Scottish Budget 2025 to 2026

Chapter 3 Health & Social Care

Health & Social Care

The Health and Social Care portfolio is responsible for supporting our health and social care services, ensuring an effective, efficient and sustainable health and social care system that is fit for Scotland’s future. It seeks to improve the health and wellbeing of our population, by preventing ill health, tackling health inequalities, and promoting healthier lifestyles.

This budget sees record funding of over £21 billion for the portfolio, which includes an increase in our capital spending power of £139 million from 2024-25, to ensure that people have access to high-quality health, mental health, and social care services when and where they need them, driving forward our vision of a Scotland where people live longer, healthier and fulfilling lives.

We will continue to focus on reform and improvement of the performance of our services by deploying existing resources more efficiently and effectively, and working to identify funding to support actions that deliver against our reform vision. This will include measures to improve population health, to intervene earlier with preventative measures delivered through effective primary and community care services, and making changes to how we deliver services that will improve quality and access.

We will continue to invest in, strengthen and improve the performance of our NHS. We will prioritise, and increase access and capacity in, Primary Care, including supporting services in General Practice, and enable measures to sustainably treat more patients in community settings, particularly in eyecare, whilst ensuring the success of dental reform.

This health budget includes more than £16.2 billion for Health Boards to deliver front line and other key services, and this sum includes funding to honour our commitments to fair pay settlements for our health workforce.

Supporting the First Minister’s priority of maximising access to quality health and social care services, this budget includes £200 million to reduce waiting lists and to help support reduction of delayed discharge. Our commitment to renew our NHS means we will also be seeking to start the work in 2025-26 on delivering a series of new acute facilities.

The budget also supports the expansion of Hospital at Home and primary care enhancements, including new core funding to General Medical Services to deliver enhanced frailty, cardiovascular disease and other essential services in General Practice, a critical dental workforce and training package and a community eye care programme to transfer patients from waiting lists.

We will support improvements across a range of mental health services and treatments, increase access to care and support for people living with dementia, provide an additional £5 million for voluntary sector short breaks for unpaid carers, and expand support for disabled people through the reopened Independent Living Fund. We will also be investing £4 million in our hospice sector. We will maintain our focus on adopting innovation and digital technology, including accelerating the delivery of our personalised digital health service.

As well as funding services we will continue to promote good health, including through our sport budget, and our commitment to invest an additional £250 million in the National Mission on Drugs over the course of this Parliament.

Health and Social Care intended contributions to the National Outcomes

Primary National Outcomes

• Health
• Children and Young People
• Communities
• Human Rights

Secondary National Outcomes

• Culture
• Economy
• Education
• Environment
• Fair Work and Business
• International
• Poverty

For further information on the purpose of the portfolio budget, and contributions to national outcomes (including impacts of spend on equality of outcome) please refer to the relevant portfolio annex in the published Equality and Fairer Scotland Budget Statement.

Health & Social Care

The prior year 2024-25 Budget comparator figures are based on the latest in-year budget numbers which were revised at the Autumn Budget Revision. The 2023-24 Scottish Budget comparator figures reflect the outturn numbers for that year.

*The Miscellaneous Other Services and Resource income budget line in 2024-25 includes funding adjustments set out in the Autumn Budget Revision with recurring funding now transferred to NHS Boards core budgets in 2025-26.

**Funding is transferred to Local Government as part of the Autumn Budget Revision to deliver health and social care services.

* The reduction in the Improving Outcomes and Reform Budget line largely relates to £185.6 million of funding that has been permanently transferred to NHS Boards as part of their core funding from 2025-26. There is also an increase of £100 million with regards additional funding to reduce waiting times.