 The next item of business is a debate on motion 2747 in the name of Kevin Stewart on mental health and wellbeing in primary care services. I invite members who wish to participate in the debate to press the request to speak buttons or place an R in the chat function now or as soon as possible, and I call on the minister to speak and move the motion for around 12 minutes, please minister. Thank you, Presiding Officer, and happy new year to you and all in the chamber. I welcome the opportunity to open this debate on mental health and wellbeing in primary care services. Mental health is one of the major public health challenges in Scotland, and we know that the pandemic has had significant impact on mental health and wellbeing across Scotland, particularly for our children and young people. We will all have been affected in different ways, and we know that for too many people, the impact on their mental health will have been exacerbated by existing inequalities. Approximately one third of all GP consultations now have a mental health component. However, the increasing range and complexity of mental health presentations do not all fit existing pathways of care. We need to ensure that we have the right capacity and capability in place to provide the necessary assessment, care and support within primary care settings. That is essential to ensure that people get the support that they need when they need it. Last year, we published our mental health transition and recovery plan, which sets out how we intend to support mental health through the pandemic. We have further built on those commitments through the NHS recovery plan and our programme for government. Our work focuses just as much on supporting and creating conditions for everyone to have good mental wellbeing as it does on transforming our mental health services. Our ambition is supported by our £120 million mental health recovery and renewal fund, the single largest investment in mental health in the history of devolution. The Scottish budget that was published on 9 December continues record levels of investment with direct funding for mental health in 2022-23 of more than £290 million. That is a 6 per cent increase on this year and a 139 per cent increase on 2020-21. By the end of this Parliament, we will increase direct mental health funding by 25 per cent and ensure that 10 per cent of all front-line NHS spend goes to mental health with 1 per cent directed specifically to children and young people services. I am grateful to the minister for giving way. I am also grateful for his assurances about his Government's commitment to addressing the crisis in child and adolescent mental health care, but he will be aware of the freedom of information request that was published by my party over Christmas that shows that things are getting worse and not better. In fact, one young person had to wait seven years for first-line treatment. How does he expect to clear down Calms waiting times list by next year as his Government ambition when we are still going backwards? We are still in the midst of the pandemic and I think that this is the most precarious time in the pandemic. We still have Covid cases. We have a situation where there are other winter pressures and, quite frankly, we have a situation where folk are tired. That is why we are supporting our staff and we are continuing to help where we can to ensure that we drive down waiting times and waiting lists. They are unacceptable and we will do all that we can to ensure that we get those down. I talked about the record investment in transformational change. I also want to talk about the new multidisciplinary model that will deliver manifesto commitment to provide 1,000 additional dedicated roles by 2026 to help to grow community mental health resilience and increase the use of social prescribing. That approach has the potential to be truly transformative. Fundamentally changing the way services are delivered provides the opportunity for a truly person-centred service with more help for people when and where they need it. That multidisciplinary approach has been developed in partnership and will be central to changing how we deliver services. Those newly funded roles could include mental health nurses, psychologists, peer support workers, occupational therapists and link workers. That will increase the range of responses available in or around GP settings. It will no longer be the case that an individual can only be treated by their GP or through a referral to secondary services. To facilitate person-centred care, a range of professionals will be available to deliver a sustainable, timely and compassionate mental health service. We have heard directly from patients how support from different professionals can be life changing. One patient in Ayrshire and Arran following input from our occupational therapist said, my sleep pattern has improved and I feel like I am a different person. The Royal College of Occupational Therapists recognised that this support can prevent conditions from getting worse, especially where physical and mental ill health intertwine. Specifically, that approach looks to improving our nation's health not just now but in the long term, because it puts the needs of individuals first and over time will reduce pressure on our hospitals and acute services. That service will not operate in isolation either. As well as strengthening links with secondary care, it will sit within and link to broader community assets such as addiction services, food banks, benefit support and providing on-going emotional support. That aspect of the services will be supported by every GP practice having access to a link worker. He will support mental wellbeing through good-quality conversations, putting individuals at the centre of decision-making about their care. Would the minister agree that link workers should be already in every practice with the contracts that are already in place? We already have link workers in practices and that goes much, much further. As I have said, the multi-faceted approach will make a real difference not only to GPs and practices but more importantly to patients across the country. The alliance is also very supportive of that approach, recognising the role that community link workers and others in multidisciplinary teams can play to support improved mental health and wellbeing. We know that the pandemic has and will continue to have a significant effect on the mental health and wellbeing of our children and young people in Scotland. I would like to highlight some of the work that we have progressed to improve services and support for young folks' mental health and wellbeing. We have already provided health boards with nearly £40 million to improve their child and adolescent mental health services over the lifetime of this Parliament. In addition, the mental health and wellbeing and primary care services will provide support, treatment and assessment across all demographics rather than targeted groups. That will include children and young people. That will include early intervention and prevention to a range of people, which we know is vital in preventing the escalation of mental health needs. However, they will also support those with severe and complex mental health needs. Where more specialist input is required, they will be accessed by this service in partnership with the GP practice. To work towards our ambition for new mental health and wellbeing primary care services, £1.5 million has already been made available from the Mental Health Recovery and Renewal Fund. Local planning guidance has also been developed and will be published tomorrow. Planning has been devolved to local groups who, through collaboration, communication and co-operation, are best placed to determine what is required to meet the needs of local people and communities. Although those services will play a vital role in Covid recovery, supporting and addressing mental health and wellbeing needs, which have increased significantly over the past two years, I am only too aware of the pressure that the pandemic continues to place on our front-line NHS services. While we do not want to delay implementation of all of that, we have made it clear to stakeholders that we will work flexibly with them to support planning and avoid any additional or unnecessary pressures. Despite recent workforce expansion, we know that demand for mental health services continues to grow, which is why we are taking steps to continue to support and grow the workforce. We have invested but recognise that recruitment continues to be challenging, which is why those services must be developed incrementally to 2026 and across a number of disciplines that I have already mentioned. Those services must provide additionality and must not replace existing capacity. Those additional roles will be factored into the long-term mental health workforce plan, developed in the first half of this Parliament, but we must act now to meet the growing demand for mental health support. Our intention is that the funding available will increase significantly year-on-year to support implementation, reaching up to an expected £40 million per annum by 2024-25. By the end of the Parliament, that could be an investment of over £100 million, which should increase the mental health workforce substantially and change the way that support is delivered in a truly transformational way. It will improve the experience of support and care provided in primary care, through more rapid access to support within a setting that individuals know and trust. Our investment will be further complemented by the Communities, Mental Health and Well-being Fund, announced in October last year, which will provide £15 million in community support for adults. The fund will provide opportunities to maximise links and to further support options in local communities. That will enable and empower people to tap into existing community assets, support and services. The fund builds on the £50 million of funding this year through the community mental health and wellbeing framework, which has enabled local authorities to provide over 230 new and enhanced community-based services for children and young people and their families and carers. I know that members right across the chamber, regardless of our political differences, share our ambition to improve the nation's mental health and wellbeing. With mental health and primary care featuring as a centrepiece of most of the parties in the chamber's manifestos, I look forward to today's debate and hearing the views of all in the chamber, including how folk can work with us to support the implementation of all of that. I would also like to take this opportunity to thank key stakeholders who have contributed their time and energy to the development of the approach that I have outlined today. I also give my sincere thanks to those who have continued to provide essential services and support during the pandemic. I cannot support the amendments lodged today. I have some sympathies for the amendment that was lodged by Mr Cole Hamilton. We will ensure that we continue to recognise that there are workforce challenges. Those are not unique to Scotland and we have taken action to invest in mental health to address waiting times in the face of unprecedented demand and challenges. I also recognise that this is one of the most difficult winters that our workforce has faced. Their wellbeing remains a key priority and we will overcome the challenges ahead if we look after our most valuable asset, the people who provide our services. I move the motion in my name and I look forward to people's contributions this afternoon. I can inform the chamber that we are quite tight for time, so I encourage members to stick to their time allocation. I call on Craig White to speak to amendment 2747.3 for around eight minutes. I wish you and everyone present a happy new year. I would like to take this opportunity to welcome the debate into mental health in primary care in Scotland today. To open, I would like to move the amendment in my name. At its core, the debate should be about the challenges that we face in mental health services. Those challenges have undoubtedly been made more acute by the pandemic and by the restrictions that have been put in place to combat it. Scotland went into the public health crisis, however, with a pre-existing mental health crisis. People with mental health problems are forced to wait too long for help, particularly the young. Today, we need to focus on the barriers to making progress. Additional funding for mental health is welcome, and we have long advocated 10 per cent of the NHS budget being directed towards mental health services, because those services are in crisis. Waiting times are too long, pathways are often too complex, medication rates remain too high and too many people reach crisis point. GP services, often the first point of contact, are severely overstretched, and I pay tribute to the work that GPs and all those working in the NHS and our mental health services are doing and will continue to do. However, we should never lose sight of the fact that GPs are responsible for diagnosing, treating, monitoring and referring patients towards specialist services. It is to GPs who, when they fail to access secondary mental health treatment, or if that treatment fails. While I recognise the huge pressures that GPs face, I support Sam Aitch's call for patients with mental health needs to be given priority for face-to-face appointments wherever that is possible. The Government should be well aware that 90 per cent of people referred for psychological therapy should start treatment within 18 weeks, but that national standard has never been met. The 18-week waiting time targets for child and adolescent mental health services has also never been met. That means that over 2,000 children are waiting over a year to access essential mental health services. Could the minister honestly imagine being 10 or 11 and being asked to wait over a year, or, as Alex Cole-Hamilton said, for up to seven years for treatment for a complex condition that he does not fully understand? It is not just unfair, it is unsustainable and it is indefensible. Following Covid, people are up to twice as likely to be experiencing anxiety, depression and high levels of psychological distress. That inevitably places more demand on all-care and support services, community facilities across primary care and in secondary mental health facilities too. The system is squeezed to crisis point and over 1,000 vacancies for mental health nurses remain unfilled and nearly 100 more consultant psychiatrists are needed across the service. The Royal College of Nursing says that we need a long-term, fully funded workforce plan for mental health services across primary and acute care. The Royal College of GPs in Scotland warns that 71 per cent of its members saw mental health