8. To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on the 2021 Scottish National Party manifesto commitment to expand on the community link worker programme. (S6O-02503)

Due to difficult decisions during the emergency budget review, recruitment to additional roles to support community mental health resilience and ensure that every general practice has access to a dedicated mental health and wellbeing service has not yet commenced. However, we have already prioritised significant investment to build primary care mental health capacity through action 15 and the primary care improvement fund. More than 540 whole-time equivalent primary care mental health workers have been recruited through those funds. We remain committed to improving mental health service provision in primary care settings.

As Dr Gulhane mentioned, the proposed reduction in community link worker posts in Glasgow will be felt most acutely by the deprived communities in the city. Last week’s programme for government committed to ensuring that services such as the community link worker programme can respond to local needs in the year ahead. However, link workers and GP practices are facing uncertainty in the here and now. It is not good enough for the cabinet secretary to simply pass the buck. Will he commit to getting around the table with the Glasgow city health and social care partnership and the GMB trade union in order to ensure that link worker provision is maintained at its current level and that it can be funded more sustainably in the longer term?

As I mentioned in response to Mr Gulhane’s question, we are already engaging with the health and social care partnership in Glasgow to understand its plans for the primary care improvement fund, and we will continue to engage with it in order to try to address the issues that it faces in relation to community link workers.

I recognise the important value of those workers, and we want to ensure that they are maintained in order to support GP practices in some of our most deprived communities.

This week I met with general practitioners in Easterhouse in my Glasgow Provan constituency. They expressed deep concern about proposed reductions to the hugely valuable community link worker programme and highlighted reductions in GP workload and in prescriptions issued as a consequence of the work that is undertaken by the link workers. They also highlighted a carbon cost to the proposed reductions, as prescriptions are one of the health service’s biggest sources of carbon emissions.

The reductions are a false economy at a time when we should be moving towards preventative medicine. Has the Scottish Government done any assessment of the additional costs in terms of GP time, additional prescriptions and, indeed, our carbon footprint that would arise from the proposal?

We have not carried out such an assessment on general practices or the wider system. However, we recognise the important value that community link workers have as part of the multidisciplinary team in primary care settings, which is why we take seriously the issues that are being highlighted by members around the potential impact on community link workers in Glasgow and why we have already started the process of engagement with the health and social care partnership in Glasgow to understand how it plans to use the investment that we are providing it with around the primary care improvement fund.

However, I also underline the point that we have already stepped in to provide financial support to the health and social care partnership to allow it to continue those posts in this financial year. It is important that the partnership has a sustainable financial pathway to supporting those posts.