Finance Secretary Shona Robison has today announced £115.8m cuts to health and social care as part of the Scottish government’s in-year savings plan, with mental health services and some programmes for disabled people hit hardest.

Shona Robison outlined urgent action to balance Scotland’s 2024-25 budget and address a £1bn gap in Scottish public finances:

“In the face of these challenges, the Scottish government has stepped in to support people and services where it has been needed most: on social security, health and public services.

“We will continue to be a fiscally responsible government and balance the budget each year, as we have done every year for 17 years and as we will do again this year.

“But this will mean we must unfortunately take difficult decisions along the way.”

In a letter to the parliament’s Finance and Public Administration Committee, Ms Robison details a £188m reduction in spending, the largest proportion of which will be in health and care expenditure.

The biggest amount will be in the COVID-19 funding and other services, seeing £20.3m savings to ‘drive down’ expenditure and improve COVID-19 specific activity relating to vaccinations and PPE.

This comes despite Ms Robison reflecting in her speech to the parliament on a “recent surge” in COVID-19 and respiratory cases, and warnings of reduced vaccination uptake following the rollout of the new respiratory vaccination programme.

In her letter to the Finance and Public Audit Committee, Ms Robison also highlighted the ‘significant’ health and social care backlog arising from the pandemic.

Ms Robison said that while health cuts have to be made, key frontline emergency services will be protected.

However, mental health will see £18.8m cut for 2024-25, including changes to the distress brief intervention programme and student mental health measures, while additional mental health officer funding is also set to be cut.

There will be a delay to the start of funding to build Changing Places toilets for people with physical disabilities.

Meanwhile, third sector intermediary, the ALLIANCE will have its funding reviewed ‘to align with self-management grant fund awards’ as part of savings in ‘quality and improvement’ in health and social care.

Almost £30m of health and care cuts will come from ‘reprofiling’ of demand-led activities, including investment in digital trial developments within health research are set to be ‘paused’.

An expected £13.6m savings will come from adult social care and the National Care Service (NCS) including a ‘refinement’ of non-staffing spend linked to delivering the NCS and cuts to the Independent Living Fund.

This follows leading adult day care and voluntary care services highlighting staffing pressures across the sector affecting the quality of care.

Staff education and training across the health and care workforce will also see an £8.2m cut to spending.

Much of the need to find in-year savings has come from pay agreements.

Ms Robison writes that while she welcomes Westminster’s acceptance of NHS pay recommendations, there is still ‘significant uncertainty’ over the funding Scotland will receive following the UK budget.

After the latest NHS Agenda for Change above-inflation pay offer for 2024-25 was backed by £448m government funding, Ms Robinson today confirmed that pay continues to be a ‘significant driver’ of in-year pressures, with potential costs of up to £0.8bn this financial year.

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