related presentations increase a lot during the pandemic and can also make an appeal. Mental health problems are widespread. They affect people of all ages and all backgrounds. So, when we debate poor mental health, we all too often fall back on jargon. We make the services seem inaccessible. The minister talks frequently about lived experience. What is lived experience? It is people who this morning took a drink rather than a walk because the world outside seems too bleak. Children, often young girls, retreating to their rooms to self-harm, starting with pins and pencils before moving to knives. People suffering stress and anxiety at the prospect of doing everyday things. Adults treated in secure mental health facilities for their own safety or the safety of their partners and children. Let us never forget those who feel that there is no other way out. Sometimes they are failed by the system who take their own lives. That is the reality of the lived experience for those individuals, their family, their friends and colleagues. As a report published by the BMA and Health and Social Care Scotland published last July stated, more work needs to be done to demystify services. It adds that the current terminology used within the system is often a barrier to asking for help. Fundamentally, this Government needs to address the barriers and the blockages to accessing services. The complex terminology, people being forced to tell painful stories time and time again, the locked doors, the long waiting lists, the rejected referrals. I thank Mr Hoy for giving way. During my time in this role, the short time I have been in this role, I have spent a lot of time talking to folks with lived experience. I do not disagree with Mr Hoy about the terminology and some of the difficulties that there are in accessing services. That is one of the reasons why we are making this investment, so it is easier for folks to talk to people and to access those services. I hope that, together across this Parliament, we can all do as much as we possibly can to destigmatise mental health and to ensure that we get rid of some of the jargon and the barriers that Mr Hoy made. I thank the minister for that. I very much agree with him that, if community link workers can act almost as translators between the practitioners, public and patients, they will be doing a huge service. We need to focus also on the multidisciplinary teams that will be created, because that is to be welcomed and encouraged. Many of the blockages that we have talked about result from poor levels of recruitment into existing posts. While I welcome the Government's commitment to the expansion of mental health link workers, I wonder where they will be recruited from. By 2026, every GP practice will have access to a mental health and wellbeing service, but that will require over 1,000 new recruits. I look forward to finding out more from the Government as to how they will find that capacity. We need not just to focus on retention and recruitment. We must also make sure that we avoid redeployment. The borrow from Peter to pay Paul's approach to staffing across the NHS is ultimately unsustainable, as the Royal College of Psychiatrists has conceded. We also need to address the issue of staff morale. As Alex Cole-Hamilton's motion refers to, staff are worn out and burnt out. We have asked everything of them and more, and urgent action is needed there. It is also time to tackle the postcode lottery in mental health services to ensure that those new services are fully defined, accessible wherever possible around the clock and that they are consistent and comprehensive. Fundamentally, we need to make sure that we tackle those low-level mental health problems. Problems that are left unchecked often only escalate sometimes to crisis solutions. According to Public Health Scotland, socially disadvantaged people have an advanced risk and an increased risk of developing mental health issues. We need to ensure that those multidisciplinary professional teams are plugged into the primary care process and that they are qualified in areas such as relationships, family circumstances, the effects of poor housing, disability and unemployment, and that they can provide support on people's personal finance issues, drug and alcohol misuse, grief and trauma, problems with prescription drugs and other forms of dependency. Deputy Presiding Officer, there is, I believe, cross-party consensus that we must do more to tackle the mental health crisis that we face. As we have all seen from the helpful briefings that we have received in recent days from among the royal colleges, charities and community groups, there is no lack of support and no poverty of ideas, as we have said about doing this. The challenge for this Government is to take this crisis seriously and to address it urgently, to get the new and additional trains to concrete now, Mr Hoy. To tackle the underlying causes of poor mental health, that should not be too much to ask. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. Thank you, Mr Hoy. I now call on Carole Mawchen to speak to and move amendment 2747.1 for around six minutes, Ms Mawchen. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I'm grateful for the opportunity to open this debate on behalf of Scottish Labour. As a party, we have been at the forefront of arguing for a better settlement for people in need of mental health support. With the pandemic further stretching the resources of our NHS, there is no better time than now to discuss this crucial issue. I welcome the fact that mental health is receiving more attention, and it appears that we're beginning to turn a corner in recognising its vital importance to the wellbeing of the country. However, let me be clear that recognition on its own will not push the needle forward. It will require considerable and targeted investment over a long period of time, with significant investment in staffing levels. We need to match the increased funding in other parts of the UK, and I am going to be honest. We need a minister and a Government who place the needs of others before the need to spend time in this chamber to quite frankly pat themselves on the back. Our staff and those in need of the service deserve better. They deserve better than this self-congratulatory Government motion placed before us today. Scotland's mental health provision is well below that which taxpayers deserve and puts undue pressure on staff who are working day and night to provide a world-class service. I think that it is fair to say that, for the most part, the record of this Scottish Government on the issue has been dismal, and that the general public recognised that and their perception is that mental health is treated as a second-class consideration. I have to say that mental health has been a priority for this Government since coming to power, and there has been significant investment. Since 2007, psychiatric consultants across all specialities in NHS Scotland has increased by 23.22 per cent. Mental health nursing workforce has increased by 34 per cent since 2007. It is a significant investment. I am going to address those issues. There are so many personal stories that we have heard many of them. In particular, experiences of young people stand out. They are often in pain and in many cases very lost with nowhere to turn. What do they face? Waiting lists? Long waiting lists. That first appointment and continued treatment could be the difference between life and death for some, but it is coming far too late in many cases. Evidence to this health committee repeatedly shows long waits with no community alternatives or basic local service provision. Young people and mental health organisations have repeatedly told us in committee that shrinking provision of local services is impacting on wellbeing. The Government's response is to cut local government funding again. There has to be recognition on the benches behind the Government. Surely that has to change and has to change rapidly. Is the member arguing that the NHS should have a cut in its budget to give more to local government? That member is fed up with the Government bank benches using that as an excuse to not properly fund services. That has to be recognised. To return to NHS services, Scottish Labour's amendment notes that there are 18-week waiting time targets for CAMHS. However, that has not once been met. On top of that, almost 2,000 children we have heard and young people are waiting on lists. They are waiting over a year. I do not think that we would leave people waiting a year if they had serious physical injuries. Why, then, does the minister not address that? Beyond the individuals who are directly affected, those figures tell the story of thousands of extended families and they speak to us about that. They are constantly worried about their loved ones. At the bottom of so much of that is the continued underinvestment. The Government's motion papers over some of the cracks is not anywhere near enough to turn the ship around and address the very real issues of star shortages. The truth is that only this Government can take the blame for this. It is its lack of planning that has resulted in such failures on our staff and the workforce. Our NHS staff deserve so much better. I ask the minister, but he already knows, because the previous speaker has mentioned it, that there are more than 1,000 vacancies for mental health nurses and almost 100 consultant for psychiatrists' vacancies across Scotland. Can he tell us now how many of those vacancies will be filled? Over the next 12 months, will those vacancies be filled? Star shortages are undermining our efforts to improve services, to get people experiencing poor mental health, the right treatment and to support the wellbeing of staff. However, those things do not seem to be a priority. It takes time and long-term planning to get them in place. A quick pat on the back is what is preferred. Short-termism is not going to cut it. The Scottish Government's own target to recruit 800 mental health workers by 2022 looks like it is going to be missed. 100 of those positions have not even been created. Let's be honest, it wasn't even an ambitious target. Those statistics do not make positive reading for us at all, but there is an alternative. Scottish Labour believes that every GP practice should have access to mental health professionals to support patients close to home and reduce pressures on GPs who are struggling to deal with the growing caseload that they had. In order to do that, it is our contention that mental health funding should be increased to at least 11 per cent of the NHS budget. Doing so would signal to young people in particular that this Government is taking mental health seriously. In closing, we can see a consistent pattern developing where the Government comes to the chamber and announced targets designed to address long-term problems. Those targets are missed and they simply start the cycle again. We need to close now. I will, but in this case they also allocate time to congratulate themselves. No, you need to close now. It is politics by press release. I move the motion in my name for Scottish Labour. Thank you very much, Mr Morgan. I now call on Alex Cole-Hamilton to speak to a move amendment 2747.246, please. Thank you very much, Deputy Presiding Officer. I move the amendment in my name. I am grateful to the Government for making time for this debate because Scotland still faces a national mental health crisis. It has been defined as a crisis by this chamber on no less than two occasions in backing amendments in my name and the name of the Scottish Liberal Democrats. That mental health crisis is experienced in front lines right across our public sector, in our schools, in our prisons, in our hospitals, in our GP surgeries. It is characterised by the same things, unmet need, crises that could have been averted because early warning signs were not acted on sufficiently and people facing monstrous waiting times. There is an acute mental health problem in Scotland. We know that. We know that one in four people will suffer from a serious mental health condition at some point in their life. Just like physical health, mental health and the way it is maintained and falters have a huge impact on everyone's life. Just like physical health, when small problems are not spotted or treated, they become acute. That is why mental health should be regarded with the same priority as physical health is. Harold Mocken was absolutely right. He would not expect somebody to wait a year with a severe physical injury. That is why it should be prioritised in the same way. Scottish Liberal Democrats have long fought for that. Such a fight has secured over £145 million in the last budget for mental health. The pandemic has taken its toll. It separated us from loved ones, disrupted our livelihoods and made us worry about the very fabric of our community. It is no wonder that the pandemic has left so many of us with mental health taking a toll turn for the worse. The Royal College of Psychiatrists has reported that people are twice as likely to experience anxiety, depression and high levels of psychological stress than before Covid-19. The Scottish Association for Mental Health also found that 8 in 10 TPs thought that we are at the cusp of the new, hidden pandemic and mental health. Mental health was set to increase as a direct result. Novelist Charlotte Bronte once wrote that, if life is a battle, may we all be able to fight it well. Despite the growing need for access to mental health services and the valiant efforts of our healthcare services, those battling with their mental health in this country are not unable to fight that battle well. 20 per cent of adults who have sought help for their mental health were not seen within the 18-week waiting period. In 2014, the SNP set itself a target on mental health waiting times that has never, ever been achieved. Furthermore, research conducted by my own party, and I referenced this in an intervention to Kevin Stewart, found that hundreds of children have had to wait more than two years to receive first-line treatment from child and adolescent mental health services. As I said earlier, one young person had to wait seven years for that treatment to begin. That is a scandal. Opening up about your mental health is a vulnerable act, and it is remarkably brave one, regardless of where it takes place. It should be met with reassurance and, most importantly, with help. People should only have to tell their story once. Primary care providers in places such as GPs are so often used as a place to seek such help, but already existing pressures on staff have been exacerbated by the pandemic, which have moved appointments online, shortened those same appointments and reduced the amount of facetime that people can have together. Those factors make it even harder for people to open up and for staff to spot warning signs. It is clear—absolutely crystal clear—that there needs to be radical action to tackle this issue and to ensure that everyone has access to consistent treatment, if and when they need it. While I welcome where progress has been made and the ambition set by the Government—we have talked about the ambition to clear down CAMHS waiting lists by 2023—my party's campaigns have been listened to. The policies that the Government currently have on offer simply do not go far enough. I am very concerned that we may artificially seek to meet targets such as CAMHS, one by parking young people on medication. That is why the Scottish Liberal Democrats have been campaigning for more mental health professional places to work in primary care providers. We agree with the Labour amendment on citing mental health care professionals in GPs, not just link workers, but people who can offer talking therapies on site to implement a mental health first aid strategy in every workplace and to increase the number of walk-in services at mental health emergency services. There is a desperate need to train more staff of that, there is no doubt. When surveyed, almost half of the students said that they experienced serious psychological issues and that they feel like they are not getting helpful. However, one in eight specialist positions in child and adolescent mental health positions are currently live vacant. That is why we have previously called for doubling the number of specialist psychiatrists who can answer this deeply unmet need. We must also make sure that we have a large and strong workforce across Scotland to ensure that a quality of services is delivered to anyone, wherever they are, because we know that there are issues of rurality that compound that. However, we also need to do more to retain the staff that we have by making sure that they are not overloaded, that they have good working conditions, that they know when their breaks are coming and that their wellbeing is protected as well. We know the impact that that can have. I have reminded the chamber before of my constituent Andy Cunningham, who is a paramedic in emergency care, who talked very bravely about the time that he realised he needed help. When fishing another suicide victim out of the river, he felt entirely empty, entirely devoid of feeling and realised that he was struggling. He put his hand up and received some help, but he is one of the lucky ones. We owe our emergency care and front-line primary care of staff an immense debt of gratitude, and their mental health is suffering as well. I will conclude by saying this, Presiding Officer. The NHS is one of our most vital services, it is our most vital service. It is life-saving, but it is also on-life support and nowhere is that more evident in the waiting list for assign mental health treatment. I once again move the amendment to my name. Thank you Mr Cole-Hamilton. We now move to the open debate, and I call James Dornan, who will be followed by whoever Mr Dornan joins us online for in six minutes. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. This is an extremely important opportunity to speak in support of the motion to have and shoot. That is why I am sorry that, before I get into my speech, I really have to ask the minister, even for me during his closing speech, what budget proposals Labour made to increase funding on mental health this year, last year or any year since 2007? Or did Ms Morgan give you the address of where they keep the magic money tree? Labour does nobody any good by pretending that there is an easy solution to the problem of staffing in mental health. I know that the Scottish Government has been keen to make progress for some time in improving the situation for those who have been struggling with their mental health. The progress that has been made today with the introduction of community link support workers in many areas of the country. As someone who has seen his own mental health suffer during the pandemic, I think that it is vitally important to acknowledge the mental health challenges posed to us all by Covid. I am fortunate to have a partner that stays with me and family close by who understand my moods and depressions when things get bad, but there are so many people who are unable to make use of their regular family support networks and experience isolation from those close to them, whether it be geographical or through restrictions on visiting in hospital or care settings. With the Omicron variant, which is more easily transmissible than ever, we just cannot abandon all restrictions at the time. Is this difficult balance of combat and threat posed by Covid at the same time as the need to acknowledge and recognise the challenges of maintaining good mental health? That is clearly a major driver behind the implementation of the policy, a policy that marks a step change in the treatment of mental health in Scotland. In 2021, the Scottish Government announced the establishment of the £120 million mental health recovery and renewal fund, which is largely focused on the provision of community-based support. This huge pool of funding is what is enabling the expansion of mental health services, including 1,000-year-olds. I do not think that it would be hyperbolic to say that the additional mental health challenge that is posed in the wake of Covid may not be fully felt for the generation, but I am really pleased that the Scottish Government is taking action now to do what it can to mitigate future mental health problems that we will face alongside the ones that we are facing just now. In addition to the 1,000-year-olds and primary care centres, one of the biggest investments in the mental health of the nation in decades will see the development and implementation of innovative solutions at local levels, allowing teams to work together across multiple different disciplines to enhance the care that received by our citizens when they need it the most. I was pleased to see the recommendations in the 2017 mental health strategy begin to come to fruition. As someone who has advocated for better and more accessible mental health services from the beginning of my time and as an MSP, I see that this is a large step in the right direction from the Scottish Government. I know that it is not a panacea to all the mental health problems that my fellow Scots will be experiencing, but it is a big step in the right direction and one that should be welcomed by all parties in this chamber. Public Health Scotland estimates that adults living in the most deprived areas are approximately twice as likely to have common mental health problems as those in the least deprived areas. That is something that we must address when looking at ways to improve the mental health of our nation. There are numerous reasons that people in the more deprived areas suffer more often from mental health issues that are often to do with the frequency in which they have to deal with problems that they do not have the means or support to deal with, which unsurprisingly causes massive amounts of stress in their lives. Tories' issues include poor housing, family problems on employment, childhood adversity and chronic health conditions, but behind most, if not all of these, lies the curse of poverty. Clearly mental health inequalities exist all over Scotland, but, given what I have just highlighted, I would welcome any assurances that the minister can give in summing up that the help provided will be specifically targeted where possible at the more deprived areas of Scotland. As the MSP for Glasgow could cut, I have a number of areas within the constituency that have a large amount of mental health sufferers in it, and, unfortunately, last year I received an alarming amount of reports of young men committing suicide in one area of my constituency. We all know that too often horrific events such as that happen in areas of unemployment, sickness and benefit recipients. The last straw for some families is a loss of any part of the meager household income that they see. That is why, without saying that this would have been the only issue, or, and I promise this, trying to make any political capital on it, I urged my Conservative colleagues to lobby their Government to reinstate the £20 universal credit. It may not be much to us, but it can make a difference to a young mother, a young parent with a child or children, to feed or someone being able to both eat and eat instead of having to choose between the two. That is why I am keen to ensure that those in deprived areas are offered the most benefit possible from this increase in staffing for mental health services. That is where I believe that it would do the most good for my constituents. The city of Glasgow and our countries are whole, as well as those people who are already often having to negotiate so many precarious aspects for their life. In conclusion, Presiding Officer, I warmly welcome the actions of the Scottish Government in relation to mental health, and recognise that the improvements to our mental health services will be transformational to the lives of many who have not been able to access the help that they needed in the past. I appreciate the commitment of Kevin Stewart, our mental wellbeing and social care minister, who has worked hard on what is a particularly challenging grief at the moment. I am proud to see real, concrete action being taken by this Government on what has been a long-standing problem in our society. I look forward to seeing the new community-based support that has been put in place. That will benefit many people in the area that I represent and will hopefully be able to mitigate some of the health inequalities present in those more deprived areas of which mental health inequality has always played a large part. Primary care services are often the first point of contact for people experiencing mental health problems, but improving mental health and wellbeing is a major public health challenge, as we have heard today. That is partly because the underlying issues are complex and people's needs are different. All public services have an important role to play in supporting wellbeing and tackling the social and economic factors that contribute to mental health problems. In 2021, mental health issues were the primary reason for time of work outstripping Covid. Poor mental health accounted for 19 per cent of all lost working time across the country, while confirmed cases of Covid represented 16 per cent. In addition, mental health troubles were the most common cause of lost working time in nearly every industry in the UK, with absences averaging at least three times longer than Covid-related reasons. Evidence suggests that mental health problems in childhood and adolescence have a significant impact on mental health and education and on the ability to find and sustain employment. The Covid pandemic has had a detrimental effect on children and young people's mental health and wellbeing—some evidence that that will also affect their attainment. 36 per cent of children and young people with learning disabilities have a diagnosable psychiatric disorder. 40 per cent have looked after children in Scotland, aged between 5 and 17, who were assessed as having at least one mental disorder. 95 per cent of 16 to 20-year-olds in custody have at least one mental health problem. As we have heard, children living in low-income households are three times more likely to suffer mental health problems than their more affluent peers. Yet, despite those alarming statistics, more children and young people are waiting over 18 weeks to start treatment in specialist camps up from 26 per cent in 2017-18 to 33 per cent in 2021. While those waiting more than a year for treatment travelled between March 2020 and March 2021. The national improvement framework is the Scottish Government's key plan that sets out four priorities for education. Those priorities include children and young people's health and wellbeing. However, there is a lack of data to assess the wellbeing of children and young people who are learners at school. If we cannot assess whether a national priority is being achieved, it is impossible to know what is working and what needs to change. At Health, Social Care and Sport Committee yesterday, we heard from Mary Glasgow, the chief executive of Children First. She spoke at length about the challenges families face when their children need support. We heard about the importance of having good person-centred services. This is something that the Scottish Government frequently mentions but rarely delivers. Good person-centred services should provide a space to really listen and understand the needs of the family and the young person, not what the agency can spare to offer. Mary Glasgow told us of family wellbeing teams and the success that those services have had when social and family relationships are fractured and young people suffer with anxiety, self-harm tendencies and eating disorders. When they get their GP appointment, they are often told that CAMHS services are the only option, but those family wellbeing teams offer quick and early help. They often remove the requirement for CAMHS assessment and provide a safe space for families and young people to be heard. Those teams are effective and allow the time needed to build relationships between the professionals and the families. Unfortunately, funding issues often make it difficult to replicate the family wellbeing teams across the country—those were her words. Language, which our professionals often contribute to the stigma—we have heard that from Ms Mocken earlier—and we must start using human language. Often, there is shame and guilt felt by those who need assistance and being referred to a service contributes to that feeling. Shame, stigma and guilt must be removed. Those who need assistance have done nothing wrong. They are entitled to support and help, and that must be delivered with respect, kindness and compassion. However, how can a workforce that has reached burnout deliver that compassionate care when they themselves are facing periods of stress and anxiety? Patients and carers are both at the end of their tether. For once, I want the SNP Government to accept that things were bad long before Covid. We must stop using Covid to justify our poorly performing services. We need to start making changes now. Our parents and young people deserve better mental health support. There is so much good practice going on across the country. Let us find it, fund it and replicate it. I thank Kevin Stewart and the Scottish Government for bringing forward the debate this afternoon. I recently held my first member's debate celebrating World Mental Health Day in October of this year, so it is great to see the issue being debated again. The first line in the motion states that the Parliament recognises the importance of improving capability and capacity for mental health assessment, care and support within primary care settings. That is in the context as we recover from the pandemic. The commitment to expand mental health and wellbeing primary care services is, of course, supported by the £120 million mental health recovery and renewable fund. That is very welcome. Why is it important that we have heard a few members talk about this today? We have all been briefed by various organisations. The Mental Health Foundation shows that long-term inequalities continue to drive many mental health problems across Scotland. Children live in the poorest households and are four times more likely to have poorer mental health, wellbeing and the nose and the highest income households. I thank the member for giving way in the intervention with Alex Douglas Cohampton. The minister said that the CAMHS delay was largely down to Covid and the winter pressures. The Government first said that it would address CAMHS waiting times in 2018. That predates Covid. Surely those issues are deeper rooted in that and that the Government has failed in the past to tackle them? That has been mentioned by Alex Cohampton, I am sure that the minister will address that issue in his winding up. As I said, it is four times more likely to have poorer mental wellbeing. Poverty is a major driver and that is one of the things that we cannot forget. We need to double the efforts on child poverty. The Scottish Health Survey for 2020 also found out that one in 10 adults had two or more symptoms of depression, while a similar proportion is 13 per cent of two more symptoms of anxiety. Just this year, in February 2021, among Scottish 18 to 24-year-olds, 50 per cent felt lonely over the last two weeks because of the pandemic. The Scottish adult rate was 29 per cent. The Royal College of Psychiatrists welcomes the investment that initial staffing proposed in the motion today. It also stated that the provosts can take a step closer to a no-wrong door health and social care service that can provide the right care in the right place at the right time. It is really important that we look at where we can deliver these in the local environment. We need to continue to invest in local primary care services so that the needs would be better met by holistic community-based treatment options. I want to touch on the role of social prescribing. We already have the social prescribing network set up just now, and I know that Maureed Todd meets with him often. Previous studies have shown that the social prescribing initiatives can reduce the accident and emergency attendances in patient admissions and significantly improve feelings of social connectedness and overall mental wellbeing. The Mental Health Foundation in a briefing asked that the Scottish Government invests in community health services to the rapid expansion of social prescribing, exercise referral schemes and peer support and cognitive behavioural therapy. The proposals that have been heard before from multidisciplinary primary care mental health and wellbeing services, defined by local resource to meet local need, are of course a positive step. The range of professionals can provide the skills and experiences that are needed to provide comprehensive care, as well as connections to the social support. The Scottish Government's commitment to recruit 1,000 additional mental health link workers is in the 2022-23 programme for government, and that is of course welcome. We have had discussions about GP practices as having access to a community link worker, and I think that that is really important. That is a vital means of ensuring that patients who present with symptoms of a mild to moderate mental health problem are given the opportunity to participate in community-based programmes. Local need should determine the allocation of newly recruited link workers, and it is at a point that I will ask the minister to address in his winding up. The existing social community link worker network could also be used to look at existing community link networks to look at evaluation, training and measuring outcomes. Link workers should also have in-depth and up-to-date understanding of the range of relevant mental wellbeing programmes that are available across their own GP catchment area. I think that one of the key things that I am talking about is my constituency. We need to look at that, which is also available in rural areas, for example. Expectations of care, we need to ensure that we have clearly defined the effective expectations of what should be available in metrics of success for these services and their staff. Those can help to ensure the quality of care and support that is there in regard of the model of delivery. That applies to link workers' roles as well, who also need a defined training pathway. We have had a few members talk about the issue and about recruitment. On additional posts identified yesterday, we had a debate about labour shortages. In our economy, it is obviously irrelevant to talk about that issue as well. We need a unified approach. We need to work alongside other services and professions in mental health. We need to have the correct balance between redeployment and the creation of new staff capacity. We need to work closely with the third community and health sectors even further. We also need to support those with severe pre-existing mental health conditions. The quality of access for those with more severe and complex mental health conditions needs access to the right care and support through their GP must be a priority. That includes being able to access the social supports and connections proposed to enable them to participate in economic and social activities. In connection with specialist care, that is also critical with continuing engagement by GPs and secondary care settings to ensure timely access to the care patients' needs. That care must continue to be properly resourced and staffed, reflecting that there will continue to be those with severe, complex and enduring conditions who will need specialist care interventions. We need to ensure that additional support and training will be provided to enable those new services and link workers to provide support and signposting to those with severe mental health conditions. This morning, I met the carers of Ysgolion. That issue was talked about quite extensively, signposting, and I think that that is really important. I am looking at local solutions for local people. In conclusion, the investment by the Scottish Government is very much welcomed. The investment can make a real difference to many families and ensure that people live as life as well as possible. Thank you, Mr MacLennan. I now call Monica Lennan to be followed by Jo Fitzpatrick. Thank you, Presiding Officer. It is always good to talk about mental health and wellbeing. What people in the country really need the Government to do is to take bold and urgent action to address fundamental system failure. I must do some of my time today to address breaking news that affects my constituents. NHS Lanarkshire has declared a code plaque emergency on 22 October last year, meaning that services are operating at the highest level of risk—clearly not a sustainable solution. I go to the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care on 9 December, asking him to meet me and other Lanarkshire MSPs as a matter of urgency to brief us on his plans to reduce the risk to our constituents. I do not have the words to describe how badly the situation has declined in Lanarkshire. It is off the scale. Today, the health board has advised that GP practices have been instructed to move to a managed suspension of services, which will continue for four weeks. However, given the code plaque has already gone on for three months, it is hard to have confidence that the Scottish Government has a proper plan to get out of this crisis beyond shutting down more services, fansalling operations and keeping people in despair. People like my constituent, Liz Barry, from East Kilbride, whose mental health is in tatters because she lives with chronic chronic pain and is expected to wait three years for a vital pain relief injection. Liz has already tried to take her own life. That is how serious this matter is. It is extremely distressing for me and my team that the phone number that we hand out most often is 116123. That is the number for Samaritans Scotland. I am grateful to all the Samaritans volunteers for providing a lifesaving helpline 24 hours a day, three, six, five days a year. However, I feel sad and angry that people are contemplating suicides because they cannot get NHS treatment and have lost all hope. I have returned to this grim announcement from NHS Lanarkshire today, which cautioned that only the most urgent and time-critical cases will be responded to. How are urgent and time-critical being defined? Those who can afford it are going private, but what about everyone else? What worries me greatly and I hope that it is an oversight is that arrangements for people with mental health concerns have not even been mentioned in the correspondence and pressurities that NHS Lanarkshire has published today. The minister must give a cast and guarantee this afternoon that mental health is not being prioritised in NHS Lanarkshire or, frankly, anywhere else. Laying everything at the door of Covid is not an answer either. We all know that mental health services were in a really bad way before the pandemic. What we need is transformative system change, and I make no apology again for drawing Government and Parliament's attention to a petition sphere headed by my constituent Karen McEwen, following the death of her partner Luke Henderson to suicide, a matter that I highlighted in Paul The Clarens debate on world's mental health last year. The death of Luke Henderson with a tragic loss could not be avoided if we had mental health services that functioned properly. Karen's petition has already moved MSPs in committee sessions to tears, but she does not look for our sympathy. She wants an independent review of mental health services, and I appeal to the minister to agree to that. I also want to acknowledge the thousands of people living in care homes whose mental and emotional wellbeing has declined during the pandemic due to isolation and loneliness. We know that the SNP promise before the election to give effect to Anne's law. Andrew has sadly passed away in her family and the Care Home Relative Scotland group wanting to know when Anne's law will be implemented. Family caregivers must be part of the care plan if we are serious about mental health and wellbeing. We all know and appreciate healthcare workers. They do their best with the time and resource available to them, and at times that their own mental health and wellbeing takes a battering. The minister must act to prevent burnout, exhaustion and PTSD from becoming the norm in our public services. I, too, am frustrated by the motion in front of us today. For too long, SNP ministers have been complacent and taken a sticking plaster approach to mental health services, while people continue to fall through the cracks. It is unacceptable that the Government's 18-week waiting time and targets for CAMHS have never been met. It is unacceptable that there are almost 2,000 children and young people on the waiting list who have had to wait over a year to begin treatment. It is unacceptable that there are currently over 1,000 vacancies for mental health nurses and almost 100 consultant psychiatrist vacancies. Our amendment injects some reality into this debate. SNP ministers have failed to take workforce planning seriously, and their target of recruiting 800 mental health workers is at risk. Ms Targets and broken promises have consequences. I support the Scottish Labour amendment, and I urge the Government to accept Karen MacEwan's petition, as nothing short of an independent review of mental health services and complete system change will do. Thank you very much, Ms Lennon. I now call on Joe Fitzpatrick to be followed by Gillian Mackay again. Covid-19 pandemic continues to place additional strain on our NHS, including on its mental health services. We know that the pandemic continues to have a significant impact on the mental wellbeing of many in our communities, so I welcome that the Scottish Government has provided £18 million of dedicated funding to help to respond to the specific mental health challenges of the pandemic. In Dundee, there have for some time now been calls, which I have backed for a service in the city centre that can support people, particularly at a time of crisis. I am really encouraged that my city is now delivering upon that ambition, with a site having been identified for a new community wellbeing centre, which will be always open and will provide an immediate compassionate response to anyone who considers themselves in need of mental health support. I look forward to seeing that vital service up and running and pay tribute to Phil Welsh and his wife for campaigning for this service. As we have heard, the SNP has committed to increasing Scottish Government investment in mental health by at least 25 per cent, ensuring that by the end of this Parliament 10 per cent of our front-line NHS budget will be invested in mental health services. I welcome the Scottish Government's plan to build on the success of its community link worker programme to ensure that every GP practice in the country has access to a dedicated mental wellbeing link worker, creating a network of 1,000 additional dedicated staff who can help to grow community mental health resilience and help to direct social prescribing. That will ensure that people get the support that they need, when they need it and where they need it. In primary care across Dundee, the new patient assessment management and liaison service PAMS, in primary care, aims to enable without barrier access to a mental health specialist right across our city. PAMS places mental health specialists directly within GP practices and encourages people concerned about their mental health and wellbeing to book appointments directly without having to see their GP first. Social prescribing link workers are also supporting practices across the city. As of August, I understand that there are seven GP practices with full access to PAMS and four practices with partial access to PAMS with further expansions planned. I want to take this opportunity to pay tribute to some of the charities and third sector organisations who are playing a vital role in improving mental health and wellbeing within local communities across Dundee. The Lockheed community hub in my constituency provides mental health support as well as drug and alcohol support, child and family groups and one-to-one services. The hub has been supported by funding from the Scottish Government's investment in communities fund and is an invaluable community space with staffing supporting the local Lockheed