To ask the Scottish Government how the Scottish budget 2025-26 will support the national health service. (S6O-04107)

With record funding of more than £21 billion provided in this year’s proposed budget, we aim to improve patient experience by ensuring that the journey from diagnosis to treatment to aftercare is as straightforward and stress free as possible. A commitment to provide £200 million to reduce waiting times and improve capacity, with a vow to make the system more efficient and reduce delayed discharge, means that, by March 2026, more than 150,000 extra patients are expected to be treated as a result.

Despite substantial funding increases, significant challenge remains, which means that prevention and reform remain critical to delivering a sustainable health and social care system.

I remind members that I hold a bank nurse contract with NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde.

My Rutherglen constituents often contact me regarding support for long-term health conditions, and in particular access to diabetes technology. How will measures in this year’s budget support those requiring long-term treatment?

I thank Clare Haughey for bringing up a point that is absolutely central to the elements of reform and improvement that I spoke about. Addressing concerns around long-term conditions and managing them better is central to those aims, and the Government is committed to supporting people with long-term conditions for those reasons.

On the question of diabetes tech, this year alone, we have provided funding for 2,100 people to receive a hybrid closed-loop system. We will continue to support those people with recurring funding for as long as they use the system, and we are working on plans for expansion in 2025.

The 2025-26 budget also includes an additional £4.5 million to deliver new specialist support across the country for people with long Covid, ME, chronic fatigue and other similar conditions. That important investment will support people with those conditions across Scotland. We are asking Parliament to unite behind the budget to ensure that that funding reaches the people who really need it.

A recent Audit Scotland report on alcohol and drug services recommended that the Scottish Government increase funding to tackle alcohol-related harm by mid-2025. However, the budget indicates that those services received a real-terms funding cut. How does the Scottish Government respond to Alcohol Focus Scotland’s assessment that

“the budget in its current form is ... lacking in the ambition and determination needed to tackle Scotland’s alcohol emergency”?

I thank Carol Mochan for raising an important issue that is a priority for the Government. We have maintained alcohol and drug services funding, which includes the national mission funding of £60 million a year and the £250 million across this parliamentary session.

We have also baselined a significant amount of money—£19 million—into alcohol and drug partnership funding to give long-term certainty, which was one of the ADPs’ asks. Alongside the funding that we provide, there is wider health board Intervention, details of which are not readily available in the budget document, which speaks to services that are being delivered in communities.

On that basis, I hope that Carol Mochan is reassured that the issue remains a significant priority for the Government.