Thank you, convener, and good morning to you all. I am grateful for the opportunity to speak to the committee.
Following the publication of the 2019 statistics on drug-related deaths in Scotland, the First Minister announced the need for the Scottish Government to lead a national mission to save lives and improve lives. In her statement to Parliament on 20 January, she pledged an additional £50 million in each of the next five years to drive forward the changes that we need.
Our mission is to get more people into treatment, as we know that that is a protective factor that keeps people safe. That is one of my immediate priorities. In order to do that, we need to improve our treatment offer and make it much more accessible to those who have the greatest needs.
A significant amount of work, including work by the drug deaths task force, is already under way to increase treatment numbers. The roll-out of the new medication-assisted treatment standards that the task force has developed will ensure that a range of treatment options are available to anyone who needs them, no matter where in the country they are, on the day that they request them. That also includes my commitment to increase the capacity of residential rehabilitation. I have committed to a significant uplift in the current provision of residential placements, and I have asked a residential rehabilitation working group to examine how we can do that quickly.
In addition, I am working on other improvements, such as expanding the reach of examples of good practice—for instance, the heroin-assisted treatment service, which is currently available in Glasgow but could be replicated elsewhere. We are also working to make long-acting buprenorphine more available as an option for those who would find it more suitable than methadone or other opioid substitutes. Those moves will help to ensure that treatments will be more widely available, which will mean that all areas will offer a more person-centred approach.
We are working with stakeholders to gear up the way in which we take account of those with lived and living experience, in order to ensure that our services, initiatives, plans and policies are informed by the views and experiences of people who have gone through treatment or who are in recovery and those of their families, as well as those of people who are not currently in treatment.
In order to step up our efforts to face those challenges, I will convene an implementation group, in which I and other Scottish Government ministers will work alongside chief officer or director representatives from health and social care partnerships, integration authorities and other organisations, such as the royal colleges, to ensure that we align our strategies and to support better delivery. In essence, that will allow us to ensure that our public health emergency response—our work to save lives—is far better embedded in our wider work to improve lives, whether it involves mental health, housing, adverse childhood experiences, education, prevention or poverty and inequality. The implementation group will draw on advice not only from the drug deaths task force, but from the new residential rehabilitation working group, as well as from organisations that represent those with lived and living experience and their families.
In all that we do, partnership working will be key. Since I came into post, one of my first priorities has been to meet as many organisations and individuals working in the field as I can. That has allowed me to hear a wide range of thoughts and opinions about how we can make improvements, reduce deaths and improve the lives of individuals and their families.
In my role as minister, it is my responsibility to build relationships and work positively with all those groups. In addition, I am clear about my responsibility to work with Parliament and parliamentary committees in order to ensure that, as we move forward, we can build more of a consensus across Parliament on the direction of travel. I hope that my time with the committee this morning is an opportunity to start to build that consensus.
I welcome the opportunity to answer any questions that members have.