community. The Lynch Street Soccer's new change centres provide football-themed training and personal development opportunities for socially disadvantaged groups across Scotland, including from those in my constituency. Street Soccer is doing incredible work in supporting people to address issues such as mental health, drug and alcohol use, loneliness and isolation. The Dundee Fairness commission brought together members from the public, voluntary, community, private and academic sectors, including those who have lived the experience of poverty and inequality. Since 2015, the commission has gathered evidence and worked tirelessly to identify solutions to improve local communities across Dundee. One of the areas that it identified as being beneficial to mental health and wellbeing was safe access to green space. In 2019, I was pleased to help to launch green health prescriptions in Dundee as part of the green health partnership. Three GP practices piloted the programme that has since been expanded further into primary and selected secondary care services across the city. The initiative aims to bring about a step change in the use of nature-based solutions to deliver health outcomes as part of social prescribing, aiming to allow NHS healthcare professionals to connect patients with free outdoor interventions that are delivered and supported by the third sector. I also want to highlight the important work of the award-winning TVU community garden, which now has 25 plots and helps to connect the community with local organisations and charities. Preparations are underway at the adjacent site to create Dundee's first wee forest. A partnership between Dundee University's Botanic Gardens, a local primary healthcare provider, local primary schools and is funded by NatureScot. Wellbeing works Dundee works closely with individuals and partner organisations to grow food at the community garden. They have also recently launched their community toolbox, which allows members to hire tools and equipment from their library. That ranges from tools for home improvements to camping equipment. The fruit bowls community project at Lockheed Park in the heart of my constituency has transformed a former bowling green to a community growing project and is another example of repurposing green space in Dundee for the benefit of local communities' health and wellbeing. I also want to take the opportunity to thank the parish nurses at the steeple church, the hot chocolate trust, positive steps, feeling strong, the Dundee carer centre, Dundee contemporary arts and the city's rep theatre and the many other organisations that continue to work tirelessly to improve the mental wellbeing of my constituents. Finally, I want to recognise the two andy man's clubs, which now operate in Dundee and a women's club also planned. The club regularly organises walks and talk sessions and everyone is welcome to join. Almost 38,000 people attended the andy man's club across the UK last year, including many in my constituency. Charities such as that are integral to tackling stigma around mental health, an area that I hope across the chamber that we can all work to tackle. The Scottish Greens believe that everyone who needs mental health support should have quick and easy access to it. We must place mental health at the heart of our healthcare system to ensure that it has parity with physical health, and part of that is ensuring that people can get support and treatment when they need it. Too many people are waiting too long for treatment. The number of referrals to psychological therapies are now back to pre-pandemic levels and services are struggling to meet demand. We need to make it as easy as possible for people to access mental health support if we are committed to prevention and early intervention. We need to provide an alternative to acute treatment so that people are receiving the most appropriate support but also so that they are not sitting on a waiting list while their mental health worsens. We know that the pandemic has had a devastating impact on mental health. People have struggled financially, they have lost loved ones, they have been isolated while in lockdown or shielding. We should not underestimate the effect of this collective trauma, which will continue to take its toll for many years to come. For most people, making an appointment with a GP is the first step towards getting help for mental health problems. Like Monica Lennon, I am concerned with the issues that are facing NHS Lanarkshire at the moment. According to the Royal College of GPs, approximately one third of all consultations in GP practices have a mental health component. General practice teams have already been providing mental health support a large portion of the population and, as health professionals embedded within the community, they are well placed to do so, particularly to individuals who may not require acute or specialist treatment. According to a recent RC GP survey, 94 per cent of GPs who responded agreed that, since the beginning of the pandemic, the number of patients presenting with mental health problems has increased. The GP workforce is under pressure like never before, and this is impacting GP's ability to help patients seeking mental health support. A report produced by Sam H found that, while there have been very positive examples of participants receiving support from GPs, the pressures of the pandemic have negatively affected some people's experiences of accessing mental health support, with many describing difficulty in accessing appointments due to high demand. We cannot leave people struggling without the help that they need, but we also cannot expect existing services to meet the surging demand. We need to expand the number of mental health professionals working within communities. That is why the Scottish Greens and the Scottish Government have committed to ensure that, by the end of this parliamentary session, every GP practice has a link worker and access to an assigned community-based mental health clinician. That will help to ensure that patients can access mental health support as quickly as possible, also that they see the most appropriate person. If treatment is truly to be person-centred, we also need to see a diverse mix of mental health professionals in primary care, so that people can see the right person at the right time. Whether that is CBT or talking therapies. That will in turn improve the support that is being provided to people, seeking help for their mental health and reduce GP's workload. Increasing the number of community link workers in general practice will hopefully improve engagement with social prescribing, the mental health benefits of which are well known. In Lanarkshire in my region, the well-connected social prescribing programme has been shown to help people by improving self-confidence and self-esteem, reducing low mood and feelings of stress, helping people to develop positive ways of coping with the challenges of life amongst other benefits. A scheme run over five months recently saw GP's at five practices in Edinburgh prescribing nature as part of a collaboration between RSPB Scotland and Edinburgh and Lodians Health Foundation. The scheme to establish the effectiveness of using nature as a health tool in an urban setting was a review to rolling it out to other practices. Given that many peer support groups were cancelled due to not being able to meet in person during lockdown, outdoor social prescribing must be in the mix going forward. Great work is being done on social prescribing and the benefits are being felt. We know, however, that clinicians may struggle to find the time to engage with social prescribing and to develop relationships with local organisations. Community link workers will be vital in this regard, as they are able to spend extended length of time with patients. Link workers can build relationships of trust and sign post-patients to appropriate local non-NHS services. Due to the pressures of the pandemic, however, many non-NHS organisations may be providing limited or reduced support. That is why it is essential that we support those organisations during the recovery from the pandemic and ensure that there is equal access to social prescribing across the country. Prior to the pandemic, there was already an increasing demand for mental health services in Scotland, and we know that the increase in mental health demand has been exacerbated by the pandemic. Covid-19 has changed many aspects of our lives. The pandemic has allowed for a far greater understanding of the need to take mental health seriously and of having a society that puts the wellbeing of its citizens first and foremost. Of those exacerbated mental health challenges, we have shown the need for greater emphasis on mental health services and have created a need for improved service delivery, including through better integration with primary care and indeed the third sector. I welcome that significant progress has already been made by the Scottish Government in expanding capacity and access to mental health services in GP settings. Action 15 of the mental health strategy 2017-2027 outlines the Scottish Government's commitment to funding 800 additional mental health workers in key settings—GP practices, all A&Es, every police station custody suite and prisons. As of July 1, 2021, an additional 654.3 whole-time equivalent mental health roles have been filled using action 15 funding. That equates to 82 per cent of the total overall target. The Scottish Government has made more than £51 million available since 2019 to deliver action 15 and will continue to invest in 2022 to ensure that the commitment is met. In addition, it is welcome that the Scottish Government has invested more than £60 million to create provisions for local authorities across Scotland to employ mental health councillors. I want to credit Dumfries and Galloway Council for having really taken this initiative on board. The local authority has named their councillor staff, youth information officers. The name of the youth information officer is aimed to reduce stigma, which is hugely important. The staff work directly as part of Dumfries and Galloway youth inquiry team, access in schools and young people across the region, Monday as well as all the way through to Saturday. The staff are also delivering strong links with local primary care and NHS staff, and they are responding to new demands exacerbated by the pandemic. I welcome that the youth information officers and the Scottish Government have provided additional funding and support for crucial mental health services. Since March 2020, over £18 million of dedicated funding to help respond to the special mental health challenges of the pandemic has been allocated. I am really pleased that the Government has supported the mental health and wellbeing of our front-line health and social care staff. During the pandemic, I have continued to work as a registered nurse, and I have had contact directly with many health professional colleagues who have said that they have been really resilient, but some of them have also suffered from stress and real challenges so that the money for the front-line healthcare workers to help their health and wellbeing is really welcome and important. Over £1 million has already been invested in the roll-out of distress brief intervention programme on a national basis, including to people under 18 as well. DBI includes seeing trained front-line health police, paramedic and primary care staff, the trained and mental health first aid response. The DBI programme is hugely important and demonstrates how different agencies can work in partnership with primary care. DBI has already been accessed by over 4,000 individuals in the NH24 pathway, but I know that many, many more have already been involved. It is proven to support people, particularly at risk of acute mental ill health, but, including people struggling with eating disorders, we just heard at health committee yesterday and previously in the mental health cross-party group, which I am a co-convener of, that there are really increasing concerns of people with eating disorders during the pandemic. However, I also have concerns over the number of suicides and also the reports of persons who self-harmed. The Covid restrictions have prevented face-to-face engagement, but I need to ask the minister to ensure that DBI, as well as other online cognitive behavioural therapies, all that support continues to receive the funding that it needs to move forward. My final point is related to social prescribing. A large part of the Scottish Government's revised vision for mental health focuses on the importance of social prescribing and on the third sector playing a crucial role in promoting positive health and wellbeing. As a member of the Health and Sport Committee in this and the previous parliamentary session, one of the previous challenges that we recognise was primary care practitioners do not know which services are available to refer people to or to signpost people to. That was raised at committee just yesterday as well in our current child and adolescent mental health inquiry. The risk support available in signposting people is vitally important, and the third sector, Dumfries and Galloway, has created a website with an app called DG Locator to help signpost people to the services that are available. The DG Locator is similar to the Government's ALICE service, which is a local information system for Scotland. However, the DG Locator is easy to navigate, it is up-to-date, and it has all the local services that are easy to access. That has been linked with the GP practices across Dumfries and Galloway to make it easier for link workers and support to be signposted for people. I ask the minister if he would consider checking the DG Locator web. Can I ask that you conclude your remarks, please? Yes, I am in my final sentence. I would like to ask that the minister would have a look at the DG Locator and see how its functionality works. I welcome the steps that the Government is taking forward, and I will conclude there, Presiding Officer. As has already been said by the minister and others, this is a subject with broad cross-party agreement. No one can doubt the importance of improving capability and capacity for mental health treatment. As we emerge from the darkness of the pandemic, these needs have never been more critical. It is a privilege to have Dr Sandesh Galhany as a colleague. His experience benefits our parliament, and I look forward to hearing his contribution. GPs, like Dr Galhany, are often the first point of contact for those with mental health problems. I know because I have been that patient. I have sat in front of a GP and said that I was struggling. Those were dark days, and I found it difficult, but it was the right thing to do and ultimately resulted in me getting the help that I needed. I was fortunate as my employers paid for my treatment, but for many other people I left in agonising limbo. In 2015, the SNP Government introduced a target time for psychological treatment. It is a target that has never been met. Less than a year ago, the Royal College of Psychiatrists warned that child mental health services in Scotland were significantly underfunded, while an earlier Audit Scotland report said that they were complex and fragmented. Mental health, like physical health, is not a constant throughout our lives. The Scottish health survey tells us that every year around 1 in 4 are estimated to be affected by mental health problems. No one—absolutely no one—is immune from becoming unwell. I am sure that many other members will have their own stories to tell, and it is important that we do so. The mindset of putting on a stiff upper lip and pulling yourself together now sounds ludicrously callous and old-fashioned. Charities such as the Scottish Association for Mental Health play a key role in chipping away at that stigma. Their campaign CME Scotland can take credit for helping to change perceptions about mental health. In just over three weeks' time, on 3 February, they will run the Scottish part of the UK-wide Time to Talk Day. Described as the nation's biggest mental health conversation, it encourages friends and families, communities and colleagues to come together to talk, to listen and to change lives. But it won't just change lives, it will save lives. Another charity, The Samaritans, collects data on suicides from across the UK. These paint a very bleak picture. In England and Wales, the suicide rate is around 10 people per 100,000, while in Scotland it is 15 per 100,000. Last year, tragically, 805 people in Scotland could see no other way. Men are almost three times as likely as women to take their own lives, and people in the most deprived communities are also three times more likely to die by suicide than those in the most affluent areas. Numbers like these are sobering, but they cannot even begin to describe the pain behind each death. The need to talk is especially important for men who, still speaking generally, are not always as forthcoming about their struggles. Suicide is an emotive and complex subject. Six minutes is nowhere near enough to provide a proper meaningful contribution, but one issue that I think is overlooked is the role of the media. Research shows that explicit descriptions of suicide methods used, sensationalism or identifying so-called hotspots can lead to imitational suicidal behaviour among vulnerable people. Broadcasters and newspapers adhere to detailed guidelines issued by media regulators and charities. Year-round, we see reports of missing people. All too often there is a follow-up report of a body being found. There are no suspicious circumstances, say the police, which is usually coded language for suicide. However, those reports rarely ever mention the actual word. I believe that this is motivated by sensitivity and respect for the person whose life has been lost and fears that a report could lead to further deaths. However, does this well-intentioned blind spot not run contrary to the time-to-talk ethos when someone dies of suicide, it should not be a taboo to say so? I would like to conclude with the observation, as has been made by others that Scotland's mental health crisis predates the pandemic. Other speakers have provided numerous examples of delays, gaps in treatment and long-standing problems with staffing, morale and retention. The SNP needs to stop producing long-winded reports and reviews, stop the self-congratulation and get on with taking the necessary action to save lives. After almost 15 years in government, the SNP can blame no one else. I call Fergus Ewing to be followed by Pauline McNeill. It was 22 years ago in 1999 that I finally managed to persuade the voters of Inverness, East Nairn and Lochaber to elect me. It was only after becoming an MSP that, perhaps to my shame, I realised that mental health was quite so prevalent amongst our community. We see that across parties in the work that we do in our constituencies. Those problems are especially severe in the Highlands and Islands. Across all parties, I know that many have worked for many years to address complex and difficult problems. It would be fair to mention the work of my former colleague, Meri Scanlon, who focused on this for many a year. I would like to start by thanking all those who work in our NHS but also in other areas and functions in our local authorities and schools. The third sector has been mentioned by Emma Harper and others for all the work that it does, which is extremely difficult. I do not think that I can do it. It is immensely difficult to turn around the life of even one person who is troubled severely by mental health issues. I welcome the clear commitments of finance that have been made by the minister. I must admit that some of the criticism about self-congratulation is just over the top. I do not see that. I see a minister who is determined to do his best in a very challenging brief. I would also say that the schools play a very big role here. I do not think that that has been mentioned before, so this is the first of two points that I wish to make, Presiding Officer. After all, young people in particular, especially in their teenage years, are slow to trust people, perhaps in particular female teenagers. Who are they more likely to trust than a teacher with whom they are close? A classroom assistant, an occupational therapist or speech therapist. I understand from Shirley-Anne Somerville in the education committee this morning that counsellors are to be provided in each high school. I am not sure what stage this initiative has reached, but I think that early intervention is key. I would be interested if the minister agrees, because he will know much more about this than I do, about what greater role schools can play. After all, they are looking to improve the mental health and wellbeing of all pupils in their care. I think that it is especially important that the potential role of schools is important. If those problems can be tackled at an early stage before they become acute, it does not get to the tragic stage that was described by Mr Findlay and many others. The other issue that I want to raise is one that arose following a fairly lengthy Zoom call with a family yesterday within my constituency, who has a child who has been placed in care in what is called out-of-area care. As the minister knows, that involves persons with assessed acute mental health needs who require inpatient care who are admitted to a unit outwith their own local area. That is a particular challenge for the Highlands, where there is a lack of specialist units of some varieties. Therefore, very often young children and teenagers are required to be admitted to establishments in Glasgow, Dundee or Edinburgh. That means that parents and family have to travel sometimes twice a week. In this particular case, the family has spent the best part of a year in twice-weekly journeys of 370 miles to and from Glasgow. I think that the minister may wish to look at how those arrangements operate, because, firstly, there is often very grave difficulty in accessing those services. The perception is, I am afraid, that financial motivations may trump clinical judgment. Secondly, there is unnecessary complexity and, indeed, I believe unnecessary references to mental health tribunals, which are incredibly costly but also the source of huge conflict and tension among everybody involved. Thirdly, there is a very niggardly approach towards costs. Let me, in the closing parts of my speech, just advise the chamber of what the costs are. The family, fortunately, in good remunerated employment, receives £8.50 each per day for meals allowance and a mileage allowance of 12 or 13 p. 12 or 13 p a mile. The family has travelled 30,000 miles in the past 10 months. 12 p. We receive 45 p a mile for the first 10,000 miles that we travel. How can it conceivably be fair or justified that people who are in the desperately difficult situation of having a child who faces difficulties such as self-harm, such as Aspergus syndrome and other such matters should then have those difficulties compounded by being penalised financially in this way? In closing, I will write with more details of this case, which I have chosen not to mention in this chamber for obvious reasons. I hope to meet the minister to discuss this case. I think that perhaps it casts a light into how the out-of-area service might be improved, but I would finish by stating what that family told me that they are immensely grateful to many of the professionals in Scotland who have sought to help their child. I call Pauline McNeill, who will be the final speaker in the open debate. Many mental health practitioners will tell you that long periods of isolation, a lack of social contact has inevitably had an effect on many people's mental health. That is what they hear in their sessions, but it starts when it comes to children and young people. The pandemic and repeated lockdowns have been traumatic for children with months away from school, separation from the rents and anxiety about the virus itself, as well as concerns about their future job prospects. The ages of 19 to 25 are considered to be the most critical age in a person's life where they make life choices, and we have to factor that in to the services that we provide. We are already starting to talk about a lockdown generation, so we need to prepare our support services for that reality. Sadly, we know that the mental health crisis was with us before the pandemic. One example that Craig Hoy talked about earlier is the experience of young girls in social media and a recent survey showing that three out of five girls had complained of some form of sexual harassment. Indeed, there is an urgency about setting out a comprehensive response on the creation of a mental health system that is fit for purpose with longer-term thinking, funding and support. The pandemic has also highlighted the deep inequalities in our society, and we must be mindful of that to support children and families. All children must be given the same chance to reach their own individual potential, but in order for that to happen, we need to do more to level up that opportunity so that our ambitions for them in school and education must be accompanied by strong action, such as one-to-one help on skills and support in education. Many studies have shown that children and young people living in poverty think that James Dornan mentioned this already, experienced a greater impact on their mental health and on their educational attainment. Katharine Seymour, head of research at Mental Health Foundation, said that our evidence indicates that teenagers from less-advantaged homes are having the hardest emotional struggle of all, and that they are much more likely to report frequent symptoms of anxiety and depression than their peers with peers in jobs that are typically better paid. However, how do we know that young people are getting the support that they need? How easy is it to access support that they need? How easy is it to access the right type of support? I suggest that it is not always, and there are quite serious issues of young people struggling to get the support that they need. I have raised before that. Many young people I have dealt with wereingly being bumped off the referral system for reasons that seem very thin to me, and I am wondering if that is due to pressures on the service or not. Surely a system like that must factor in. If a young person cannot respond to a letter or a call because they need a mental health service, then surely bumping them off or not responding to a call or a letter is fundamentally opposite of what the service should be doing. I have raised before that. In Glasgow, there is an opt-in service. If you do not reply to the letter within five days, you can be removed from the referral system. I do not really understand the model of care. I have now spoken three times in this whole debate around mental health. I would want the ministers to address the question of the structure of our mental health service and the quality of it. In many other areas, we differentiate between young people up to the age of 25 and adults. However, for some reason in the health service, we have not, although we strive, to get that transitional service. That is really important when it comes to mental health, because the shift from childhood to adulthood is a chart one. We need the service that recognises that by design. I welcome the Government's commitment to extend the CAMHS programme up to the age of 25. However, I am concerned about the high rate of referrals that are rejected. A figure that I found today suggested that 27 per cent reject it. I do not really know what that figure actually means, but I think that we should interrogate that a bit more closely. I also believe that we need to make sure that we are keeping up with the most recent treatments and that our system is not only a medical model. Many practitioners do not label patients with a specific diagnosis, so that they get the specific help that they need. Is that the approach that we have? Have we modernised enough as a service? I certainly think that a one-size-fits-all approach is certainly not what we need. We need to offer options that suit the patients as well. I may say that 46 per cent of respondents support options for their depression, so that suggests that people should sub some kind of choice. I think that Gillian Mackay spoke about that earlier. I was concerned to find out that a case that I raised in the debate last year of a young woman who made a suicide attempt was not a priority in the system for reasons that I could not understand. After several interventions from the GP and from me as an MSP, she finally got an appointment with a psychiatrist and because she needed or required the CBT treatment, she was told that it is not available on our NHS mental health services. That has led me to question whether or not we are too focused on CBT or singular therapies, where I am clear in my own mind that it is common sense that we should incorporate treatments that would widen—I cannot see—my opasm in six minutes. You have some 20-plus seconds, Ms McNeill. In my 20 seconds remaining, I will sit a bit closer next time. I would really like the minister to address the question of the modernisation of our services. Have we done enough research to satisfy us? It is not just about waiting lists and resources, but we need to make sure that Scotland, as a nation, is modernising a service that is fit for purpose. If we do not do that, all the discussion and critique around waiting lists will be less significant. We need to address the question. I could conclude by saying that the Barnardos chief executive, Javid, can put it very well when he said that the negative effects of the pandemic could last a lifetime if children and young people do not have the right support. Children must be front and centre of the Government's plans for the close Covid period. I hope that some of my points can be addressed in the summing up. We now move to closing speeches. I call on Alex Cole-Hamilton up to six minutes, please. