Reprioritising £38m in the mental health budget: FOI release

Information requested

1) In the Emergency Budget Review, the Scottish Government states it is reprioritising £38m in the mental health budget, specifically "This has included continuing to support overall increases to mental health spending as well as delivery of dementia, learning disability and autism services, and crosscutting trauma work at level of last year’s spend. Within the revised budget we will seek to focus on progressing existing commitments including clearing CAMHS and psychological therapies waiting times backlogs.

1a) Set out exactly where within the mental health budget has seen budget reductions by setting out budgets prior to the EBR and after the EBR.

1b) Please break this down by specific area such as dementia, learning disability, autism, and others.

Response

Some of the information you have requested is otherwise publicly accessible. Under section 25(1) of FOISA, we do not have to give you information which is already reasonably accessible to you. Information on the 2022/23 budget can be found here.

£m	2021/22 Spend Est.*	Post EBR 2022/23 change on 2021/22 spend**	Post EBR 2022/23 change on planned budget
Mental Health Service Improvement	£113.08	+£6.02	-£23.61
Mental Health Renewal and Recovery Plan	£104.14	+£0.62	-£15.25
Child Abuse Inquiry - Survivor Support Fund (Future Pathways)	£3.76	+£0.99	-£0.25
Scottish Autism Strategy	£1.45	+£0.62	-£1.03
Adult Survivors Fund (Survivor Support Policy)	£2.63	+£0.03	-£0.20
Keys to Life (Learning Disability)	£2.37	+£1.74	+£0.80
Other Below £2m	£15.47	-£0.55	+£1.66
Total	£242.90	+£9.47	-£37.88

*2021/22 estimated MH outturn figures, excluding budget transfers to local government and integration authorities reserves.
** this is based on estimated spend for 2022-23 and anticipates drawing on IJB reserves that were unspent in the previous year/s.

Since 2020/21, Mental Health Directorate’s programme budget has more than doubled, from £117 million to almost £252.4 million in 2022/23 (post EBR).

Overall NHS Mental Health expenditure has risen from £1.1bn in 2019/20 to £1.25bn in 2020/21, an increase of £172m or 16% - rising from 8.5% of total NHS expenditure to 8.8%. This compares to spend of £651m in 2006/07. This does not include funding that is spent across other areas, such as education and the third sector.

The draft budget for 2023/24 has been published and is available on the Scottish Government’s website, here - Scottish Budget: 2023-24 - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)

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