Chamber and committees

It is a verb: to game. It is for a young man or a young woman—

Welcome to the meeting, cabinet secretary. This is the first time that we have met in person. Before this, we have had only virtual meetings.

Both of us represent this fine capital city, which is important not just internationally but at the more local level with regard to our country’s economic growth. Our world heritage status, which is something that Liverpool lost just recently, is under direct threat through a number of decisions taken by the city’s Scottish National Party administration. Those decisions were taken without consultation with Historic Environment Scotland or Edinburgh World Heritage or any proper local engagement, and you have written on the subject in the local Edinburgh Evening News. Given the cultural importance of our maintaining our world heritage status, what can you do as cabinet secretary and as the Edinburgh Central MSP to help to preserve it?

I should probably have declared an interest, given that I was a board member of Marketing Edinburgh when we were seeking to get a studio in the city.

At our introductory meeting, we spoke about the role of the gaming community—I do not mean pheasants—[Laughter.] I mean “Grand Theft Auto” and the role of Dundee. You have spoken at length about screen industries, but where does the gaming sector fit in?

I thank the minister for taking the time to make such an extensive statement today. My question builds on the answer that she has just provided to Ms Martin. The SNP has said that it will do everything that it can to tackle Scotland’s drug deaths crisis. However, the UK Government has invited the Scottish Government to work with it on project ADDER—addiction, disruption, diversion, enforcement and recovery—three times, and three times the SNP has snubbed it.

The SNP’s persistent refusal to work with the UK Government is costing lives. The First Minister admitted that she has let Scotland’s drug deaths crisis spiral out of control, and the SNP’s obsession with independence has come at a high cost. The Scottish Government must focus on the devolved public health and justice systems that it controls. When will it accept the UK Government’s invitation and start working constructively with it to solve this national crisis?

I have no relevant interests to declare.

Like Jenni Minto, I am new to Parliament and to the committee. The committee has quite a broad remit and, as other members have said, it is key that we do not step on the toes of the other subject committees. However, there is definitely somewhere for us to dip in and out as and when necessary. Finding that balance is going to be key for the committee if it is to be effective. It will be interesting to see how that develops.

I am an MSP for Lothian, so issues around the festivals and culture are really important to me. How the festivals and the Edinburgh economy change and adapt will be key, as the sector has been left largely unsupported for the past 15 to 16 months. We need to be aware of that.

On the four points in the legacy paper, we must make sure that we are on top of the point about the 2022 census. As a citizen, I was disappointed that we did not take part in the UK-wide census that took place in 2021. We need to figure out how to get back on track with the rest of the country and make sure that the census is carried out. There are no excuses now for its not taking place.

I remember all the emotion around the fire at the Glasgow School of Art, which was very upsetting. We must make sure that there is an investigation into that and find out what happened. It was a great cultural tragedy for the country.

On interparliamentary working, as I have been an outsider for longer than some of the other members here, I know that people in our country do not want to see the different Parliaments in the UK bickering; they want to see us working together in a much more positive way. If we take one thing away, it is that we have to start working more positively together and finding positive things to work on instead of always drilling down on the minuscule negatives. People do not want to see that. There is time for it, but we have to be mindful about what we are here to do.

I will speak to the amendment that has been lodged in my name on behalf of the Scottish Conservatives.

Drug deaths have become Scotland’s national tragedy under the SNP. They have now reached a record high, and too many families and communities have been blighted by the crisis. The drug death rate in Scotland is three and a half times worse than that in the rest of the UK, and it is the worst in Europe. After nearly 14 years in power, the SNP has finally admitted that it should have done more to tackle Scotland’s scandalous rate of drug deaths. I listened with keen interest to what the cabinet secretary said.

By Nicola Sturgeon’s own admission, she took her eye off the ball. In 2007, 455 people died in Scotland following drug use; in 2019, the figure had risen to 1,264. The drug death rate has almost tripled on the SNP’s watch, and the SNP should be ashamed of its record. The First Minister completely failed to act before the crisis spiralled out of control.

Drug-related hospitalisations have tripled in the past two decades. According to figures that were released by Public Health Scotland earlier this week, in 2019-20 there were 14,976 drug-related hospital stays. The drugs hospitalisation rate in Scotland now stands at 282 per 100,000 people. That is up from 87 per 100,000 people in 1997. The NHS Tayside figure of 334 per 100,000 people is far higher than the national average, and the Dundee City Council area boasts the worst drug death rate in Scotland. More locally, in the Lothian health board region, the number of people who died following drug use rose from 54 in 2007 to 155 in 2019—an upward trend that matches the Scotland-wide picture.

