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The Scottish Government remains committed to improving mental health service provision in primary care settings. The newly published Mental Health and Wellbeing Delivery Plan sets out our ambition to drive a shift in the balance of care across mental health to ensure a focus on prevention and early intervention in the community, including a focus on providing high quality mental health care in General Practice, by:

• Working collaboratively to improve access to support, assessment and treatment in primary care mental health and wellbeing services. This will include the development of multi-disciplinary teams in general practice, and maximising the role of community mental health teams, digital provision and NHS 24 to make access simpler and quicker, aligning care and quality with the Getting it Right For Everyone (GIRFE) principles. We will produce an initial report on progress, which will include equality impacts, by November 2024;
• Publish guidance on measuring and evaluating outcomes from mental health and wellbeing services in primary care by the end of 2023. This includes data indicators for protected characteristics and deprivation; and
• Continue to include primary care and community mental health as priorities within the Mental Health Outcomes Framework.

We will work with partners, including primary care stakeholders, to progress this ambition.

Additionally, as at 12 July 2022, 958.9 whole time equivalent (WTE) mental health roles have been filled using Action 15 funding, including 356.1 WTE posts in GP practices. Having met and exceeded the Action 15 commitment, the Scottish Government has continued to fund the roles that were recruited to.

By March 2023 186 WTE mental health workers had been recruited under the Primary Care Improvement Fund (PCIF). The PCIF also funds Community Link Workers (CLWs) as part of primary care multi-disciplinary teams (MDTs) and, at March 2023, more than 308 WTE CLWs were in post supporting GP practices. We are investing almost £190 million (£170m plus Agenda for Change Uplifts) in the Primary Care Improvement Fund in 2023-24, for the ongoing development of primary care multi-disciplinary teams and we have committed to the PCIF being £170m plus Agenda for Change uplifts in future years.

The Scottish Government measures progress against the commitment to increase GP numbers using headcount data as this provides an accurate number of GPs registered on the Performers List in Scotland at the time the data is collected. Currently whole-time equivalent data is calculated as an estimate, based on returns from General Practices through the General Practice Workforce Survey.

The latest publication can be found here: General practice workforce survey 2022 - General practice workforce survey - Publications - Public Health Scotland

The Scottish Government uses both headcount and whole-time equivalent data to inform workforce planning to increase GP capacity.

Ending homelessness continues to be a key priority for the Scottish Government. Our ambition can only be achieved through a shared public responsibility when government and partners all play their part.

With that in mind, I met with the Scottish Veterans Commissioner on 30 November and have agreed a number of actions to raise the profile of veterans’ housing and homelessness issues with relevant stakeholders such as local authorities and social landlords.

I have also discussed with the Minister for Veterans how we can work together to provide support to veterans and their families and I have invited him to join the Ministerial Oversight Group on Homelessness, which brings together ministers from a range of portfolios across the Scottish Government to identify the actions required to prevent and end homelessness, including for veterans.

NHSScotland is following the guidance from the Institution of Structural Engineers (IStructE) who do not recommend that all sites with Reinforced Autoclaved Aerated Concrete (RAAC) should be vacated simply because RAAC is present. They do however recommend that if RAAC planks are present, their structural condition will need to be determined by a Chartered or Incorporated Structural Engineer to determine the risks and whether any remedial work is required. This is the approach that NHSScotland is taking. Where RAAC has been found in the NHSScotland Estate there has been no immediate disruption or concern although additional monitoring and management of is required in all cases. NHS Boards will consider their buildings with RAAC on an ongoing risk based approach to the management of those assets.

My officials engage with the pharmaceutical industry on a range of matters, including the development of new medicines, and keep me updated as required.

The Chief Pharmaceutical Officer last met with Vertex Pharmaceuticals on 6 December 2023 and continued to impress upon them the importance of offering a revised price to address the concern that the current price of the cystic fibrosis (CF) medicines covered by the multiple technology appraisal (MTA) exceeds what the NHS would consider reasonable. She also discussed the ongoing availability of clinical trial CF medicines, including when a trial is stopped.

3,297 square kilometres of Scotland’s inshore waters are permanently closed to both scallop dredging and bottom trawling, with no permanent prohibitions for creeling in place.

Scottish inshore waters are defined from the mean high water spring up to the extent of the territorial sea (12 Nautical Mile limit)

As previously set out in the response to S6W-16651 on 21 April 2023 recruitment of the 1,000 additional roles to support community mental health resilience, ensuring every GP Practice has access to a mental health and wellbeing service has not yet commenced. The re-profiling of spend means that recruitment for this programme continues to be paused in 2023-24. We have already prioritised significant investment to build mental health capacity in primary care through Action 15 of the Mental Health Strategy 2017-2027 and the Primary Care Improvement Fund, with funding for posts continuing in 2023-24.

We continue to focus on delivery of our mental health and wellbeing strategy and recently published delivery plan, which includes commitments around mental health in primary care.

All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament’s website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers

Scottish Government fund peatland restoration via the Peatland Action partnership. The individual delivery partners that make up this partnership apply their own grant offer terms and conditions regarding protections and restrictions on the land that receives money from them for undertaking peatland restoration. I would refer the MSP to those organisations for further information.

At a programme level, the Peatland ACTION Monitoring Strategy ( https://www.nature.scot/doc/peatland-action-monitoring-strategy ) is putting in place a structured approach to monitoring sites that have had their peatland restored to evidence whether we are delivering effective restoration.

In its November 2023 independent assessment of progress on climate adaptation, the Climate Change Committee (CCC) recommended that the Scottish Government “should set specific and quantified targets for levels of resilience across Scottish society under each outcome” of the next Scottish National Adaptation Plan.

The Scottish Government is considering all recommendations from the CCC on the structure of the next adaptation plan. Public consultation on a draft of the next adaptation plan is anticipated in early-2024 and we have asked the CCC to provide further views at this stage.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-23310 on 11 December 2023. All answers to parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament’s website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers