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I am more than happy to bring in Richard McCallum in a second, but, to be absolutely clear, that funding is in addition to the £61 million reducing drugs deaths budget, which includes the second tranche of £50 million of additional funding as part of the commitment for £250 million over five years from 2021-22. It is specifically aimed at supporting an additional response to our collective challenge on drug deaths.

The increase of £1.2 million in funding on alcohol and drugs for 2022-23, to which you referred, brings the total budget to £24.4 million. That includes investment in an alcohol harm and treatment policy team to deliver our alcohol priorities with Alcohol Focus Scotland, Scottish Health Action on Alcohol Problems and the Scottish Alcohol Counselling Consortium. It also provides funding for specific alcohol services that will be delivered to support the Simon Community Scotland to deliver a pilot managed alcohol programme.

That funding is in addition to the £61 million reducing drug deaths budget. I hope that that is clear. Richard McCallum might have something to add to that.

You are right to say that that is an important commitment. The issue has become even more important, given what we have been dealing with during the pandemic. We know that sport is good not just for physical health but for mental health, so it is important that we live up to the commitment to double our investment to £100 million a year by the end of this parliamentary session, which we intend to do.

How will the money be spent? It will allow us to rebuild capacity and resilience in the sector following closures during the pandemic. One cannot be unaware of the impact that the pandemic has had on sport. The impact has been felt at the local grass-roots level—for example, a daughter’s football club that she goes to on a Saturday, which might have been hit hard by the pandemic but not have reserves to reach into—right through to the biggest clubs in the country. That has been the case not just in one sport but across myriad sports. Sport has been affected by the lack of people coming through turnstiles, for example. I will not pre-empt anything that the First Minister will say this afternoon, but omicron is clearly causing us great concern in that respect.

We work closely with sportscotland and other partners to understand how we can best increase investment in physical activity and sport while ensuring that we also address inequality. To be frank, I note that some sports have been better at dealing with inequality of access than others; other sports and sporting bodies have a little bit more work to do in that respect.

That is a good question. The national performance framework informs the budget. The impact on outcomes is, of course, considered when we make commitments. That, too, in turn informs our budget. We know that increasing health and care spending will directly contribute to the health and wellbeing of the nation.

The First Minister often talks about the fact that we cannot separate health and the economy—although people sometimes ask us to do so—because they are intrinsically linked. An increased workforce contributes to the economy, as does increased capital investment in health, which generates jobs and moves us towards our net zero goals. Our commitments to fair work and pay contribute to outcomes on poverty, and health has a role in each and every one of them.

The national performance framework sets our budget priorities. As I said in my previous answer, the framework is a consistent thread that runs through our entire consideration.

I agree entirely with Carol Mochan’s assessment and her plea to every decision maker and policy maker that tackling poverty and inequality has to be the root of our mission in Scotland, because it touches on every portfolio in the Government. That is without a shadow of doubt.

I will not rehearse everything that I said previously about the good work that we are doing with the Deputy First Minister. However, to answer the question I say that the issue absolutely requires us to be politically brave and bold. We are up for that challenge. We have committed once again to doubling the child payment, which Scottish Labour had been calling for and has welcomed. There are a number of initiatives. Carol Mochan will know that we have committed to the family wellbeing fund for this session of Parliament. It is a significant investment that is designed to tackle child poverty.

There is no getting away from the fact that some of the investments will take the course of the parliamentary session to work. Of course, if we were able to meet our child poverty targets sooner, we would absolutely do that. Ms Mochan is probably aware of the detail of the child poverty targets, so I will not rehearse them. However, I give her the absolute commitment that regardless of whether we are in health, education, transport, housing or social justice, we are all absolutely at one on the drive to reduce child poverty. As the person who is responsible for the largest share of the Scottish budget by quite a distance, I am not unaware of my responsibilities in that respect.

There is no doubt that the omicron variant causes more difficulty. The emergence of a new variant that is more transmissible means that we are facing an even greater challenge.

As Gillian Mackay will know, when the first omicron clusters were found in the Lanarkshire area, we ended up in a position where entire departments in our acute sites in Lanarkshire were worried about staffing levels. They were able to cope, and I pay tribute to the management and the health board for managing the situation, but it looked really difficult and challenging at one time.

The emergence of a new variant not only has direct health impacts—although it has those, and we have to factor that into the recovery—but affects our staff. An exemption process in now in place for NHS and social care staff. However, if a staff member tests positive—and positive cases are increasing, as we see in the recent daily numbers—that will still have an impact on the health service.

Those are both good questions, and they are intrinsically linked.

