Chamber and committees

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 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.

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?

Thank you, Presiding Officer. I congratulate you on your new role.

I am incredibly pleased to be speaking in this education debate. As a newly elected MSP for the Lothian region, I share and reaffirm my commitment to the area in which I grew up, attended school and went to university. I have lived and worked here for most of my life. I care deeply for the area and am very proud to call it my home.

I stood for election to be a strong voice for the local communities. People who know me know that I will keep that promise, so when I receive from constituents correspondence in which they raise serious concerns about the harrowing experiences that their families are going through, and legitimate concerns about their children’s futures, I have to ensure that their voices are heard. Just as all our futures hung in the balance during the election campaign, so too do the futures of school children across Scotland, because of the alternative certification model. It seems to be shaping up to be yet another exams fiasco for the SNP Government.

One of my constituents contacted me to share his first-hand experience of the debacle of the process and, to be frank, it is alarming. Initially, students were told that they would not sit exams this year. The SQA then released exam-style papers and schools sent out exam timetables with only four weeks’ warning. Parents had no guidance on how to prepare their children for that, either academically or emotionally, in such a short timeframe.

Teachers were also under immense pressure to organise the exams as quickly as possible, which led to knock-on effects for other pupils and impacted particularly on pupils’ mental health. Being faced with exams under such conditions is unreasonable, especially with the added confusion of being told that the exams were not exams after all.

My constituent, who is a parent, told me that never in his children’s school life had he been so stressed. He told me that

“it was absolutely beyond any sense and completely unthinking to subject young people to that amount of strain ... which is still occurring. ... As parents, we felt utterly disorientated, not knowing how to support our children or understand the importance ... these tests had ... Information was patchy, conflicting, and very hard to come by. It has been and continues to be a very anxiety provoking experience for the whole family ... Things have felt very disempowering to us because we cannot understand how to support our children and the consequences ... these assessments will have.”

There have also been worrying stories of the content of the exams being

“freely available to ... students due to exams being repeated on different days. This was by cheat sheets ... WhatsApp groups and other electronic platforms.”

That put some children at a huge disadvantage if they were in the first cohort to sit the exams. My constituent feels

“at a loss to understand how schools and teachers will be able to mark papers fairly, and I feel the whole thing is a sham.”

Those are his words. He carries on:

“I feel exceptionally angry that grades and futures could be decided on this.”

He also told me that he had written to the SQA to raise his concerns, but

“the reply I was given was firmly projected back to the schools and when I asked the schools I sensed they felt gagged to say what they really felt.”

I have also heard from a teacher in my region that it is the less well-off students who are suffering most. Many of them are not turning up for the so-called exams out of fear of how they will perform, after the shambolic past year of learning has put them at such a disadvantage.

It was only recently that the SQA stressed that the national qualifications 2021 group had published information on a new service that is aimed at young people who have suffered severe disruption of their learning. I have a genuine concern that that will be too little, and way too late, given what I have heard and continue to hear from professionals. I have therefore written this week to the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills to seek answers to all those questions. I look forward eagerly to her response.

The Scottish Secondary Teachers Association, which represents 6,500 high school teachers, has said that

“‘it’s not too late’ for Shirley-Anne Somerville to take action to stop ‘the exams debacle’”.

Unlike the EIS, the SSTA was refused a place on the Scottish Government’s national qualifications 2021 group. It said that 92 per cent of its members had found that collection of evidence through assessments has created “substantial ... stress” and unnecessary pressure on the pupils.

That is what I am hearing from my constituents. Pupils should not be put under so much pressure that they are unable to sleep, experience feelings of hopelessness and worry that their future is at an end before it has even begun. We should be ashamed.

The alternative certification model is not the only problem: we must not forget that the attainment gap remains wide open and that there are 1,700 fewer teachers in schools than there were when the SNP came to power. Results from the programme for international student assessment show that Scottish education has gone backwards and that subject choice is narrowing. The SNP has also failed to cut class sizes.

Time and again, the First Minister has stated that her number 1 priority is education, and that that is what she wants to be judged on. Although I am in no doubt that managing the education of the country during the pandemic has been an extremely difficult task, the pandemic must not be used as an excuse for the state of our education in Scotland. The health, wellbeing and education of our young people should have been priorities throughout the pandemic, but it is clear that young people have been failed by the Scottish Government—not only now, but in each of the 14 years for which the SNP has been in power.

I will change the tone now, to make a very personal comment. I am dedicating my speech to my most fabulous friend Kathleen. I need a deep breath for this bit. We met at university through a shared love of hockey, both on and off the pitch, although latterly it was more fun off the pitch because of injuries and the like. My very dear friend passed away in February. She was a force to be reckoned with and an immense legal talent who has been taken from us far too soon. This is for you, Kathleen. Like you, many people have put their faith in me to stand up and be a strong voice for the people of the Lothian region. I will not let you down. Thank you.

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will comment on the Mental Welfare Commission for Scotland’s report “Authority to discharge”, which shows unlawful transfers of adults with incapacity from hospitals to care homes during the early stages of the pandemic.

I thank the minister for that offer—I will take him up on it.

This is not an isolated incident, given the Government’s failure to protect some of Scotland’s most vulnerable people. Last year, a report—which was initially delayed—stated that more than 100 Covid-positive patients were released into care homes during the pandemic, yet it was only earlier this year that the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Sport finally admitted that there was a failure to take the right precautions. The Scottish Conservatives have repeatedly called for an immediate public inquiry into what happened in our care homes, but the Government has repeatedly refused to set up such an inquiry, despite cross-party support for it in the Parliament. Will the Government finally listen to Parliament and conduct an immediate public inquiry, so that the families of care home residents can finally get the answers that they deserve?

The report makes for distressing reading. The Mental Welfare Commission found that, at the start of the pandemic, hundreds of people with conditions such as severe dementia and learning disabilities were moved from hospitals to care homes without due consent, amid what the commission calls “endemic ... poor practice”, “confusion” over the legal rights of adults with incapacity and disregard for those with power of attorney. Most worryingly, the report found that at least 20 of the transfers were unlawful. What assurance can the minister give us that the issue is being investigated and that such transfers will not happen again?

took the oath.