THE Scottish government’s £1.5 billion annual spending on mental health services cannot be assessed for effectiveness due to lack of transparency, MSPs warned on Friday.

Holyrood’s health, social care and sport committee had been examining how the spend was delivering on the Scottish government’s Mental Health and Wellbeing Strategy as part of its pre-Budget scrutiny process, but found it “very difficult to identify links between those priorities and how mental health budgets are spent.”

The committee’s report urged ministers to do more to provide detailed analysis, but also warned of the “negative impact” of budget uncertainty in the medium-and long-term, particularly in the third sector.

“Issues of transparency, data availability and analysis has limited our ability to effectively scrutinise policy and funding,” said committee convener, SNP MSP Clare Haughey.

“More importantly, this limits the government’s ability to understand the effectiveness of funding for mental health services and where spending could be better targeted to improve outcomes.

“We’re calling for more transparency and better data and analysis to improve evaluation and to better inform spending priorities.”

The Scottish government was contacted for comment.