Meeting of the Parliament 29 January 2025
I will make some progress, then come back to Ms Baillie.
We have planned for and driven workforce growth through investment in training our workforce of the future, with an increase in funded undergraduate places for health and social care professions. Our workforce planning will continue to evolve to account for the shift that is required in the shape and size of the workforce. Part of that will be consideration of the skills mix that is needed to deliver the service improvements and reforms that have been mentioned. We will set out more detail as part of our medium-term approach to health and social care renewal, which we are committed to publishing before the summer recess.
Some required changes are already taking place, including in pharmacy education, in which, from 2026, all graduates will be independent-prescriber trained at the point of registration. That, coupled with our planned expansion of the pharmacy first service, presents a new opportunity for patients to benefit from that expertise and for GPs to be freed up to focus on the care that only they can provide.
Our budget will also enable the number of domestic intakes to university dental courses to increase by 7 per cent, which will ensure that we build a strong workforce pipeline in the medium and longer terms.
Since 2021, we have increased the number of medical undergraduate places by 300, while also offering alternative routes to medicine as a career and doing more to support a pipeline of doctors for our remote and island communities.
Retaining and recruiting GPs is vital, and we remain committed to increasing their number. There are currently over 5,000 GPs in Scotland, the number of which we have increased by 307 since 2017. There are just over 1,200 GPs in training in Scotland, which is extremely encouraging. We have published a GP recruitment and retention plan, which includes new actions that will support the attraction and retention of GPs, including work on expanding fellowships and flexible retention schemes.
In the coming weeks, we are due to publish the nursing and midwifery task force report, which is also focused on recruitment and retention.
Finally, through continuation of work on the national care service, we will continue to support improvement and innovation across the system via the establishment of an advisory board, which will have a clear focus on national and local workforce planning, high-quality learning, and development and leadership support for social care staff.
Growth in the workforce alone cannot be the solution to the challenges ahead: we must also take account of emerging opportunities in order to enhance workforce productivity and wellbeing, including reducing workload through use of new technology and artificial intelligence, and enhancing the quality of care for patients across the country by using staff expertise in different ways.
That is why, last year, we published “Improving Wellbeing and Working Cultures”, which sets out our ambition to enhance working cultures across the system, and why we continue to support national wellbeing, leadership and equalities interventions. That approach, and the support that is offered, have been and will continue to be shaped by the voices and lived experiences of our staff.
The joint social services task force has also taken forward important work to present a range of opportunities to improve the experiences of our valued social care, social work and allied health professional staff.
Those are great examples of the practical steps that we are taking to support the workforce of today and tomorrow.
The immediate steps that I have outlined are critically important as we seek to improve the experience of staff who work daily in our hospitals and communities. They form part of a comprehensive package that will allow us to deal more effectively with the immediate challenges that the system faces and, at the same time, support staff to respond to future demands.
In closing, I reiterate my heartfelt thanks to health and social care staff across the system for all that they do. Although I am the first to recognise that the system is not without its challenges, their efforts continue to make a real difference to the lives of people across Scotland every day, and this Government will continue to do everything that it can do to support them.
I move amendment S6M-16252.1, to leave out from “there is a continuing crisis” to end and insert:
“current high wait times mean that too many are waiting too long for treatment; thanks hardworking NHS and social care staff who provide extraordinary care across the country; recognises that there are crises facing too many parts of the NHS; notes investment of over £11 billion in the NHS workforce and an estimated £950 million to ensure that adult social care workers, including those in the third and private sectors, are paid at least the real Living Wage; recognises that the biggest threat to the health and social care workforce comes from the UK Government’s decision to increase employer national insurance contributions, and demands that the UK Labour administration reimburse the Scottish Government in full; supports the calls for the publication of a medium-term approach to health and social care reform, including workforce planning, before the Parliament’s 2025 summer recess, and believes that the aim of the medium-term reforms must be to ensure that everyone can access the treatment and care that they require, in the right place, at the right time.”
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