One cannot disagree that that increase has a significant knock-on effect on the national health service, reducing its capacity to deal with other cases. We hear time and time again that Scotland’s NHS is at its limit—that cannot be argued with. By doing all that we can to reduce those admissions, we can relieve pressure on the NHS. That is something that we can control now, and it should be a priority.

In a meeting with me, a constituent who has a lot of experience working in that sector highlighted several areas of concern. One cause for concern is not just the increase in drug deaths in the past ten years, but the fact that poly-drug use has increased so significantly. One of the biggest changes in the past seven years has been the massive increase in the use of non-prescribed benzodiazepines or “street BDZs”.

The National Records of Scotland reported that 94 per cent of all drug-related deaths in Scotland involve people who took more than one substance—poly-drug use. Opiates such as heroin and methadone are implicated in the majority of deaths, but users are often taking a lethal cocktail of substances, which increasingly includes benzodiazepines. I was shocked to learn that only one street benzodiazepine death was recorded in 2009, but that there were 814 in 2019.

My constituent also noted how addiction services have been subjected to disinvestment for at least the past 15 years and how services have struggled to retain staff, which continues to be a huge problem. We need to continue to designate additional funding in that direction, and I was glad to hear about some of that work today.

When patients tragically die, the workforce that helps them is shaken. I heard of one member of staff who had to struggle with two deaths in one day. Those staff are determined to deliver the highest quality service possible and, despite everything that they face, create bonds and form relationships with the service users. We need to find a way to protect and support them too.

The Scottish Conservatives secured an extra £20 million a year for residential drug rehab facilities. The measures were announced as part of a £250 million package over five years, which is specifically aimed at tackling the shocking drug death figures. Those measures are welcome news after the SNP’s hugely damaging cuts to rehab beds. However, it should not have taken the SNP 14 years to finally realise that its drug policies had failed.

Scotland has a large network of injection equipment provision and our national take-home naloxone programme was introduced in 2011. One could perhaps assume that those initiatives would help prevent opiate deaths rates—I am certain that they have—but rates continue to rise. We are not measuring in detail the success of the take-home naloxone programme, so we do not know for sure how many lives have been saved by it, although Public Health Scotland’s enhanced surveillance of problem drug use, which started in the past 12 months, is welcome. We do not know how many drug-related deaths there might have been without the take-home naloxone programme. If we are not measuring the achievements of those programmes in detail, how do we know which programmes to invest in and which ones to put on hold?

A strong level of support exists for the introduction in Scotland of drug consumption rooms, which are used frequently in other countries across Europe. There are 31 facilities across 25 cities in the Netherlands, and 24 facilities in 15 cities in Germany. Other countries—Australia, Canada, Denmark and France—are increasingly adopting drug consumption rooms as part of drug harm reduction strategies and are seeing positive effects.

It is not as simple, however, as a straight comparison between us and other countries. What works there does not necessarily translate into a solution for Scotland. We have heard about all the solutions that are available to us right now in the minister’s proposal today.

No, thank you.

The Scottish Government must now find a solution to the hugely complex situation in Scotland that includes access to the new treatments that we have heard about; safe and secure housing, which is key; support through the justice system; and a preventative approach with children and young people—[Interruption.] No, I will not take an intervention.

As we said in our manifesto, we want to prioritise abstinence-based programmes. Everyone should have the right to rehab, and we are committed to working on a cross-party basis to deliver that for vulnerable people. We will continue to appeal for cross-party support to tackle drug deaths by opening up access to treatment and rehabilitation programmes. That is why we have lodged an amendment that calls on the Scottish Government to introduce a right to recovery as the starting point for the introduction of a bill that would ensure that everyone has access to the necessary treatment when they need or want it, not when professionals or organisations determine that they can be accommodated.

It is clear that the SNP’s Drug Deaths Taskforce has failed. In 2019, the SNP assembled the task force to tackle the rising number of drug deaths in Scotland. However, a year after the creation of the task force, leading campaign group FAVOR warned that Scotland was going backwards with its efforts on tackling drug deaths. Chief executive officer Annemarie Ward said:

“Even before the pandemic struck, we were seeing very little concrete action ... we need the Scottish Government to start properly funding rehabilitation and recovery programmes.”

