Chamber and committees

In January, we marked the first year of the national mission to reduce drug-related deaths and harms. The groundwork has been laid for addressing the issues head-on across Government in health, justice, housing and education and putting in place the investment and actions so that we can focus on delivering change on the ground. Change is urgently needed. Every drug-related death is a tragedy, and we are again reminded of the need for continued and collective action by the quarterly suspected drug death statistics that were published only yesterday.

Sadly, we know that many people in the justice system—whether at the point of arrest, in the community or in custody—have drug or alcohol issues. Therefore, I welcome the opportunity to reflect on the steps that the Scottish Government and its partners are taking across the justice system, and those that we have already taken, to reduce drug-related deaths and harms and how we will build on them in the future.

Those steps form part of the person-centred and trauma-informed approach that underpins our vision for justice and will be central to how we work with people who are in contact with the justice system, including people with drug or alcohol problems. We have a bold, transformative vision of the future justice system for Scotland that sets out clear aims and priorities, including a focus on rehabilitation and shifting the balance between the use of custody and justice in the community.

I want to be clear that this approach is not the easy option to take, but it is the right one. The Scottish Government is committed to focusing on what works—what evidence demonstrates makes a meaningful and lasting change. This is not about soft justice but is about what is most effective and what works to make communities safer and reduce victimisation and harm. It is not about building more prisons, putting more people in them and hoping for the best. That would be soft justice and the easy option.

A person-centred and trauma-informed approach begins with the recognition of the need to treat everyone with respect, regardless of their background, and to provide support to empower people to make positive changes in their lives. It is clear that 50 years of outdated drug legislation, which focuses on criminalising people with complex needs, rather than on how services can support them into recovery, has caused more harm than good. We have known for years that the police cannot simply arrest our way out of the current drugs emergency in Scotland. Many different groups of experts have looked at the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 and concluded that change is needed.

Across Scottish Government and the Scottish Drug Deaths Taskforce, work is under way that is intended to change the way we work within the current law, and I appreciate the work that the task force has done on that to date. An action plan is being developed to respond to the proposals in the phase 1 report and take forward a second phase of drug law reform consultation, and to lead a national conversation in Scotland to show that the evidence is clear and it is time to act.

Ultimately, we believe that the best way to reduce drug-related crime and the associated harms is to provide opportunities to access appropriate treatment and support services at every point of the criminal justice system, and the Scottish Government and justice partners are actively working towards that.

An excellent example of the positive steps that have been taken to date include recorded police warnings. Last year, the Lord Advocate—I should emphasise that the Lord Advocate is not the Scottish National Party Government and does not speak on behalf of the Government when she acts in this area but is independent—announced that recorded police warnings may be used for all classes of drug possession. Although that was a decision for the Lord Advocate, I welcomed the change, which can help with a shift to a public health approach.

There are other encouraging examples of effective practice. The Drug Deaths Taskforce has developed a police referral peer navigator programme which is offering person-centred support to people who use drugs at the first point of contact with the police, facilitating entry to wider services and the help that those people need.

I very much welcome the leadership and progressive approach of Police Scotland in supporting that programme and in taking other operational decisions that help to save lives. For example, the recent decision by the chief constable to roll out the carriage of naloxone by all serving police officers up to the rank of inspector, and officers’ support of that, is helping to preserve life and keep people safe. The roll-out follows recommendations from an independent evaluation. I am delighted to be able to announce today that the Scottish Government’s drugs policy division will provide funding of £463,500 to Police Scotland to allow it to kit out all those officers with that life-saving medication.

Police Scotland is also playing an important role in advising on potential operational implications of establishing safe consumption facilities. As Parliament is aware, that is a sensitive but important measure to save lives within the existing legal framework.

Of course, Police Scotland continues to take action against the serious organised crime groups who traffic drugs and are exploiting some of our most vulnerable individuals and communities for their own profit.

Those preventative actions are helping to divert people with addiction out of the criminal justice system, where appropriate, and into treatment and support for their recovery.

There are elements of the justice system that seek to do that, including a number of programmes. My colleague Angela Constance will outline some of the ways that we are seeking to do that through the Drug Deaths Taskforce when she sums up. I am happy to provide the member with more information about what we do in justice, but the stuff that Angela Constance is doing will be of more interest to him.

Where cases are prosecuted in court, it is rightly for the independent judiciary to decide the most appropriate sentence. However, the Government is committed to shifting the balance from custody to more effective community interventions, where appropriate. We know that many of those who offend have experienced poverty, disadvantage, adverse childhood experiences and trauma and often have health problems, such as drug and alcohol dependency.

