Chamber and committees

As you will appreciate in the context of those 20 recommendations and 139 actions, the task force was an iterative process; other recommendations came out earlier. Through the information that I have given to the committee, I hope that I have demonstrated that progress is already under way. We did not sit back and wait for the final recommendations of the task force. I gave a very warm welcome to the challenge, and to the criticism—to be frank—that the final report contained for the Government.

Given all those actions, we have a lot to work through, but I will endeavour to demonstrate an overwhelmingly positive response at the turn of the year, when we come back to the Parliament with the cross-Government action plan and the stigma action plan.

On whether we will implement every recommendation in the precise way that is envisaged in the report, you will appreciate that it is the role of organisations and people who make recommendations to make those recommendations, and it is for Government to work out how they might be delivered.

First, I offer my condolences to the family of Mr Cole-Hamilton’s constituent. Any death is a tragedy. We all feel that, and the death of young people is always particularly sore.

That points to the need for drug-checking facilities. I have discussed the matter fairly extensively with the United Kingdom Government and UK ministers such as the Minister for Crime, Policing and Fire. Mr Cole-Hamilton may have a slightly different understanding of the position in England. In my engagement with UK ministers, they have been really resistant to drug-checking facilities at festivals. I am aware of one licence having recently been made available to support festivals on a short-term basis.

It is fair to say that we do not have enough drug-checking facilities at those types of events across the UK. Drug-checking facilities require a Home Office licence. For years, a postal service has operated in Wales whereby people can get substances tested.

The important thing about drug-checking facilities is how they are layered with other methods of harm reduction. I am very much in favour of extending drug-checking facilities. Across the UK, we are not doing enough of that . In Scotland, there is work on three projects, and research is going on at the same time that those projects are being developed. One of those projects is nearing a position at which it will be able to make a licence application to the Home Office. The projects are geographically specific.

We will, of course, engage with all colleagues, including the Lord Advocate, on whether different approaches are required, based on experience and such tragedies.

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.

I have discussed that matter with the new leadership of the task force and the task force membership more broadly, and I am confident that it will produce its vital recommendations by the summer. The Government is actively supporting the task force’s work with, for example, a team of civil servants who support it with secretariat tasks and so on.

It has always been the case that we will need to look after the legacy of the task force’s work. Some tests of change will not be completed, but they would not have been completed by the end of this year, which was the original timescale in the task force’s recommendations. Arrangements will therefore have to be made, and we will do that in consultation with the task force and others to ensure that we continue to learn from the evidence as it emerges.

I have made it clear that I am committed to evidence-based policy, but I am also clear that we cannot wait for evidence to be complete, because that will never be the case. We have to take what we know, implement it and be prepared to adapt and change as we move forward.

I very much concur with the view that it is for the Government and this country’s institutions to implement changes, and it is imperative for our democracy that we are guided and scrutinised by the Parliament and parliamentary committees.

Notwithstanding that, there is a role for external organisations and experts in various fields, in particular people in the lived and living experience community, academics and people who provide services on the ground.

The terms of the task force’s remit changed when I came into this post. The task force had been in operation for 18 months when I became the Minister for Drugs Policy, and, at that time, I was very clear that two things were missing or needed to be corrected. Drugs policy should not be seen in isolation and must be connected with every other Government portfolio. Drugs policy needs to be joined at the hip with justice, housing, homelessness, mental health, primary care, education, prevention, poverty and inequality policies, and that is a far bigger job than that of the task force.

I was aware from my early engagement with stakeholders and various party spokespersons and MSPs that there was concern about how the Government was performing in relation to tackling drug deaths and that there were concerns in and around the task force. My view was that the Government had outsourced its responsibilities and that I would not do that. I wanted to support the evidence-led work of the task force. My view was that any criticism of the task force should rest, rightly, with the Government and not the task force, which comprises individuals and citizens who give their time and talents to work with the Government. Therefore, there was a refocusing of the role and remit of the task force.

It is, of course, not for a Government minister to indicate to committees how they should proceed with their business. I will say that I very much embrace scrutiny; although it is not always comfortable, it is absolutely necessary, and I assure you that it always leads to better outcomes.

I welcome the joined-up approach that is being taken by the three parliamentary committees that are involved today, because it reflects the work that we are embarking on in the Government to ensure that drugs policy is joined at the hip with other crucial public policy areas and is not seen in isolation. We are trying to get our services to take that joined-up approach in communities.

