Chamber and committees

The minister may recall comments made by her colleague David McDonald, who, until recently, was a Scottish National Party deputy leader of Glasgow City Council and chair of Glasgow Life. He said:

“Unlike Edinburgh, London, Liverpool, Manchester, York, Bradford, Leeds, Cardiff and others Glasgow gets no national funding for its museums from the UK/Scottish Government … This can’t go on. Can it?”

He is right, is he not?

To ask the Scottish Government what steps it will take to support Glasgow’s museums and galleries. (S6O-02524)

The member is correct that organised crime groups are a cancer in our communities and that they should be robustly challenged at every level, structurally. However, does he recognise that interventions such as medication assisted treatment or heroin assisted treatment can, in some instances, be effective in diverting revenues that would otherwise flow to illicit supply chains, giving more control and, ultimately, beneficial outcomes?

Does the member agree that there may be confusion over what constitutes decriminalisation and what constitutes legalisation, and that part of the confusion may be that the law officers of Scotland do not sit in the Scottish Parliament but are quasi-members?

I thank John Mason for giving way. He will be aware of the heroin-assisted treatment pilot, which I think is in his constituency in Glasgow. Does he not share my frustration that the pilot is vanishingly small in scale and could easily be expanded and grown to help to address some of the issues that he referred to, such as the monopoly of criminal gangs in the supply chain?

Will the member take an intervention?

As I have said on more occasions than I care to remember, Scotland’s drug deaths crisis is the most important public health emergency that communities across the country face, bar none. There is no magic bullet—only a fool would suggest that there is. The reality is that it will require a collective approach from every party in the Parliament and a whole-system response that embraces harm-reduction methods and recovery services in equal measure.

I make clear the disdain in which I hold the Government motion. As tends to be the case, the Government has resorted to constitutional grievance and has called for changes to legislation that are outwith the control of the Parliament before addressing solutions that are possible using the powers that the Government has had at its disposal for years.

There is no clearer example of that contemptuous approach than overdose prevention centres. Almost seven years ago, the then Lord Advocate, James Wolffe KC, rejected the proposal for an overdose prevention centre pilot in Glasgow. Last week, the current Lord Advocate, Dorothy Bain KC, approved it, which proves that—as many of us said—it could be done within current legislative frameworks. In that time, more than 7,000 people have fallen victim to entirely preventable drug-related deaths.

What a horrific indictment that is of the malaise in, and the indifference that is shown by, the Government and people in positions of power. It should not have taken people such as Peter Krykant risking their livelihoods and liberty to prove that overdose prevention could be done on the streets of Glasgow. That is the job of the Government—a job at which, by all accounts, it has failed miserably. Today, when we could have had a debate about how to progress the introduction of an overdose prevention centre pilot in Glasgow—a measure that, belated as it would be, every party in the Parliament supports—we are reduced to the dismaying spectacle of the Government squabbling over the constitution.

In the back of the old converted ambulance that is run by Peter Krykant, I have worked with people who were trapped in the vicious cycle of poverty, trauma and addiction. They do not care for the political games that are often played with their lives and the lives of their loved ones. They do not care whether Governments at Calton Hill or Whitehall hold specific powers. Most worryingly, they perceive those of us in positions of power as being aloof and devoid of compassion or empathy for the plight that they endure, and they fear that we are more interested in point scoring than in addressing the root causes of the problem.

Based on the evidence of the past few years, and from what we have heard so far in the debate, who could blame them for holding those cynical views? As I said previously, harm reduction and recovery do not exist in individual silos. We cannot rehabilitate a corpse and we cannot expect harm-reduction methods to work without long-term wraparound recovery and addiction services.

The harsh reality is that the Government has taken its “eye off the ball”. Those are not my words, but those of the former First Minister. In consequence, we have seen an almost continuous spiral of death and devastation in some of the poorest communities in our country. People who try to access recovery services are failed by a flailing approach to the introduction of medication assisted treatment standards, which has been woefully inadequate, in part because almost £50 million was slashed from alcohol and drug partnerships’ budgets between 2014 and 2019.

I completely agree with the point that Brian Whittle makes. One of the most important points about overdose prevention is the interaction with people who are deeply alienated from other services. The first conversation could be the difference between life and death. We see that in all sorts of interactions with vulnerable people in society.

The Government has the opportunity to enhance diamorphine-assisted treatment, for example. We have seen no progression beyond the initial heroin-assisted treatment pilot in Glasgow. The Government has simply not addressed that measure robustly enough, which could save lives. Brian Whittle made an important point in that regard.

All the while, the Government’s answer is to cry out for more powers, when every power and policy that it has at its disposal is underused, underfunded or utterly underwhelming. I support a public health approach being taken to solving the drug deaths crisis in our communities. I also support harm-reduction measures and any effort to get people into recovery and rehabilitation, should they wish to do so. However, I cannot support the Government’s continued denial of reality and its persistence in playing politics with people’s lives.

Countless people have made more impact in the fight to solve this country’s drug deaths than the Scottish ministers. I genuinely have nothing but admiration for every one of the citizens who stepped forward when the Government did not. They are the real heroes. They are the best of us and they showed leadership and courage when the Government was in hiding.

I encourage all colleagues to support the amendment in the name of my friend, the member for Dumbarton.

Does the minister agree with the point that decriminalisation is, in effect, a matter of prosecutorial discretion and public interest, in the sense that the prosecution of a possession offence is effectively decriminalised in Scotland, which I support, but that it is not a matter that requires a legal change to the 1971 act?

As Dr Gulhane mentioned, the proposed reduction in community link worker posts in Glasgow will be felt most acutely by the deprived communities in the city. Last week’s programme for government committed to ensuring that services such as the community link worker programme can respond to local needs in the year ahead. However, link workers and GP practices are facing uncertainty in the here and now. It is not good enough for the cabinet secretary to simply pass the buck. Will he commit to getting around the table with the Glasgow city health and social care partnership and the GMB trade union in order to ensure that link worker provision is maintained at its current level and that it can be funded more sustainably in the longer term?