Chamber and committees

We will have a question specifically on that later, if you do not mind. Thank you.

Could the member keep to her topic, please?

I will correct this if required, but my understanding of what is happening in Portugal is that the recording of deaths has also changed, so I would not be quite that pointed in citing Portugal as a shining example.

After being told that Scotland had just 425 rehabilitation beds, the Democrat commissioner Rene Gonzalez said:

“I am deeply concerned. I would encourage Scotland to try to avoid the tragedy we’re going through, and if you’re going to go down this path, make a strong commitment to addiction services and emergency intervention.”

The Scottish Government recently announced funding of £14 million, which would increase rehabilitation beds across Scotland to almost 600. Those beds are vital, and they would be even more so if Scotland were to decriminalise drugs.

All of us across the chamber can agree that more action needs to be taken. However, the Scottish Conservatives do not support the decriminalisation of drugs. Decriminalising class A drugs will not help to tackle Scotland’s drug death crisis and could make it more difficult for the police to tackle the criminal gangs that profit from the trade and cause misery for our communities. It would do a disservice to Police Scotland, which works tirelessly, 24/7, to tackle those gangs.

I recently visited Children 1st’s office in Bathgate and met a woman who told me about the troubles that her daughter faced after she got caught up in cocaine use. That led to her using other drugs, which ultimately meant that the girl’s life and her family’s life were shattered and torn apart. The woman whom I spoke to had to sell the family home to pay for rehabilitation for her daughter and to clear the debt that was hanging over the daughter and the threat to the girl’s life by the criminal gangs supplying the drugs. It is gangs such as those that could be encouraged by, and profit from, the decriminalisation of drugs.

We must have an approach that encompasses criminal justice, social justice and health. I agree that the issue of drug addiction must be treated as a public health emergency, but the Scottish Conservatives cannot agree with the way in which the Government motion undermines the important role of the justice system.

Project ADDER—addiction, diversion, disruption, enforcement and recovery—is yet another tool that could be used to help tackle our drug-related deaths, yet it is disappointingly viewed unenthusiastically by the Scottish Government. However, in Blackpool, a Sunday Post investigation found that project ADDER worked in part because it was making recovery a priority. The Scottish National Party-Green Government is just focused on decriminalisation and has no plans to get people off drugs.

Nevertheless, as a result of this continuing crisis, the Scottish Conservatives will not oppose the use of drug consumption rooms, specifically the pilot in Glasgow.

The situation that we are facing in Scotland is far graver than the situation that people are facing elsewhere in the United Kingdom, where exactly the same legislation is in place. We have to look internally at ourselves and what we are not doing to help save those lives.

We have serious reservations about drug consumption rooms and their operation, and we must remember that they are not a magic bullet and that they will not solve all our problems. However, it is vital that the Scottish Government takes every practical step that it can to tackle the epidemic of drug misuse that is sweeping our country.

I would like to ask the minister, Maree Todd, to answer the following questions in her contribution. How does she foresee the Glasgow drug consumption rooms working on the ground? What will the evaluation methodology be and will it be made public? What will be measured? Just as importantly, will there be an independent assessment and review of the outcomes?

I have heard from people who work in drug rehabilitation services or are in recovery themselves, and they say that they would absolutely not oppose drug consumption rooms either, but they have a concern around the funding, which I share. Where will the money for the drug consumption room in Glasgow come from? Is it to come from the existing health and social care partnership budget? What other services are being cut to release the funds?

As I said, I have reservations about the effectiveness of drug consumption rooms, and the decision that the Lord Advocate made last week explains why. It confirmed that the SNP Government can proceed with a drug consumption room pilot if it wishes. The Lord Advocate gave the SNP one less hiding place when she removed the threat of prosecution from a consumption room pilot scheme in which class A drugs can be taken under supervision. Members should remember that the SNP Government previously insisted that that would require a change in UK law or independence. Neither has had to take place. That decision tells us that there was always a way for us to do that, and the SNP now has one less excuse for its failures.

Annemarie Ward from the drugs charity Faces & Voices of Recovery UK—Favor UK—has said that safe consumption rooms need to be underpinned by vital access to prescription programmes, detoxification and rehabilitation services, as laid out in the proposed right to addiction recovery (Scotland) bill.

It is now up to the SNP Government to demonstrate that safe consumption rooms can work, to back the crucial right to addiction recovery bill; and to finally start tackling the drug deaths crisis over which Nicola Sturgeon and, now, Humza Yousaf have presided.