There is a role for parliamentary scrutiny of the Government on the Drug Deaths Taskforce, the residential rehabilitation group, how we implement MAT standards and the national implementation group, and I am sure that people will be interested in the new national collaborative, too. The national mission is bigger than any one group. There is a lot to scrutinise and a lot to engage with.

It is no secret that Mr Malthouse and I have different views on harm reduction interventions, and we will have different views on the lens through which drug use should be viewed. I very much recognise the role and relationship of poverty and other matters in relation to this issue, and a lot has been written and published about the impact of concentrated levels of poverty and social deprivation.

Where I agree with Mr Malthouse is that there is a moral obligation on us to address poverty. However, as well as addressing the bigger structural changes that need to be made to society, we need to focus on the here and now, and that can be seen in the work that we are doing to invest in and reform services and to move matters forward as much and as quickly as we can.

There is a lot in that question. First, some care needs to be taken with the 1980s narrative. I always find it somewhat triggering to talk about the 1980s, but there is no doubt that those years had a scarring effect. That is something that we need to bear in mind, as we did in response to the financial crash and the spike in youth unemployment, which we knew would have a scarring impact on people’s life chances. In the recovery period following any recession or, indeed, pandemic, we need to focus on reducing the risk of such long-term impacts on our society and our communities.

There is a clear relationship between drug use and poverty. Indeed, last year’s annual report on the drug-related deaths statistics showed that people in our most deprived communities are 18 times more likely to die a drug-related death. That said, I would always urge a bit of caution about looking only at the structural issues in and around poverty. That can make people feel helpless, but no one should feel powerless in the face of poverty, which is, after all, man-made.

In that respect, I should mention the work that we are doing on child poverty and social security. I know that members of the Social Justice and Social Security Committee are present, so I will not go through all of those things in detail, but I will just point to one example—and not just because I introduced it. Under the fairer Scotland duty, all public agencies must ensure that the drive to reduce poverty is at the heart of allocating resources and making big strategic decisions.

Ms Whitham also raised an important point about regeneration. In our child poverty delivery plans, the focus of evidence is on, for example, income, work and reducing the cost of living, but the first plan—which I was involved with and which will be updated soon—also looked at not only the impact of drug use, particularly on families, but quality of life. Community regeneration is therefore really important, as it is as much about the resilience of communities as it is about community action.

Yes, I continue to support the use of recorded police warnings, which were recently extended to cover class A drugs such as heroin and opioids. It is essentially a discretion that the police have, and it is based on a wealth of international evidence that shows that, at every twist and turn, our justice system should provide opportunities to divert people from the criminal justice system into diversionary activities or treatment.

I know that Ms Webber and I disagree fundamentally on that approach, but where I think that we can find common ground is on the increase in hospital admissions involving cannabis. Although cannabis is rarely implicated in drug-related deaths, statistics show that it features heavily in hospital and psychiatric admissions, often because of synthetic cannabinoids. The relationship between cannabis use and mental health is, I think, something that we can agree on.

The increase in hospital admissions because of cannabis use can be seen in all ages, but I have some concerns around young people in that respect. Young people have different patterns of drug use. Increasingly, they are moving away from risky behaviours. However, those young people who use drugs are far less likely to use opiates and more likely to use cannabis, MDMA or cocaine. Work is being done to develop bespoke services for young people. That feeds into our work on the prevention material for reaching young people not just in schools but in other settings.

We have a national mission to consider the harms and risks of all drugs, and the best way of reducing those harms and risks. Often, at its nub, that is about getting more people into the right treatment at the right time.

I apologise for the length of that answer, convener.

It is often important to work harder to engage with those with whom we disagree. It is no secret that Mr Malthouse and I have different perspectives on the implementation of a public health approach and on some harm reduction interventions—safer drugs consumption facilities being but one of those. In all fairness, I will say that I have had a number of discussions with him. I have participated and engaged in a number of four-nations meetings, through the British-Irish Council or the UK drugs summit, and we have had lots of correspondence—yes, I am a persistent correspondent of Mr Malthouse. My ethos is to engage him and his Government on the evidence. My correspondence with him on safer drugs consumption facilities has always been about the evidence that they work.

What has been useful about our more recent correspondence and, I suppose, Mr Malthouse’s appearance yesterday, is that he has spoken more, and in more detail, about what his concerns are, and that gives me the opportunity to refute those concerns with the evidence, because the evidence is crystal clear. Again, I can point to evidence from across the world that has been produced by other experts, as well as to our own evidence paper. He sees more obstacles to implementation than I do but, if there is a way for us to work together to overcome any obstacle, my door to that is open. I stress that I seek to engage on the evidence and not the politics.