Social Inclusion, Housing and Voluntary Sector Committee, 22 Mar 2000

Meeting date: Wednesday, March 22, 2000

Official Report 143KB pdf

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Drug Inquiry

Item 5 on the agenda is the paper on drug misuse in deprived communities, which is essentially an update on our work programme. We have been round the houses on this inquiry as well. Are there any comments?

It would be helpful if you could explain the objective of the inquiry. This is an opportunity to discuss that when it is being recorded in the Official Report. It might be helpful if we identified the objectives of the inquiry; it might help to shape the subsequent discussion.

I think that the remit has been well established. Committee papers from previous meetings indicate the remit, and members' attention can be drawn again to those papers so that they are clear about it. I am not sure if we have copies of the relevant paper here, but, as I recall, the remit was to focus on the links between drug misuse and deprived communities. It is not to answer all the drug-related issues on the public agenda, but will focus on the connection with poverty. It should relate poverty to the causes of drug misuse and should take into account some of the models and strategies that are in operation to address the needs of those communities.

That is a brief summation. Keith Raffan is not here this morning, but he has played a major role. My view is that we should get started on the inquiry. I would like to talk about some of the detail. The committee needs to get an understanding of public involvement and of public consultation. There is the proposal from CAP—the Communities Against Poverty Network—and I was going to make a specific reference to it in a moment. CAP has come up with an interesting proposal about how we can consult with it.

We need also to take a broader view, and we could possibly do some interesting work on drugs issues through visits to local communities. We need to consider how we hear evidence, quantify it and report on it. The Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations has made an interesting submission about how we can use the internet—essentially, people can give anonymous evidence, and, in the context of drugs, that might be very useful. Members may be aware that a citizens jury is being held under Jim McCormick of the Scottish Council Foundation, which is examining various innovative and interesting ways of getting evidence. We could consider that. Now is the time for us to move into much more of a public consultation phase.

I think that we have done a lot of good work on the housing stock inquiry, which has involved a lot of detailed analysis. We now have to move into a slightly different format, which is much more about public engagement and hearing issues from the streets, and bringing those issues back into the formal political process. We must form a vital connection in doing that.

I was going to ask the committee if we could bring forward a paper to formalise some of that and come up with some proposals, if we could squeeze that on to next week's agenda. Our proposals might focus on ideas such as getting evidence through the internet via the SCVO. We will need to consider the details of that. We also need to think about how we hear evidence in communities and about how we manage the committee's splitting into groups to hear evidence and to report back. Hearing evidence from excluded communities is not easy, and we have to consider different ways to organise that.

That is very important. I chaired a drugs forum meeting in Lanarkshire last night. It was set up by the local police and the schools. One of the points that came across from parents was that they feel excluded; they do not feel involved.

There has been an emphasis by the Executive of the role of the drug action teams, and the issue of communities having a strong voice on DATs was flagged up. There does not, however, seem to be any real evidence of how that will work. It is important that we as a committee speak to people who live in communities where drugs are a real issue, and where people have personal experience of the drug problem—they might live next to a drug user, they might be parents of a user or they might be users themselves. It is one thing to talk about our proposals, but another thing completely to do it. It is about how we access the people concerned. They will not come along to Edinburgh to give us formal evidence: it would be pretty traumatic for them and would simply not be an option for many of them, unfortunately.

We need to consider a whole package to bring into the formal political process in a new way. We also need to engage with some of the relevant agencies. There has been some debate in the newspapers, of which I am sure members are all aware, about how some of the drugs projects are tackling the issues, and I think that we need to hear evidence about some of those projects. I know that there is a variety of drugs projects out there that engage with deprived communities and that involve some very interesting and challenging practice. However, in some other cases, we will have to raise questions about the work that is going on, in terms of how it links in with the poorer communities and of how it allows communities to be in charge of some of the strategies.

I suggest that I should bring proposals to the committee next week to kick-start the work in our programme. We are collecting and analysing the written evidence that we have received. On Wednesday 26 April, which is not very far away, we will hear oral evidence from Executive officials. We will need to get in touch with our adviser so that we can pull together some questions. We need to take the earliest opportunity to make use of our adviser, which we did not quite do the previous time. Members should start thinking about the kind of questions that they would like to ask, so that we can find out from the officials what the Executive is doing. We will then produce more detailed proposals for visits and suchlike.

Will the Executive officials be the officials from the ministerial group that Angus MacKay is putting together on drug abuse?

We can invite them if the committee wants us to do so. The intention was to invite officials from the Scottish Executive Development Department, because that department is the one that relates to this committee, as it were. Because the inquiry will consider the implications for social inclusion work and community projects, we felt that that was the appropriate department to talk to.

My understanding was that we would invite the officials associated with Angus MacKay's work on drugs as well. I am not sure whether it is appropriate to mention names, but Nicola Munro was one.

We can certainly ensure that they are invited.

Yes, I think that we have to invite them. Later on, we may want to talk to other officials about the mainstreaming of the drugs strategy within social inclusion strategies; but initially we have to focus on the drugs work.

