A Healthier Scotland

We believe that effective health policy is as much about preventing ill-health as treating it. That is why we will ensure a sharper focus on improving public health and reducing inequalities, as well as on ensuring good quality and timely treatment and care.

Improving our nation's health is undoubtedly a significant challenge. The facts tell their own story. We need to accelerate the rate of improvement in the health of the people of Scotland generally, but also address much more effectively the growing disparity in health and life expectancy between the richest and poorest in our country.

The SNP Government has already taken some decisive steps toward helping people sustain and improve their health - especially in disadvantaged communities - and to ensure better, local and faster access to health care.

By continuing to make progress towards this objective, we will also go some way to meeting our commitments in other areas too. For example, if Scotland's people are healthier, they will be much more likely to make a contribution to growing our economy, and therefore to the achievement of our related objective of making our nation wealthier and fairer.

The first year

During our first year in government, we have taken a number of important steps toward making Scotland healthier:

• Reversed previous decision to close A&E Depts at Ayr and Monklands Hospitals
• Approved outline business case for £842 million project to build integrated children's and adult hospital on site of current Southern General Hospital, Glasgow. 
• New guidance on hospital car parking issued to NHS. 
• Consulting on proposals for greater patient and community involvement in how local health services are delivered. 
• Waiting lists are at an all time record low
• Target of a 15-week maximum wait for both outpatient consultations and hospital admissions introduced
• Children's cancer services retained and enhanced in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen and Dundee
• On track to achieve target of reducing premature cancer deaths by 20 per cent by 2010.
• Prescription charges cut by 25 per cent across Scotland. 
• Funding for NHS boards will rise to £8 billion next year.
• Implemented in full the NHS pay award from July 2007, ahead of England. 
• Extra £23 million to improve and modernise primary care premises. 
• Health boards on track to meet nationwide hand hygiene target; task force to oversee £54 million investment to tack tackle HAI, inc MRSA screening programme
• Introduced Public Health Bill to modernise Scotland’s public health legislation.
• Funding of £6 million will help at least 20,000 overweight and obese children.
• New nutritional guidelines for Scottish schools from August
• Taskforce set up to tackle the major health inequalities facing people
• £64 million cervical cancer immunisation programme to begin on Sept 1, a year ahead of rest of UK. 
• Record funding of £25 million for tackling alcohol misuse (£10.13 million in 2007/08). 
• Established Sutherland Review to look at funding of free personal care.
• Launched a school based preventative dental health service.
• Third dental school to be established in Aberdeen later this year. 
• More than £10 million to improve eyecare services in Scotland
• Consultation on Commonwealth Games legacy: Aberdeen and Edinburgh first recipients of funding to develop swimming facilities
• Record funding of £12 million for physical activity initiatives in schools, workplaces, homes and communities
• Set out proposals for affordable housing and support for first-time buyers
• Record number of central heating systems installed

The year ahead

Of course, improving our health is a long-term challenge. However, in the Parliamentary year ahead, the SNP Government will bring forward a number of proposals, some of which will involve legislation, for discussion and approval so that we can continue to put Scotland on the road to better health.

To help achieve a healthier Scotland, the Scottish Government will:

• invest over £37 million - £12.5 million each year - to strengthen primary health care in the most deprived areas;
• provide a new fund deployed by Community Planning Partnerships, to tackle poverty and deprivation and to help more people overcome barriers and get back into work, amounting to £145 million a year within the local government settlement;
• invest a total of £1.47 billion (£430.0m/£507.8m/£533.2m) in new and better housing across Scotland, including our most deprived communities;
• invest £47.4m/£53.9m/£54.9m in sport to increase participation and improve sporting performance, contributing to a range of outcomes including better physical and mental health. This includes £4.1m/£6.6m/£11.6m which will be invested in delivering a successful Commonwealth Games in Scotland in 2014;
• as part of an overall investment of over £100 million extra a year in health improvement and better public health, invest £85 million (£20.1m/£30.1m/£35.1m) to reduce the harm done by misuse of alcohol, £3 million a year for further action to reduce smoking; and an £11.5 million a year programme on diet and physical activity for health and to help prevent obesity. All of which will improve health, have a positive impact on productivity, and enhance the economic wellbeing and life chances of our population;
• invest in prevention, screening and early detection of serious illnesses, with a new immunisation programme to protect women against cervical cancer (£18.0m/£18.5m/£27.5m); a commitment of £12.0m/£21.0m/£21.0m to screen people admitted to hospital for MRSA and to help prevent the spread of infection; and a £16.3m/£14.2m/£10.8m national screening programme to detect serious illnesses early;
• invest £30 million (£10 million each year) to ensure more flexible access to primary care and £270 million (£90 million a year) to ensure that, by the end of 2011, nobody will wait longer than 18 weeks from GP referral to treatment for routine conditions;
• invest £97 million (£20.0m/£32.0m/£45.0m) to phase out prescription charges to ensure that sick people are not financially disadvantaged;
• uprate free personal and nursing care payments, ensuring that older people in care homes are not financially disadvantaged;
• invest £19.5 million (£4.5m/£6.0m/£9.0m) in better access to NHS dental services by introducing a prevention-based school service, starting in the most deprived areas, and by establishing a third dental school for Scotland in Aberdeen; and

Other priorities include:

• We will begin the process of comprehensively modernising Scotland's public health legislation. This is currently set out in a number of Acts dating back to 1897 and is therefore no longer fit for the modern public health challenges we face;
• We will ensure that our comprehensive health strategy will equip the health service for the challenges of the future: an ageing population; a growth in long term conditions; and widening health inequalities. The strategy will also inform our approach to the delivery of key commitments such as the phasing out of prescription charges; the setting of the binding 18-week waiting time guarantee; more flexible access to primary care, including GP appointments; the raising of the legal age for buying tobacco from 16 to 18; and the introduction of health checks in schools, starting in the most disadvantaged areas. We will present the secondary legislation on several of these measures as it is required;
• We will consult on our proposals for a Patients' Rights Bill which will bring greater accountability to our health service, give patients more rights and give legal effect to waiting time guarantees;
• We will consult on proposals to give greater patient and community involvement in how local health services are delivered, including through participation in direct elections to Scotland's Health Boards. This will lead to the introduction of a Local Healthcare Bill;
• We will treat the misuse of alcohol in Scotland as one of the most significant challenges that we face; not just in terms of the health implications but also its close association to issues such as violent crime. Therefore, over the coming year, we will develop our action plan on alcohol and set out a radical range of measures to reduce alcohol-related harm;
• We will continue to give our support to Glasgow's 2014 Commonwealth Games Bid, both as a means to promote Scotland on the world stage and as a way of providing the facilities and the inspiration to get more Scots physically active. We will take forward the necessary legislation in Parliament to help ensure Glasgow 2014 is the most successful Games yet;
• We are examining the Emergency Workers Act, with a view to enhancing the protection provided and extending it to vulnerable health workers and primary care staff; and
• We are taking forward a comprehensive series of measures on housing, including proposals for reform of the social housing sector so that it is better placed to meet the needs of tenants. We believe that everyone in Scotland should be able to have a secure, warm home at a cost they can afford - and, further, that there is a clear link between a healthy community and the availability of decent quality of housing for all.

Over the coming year, we will continue to improve our health and wellbeing as a nation. Across the political spectrum there is already consensus about the health challenges that face us, as well as broad agreement about what needs to be done.

By working with others across Parliament, and by continuing to make the case to agree collectively on the deep roots of some of these issues, the SNP government will make more progress over the year ahead, and begin to put Scotland further on the path to a healthier future.