The sector is rapidly losing confidence in the poor performance of the Drug Deaths Taskforce. It must publish a comprehensive review into the provision of drug and treatment services before the end of the year.

We cannot stop here. Appointing a drugs minister who reports directly to the First Minister is a positive move, and I look forward to working with Angela Constance in my role as shadow minister for drugs policy. However, the SNP must take action and work closely with key stakeholders in order to deliver support to those who need it most.

More should have been done earlier. Families have been failed, and entire communities have been left broken. This Parliament must ensure that drug deaths are reduced once and for all, and it must introduce a right to recovery to enshrine in law that everyone has access the necessary addiction treatment.

I move amendment S6M-00400.1, to leave out from “reform of the” to end and insert:

“how to work constructively across the UK to tackle drug-related deaths, and calls on the Scottish Government to introduce a Right to Recovery to enshrine in law that everyone has access to the necessary addiction treatment.”

I, too, welcome Ms Robison to her new role. I welcome the chance to speak in this debate because poverty is a huge problem across my region and I am eager to have the chance to address it. Today, I will focus on child poverty and homelessness.

In my region, child poverty figures make for quite shocking reading, with almost a quarter of children in West Lothian now living in poverty. According to new research that has been published by the End Child Poverty coalition, the number of poverty-stricken youngsters in West Lothian has gone up from 7,499 in 2014-15 to 8,740. The research shows that, since 2015, child poverty has risen in every Scottish local authority area, which is appalling. As I said in my maiden speech last week, we need to support our young people and prioritise their future before it is too late.

Child poverty is a serious concern in the Lothian region, but it is not the only concern. Homelessness is a huge issue, and it is getting worse under the SNP. Last year in Scotland, someone was made homeless every 17 minutes, and figures show that the number of people who are assessed as homeless is the highest that it has been for six years. [Interruption.] I will not give way yet, as I am still learning the ropes.

The number of deaths of people who are homeless has also gone up by nearly a third in two years. The SNP’s focus on a second independence referendum has led it to presiding over rising poverty across Scotland.

I was recently contacted by a constituent who shared their experience of the treatment of homeless people in Edinburgh. I was deeply concerned to hear how the City of Edinburgh Council had handled their case. My constituent and their partner have been homeless for 15 months. They were initially put into a single room guest house, which had no facilities to wash clothes or cook meals. They are carers, so it is imperative that they remain clean and healthy to care for the vulnerable. They were then moved into serviced apartments, which thankfully were more suitable to their needs. However, after a year of having no contact from the City of Edinburgh Council, they were told that they were to leave that place but were given no information as to where they might go next. They were unable to contact anyone in the council housing department and, as a result of the months of uncertainty, have suffered from poor mental health and experienced suicidal thoughts.

Thankfully, my constituent and their partner were recently contacted by the council housing department, but it was to inform them that the council had made a mistake. They were not offered an apology or any reassurance that the issue will not happen again. Ultimately, they were informed that it could take up to three years of living in emergency temporary accommodation for them to receive a council house. My constituent said:

“This is truly outrageous. We don’t feel safe in temporary accommodation when situations like this loom over our heads every single day. I just don’t know if I have the willpower nor the mental health capacity to wait so long for our own home, this has been a truly torturous 15 months.” [Interruption.]

I will not give way because, as I said, I am still learning the ropes.

The Conservatives have bold and ambitious plans to tackle those issues. We would deliver the biggest social house-building programme since devolution. We have pledged to build 60,000 new affordable homes, including 40,000 in the social rented sector over the next five years. Such measures are urgently required. It is heartbreaking to hear of people suffering in those circumstances, and that constituent of mine is not the only one in such a situation. We have all received emails on that this week. People need homes and not hotels or serviced apartments, as in the case of my constituent.

We want to build a Scotland that not only supports those who are in financial crisis but helps to lift people out of the poverty cycle by tackling the root causes. We will push the SNP Government to do more to tackle the causes of poverty and ensure that everyone in Scotland is given the opportunity to succeed.

I am looking for a bit of clarity on local authorities, given that they provide money to the Scottish Qualifications Authority on an annual basis. What element of that fee will no longer be required for this year? Should they expect to get some money back?