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. I reiterate my thanks to the Government benches for bringing this debate so early in this new year, in this parliamentary term. I should correct the minister. I think that it is not fair for him to say that mental health has been a priority for the SNP since 2007. It has not for many years. It was liberal democrats' leading debates on mental health in this chamber that gave it the only airtime it got. Again, the spending that was afforded in Scottish budgets to mental health was because the liberal democrats had asked for it. It is disingenuous to say that it has been a priority when it was only a liberal democrat called for a minister for mental health that had one created. I will cover some of the topics and points raised by other members and then address some specifics within the strategies. I thought that I delivered an excellent speech. I was right again to talk about how we would not leave people with a severe physical injury for want of care for an entire year. That is what we are asking people to do with severe mental injuries every day, week in, week out. We also support Labour's call in their amendment for dedicated mental health professionals in GP surgeries. It is something that we have been calling for for many years. Link workers are fine, but they are only as fine as the referrals that they can make. If you are referring somebody to the end of one of the longest waiting lists in the NHS, it is of no use to you if you are in a moment of profound personal crisis. I have some respect for James Dornan taking up his own mental health record. Anyone who does so in this chamber is incredibly brave, yet he diminished that contribution and he diminished himself when he launched a series of childish attacks. He could have taken a leaf, I think, out of Fergus Ewingberg, who spoke with even-handed fortitude and paid credit rightly to many members right across the chamber in their efforts around this important issue. Sue Webber made a couple of important points about employment. We picked that up in our freedom of information request when we discovered over Christmas time last year that over 400 years of staff time was lost in the nursing profession alone last year because of mental ill health. That has a massive impact on staffing capacity and wellbeing. That is self-sustaining, because if you are having to cover the work of a shift that is no longer safely staffed, that will have an impact on your own wellbeing. I want to come to some of the work that the Government is doing. In particular, I have an interest in action 15, which is highlighted in the Government's motion today. That is because the Scottish Liberal Democrats have won that commitment and have had to press again and again for the Government to keep it and be open about progress. I remember meeting the then Health Secretary Shona Robertson and Mental Health Minister Maureen Watt shortly after I was first elected in 2016. I impressed upon them the importance of getting an army of mental health practitioners into four key settings, such as A&E, GP surgeries, prisons and working alongside the police in the community. I was very pleased when a version of our manifesto commitment was included in the 2017 mental health strategy, albeit on a scale that I warned would not make the impact needed. We told ministers that it needed 2,000 staff to truly offer new 24-7 provision, but only 800 were offered. They were not practitioner as they were link workers. That was never enough. Take the police. Police officers and staff deal with people in distress on a daily basis. They know that other services are a better place to help, but the police are all too often the service of last resort. The latest action 15 update shows that Police Scotland is receiving just 20 extra staff. That is less than one extra mental health worker for every 1,000 officers and staff. That is not transformational. Every single one of those 1,000 officers and staff will tell you that. They deal with mental health on a daily basis. It is a huge proportion of what they do, and they need more support. 800 new mental health staff was never enough to meet the unmet demand. That is before those key settings received less than they were originally promised. A third of the staff that were hired under action 15 have been diverted to so-called other settings. For years, the Government could tell us virtually nothing about who they were and what they were doing. Worse still, they find themselves against releasing information around recruitment towards action 15. For two years, ministers argued against releasing action 15 recruitment projections, including detail about where staff will be located and the roles to which they will be recruited. They needed us to go all the way to the Information Commissioner, who recently concluded that withholding that information is indeed a breach of the Freedom of Information Act 2002 and ordered its disclosure. Scottish Liberal Democrats want to work with the Scottish Government where we can. The very existence of action 15 and £120 million more for mental health this year are some of the fruits of our previous work. I am determined to see many more mental health staff recruited in this Parliament, but ministers make that task harder. The job of ending the terrible long waits for treatment if they refuse to release just basic information. We should not need a two-year battle and go all the way to the Information Commissioner to find out how £35 million is really being spent. We have only just started to learn more about the staff in so-called other settings and the extent to which their time is spent in A&Es, GPs, prisons and, alongside police in our community, as I said, with the priority areas. I want to know if the Government is counting them as progress towards this flagship target, even if it only represents a fraction of their job. I hope that the cabinet secretary can address that when summing up. Otherwise, there are absolutely no guarantees that A&E departments, GP practices, prisons and the police are getting anywhere near the benefit of the full contingent of additional mental health workers that they expected when this commitment was unveiled in 2017. I can see my time is up, Presiding Officer, but I do think that it is important that the cabinet secretary address that in summation. The importance of this debate cannot be overemphasised and many of the contributions across the chamber have been both thoughtful and challenging. I want to commend in particular Russell Finlay for his contribution on suicides, which was very powerful indeed. Let me start by saying that mental health is something that affects us all, and Scottish Labour is willing to work constructively with the Government and parties across the chamber to end the continuing crisis in mental health and to get help to those who are most in need. I welcome much of what the minister said, including community link workers, but there is little recognition of the current poor state of provision and the SNP has been in charge for almost 15 years. As we have all acknowledged, the pandemic has had a devastating impact on our mental health. From an individual perspective, not being able to go to work, to visit friends and family, not being able to access vital face-to-face mental health and support services has all had an impact on our wellbeing. So, too, the mental health challenges faced by health and social care staff who have been at the very front line of the pandemic and cared for and been with those dying throughout that time. However, the minister knows that Scotland's mental health crisis far predates the pandemic. Although the steps that the Government has laid out today are welcome, it is nevertheless deeply disappointing that they are not on the scale required to tackle the problem. If their track record is anything to go by, previous promises to tackle the crisis in mental health have simply not been met. Primary care is truly the front line of mental health care, with many people going to their GP surgeries as their first port of call when experiencing mental ill health. However, we know that GP practices have been overwhelmed with the increase in patient numbers, so access to dedicated mental health clinicians will help to ease the significant pressure that GPs are facing. Hand in hand with the need for additional clinicians is the need for primary care-based mental health services to be made available 24-7, because we know that mental ill health does not only operate on a nine-to-five Monday-to-Friday basis. In my area, half of my constituents, covered by NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, have access to out-of-hours mental health crisis services, but if you live in Helensburg and Lomond, part of NHS Highland, there is nothing after 8pm. That postcode lottery cannot be allowed to continue. As Karen Mocken has pointed out, severe and long-lasting staff shortages in mental health services undermine any efforts that those within primary care settings are making to improve service delivery. It is deeply disappointing that, despite promises made by the Government in 2017 to recruit 800 additional mental health workers in key settings over the next five years, including in GP practices, latest figures show that we are still at least 100 key workers short of meeting the target. 71 per cent of Royal College of GP members said that they saw a significant increase in the number of patients presenting with mental health needs as a result of the pandemic. That speaks to the urgent need for an immediate increase in staffing numbers, as well as a long-term workforce strategy to address those problems. The RCN made it clear that no amount of service redesign or additional funding will improve services, while so many mental health nursing posts remain unfilled. The vacancies within mental health nursing are at an all-time high. Over 1,000 positions left unfilled, so any pledge to increase staffing levels must first fill existing gaps and then create roles that are genuinely additional. The Scottish National Party's Government's promise of 150 additional mental health student places is welcome, but it does not begin to touch the sides and will not provide the fix that the workforce crisis needs. The Royal College of Psychiatrists have made clear that, while any commitment to addressing the crisis within the workforce is welcome, there needs to be far more detail on what shape that will take. To tackle the current postcode lottery that exists within mental health service provision, the Royal College of Psychiatrists is calling for clarity on training pathways and a shared understanding of what success looks like in terms of mental ill health. There is no point in pledging to create x number of additional staff if we then do not have a proper strategy of where those workers are best placed to be of most use. As Karen Watkins pointed out, nowhere is the postcode lottery more apparent than the provision of the CAMHS service. There are staggering 12,000 children and young people on CAMHS waiting lists at the end of September 2021. Almost 2,000 of them have waited over a year. Just imagine the agony for them and their families desperately waiting for help. As Craig Hoy said, the 18-week target time for CAMHS has never been met. That is shameful, and there is no two ways about it. I was recently contacted by a mother who told me how her daughter, who is in need of outpatient CAMHS support to tackle the beginnings of an eating disorder, had been left to deteriorate on a waiting list for so long that she has now had to be admitted to long-term inpatient care. That would have been entirely avoidable had she been able to access the care that she needed in a timely manner. Let me finish by saying that I wish the current minister well in his endeavours, and we will work with him and others across the chamber. I hope that he will recognise the considerable frustration of members that his predecessor SNP ministers have simply not served mental health services well. When I started to read the minister's motion, my eyes lit up. Yes, as Scotland recovers from Covid-19 pandemic, I believe that members recognise the importance of improving within primary care settings, capability and capacity for mental health assessment, care and support. My heart sank. The minister goes on to say that progress has already been made to boost capacity in GP settings. Really? I guess that this depends on how the SNP defines progress, or maybe it is down to the cherry picking, the data to suit a desired narrative. I wish to declare my interests as a GP, and I have also worked in psychiatry, and based upon my own experience in that of the Royal College of Nursing Scotland, please allow me to describe the reality in primary care. When it comes to the Scottish Government's stewardship of mental health services, there is no place for self-congratulatory statements. There is clear evidence that mental health services have been struggling for a long time. The national standard that is 90% of people referred for psychological therapy should start within 18 weeks, as mentioned by many of my colleagues. However, this standard has not been met. Why is this so important? Imagine that you are 20 minutes late to a job interview and you are rushing to get there, and at that moment you are scared, worried and anxious. Imagine having that feeling all the time. Imagine being at work and making a mistake and being told off. In that moment you feel ashamed that nobody likes you, you feel down. Imagine having that feeling all the time. People do not choose to have mental health issues. It does not respect wealth, job title, name. I have only described the mild to moderate end of the mental health scale here. If you break your arm and it is off at an angle, people can see it and you are treated, but mental health does not have anything that you can see. It is a disease that deserves to be treated and taken care of just as much as any physical injury. The majority of my GP day on Monday felt like it was taken up with mental health issues, and we have to do better than that. Regarding child and adolescent CAMHS services, as Alex Cole-Hamilton and others have told us, more than 20% of young people wait more than 18 weeks to access CAMHS treatment. The 90% national standard has never been met, and this is mainly down to abysmally poor workforce planning. Mental health nursing vacancies have been rising for the past five years and are currently at record levels with over 1,000 posts unfilled and an increase of 350 unfilled posts in the last year. I would like to thank Russell Findlay for bravely talking about his own mental health problems. Speaking up is absolutely vital. Stigma is worse for men and in the ethnic communities. We must work harder to remove stigma, and I also agree with him that media can help in this endeavour. I can definitely tell Fergus Ewing that early intervention is indeed key and further that schools have a pivotal role to play. I agree with him that the financial penalisation of the family he described is unacceptable and patients out of area or children who are being moved around in the care setting are at risk. Pauline McNeill spoke about the role of social media. During lockdown and restrictions, a lot of us took to social media. We saw the glamorous lifestyle of the celebrity, the rich and the highlights of other people's lives and compared it to ours, the fantasy that we see on social media. That has worsened mental health problems. 