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I will be accountable for the progress that the budget is able to make. I am confident that we will be able to reduce waiting times. The investment that we will make, which I hope colleagues round the table will recognise is needed and which I therefore hope that they will vote for, will deliver £100 million of greater capacity in scheduled care. That will allow a capacity increase, which I hope will be sustained, to address our waiting times.

We estimate that that funding will provide 150,000 patients with treatment, whether that is surgery or diagnostic scopes and scans. That will enable us to reduce waiting times by March 2026, which is a critical commitment in the budget and one for which I will be held to account. We are working with our boards—particularly those that have regional or national centres such as the Golden Jubilee hospital and our national treatment centres—to ensure that they are able to maximise their capacity and run rates so that we can get through those patients.

I recognise that, if anybody waits too long for treatment and care, their wider health and mental health can deteriorate. Some of those patients then pick up other issues and conditions, which we want to avoid. That goes back to the point about prevention. We can deliver various levels of prevention and, by reducing waiting times, we can reduce the impact that some of those conditions can have on a person’s wider health.

Reducing waiting times is a fundamental priority and I have set it out in the budget. The £30 million that was invested this year has made a demonstrable difference and started to reduce some of the longest waits across Scotland. It has provided a starting point of capacity that we need to build on, and that is happening as we build towards the £100 million coming into place in April.

That is a fair challenge. I am answering questions about where we are now. We will invest in the health service to reduce the longest waits. We have embarked on that, with the starting point being £30 million this year, and £100 million will come into the budget next year. That is to ensure that we reduce the longest waits, because I recognise that we are not where we want to be. I accept the fact that we have not made the progress that we want to make.

That being said, I have confidence in the plan that is before us to build on the £30 million that came through last year and the £100 million that is coming from April. We are investing capital and resource to make sure that we increase capacity and are directing capacity towards the national treatment centres and regional hubs to ensure that we maximise the efficiency and productivity of the system. I am confident that we will meet the commitment that we set out in the budget.

Of course, that funding can arrive only if colleagues round the table vote for it and a budget is passed. Because the Scottish Government does not command a majority in Parliament, if we want waiting times to improve, we need to vote for it. That will be an important consideration for all of us in the coming months.

Good morning, convener and colleagues. I am very pleased to be here to talk about the health and social care aspects of our proposed Scottish budget.

The budget sees record funding for health and social care, with more than £21 billion for the portfolio. The budget will help to deliver progress for Scotland’s health and social care services, as well as lay the foundations for longer-term reform and improvement.

It is a budget for delivery that directly addresses the issues that people are most concerned about and that will support our services, ensuring that they are effective, efficient and sustainable. The budget will empower our reform programme to make those crucial services fit for Scotland’s future.

The significant budget allocation includes an increase in our capital spending power of £139 million from 2024-25, as well as a commitment of almost £200 million to reduce waiting list numbers and delayed discharge. We will continue to focus on the reform and improvement of the performance of our services by deploying existing resources more efficiently and effectively, and we will continue to take decisive action to support delivery against the reform vision, which I outlined to the Scottish Parliament in June.

The budget will support measures to improve population health and early intervention preventative measures that will be delivered through effective primary and community care services. As such, we will prioritise and increase access to and capacity in primary care, including by supporting services in general practice, and we will enable the use of measures to sustainably treat more patients in community settings. That includes support for the expansion of hospital at home; immediate investment in general medical services to support critical services; general practice stabilisation and other primary care enhancements; additional support for general practice; a critical dental workforce and training package; and a community eye care programme that will transfer patients from waiting lists.

Central to the operation of our health service are the health boards, which will receive more than £16.2 billion in total from the proposed budget. That sum includes funding to honour commitments to fair pay settlements for our health workforce.

As outlined in the budget document, our commitment to renew and reform our national health service means that we will seek to start work in 2025-26 on delivering a series of new acute care facilities.

The formula is under review, and we continue to review it. It is a very complicated financial system, and unpicking it could have unintended consequences, so we need to ensure that, if we change it in any way, we deliver improvement rather than detriment.

I do not have a timescale for when we expect to publish any commentary on the NRAC formula or reach a decision on whether we change it. The important principle in the budget is that the budgets for all boards are within 0.6 per cent of the NRAC formula, so there is no detriment to any territorial board across the country. All of them have parity in being able to deliver services, and we will keep the NRAC formula under review.

