Meeting of the Parliament 27 November 2019
That is fine, but it is not what the Government promised. The Government promised that the personnel would go to
“A&E departments, GP practices, police stations and prisons”,
but so far, we have had a miserly seven and a half personnel for the police. Just think of the number of police stations and custody suites across the country, yet only seven and a half personnel have been placed there so far. That is exactly what Neil Findlay was talking about.
What on earth are we doing to support the police on the front line? What are we doing to support general practices, prisons—we had a report just this week on that very subject—or A and Es? It is all very well and fine for the cabinet secretary to come up with statistics to rebut my statistics, but until the Government recognises and accepts that it is not delivering on the strategy that it promised and that people are crying out for help, we will not move one step forward.
I move,
That the Parliament recognises that there is a mental health crisis in Scotland; considers that mental health is not currently being treated equally to physical health, but that it deserves to be treated with the same urgency; believes that this requires the creation of new services, operating 24 hours a day, seven days a week; recalls that action 15 of the Mental Health Strategy stated that 800 additional mental health workers would be added to the workforce in A&E departments, GP practices, police station custody suites and prisons; believes that this is an insufficient quantity to meet the huge unmet demand that exists, and regrets that the commitment has since been diluted, with the latest update showing that more than a third of the staff added to the workforce so far have been attributed to “other settings”, meaning that the police, A&E departments, GP practices and prisons will not get the benefits of the full contingent of additional mental health workers expected; notes recent reports of the increasing stress and mental ill-health being experienced by police officers and staff, and urges the Scottish Government to coordinate a new emergency package of support to increase and upgrade the services available to both them and staff in other public services, and further calls on the Scottish Government to publish the final allocation of staff that each key setting is currently expected to receive, and for it to set a new target for the number of mental health workers it will add in each of these settings, elevating the ambition of its 10-year strategy and getting people the treatment they need fast.
14:50