20 per cent rejection, I can tell again Pauline McNeill, is a GP that will need to pick up the care of these patients. My colleague Sue Webber has said that mental health issues were the primary reason for time of work and that this is likely as a combination of lockdown restrictions and as Craig Hoy has articulated, people are twice as likely to experience anxiety, depression and high levels of psychological distress following Covid. We are very stretched in GP and patients return to us because they face long waits to be seen in hospital and that adds to that burden. Sue Webber spoke about Mary Glasgow who appeared before us in the health committee and her idea of having family well-being teams across the country from successful pilots is right and hearing Jo Fitzpatrick's great examples strengthens this ask, we need to help those with low-level mental health issues not with drugs or psychiatry but support in the community. Russell Finlay also spoke eloquently about the fact that poor mental health leads to the sad reality of people committing suicide. He is right in saying men are more likely to die because they tend to have more violent attempts at suicide but more women attempt suicide. This is a cry for help. This is an agonised person's last desperate act and for anyone who's watching this, if you feel low, if you feel sad, if you feel like things are getting on top of you and the dark is closing in, please pick up the phone, call the Samaritans 116 123, that's 116 123, call your GP, speak to your family or friends, speaking about how you feel is the first step to getting better. The SNP must accept that we went into this pandemic with a pre-existing mental health crisis that was exacerbated not solely caused by Covid and I think Monica Lennon agrees with me with this. The key to addressing the mental health crisis in primary care is sustainable workforce planning and an apt example of this is NHS Lanarkshire that has put GP services under managed suspension and will focus only upon the most urgent and critical care. Let me explain why this is such a bad thing to happen. When A&E asks patients not to come in unless it's life threatening, it is GPs that provide the safety net to catch those sick patients who did not attend. GPs provide unlimited care to patients and pick up so much incidental pathology. GPs ensure not only the health but the wellbeing of patients as looked after. Back pain, urine infections, period issues, endometriosis, as discussed yesterday, do not fulfil the definition, but if you suffer from these issues it is urgent. GP service at Lanarkshire has broken. My fellow GPs and everyone working in primary care has seen so much extra work from hospital that we are burning out. Patients will suffer. NHS Lanarkshire needs to be escalated to level 5, and I hope that the cabinet minister will address that in his closing remarks. The minister's motion misses the mark. Scotland does not need another statement of intent. If members are serious about mental health and wellbeing in primary care settings, they will support our amended motion, one with substance and commitment, to ensure the health and wellbeing of our patients. We must take care of the health and wellbeing of our workforce. We cannot have one without the other. I call on Humza Yousaf to wind up up to nine minutes, cabinet secretary. Thank you very much. I am happy to hear to you and to all members across the chamber. It has been an excellent debate across the chamber. I have agreed with every single word that has been said. It will never be the case, I suspect, but it has been a very powerful debate. Many members have mentioned, particularly those who have been in this chamber and in this Parliament for a number of years now, that this Parliament is at its best and is discussing this issue when it comes together. It has been good examples of collaboration, some of which I will touch upon if I can, during my contribution. I thank members who have spoken about their constituents. I think that every single one of us, while we have had constituents contacting our officers and us at our surgeries, in really dire circumstances and in really difficult situations. I do not doubt that for a second that every single MSP right across this chamber will deal with those issues with the utmost compassion and also with the urgency that those situations require, but I really want to pay tribute to those who have referenced constituent cases. A number of people have said that they might write to myself or, indeed, to Kevin Stewart. We urge you to do so, and, of course, Kevin and I would be happy to meet MSPs in relation to any issues that they raise. I also want to thank Russell Findlay for sharing his own story and speaking about his own mental health challenges. He did so powerfully. He also made the important point that speaking up in the positions that we have with the platform that we have is really important to destigmatise, to remove the taboo of mental health particularly, if I may say, of men of a certain age where we know suicide is far higher than their female counterparts. I want to congratulate and thank him more so, I should say, for speaking up. A number of good contributions and many of them touched on very common themes that I will try to pick up. Craig Hoy in his contribution talked about and challenged Government, I think rightly, but all of us, to demystify and de-dragonise the services. I think that he is right to reference that. I think that Government in our documents, in our strategies, in our articulation of the services that exist, perhaps fall into that trap of dragonising them. I take up the challenge, but I would say also that the thousand additional mental health professionals in GP practices that are in the hearts of our communities will help us in that endeavour. I know that from an excellent community link worker that we have in Pollock Health Centre, who has just moved on but replaced by an equally good community link worker, they have the ability to really be in a level with our constituents, with the public and give them access to services in a way that perhaps he is right that Government can sometimes suggest that those services are a bit more inaccessible than they are. I take up his challenge on that and certainly in the work that we do, we will make sure that we make those services as accessible as possible. In terms of some of the key themes that were mentioned by a number of members across the chamber, one of those was on workforce and, of course, a number of the motions reference workforce and workforce challenges. I do accept, absolutely, that there were challenges pre-pandemic. There seemed to be a suggestion from some members that we do not accept that there were challenges. In fact, I have stood up on this chamber on countless occasions to say that I accept fully that there were challenges pre-pandemic. Equally, I would ask for some acknowledgement back from the opposition that the pandemic, over the last 21-22 months, has undoubtedly been a significant shock to our health services and a significant shock to people's individual mental health. The amount of constituents that have come to me who have said that they have never suffered a mental health challenge and told the pandemic was quite staggering in itself. I am not suggesting that there are not challenges pre-pandemic. Equally, I would like to say that there has been improvement under the course and stewardship of this Government since 2006. CAMHS staff have increased by 81 per cent. The psychology workforce has increased by 110 per cent. Of course, since 2007, we are planning for an additional 320 CAMHS staff to be recruited in increasing our nursing mental health intake, which I know was an issue raised by a number of colleagues in terms of the vacancies that exist. However, we are working hard to increase our mental health nursing workforce in NHS Scotland, which has increased by 34 per cent to more than 9,500. In fact, 9,700 whole-time equivalent posts, but I accept that there are still challenges. Therefore, the mental health nursing student intake will increase by 22.23 per cent to a recommended intake of 888 places. That is up 20 per cent from the previous year, and that is almost 150 per cent over the course of the last 10-student uptake. We take those workforce challenges seriously. Some members asked us how to be compared with the rest of the UK. We, of course, looked to work where there is best practice elsewhere in the UK. We will look to see where we can possibly match that, but I would say in a recent benchmarking study on a number of recent benchmarking studies that looked at mental health services across the UK that we had 56 whole-time equivalents per 100,000 compared to the UK average of 40 whole-term equivalents. I will give way to Pauline McNeill. Pauline McNeill, I thank the cabinet secretary for giving way. I wondered if the cabinet secretary would address the issue that I was the theme of my speech, with the investment and the priority, which the Government says it clearly is. How would you satisfy yourself that Scotland's system is not only compared with the UK but is compared internationally in terms of how we provide services, making sure that they have the optimum treatments and that the variation of treatments are available? How do ministers satisfy themselves that the investment, if you like, is going to result in an internationally brilliant service? It is a fair challenge. When it comes to the Government and our officials and ministers, we do not just look at UK-wide, European-wide or globally, but what I would say—this is a fair challenge that Pauline McNeill put back to the Government—is that the first step in that is, of course, ensuring that we meet the targets that we have set ourselves. Members have criticised the Government for not reaching that 96 per cent target. I do not blame them for doing so. From my perspective, although we are making progress and the latest figures show that 78.6, almost 8 out of 10 children and young people were met within that 18-week target time, that is not the 90 per cent that we are committed to. Members are right to challenge us on that. I give you every commitment that Kevin Stewart, I and the entire Government do not sit on our rest on our laurels on this. We are not complacent about this, we want to make sure that we reach that target. The other key theme that was mentioned by a number of members was that investment in areas of deprivation but also in areas where those waiting times are not being met—not just not being met but being met—are the lowest and furthest away from being met. I want to give an absolute assurance that, in the Government, we are looking to invest specifically in targeting those health board areas where they are the furthest away from meeting that target, so an additional £40 million has gone in this financial year to that. In terms of funding itself, which is important and has been referenced by Kevin Stewart already, we will increase funding for mental health by 25 per cent, and we will ensure that 10 per cent of front-line NHS spend goes towards mental health. Just in the time that I have left a number of good points were raised, I just wanted to give an absolute assurance that I will go to Hamilton and a couple of other members who asked if the 1,000 mental health professionals and general practitioners were in addition to action 15—they are in addition to action 15, there should be no doubt about that. However, if you want further clarification on any point, I am happy to provide that. I just wanted to sum up the important points raised by Monica Lennon and Gillian Mackay on NHS Lanarkshire. They asked me for some clarification about the change in GP services. Would that include mental health services? Yes, absolutely. Where NHS Lanarkshire has said, it will see people who are critical and time critical and urgent. That does not just include physical health, it would also include mental health. Although the pressure relief from NHS Lanarkshire has said that those arrangements will be in place for four weeks, I have made it clear that they should be reviewed every single week. I am sorry that I have not been able to address other members' points, but I will write to a number of members on some of the questions that they have asked. However, I hope that we can continue what was a collaborative approach to tackling mental health, particularly for our young people and our children. The Government will do everything that we can to ensure that we have the appropriate service and provision available in every single part of the country to support all those who are struggling with their mental health. That concludes the debate on mental health and wellbeing in primary care services. It is now time to move on to the next item of business, which is consideration of business motion 2757 in the name of George Adam on behalf of the Parliamentary Bureau, setting out a business programme. No member has asked to speak on the motion, therefore the question is that motion 2757 be agreed. Are we all agreed? The motion is therefore agreed. The next item of business is consideration of parliamentary bureau motion 2758 on approval of an SSI. I ask George Adam on behalf of the Parliamentary Bureau to move the motion. Minister, the question on this motion will be put at decision time and there are five questions to be put as a result of today's business. I remind members that if the amendment in the name of Craig Hoy is agreed to, then the amendment in the name of Carol Mocken will fall. The first question is that amendment 2747.3 in the name of Craig Hoy, which seeks to amend motion 2747 in the name of Kevin Stewart on mental health and wellbeing in primary care services, be agreed. Are we all agreed? The Parliament is not agreed, therefore we will move to vote and there will be a short suspension to allow members to access the digital voting system.