A protest is happening outside Parliament today for the new routes home campaign, to recognise those who are locked up in hospital. I welcome the families of those patients who are in the gallery, including Tracey and Natalie, who are constituents of mine and are the mother and the sister of Kyle, who has been locked up for 14 years. Hundreds of autistic people and people with learning disabilities are stuck inappropriately in out-of-area placements, hospitals and secure units. Dozens of them have been there for over a decade—a millennium of lost years in captivity. As we approach the March 2024 deadline in “Coming Home Implementation: A report from the working group on complex care and delayed discharge”

, what has the Scottish Government done to get those patients home?

I credit Alexander Burnett, who has raised that issue on many occasions on behalf of his constituents. We as a Government are absolutely committed to delivering the “Coming Home Implementation” recommendations to reduce inappropriate hospital stays and out-of-area placements experienced by people with learning disabilities and complex care needs.

I can ensure that we provide Alexander Burnett with a fuller answer on what we have done, but I will give some examples. We have launched the new dynamic support register, which is one of the key recommendations to improve the local case management of people with learning disabilities and complex care needs. That is a very important step towards achieving the

“Coming Home Implementation” vision that will help local areas to plan for people with learning disabilities and complex care needs to live in their home communities. We have also developed a practitioner peer support network and a national support panel to support local areas to share best practice, and we have provided £20 million under our community living change fund to integration authorities to design community-based solutions that avoid or limit future hospital use and out-of-area placements.

We all want—I know that

Alexander Burnett will agree with this—to ensure that people are supported to be in a home that is absolutely right for them, and is as close to their family as possible and in their community.