I agree with Stephanie Callaghan’s opening remarks about the job that NHS Lanarkshire has done. It has not been without its challenges. Indeed, there are a number of challenges that NHS Lanarkshire often faces, given its geography and the pressures that it is under. It has coped admirably well. As you can imagine, we are working with NHS Lanarkshire very regularly to see how we can get it de-escalated from the highest level of escalation, which it is on at the moment.

Stephanie Callaghan makes a good point about the effectiveness of the interventions and of the money that we spend. Any funding that we allocate is delivered against really clear criteria. The recipients of the funding have to report on its impact and on the outcomes that we agree. We have on-going regular engagement with stakeholders around the use of resources to deliver outcomes and what the risks may be. There can be unforeseen risks in a funding application that cannot be accounted for when it is received.

As the member probably knows, we have committed to refreshing our long-term mental health strategy. That work will build on the evidence of success that we have seen from interventions and on engagement with stakeholders and—crucially—people with lived experience, to identify what the future priorities will be. In turn, that will help us to know what our funding priorities should be.

The second part of Stephanie Callaghan’s question was also really good. It was about the balance between adult services and child and adolescent services. The first thing to say is—my goodness—what an impact the pandemic will have had on all those services. That is not to say that there were no challenges before; I readily accept that there were. I will not be the only MSP on this call who had a constituent who was in need of and on the waiting list for CAMHS. That list was far too long—I am not going to pretend otherwise—but there is no doubt that the situation has been exacerbated by the pandemic.

Our mental health transition and recovery plan, which was published in October last year, reviewed the priorities. An additional £120 million recovery and renewal fund was allocated to support the delivery of that plan, and decisions on its use were based on an assessment of proposals, set against those priorities, that was carried out in discussions with key stakeholders.

It is difficult to get the balance between adult services and child and adolescent services right, but that is something we are continually looking at. Making sure that we get that balance right is part of our NHS recovery plan ambitions, but it will require significant investment.

Yes, we do. Looking at my tables, I see that we are at about 6 per cent. That is a good first step in that direction. You are right: we have that commitment, I would be confident of meeting it, and that is a good step in the right direction.

That is a good question. First, I would say that there is no fait accompli. As I have said to the committee before, I am not sitting here with a master plan of what the national care service will look like and then expecting the consultation process to fit in with my thoughts—far from it. We are genuinely interested in the analysis of the responses, of which we have received a considerable number.

We also want to ensure that we do not create a system and then try to fit people into it, but that we create a system that fits around individuals. Financial accountability is hugely important, not only for us as decision makers and policy makers, but for the individuals involved. I will not be the only MSP who has had to fight on behalf of a constituent because they have not received a package of care for a loved one or relative and their fear is that that has been more to do with cost and finances than the actual needs of the individual.

Again, I emphasise that nothing is concluded yet on the structure that we will end up putting in place—it may be that we will create community health and social care boards. However, financial accountability and leadership, which Paul O’Kane mentioned, have to be central to the creation of a national care service, whatever structure we end up putting in place.

I like that question from Emma Harper—it is fair to throw down the gauntlet in that regard. If we are already getting there, are we challenging ourselves enough? In my view, it is a positive that we have got to where we have.

The purpose of the target is to make changes on the ground and to underline the Scottish Government’s focus on shifting the balance of care where that is possible, while ensuring that we have in place appropriate support for hospital-based services. Nobody would say that—[Inaudible.]—which is an important point. I know that Emma Harper has personal experience of this area and understands the issues very well. We will continue to review the appropriate portion of spend.

To go back to my previous comments in response to the convener, once we do some further work on the medium-term financial framework and get further details, we will take that into account. In general, however, Emma Harper’s challenge to us is fair, and I will absolutely reflect on whether, if we are already meeting the 50 per cent target, we should be looking to be even more ambitious.

We can give you the detail of that. We will always look at any Audit Scotland report in great detail and consider its findings. You might have seen that the finance secretary addressed some of the issues in the Audit Scotland report.

On resource, it is important to say that it was well documented last year that very late consequentials that came in in the last few months of the year would have to be carried forward to ensure that vital programmes, such as vaccination programmes, could continue. Vaccination programmes do not stop at the end of the financial year, so we have a budget for the full initiative.

On capital, there is no doubt that lockdown had an impact on the ability to complete projects within the set timescales. Our portfolio was the most affected, along with transport and infrastructure. Contrary to any claims, the economy budget was overspent.

It is important to digest the full detail of the Audit Scotland report. With regard to transparency in the budget, I am always happy to consider members’ suggestions about how we can be even more transparent than we are. I might bring in Richard McCallum on that, as he might have more details. If Ms Webber wants to know about any specifics, she can respond after he has spoken.