Chamber and committees

Is it the case that, if the move towards sustainable and regenerative agriculture is done correctly, it will not necessarily impact on businesses’ long-term profitability if they are supported along the way to get themselves to that position? Even if we consider reducing herd sizes and reducing consumption, if that is done on a whole-farm basis and a societal basis that drives the kind of cultural change that we know that we have needed for the past 30 or 40 years, it should not affect profitability or our food security in Scotland.

The committee has been concerned about how we ensure that we get the right tree in the right place and that we think about trees on farms as something that is beneficial, as opposed to the argument that comes back to saying, “We can’t eat a tree.” That is a part of the whole thing that we need to consider.

That is something that we really need to bottom out, because a lot of people who are doing regenerative farming will say that they believe that they are sequestering a lot more carbon than their farms are emitting. We are on a journey to try to catch up with that kind of carbon auditing. It will be helpful once we get to the position where we understand that clearly and collectively.

What is social work’s perspective?

Unless any of the other witnesses has any thoughts on that, I will stop there. Thank you.

That is slightly contrary to your written submission. At this stage, does the Royal College of Psychiatrists think that that does not need to be strengthened in the bill as drafted?

I want to take us back to the charter of rights, which has been mentioned. We know that the national collaborative worked for quite a long time with people with lived and living experience and with partner agencies to draw up the “National Collaborative Charter of Rights For People Affected by Substance Use” and its toolkit, which was launched this past December. The charter draws from international guidelines on human rights and drug policy that set out best practice as identified by the UN. We anticipate that the proposed Scottish human rights bill, which will perhaps be introduced not in this session but further down the line, will underpin the charter. I am wondering how the bill that we are looking at today will intersect with the charter of rights. Could they work together? Is there any way that the charter of rights, as intended, could strengthen the bill?

In the absence of rights holders being able to realise their rights, we are seeing a gap in service provision for individuals. Can the witnesses speak to how those two things will interact with each other and how they could possibly strengthen each other?

You have outlined that some rights need to be brought into domestic law. Do you feel that the bill could be the vehicle to realise that? Could the rights that you mentioned, such as the right to the highest attainable level of health, be incorporated in the bill in order to realise those rights for people, or would we still need a human rights bill to incorporate those aspects?

I will explore some issues regarding treatment options. The bill as drafted outlines several treatment options that individuals who have a diagnosis of drug and/or alcohol addiction may access. Those include, but are not limited to, residential or community-based rehabilitation, residential or community-based detoxification, and stabilisation services.

Some of the written submissions that we have received from organisations, including from Social Work Scotland and from the Royal College of Psychiatrists in Scotland, express a little concern in their perception that the bill focuses on abstinence-based recovery rather than on harm reduction. I will explore that idea a little. The Royal College of Psychiatrists also has some concerns about unregulated rehabilitation services and how to better protect people in that space.

Does the bill, as drafted, effectively integrate harm reduction approaches with the range of treatment options that it proposes? We should recognise that people are sometimes not able to access residential rehab when that might be the thing that supports them in the long run, and looking back, they sometimes recognise that it could have supported them at an earlier stage. I am trying to square all that, and wonder whether you can speak to it. I will start with Peter Rice.

That speaks to my second question. People with lived experience have emphasised to us that it is all about wraparound support, and that recovery goes well beyond any rehabilitation that might occur. Things such as mutual aid and recovery communities, as well as that wider look across to housing and so on, are all important. Does the bill, as drafted, adequately promote the collaborative working that there needs to be between health, addiction services and broader support services? I will start with Dr Williams.

I guess that it is about the fact that recovery is not an event but a journey, and it is not linear. Any bill that seeks to address that needs to recognise that recovery is not a single thing but may be a multitude of things, and that it may come in fits and starts. Does it need to be explicit that the journey can be restarted at any point and that different options will be available?