National Health Service (Scotland) Act 1978: FOI release

Information requested

You asked for: “Can you please provide any form of policy or procedure (including archive copies) that stipulates when the National Health Service (Scotland) Act 1978, specifically […] [Section 1A], can and can’t be used?”

Response

The answer to your question is that no specific policy, procedure or guidance exists to moderate how or when Scottish Ministers may discharge their powers under Section 1A of the National Health Service (Scotland) Act 1978 (“the 1978 Act”).

Section 1A the 1978 Act was inserted in 2005 by Section 9 of the National Health Service Reform (Scotland) Act 2004 (“the 2004 Act”). As explained in the explanatory notes to the 2004 Act, Section 1A of the 2004 Act: “places a duty on Scottish Ministers to promote improvement in the physical and mental health of the people of Scotland”. It also enhanced Scottish Ministers’ ability to fulfil this duty, by providing Scottish Ministers with an express power to directly implement a range of measures to improve health, other than through the NHS or voluntary bodies.

Page 13 of the relevant SPICe Briefing for the Parliamentary Bill that preceded the 2004 Act adds: “This duty is intended as a way of taking health promoting activity beyond the NHS and therefore recognising the wider determinants of health, for example by allowing Ministers or NHS Boards to allocate money to organisations outwith the NHS or the voluntary sector.”

The powers under Section 1A the 1978 Act are discharged at the discretion of Scottish Ministers and Scottish Government officials acting on behalf of Scottish Ministers. One recent example of the Scottish Government utilising these powers, in order to fulfil Scottish Ministers’ duty to pursue health improvement, is the recent development and publication of a ten-year Population Health Framework for Scotland, which sets out a new cross-government and cross-sector approach that aims to improve health and life expectancy while reducing health inequalities.

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