Given the damaging impact of imprisonment, our long-term aim is for custody to be reserved only for individuals who pose a risk of serious harm, and for some other categories, while ensuring that effective community-based support and interventions are available where needed. That is why we are taking concerted action, including through forthcoming legislation on bail and release, as well as providing support to transform community justice services. That is smart justice, because we know that reconviction rates are lower when we take that approach. If we have lower reconviction rates, we have fewer victims and less crime in Scotland. That should be the aim of everybody who is involved in this debate.

It would have been advisable for Russell Findlay to have listened to my statement, because, when I came to that matter, I mentioned that there are categories of prisoner other than those who present a risk of serious harm. Of course there must be a role for punishment in the criminal justice system, but what we are trying to say is that it must be trauma informed. It must be recognised where people are coming from when they present in the criminal justice system. That seems to me to be a sensible approach. It would be useful to hear whether the Conservatives can make any sensible suggestions in that area.

The member raises a very important point. There is a need for caution for any Government in prescribing how political debates and discourse are conducted, but we are all, in Government and not in Government, public representatives and we all have an individual duty to watch our behaviour in relation to the issue. We need to try and make sure that, as stated in the point that was made previously, when certain things are done they are called out.

For our part, the Government is considering the working group’s recommendations, which have garnered a lot of support in principle from the public, stakeholders and politicians. As I have said, that work is pivotal to challenging society’s tolerance of misogyny—in particular, men’s tolerance of misogyny—and I hope that the Parliament will work with the Government to meet the expectations of and the intention behind the working group’s report.

We always want to keep an open mind. The member has made that suggestion before, but there is a substantial degree of activity going on currently—for example, the Minister for Community Safety has an overarching responsibility within Government to take forward issues in relation to violence against women and girls. We have a number of pieces of legislation that will address the issue directly, which has led to the establishment of other working groups. We will keep the suggestion in mind, but I do not think that there is any way that the Government could be described as not taking the issue seriously. If work on the issue can be bolstered by innovations such as the one that the member suggests, I am happy to consider them further.

It might be that there is embarrassment because, where there is an example of the Conservatives having control in government, their record on policing is lamentable, whether we are talking about police numbers, police pay or even the Conservatives’ attitude to crime; their Prime Minister says that fraud is not really a crime and should not count as part of the figures. It is embarrassment that led to the member’s question. He should ask the police, and he should allow the police to do their job.

The member is absolutely right to say that it is men who need to change their behaviour. Perhaps she can take some comfort from the fact that we worked with the police to ensure that, when they came up with a protocol after the Sarah Everard case, it was designed to take the onus to change behaviour away from women and to put it on police officers.

The process will take some time, because, as the member will be aware, the new legislation that is proposed represents a new departure for legislation, in that it specifies women. We have not done that before—we did not do it in the Domestic Abuse (Scotland) Act 2018. Throughout the process, wherever we end up, we will consistently point to the fact that it is men who must change their behaviour.

As regards campaigns, we will consider that as time goes on. We would want to run any campaign in conjunction with legislation, where that was necessary. The message, which I am sure that the member agrees with, will remain the same—it is men who need to change. If we get to the stage of having the proposed legislation on the statute book, it will have a practical effect in that misogyny will be an offence, but it will also have a symbolic effect in saying, “These things should not be permitted.”

With regard to the member’s point about bystanders, men should step up and say that such behaviour—especially what might be termed “low-level misogyny”, which can often lead to other things—is wrong. The law can be symbolic of that change, and that is what we intend.

That is a matter for the police, as I said to the previous member, and such information is not held centrally by the Scottish Government. The funding and use of campus officers, who can make a fantastic difference in schools, is a decision for Police Scotland and the local authority.

I meet the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service regularly to discuss its monthly and quarterly official statistics on criminal case activity in Scotland and how we can continue to tackle the backlog that has built up as a consequence of the pandemic. The statistics reaffirm that the pandemic has had a significant impact on our justice sector, just as it has on every other sector in Scotland. The important point is that we have a plan and strategy in place—including an extra £53.2 million for a justice recovery fund in 2022-23—to move matters forward, recognising that unnecessary delays are not in the best interests of victims, witnesses or the accused.

Given the seriousness of the situation that has just been outlined, I would think that the United Kingdom Government would recognise it in the grant settlement for the Scottish Government, but no, it says that Covid is over. We know, and the member’s question suggests that she knows, that Covid is not over.

We have allocated £53.2 million to tackling the backlog. That includes measures such as providing 16 additional courts. We are taking the necessary measures but, unlike the Tories, we know that, especially in relation to health and justice, the pandemic and its effects are not over. We are tackling the situation.

I have mentioned before in the chamber the additional funding that we have provided to victims organisations to help victims and I am happy to provide more information to Rachael Hamilton on it. It is a shame that the only people who do not seem to recognise how bad the situation is—of course, it is substantially worse in England and Wales—are the Tory Government to which she is allied.