I move amendment S6M-10490.1, to leave out from “be rooted” to end and insert:

“take both a public health and a criminal justice approach to target the serious organised crime gangs that target Scotland’s most vulnerable communities; believes that the support for people with substance dependency should be in parity with other health conditions, removing unnecessary stigma and discrimination; notes the Lord Advocate’s statement, which confirms her willingness to produce a prosecution policy statement enabling a drug consumption room facility to be set up without requiring any change to existing law; acknowledges that drug law is identical across the UK, yet drug-related deaths in Scotland are 2.7 times higher than the UK average; opposes the decriminalisation of drugs, which would make it more difficult to tackle the criminal gangs that profit from this trade and cause misery for communities across Scotland, and supports tackling the problem of substance dependency by implementing the proposed Right to Recovery Bill, which would enshrine a right in law that those who need treatment are able to get it.”

Will the member take an intervention?

The minister mentioned that children and families are at the heart of trying to break the cycle and save lives. Why do we have social workers with increasing numbers of case loads and young people who will get less and less time with those invaluable social workers to help to break the cycle?

It has been mentioned previously that the process of a member’s bill makes it quite challenging to have a timeline. We continue to put that point on the record but we continue to get the same evasive statements from the Scottish Government, which make it seem as though Douglas Ross and the Conservative Party are not doing enough to introduce the bill. Although we have concerns and want the bill to be introduced, limitations exist with the non-Government bills unit as it tries to cope with the capacity.

Maybe it is just me, Presiding Officer, but the sound in the chamber seems a bit strange today.

I welcome the chance to open for the Scottish Conservatives in this debate. I am sure that, across the chamber, we can all agree that each and every drug death is a tragedy, and there can be no doubt that our drug death crisis is an emergency. However, saying that repeatedly in the chamber, in reports and in press releases does not save lives. Under the SNP, drug-related deaths have spiralled out of control. Drug deaths in Scotland have more than doubled since the SNP came to power, and its current strategies to help those who are struggling with addiction have failed and are still failing.

I have just started my speech, but I might take an intervention in a moment, Mr Macpherson.

The strategies are just not enough or they are not being put in place fast enough where it matters on the front line. Scotland still has the highest drug death rate in Europe and, despite having the same drug laws, Scotland’s drug deaths are nearly three times the rate observed elsewhere in the United Kingdom.

I think that I accept the sentiment of what the member stated, but the SNP Government has been in control of these things in Scotland for 16 years, and it was the previous First Minister who, when she was health secretary—I cannot recall her exact title—cut the funding to our drug and rehabilitation services. That was the point at which our crisis began; that was point zero.

We must remember that, just last week, it was revealed that there have already been 600 suspected drugs deaths in the first half of 2023, which is an increase of 7 per cent on the same period last year. Implementing the MAT standards will help us in the fight against drugs deaths, yet the Scottish Government has missed its target of fully implementing the standards by April 2023. That is just another key missed target by the SNP and the Greens in their woeful handling of Scotland’s drug death crisis—so much so that the Green members cannot even find the time to come to the chamber this afternoon.

Having already been forced to delay the full implementation of MAT standards by two years, because they were so far behind schedule, ministers failed to meet their revised interim target. Those standards were introduced to tackle that shocking record, so it is unacceptable that the nationalist coalition continues to fail to meet them.

At the beginning of the Parliament’s summer recess, Humza Yousaf’s drugs minister called for heroin, cocaine and all other drugs to be decriminalised, but doing so would encourage the organised crime gangs, which make fortunes from peddling their drugs on Scotland’s streets.

The minister stated that lessons have been learned from around the world, so let us look at places elsewhere in the world that bitterly regret that failed experiment. Portland, in Oregon, decriminalised drugs in 2021, but only earlier this month officials were forced to do a U-turn due to a marked increase in overdoses and deaths. They have claimed that the step brought a “brutal” amount of “human misery” to the Oregon city, and Portland police have reportedly logged record deaths since the state of Oregon decriminalised drugs.

Oregon is seen as one of America’s more progressive states, but Portland City Commissioner of Public Safety, Rene Gonzalez, said the city had seen the homeless population rise by 29 per cent and that there had been an increase in crime. He said:

“The amount of human misery is just brutal. It is truly horrific. Portland and Scotland share many values but the addictive qualities of these drugs are so brutal that it simply overwhelms your systems.”