I thought that Wednesday 26 April, the date for oral evidence, was also the date for the briefing from the Scottish Parliament information centre on social inclusion. Has that been changed?

Martin Verity and I will get back to you on that.

There are potentially eight different visits, but only three have been included in the work programme. How does that square up?

We intend to divide the visits among different members of the committee and package the visits so that members will be able to do a couple in a day. We need to consider the way in which we will do that. If members have any specific interests, I ask them to let Martin know. Some people may be especially interested in prisons, for example; others might be interested in Dublin. I say that with full recognition of members' commitment to their work.

I think that we should get up to speed on the Dublin visit. It has been suggested that the city has similar deprivation problems to urban Scotland, but that is not the case any more.

That visit was recommended by our adviser. If members do not think that it is appropriate, we can reflect on that. Any other recommendations can also be considered. They should be filtered through Martin as usual. We had agreed on the principle that we should look outside Scotland more, to get some comparisons.

Next week, we will have a paper from the clerks that will give members more details on the logistics and our commitments. We will be in touch with our adviser on that. I will also bring a paper on our consultations.

I think that we have all considered the paper from the Communities Against Poverty Network. I have said to the network informally that I thought there was a lot of sympathy for its proposal in the committee, which I thought was a fair assumption. Given the context, the group is keen to make progress. In yesterday's discussion, I said that I would recommend to the committee today that our sub-group on social inclusion meet formally with the network's steering group so that we can begin to make progress with the proposal. Are there any comments?

Will we do something similar with the Poverty Alliance or local poverty groups? I know that they are connected, but, just as we are hearing different reactions from different tenants' groups to the stock transfer proposals, there may be different ideas and attitudes among the Poverty Alliance, the Communities Against Poverty Network and other local anti-poverty groups such as Lothian Anti-Poverty Alliance. Will we meet those people as well?

What I am suggesting is just to get us started. Meeting with one group does not exclude other groups. Next week I shall be making a public declaration that we want to have a partnership with various organisations. The Communities Against Poverty Network is anxious that we do not throw out the baby with the bath water by attempting to be so inclusive that we end up not consulting anyone. I suggest that we start there, but it does not preclude getting involved with anyone else or having any other discussions. The network has given us an interesting proposal and we can begin to make progress on that.

I am not a member of the social inclusion sub-committee, but I would be interested in attending that meeting.

I do not think that that should be a problem. It was only because of commitments for other members that I recommended the sub-group alone. The national steering group is meeting today and I shall go along after the meeting finishes at 3 o'clock. If anyone else wants to come, I am sure that they will be welcome. I shall convey to the people involved our commitment to meeting them. We will report back to the committee.

Are there any other issues that members want to raise before we go into private session?

Following the evidence that Scottish Homes gave to the committee two weeks ago, when there was some concern about the way in which it had handled debt, I was approached by the chairman, John Ward, and a press person called Bill—I cannot remember his second name. Mr Ward undertook to submit a paper to the committee explaining the position, as he did not think that Scottish Homes was fairly represented at the hearing. I said that the committee would be happy to accept that.

I am sure that the committee will consider it with great interest. Scottish Homes might come back again to the committee. A letter has been received, which will be circulated to all members.

Before we move into private session, I wanted to mention the voluntary sector, which we sometimes do not have time to talk about. Martin Verity suggested that I should present a paper on 5 April. Although I am happy to do that if the committee is interested, I would like you to consider the possibility of taking evidence that day from youth organisations, uniformed organisations and voluntary organisations such as Volunteer Development Scotland about Scottish Criminal Records Office checks.

The Executive is reviewing SCRO checks and will shortly make its recommendations. It is important that this committee should have some input into that. I know that there is not much space in our timetable for us to consider the issue, but it would not take long. We could easily do it in one session. I have good links with the uniformed youth organisations, VDS Scotland and other groups that would be happy to come at short notice to give brief evidence and to give us the opportunity to question them before making our recommendations.

If there is an opportunity in the timetable, what Karen Whitefield is suggesting would make sense. We have appointed Karen to look at voluntary sector issues and John McAllion to look at housing. It is important that they should report back regularly on the contacts that have been made.

I am concerned, as Karen is, that there has not been an opportunity to give feedback on the voluntary sector. SCRO checks have been debated in Parliament and the issue is topical. It is important that it should be raised and highlighted. However, we should ensure that we continue to receive regular reports, oral or written, from the people whom we have appointed to examine various areas. The public will want to know that we are not ignoring the voluntary sector and that work goes on outside committee meetings.

Absolutely. I know that a lot of work has been done on the voluntary sector and that it has been squeezed off the agenda a number of times. We must be careful to avoid that, but it is difficult to manage the pressure of the different issues.

Do members agree to Karen Whitefield's proposal to have a very brief evidence session on 5 April?

Members indicated agreement.

I shall let Martin Verity deal with the difficulty of organising the agenda.

The committee will now move into private session to consider our line of questioning for the minister at next week's meeting. I thank the members of the public who have taken an interest in our meeting. No doubt we shall see you again.

Meeting continued in private until 12:05.