Chamber and committees

I am very much aware of Ms McNeill’s work in the area; I frequently meet stakeholders who talk about her work and events that she has hosted in the past.

With regard to Mr Malthouse’s comments about services such as safe drug consumption facilities sending out the wrong message or encouraging drug use, I point out that there is simply no evidence for that. We hear people verbalising that concern, but there is no evidence for it, whereas there is evidence to show that safe drug consumption facilities reduce overdose deaths and save lives. They reduce transmission of blood-borne viruses, reduce infection in wounds and improve wound care, and they help in reaching people who inject drugs and who might not otherwise engage with, or be visible to, services.

Ms McNeill is a Glasgow MSP. Much of the campaign that is coalescing around safe drug consumption facilities came about because there is also a community benefit from reducing drug-related litter and drug use in public places. There is evidence that such facilities work and about their benefits. They are not a magic bullet—nothing ever is. However, in Scotland, we need all the options. I have views about the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, but we want all the available options to help us to address this national scandal and crisis.

Absolutely. We have tried to take a belt-and-braces approach. The new funds that are available to stakeholders and third sector organisations include a specific children and families fund, which is managed by the Corra Foundation, to which services and third sector organisations can apply for direct Scottish Government funding. Direct-funding opportunities have been very popular. I also point out that, before Christmas, we published our whole-family approach framework, which came with a funding package for ADPs.

Again, all the evidence from home and abroad indicates that we need to support families not just as a whole but as individuals, whether they be children or parents. We know that for every person with a drug or alcohol problem there is an impact on 11 other people. Supporting families and, where possible, keeping them together, is therefore crucial. The involvement of the family in an individual’s treatment needs to be considered as an appropriate option and choice for that individual. This is about services working with the family as a whole, which some do very well, as well as being about serving individuals’ needs.

Last year, we announced our national family residential service, which will support up to 20 families at any one time. Of course, that is part of our work to keep the Promise. I will not go into detail, unless I am pressed, but I will say that the Promise is highly germane to the work that I am doing.

We also need better standards of service and more bespoke services for women, because there has been a gap in that respect. Although it is mostly men who lose their lives, the number of women who are losing their lives is rising at a disproportionate rate.

Thank you very much, convener, and good morning.

I am grateful to the three parliamentary committees that have come together to work across their portfolios and for the opportunity to update them on our actions to implement the recommendations of the Drug Deaths Taskforce.

I would like to start by saying that every life lost to a drug-related death is unacceptable, and I once again offer my condolences to those who have lost a loved one. I give my continuing commitment to work across the Government, the Parliament and beyond to save and improve lives.

I put on record once again my gratitude to the task force for its work to date. Its focus on evidence-based recommendations has helped to inform our response to this public health emergency. I emphasise that its work sits within the context of a wider national mission, and we will consider its recommendations in line with those of our other expert groups.

The task force has supported a wide range of innovative tests of change, and those projects have undoubtedly had a positive impact in the localities in which they have operated. The focus now is on learning from the projects and on rapidly expanding and rolling out what we know will make a difference.

I very much believe in evidence-based policy making, and I am committed to following the evidence as it emerges. I have taken on board all of the task force’s recommendations to date and am working to take them forward. A prime example of that is the MAT standards, which set out what people should expect and can demand of services. Their implementation across Scotland will give people access, choice and support through services.

Through partnership with the task force, naloxone is now more widely available, with its distribution to the police and the Scottish Ambulance Service, as well as expanded family and peer-to-peer distribution. Since the start of the Police Scotland test of change, 53 lives have been saved by police officers.

Also crucial are the task force recommendations on stigma, which, as we know, is a barrier to accessing support. Following those recommendations, we launched in December 2021 a national campaign to tackle the stigma that is associated with substance use, highlighting that drug and alcohol problems are a health condition and that people who are struggling with them should receive support and not judgment.

Many of the changes that are needed have been talked about for decades but have not been delivered. Ultimately, what really matters is the impact of implementing the task force’s recommendations as part of the national mission, which is why I am acting quickly to accelerate delivery and why I have asked the task force to provide its final recommendations by July. I recognise that that presents an additional challenge, but I am confident that, with the experience that David Strang and Fiona McQueen bring to the task force’s work, that ambitious goal is achievable.

Thank you. I look forward to discussing with committee members the implementation to date and the next steps. I know that we can work together to tackle this public health emergency.

I am grateful to Mr Findlay for that question, because it highlights the important role of the police in upholding the law. He might be aware that there is a serious organised crime task force, and much of what he describes is firmly in the remit of the Cabinet Secretary for Justice and Veterans. Nobody would demur on the importance of interrupting the supply of drugs or bringing to justice those who pose the greatest risk to individuals and our communities.

