Question reference: S6W-27178
- Asked by: Carol Mochan, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Labour
- Date lodged: 1 May 2024
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Current status: Answered by Neil Gray on 14 May 2024
Question
To ask the Scottish Government how much of the NHS Recovery, Health and Social Care budget in 2024-25 has been spent on prevention, and provided to allied health professionals (AHP) as those focused on prevention.
Answer
The Scottish Government does not hold the detail of this funding. Local decisions on how to allocate funding is the responsibility of NHS Boards.
The 2024-25 Budget provides funding of over £19.5 billion for NHS recovery, health and social care – giving our NHS a real terms uplift and providing over £14.2 billion investment in our NHS Boards.
This Budget continues to support prevention and early intervention which is critical to addressing system challenges and longer term reform, with key investment including:
- Supporting investment in excess of £10 billion for the NHS paybill to support the workforce including Allied Health Professionals and which has rewarded NHS staff in recent years during the cost of living crisis. The budget for the NHS workforce is not allocated by workforce group.
- £2 billion for social care and integration, an additional £1 billion compared to 2021-22 spend. This delivers on our Programme for Government commitment to increase social care spending by 25% over this Parliament two years ahead of our original target.
- Over £2.1bn for primary care, which includes funding for Allied Health Professionals, to improve preventative care in the community, supporting the development of multidisciplinary teams in general practice, sustaining NHS dental care through enhanced fees and continuing free eye examinations.
- Supporting spend in excess of £1.3 billion to support mental health services, with £290.2 million direct investment – more than doubled since 2020/21 - enabling record numbers of staff in providing more varied support and services to a larger number of people than ever before.
- Sustaining increased funding to address the twin public health emergencies of drugs deaths and the harms from alcohol, by maintaining our commitment to provide an additional £250 million funding over the life of this parliament to address the drugs death emergency.
- Protecting those most at risk with increased investment of over 55% for our routine childhood and adult vaccination programmes.