Chamber and committees

Thank you, Louise. I will hand back to Collette Stevenson.

I will stay on the issue of trauma-informed approaches and care and bring in Superintendent Conway and then Mr McGeehan from the Procurator Fiscal Service. I would like to hear how trauma-informed their respective services are. Superintendent Conway, will you tell us how that is being built into policing? Then I will bring in Mr McGeehan.

I will bring in Louise Stevenson on the subject of trauma-informed approaches and care, and we will then move on look at drug supply and links with serious organised crime. Louise, will you be as brief as you can, please?

Mr McGeehan, do you wish to come in on that?

Before I bring in Fulton MacGregor, I invite Becky Wood to make a couple of points. It would be helpful if they could be brief.

I ask that Natalie Logan MacLean comes in, to be followed by Peter Krykant. I ask that you keep your comments fairly brief.

I will bring in Jamie Greene before bringing in Collette Stevenson and Katy Clark.

Like other members, I am completely horrified by the recent disclosures about cases of spiking in which young women have wilfully and recklessly been targeted. In my constituency, Robert Gordon University has put the safety of students front and centre of its equally safe strategy. What more can be done to support students within and beyond the campus to ensure that they are safe?

I am pleased to support the motion. I am a member of the Aberdeen city alcohol and drugs partnership, and I wish to acknowledge the work that is being done to reduce alcohol harm in Scotland.

Too often in my former professional role, I removed children from a mother who had a history of depression and who had overdosed on release from prison. She was not a bad mother; she was a failed mother. Too often, I searched a suicidal young woman who was suspected of concealing drugs in custody. She was not a criminal; she was criminalised. That must change.

The correlation between problem drug use and poor mental health is well documented. The Scottish Drugs Forum highlights that it is complex but not the result of poor decision making or lifestyle choices. The European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction highlights the complexities in treating drug use and mental ill health, noting barriers relating to access to and co-ordination within services as well as treatment networks being separated, which risks service users falling through the gaps.

In the First Minister’s announcement on the national drugs mission funds, she acknowledged that more should have been done earlier. The motion reflects the commitment to implementing approaches that reduce harm and save lives.

Alcohol & Drugs Action, in Aberdeen, is developing outreach services for people in custody, and it is engaged in non-fatal overdose follow-up work. Improvement funding has been sought to scale up its sharp response service to mainstream provision, and funding for pre-rehabilitation provision and post-care pathways will assist people who engage in residential provision.

Despite the challenges that the Scottish Ambulance Service faces, its harm reduction team is doing fantastic work to develop non-fatal overdose pathways, and its take-home naloxone programme has seen nearly 600 take-home kits given to individuals who are at risk of overdose.

There is much going on and much to do. In that regard, I have two brief but important points to make. First, workforce development is key to delivering a truly integrated person-centred approach. The mental health nursing programme at the Robert Gordon University, in my constituency, puts compassionate and person-centred care at the heart of students’ learning. The masters-level module on addictions and substance use is open to practitioners working in the field, and it is co-ordinated by mental health nurse lecturers and delivered by alcohol and drug services practitioners. It is a truly collaborative offering.

Secondly, later this week, the Criminal Justice Committee will hold a round-table session on drugs and the criminal justice system. A range of evidence has already been submitted. In the context of the debate, I note the submission from Dr Liz Aston of the Scottish Institute for Policing Research, who highlights that the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971

“shapes the environment within which people use drugs, the way environments are policed, and may impede the introduction or delivery of public health interventions”

such as

“the establishment of Safer Consumption Rooms, despite a wealth of evidence on their effectiveness as a drug death prevention intervention”.

I urge the Scottish Government to do all that it can to mitigate the impact of that damaging and antiquated UK legislation.

The public health emergency that we face in Scotland demands an ambitious and wide-ranging response in which the Government, stakeholders, educators and people with living and lived experience work to ensure that people get the right support at the right time, which, ultimately, will save lives.

The Scottish National Party Scottish Government has committed to investing £500 million in the north-east and Moray over the next 10 years to accelerate the transition to net zero and to support highly skilled jobs and livelihoods in the oil and gas sector. Does the cabinet secretary think that the UK Government should match that funding commitment, if it is serious about a just transition for the north-east?