Again, looking at evidence from around the world, we know that more punitive approaches—those in which a criminal justice system is focused solely on enforcement—can result in additional harms and barriers to treatment. I do not know whether the member is aware of the work of the Conservative Drug Policy Reform Group, which recently produced some interesting findings and spoke about how it is important that different policies do not work against one another. It is important that policing and how our criminal justice system operates do not become a barrier to people’s access to treatment, and that they do not add to the harms that people are already experiencing.

There is more work to do on engaging communities on what will make them safer. Ensuring that people have access to better and quicker treatment is a huge part of that. Again, all the evidence points to a public health approach as being better for smarter justice in our community and for making communities and individuals safer.

I am not going to contradict the cabinet secretary for justice. However, I routinely provide challenge to my colleagues on what more we can do to ensure that people have access to treatment and support to address their use of substances. For example, I am very clear that, as we work to implement the medication-assisted treatment standards, they must apply in prisons, too. A key and fundamental part—although not the only part—of improving and saving lives is ensuring that our prison population gets better access to healthcare, and that includes drug treatment.

I have recently had some meetings with Ms Robison on strengthening the homelessness prevention duties. There is something very simple, powerful and fundamental about the ask and act duty, because it should not just be a case of asking somebody and then acting by referring them on somewhere else. That might be appropriate at times, but the whole ask and act philosophy is also about how you can act before you refer someone on. It is culturally important in giving a sense of ownership and ensuring more collegiate working across the different workforces.

I am looking closely at the work that Ms Robison is leading, because it contains something important that we might be able to learn from and implement in our drugs policy, and which also connects with the MAT standards. It is all about how we make people’s rights real in reality.

I really appreciate that question, because there are a number of issues around residential treatment, and I am committed to taking a balanced approach to securing a whole system of care. Residential rehabilitation is an important part of that. It has historically been supported and funded less, and this Government is now seeking to address that.

When I made my statement to Parliament in November last year, a whole suite of information was also published, some of which was meant to shine a light on where things were not operating as they should be. Some of it was also about the work that is being done to improve access to funding and improve access pathways, and some of it was about how to improve accountability, within the Government but also at a local level, so that people could see where the funding was going and how many places were being funded by alcohol and drug partnerships in each area.

I know that the pandemic had an impact on some services. I am not sure whether I picked up correctly what Mr Choudhury said, but I am not certain about any on-going concerns. The residential rehabilitation working group continues to liaise very closely with residential rehab providers, and where there are issues to iron out, they will be proactive about it. There is a housing support fund to ensure that people do not have to choose between maintaining their tenancy at home and going into residential rehab. That was set up to mitigate some issues in which the rules for housing benefit were implicated.

I hope that that answers Mr Choudhury’s question.

People experienced challenges in accessing services during lockdown. The work of the lived-experience community was particularly helpful and imaginative. The Government worked with organisations such as the Scottish Recovery Consortium on guidance about how to continue having meetings, whether online, in open-air settings or over the phone. I know that the recovery community in Glasgow did amazing work throughout the pandemic.

Other smaller organisations such as Recovery Enterprises Scotland, which is based in East Ayrshire, were under enormous strain during the pandemic. That is why some of the new funds that I introduced are particularly geared at smaller and more local grass-roots organisations and give them access to funding that can help with work in their communities. We have worked hard to make it as easy as possible to access that funding.

There is no doubt that so-called welfare reforms have an impact on the lives of the poorest. The frustration for many of us round the table is that, although increasing investment in the Scottish child payment will lift tens of thousands of children out of poverty, the ending of the temporary increase to universal credit means that £20 a week will be taken away from people when we are still not out of Covid and are far away from recovery, both socially and economically.

Primary care is multidisciplinary and often led by general practitioners, and it is located in our communities. It is often the first port of call and is supported by nursing staff. There are efforts to connect GP practices with the voluntary sector and welfare advice, such as the work around deep-end practices. I am sure that my health and public health colleagues may have a more technical definition or description, but that is how I see general practices.

Practice varies. For example, my understanding from NHS Lothian is that the majority of GPs are involved or could be involved in prescribing medication-assisted treatment to their patients. In other parts of the country, such as Tayside, the practice has been that people have been referred to more specialist centralised addiction services. As well as supporting GP practices with the resources and the range of services and support that they need to serve our communities, we have to recognise that there are vital connections for patients who are receiving medication-assisted treatment and who have primary care needs.

Laying aside the issue of who prescribes a medication-assisted treatment, every GP that I have engaged with says that they could do more at a community level—for example, for the physical needs that people who live with drug use experience. You will know better than me that people often have other health issues that can be addressed by accessing primary care.