I will bring in Alan Gray in a second to provide more detail on that. First, I note that I did not use the words that Mr Sweeney used to describe the situation on mental health services. I said that there is a challenge, and I want it to be clear that I recognise that there is a challenge. For some people who are waiting too long to access services, Mr Sweeney’s description would be apt, but that picture is not faced by everybody in the system, nor is it faced by every mental health practitioner—although, again, I understand that those practitioners who are under pressure will recognise the description that Mr Sweeney used.

I will bring in Alan Gray now to determine issues around the budgetary situation.

That ignores the £200 million in the budget that is allocated to waiting times improvement and improvement in capacity in relation to delayed discharge. Those budget lines—the £200 million—are not just about meeting immediate need and delivering capacity; they are also about working with boards to have a sustainable service delivery model that means that they provide health service and social care capacity on a sustainable basis. That is about reform and improvement, as well as meeting the immediate demand that we all know exists for us to address waiting times and delayed discharge.

The point that Mr Gulhane makes ignores some of the investment that is being made elsewhere in the budget.

In spite of our investing a significant amount on a record increase to bring health and social care spending to record levels, there are challenges remaining, and there will be boards that continue to face financial challenges. The financial delivery unit will keep working with them, and we expect those that are on the escalation framework to continue to progress towards becoming more financially sustainable.

I have a number of points to raise. Providing greater certainty over funding allows for longer-term planning; I made that point in response to questions from Mr Whittle and Mr Sweeney. Bringing down the level of demand, particularly on secondary care services, and shifting the balance of care into the community, will be of critical importance to achieving greater financial sustainability in health and social care services.

Improving the health of our population is also critically important. I made the point on “The Sunday Show” with Martin Geissler that one of the most important things that individuals can do to take responsibility is to take advantage of the vaccination programme, if they are eligible for it. It is good for people in terms of preserving their health, but it is also good for the health service because it reduces the demand that arises from, in this case, respiratory conditions such as flu, respiratory syncytial virus and Covid, which tend to spike at this time of year.

We continue to invest in breaking down barriers to people looking after their own health and wellbeing better. That comes through the likes of the community link worker network, as well as the investments that we are making in sport, physical activity and wellbeing, and the impact that the culture budget spend will have on our health and wellbeing, particularly our mental health. As a former culture minister, I know that that expansion is good in its own right, but it also has the opposite impact to what happened during Covid, when not being able to go out and experience culture and leisure services had a clear and demonstrably detrimental impact on people’s mental health. Expanding provision and increasing access in those areas can have a virtuous and positive impact. A number of areas that are outside the health budget help to improve our health and wellbeing.

Finally, we are making investments to reduce child poverty on a wider Scottish budget and cross-portfolio basis. Poverty is one of the greatest drivers of ill health and health inequality. By addressing child poverty, we can also increase the health of our population and reduce demand on our health services. I can therefore point Mr Torrance to a number of areas that help to make our health service more sustainable.

Yes. All potential capital projects that have been on the stocks will be part of that consideration, as well as anything new that has come through. Clarity on all that will be provided at that time.

We are adopting innovation that is coming through the academic sphere, the private sector and our staff. There is incredible innovation, particularly on clinical pathways and clinical governance, to do things in a more efficient way. Our staff are doing fantastic work there, including through the skill projects and the Scottish infection prevention and control education pathway.

AI provides a particular opportunity, as does the digital side. We have already seen the beneficial outcomes of that from a radiography perspective in the cancer space. We need to make sure that we get that right, and that we do it in a safe and ethical way, but I go back to my earlier point about embracing innovation that can free up clinical time, so that our clinicians can deliver more human-to-human caring, which is so important.

The chief scientific officer for health, Dame Anna Dominiczak, is working incredibly hard in the Triple Helix Group, which brings together industry, the health service, Government and academia to make sure that our health service and our economy get the maximum benefit of the innovation that is coming through.

I point the committee to Dame Anna’s work as something that addresses some of Emma Harper’s queries. There is a huge opportunity before us, and I am determined to ensure that our health service is better able to embrace and support the innovation that is coming through and those who are investing in innovative technologies so that they can be adopted more quickly in the health service. That involves a cultural shift, as well as a practical and structural shift, in the way that the health service operates. I am, however, determined to do that, because I cannot see us having successful reform and improvement without adopting greater innovation. It has to be central to the plan.

The short answer is yes, and the long answer is that we have gone beyond that. The funding that we have raised from our more progressive income tax policy means that, this year, we have £1.7 billion more resource to allocate to public services. That means that we are able to invest across Scottish public services to a greater extent than if we had followed UK spending plans.

Again, I am more than happy to provide additional information, but the policy remains that all consequentials for health are passed on in full.