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 It is clear that 50 years of outdated drug legislation, which focuses on criminalising people with complex needs, rather than on how services can support them into recovery, has caused more harm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.

I mentioned the £50 million that was made available last year and the £53 million that was made available this year. That included setting up 16 additional solemn and summary courts from September. We have also established the justice recovery fund of £53.2 million for the next financial year. That is being provided to help to recover, renew and transform activity across the justice system as we emerge from the pandemic.

I will correct a point that was made previously. Of course there are delays that the courts service has told us could take up to 2026 to resolve, but that does not mean that cases that are currently being called will wait till that time. It means that the pandemic has an effect that will continue through to 2025 and, in some cases, 2026. It is only a shame that the UK Government did not recognise that in the grant settlement.

There will be different elements in answering that question. On whether we should have targets, it is not for me to tell Parliament how it should hold the Government to account, but the justice vision has a one-year delivery period that has been put forward just now, which includes lots of existing performance measurements—if not targets—and other interventions. We are also working on a three-year delivery target or delivery programme. When that is published, members might wish to quiz the Government on it—I am sure that they will.

On Katy Clark’s other point, I have already mentioned that Angela Constance will cover some of the things that we can do in society to try and reduce dependency, alcoholism and drug abuse. Within the justice system, we have to do more, whether that is in prisons or in how we deal with people with those issues in police custody suites, for example. We are doing a number of those things, not least in relation to a conversation that we had today with police and health professionals on how we use the navigator system and one or two innovative approaches, such as that being taken in Fraserburgh. I am happy to provide more information on that if the member wishes. Those approaches include how we best use monitoring and support to improve outcomes. There are potential developments in relation to alcohol and substance monitoring, and I am committed to looking at options focusing on what works. In doing that, I am open to working with members from across the chamber—as, I am sure, is Angela Constance—and we welcome the engagement that we have had to date.

As part of our efforts to encourage greater use of community interventions, our programme for government makes it clear that we are committed to expanding community justice services and to supporting diversion from prosecution, alternatives to remand—that comes back to the member’s question—and community sentencing.

In 2022-23, we increased annual funding by £15 million to £134 million to reflect continued investment in supporting pandemic recovery work and the expansion and transformation of community justice services. Combining that with investment in the national drugs mission, we are enabling timely and effective interventions in communities to prevent harm and to improve life chances. Our measures will also support the delivery of the revised national community justice strategy, which is currently under development. The strategy will set out clear aims for partners, with an emphasis on early intervention, and it will encourage a further shift away from the use of custody.

Our approach is evidence informed, and it is important that we assess the impact of existing measures such as drug treatment and testing orders. DTTOs are an intensive disposal that is specifically targeted at individuals with entrenched problem drug use, chaotic lifestyles and a history of offending. They were introduced to combine justice and health approaches in a targeted way, and we know that individuals on DTTOs can have difficulty in fully complying with the requirements. I therefore welcome the Drug Deaths Taskforce’s consideration of DTTOs. We intend to carry out some initial exploratory work reviewing the evidence available in relation to the orders and how they align with what is known about good practice in this area.

It is imperative that access to appropriate support is available to everyone who is serving a custodial sentence in Scotland. The Scottish Prison Service is working tirelessly to eradicate unauthorised drugs in prison, and it is continuously adapting its security measures to prevent, detect and deter the introduction of contraband. In November 2021, we laid legislation that allows prison officers to photocopy correspondence as another means to prevent the entry of illicit substances into prison and to reduce the availability of those substances to prisoners. That can only help to reduce the risks that illicit substances present to those living and working in our prisons.

Another key priority in prisons is mitigating against the known elevated risk of drug deaths at transition points such as release from custody, as well as ensuring naloxone provision and continuity of care on release. Prison officers and Department for Work and Pensions staff continue to offer assistance to prisoners to plan for their release, and the Scottish Government continues to support the work of throughcare services that support individuals to reintegrate back into their community after their release. That includes the excellent work that is done by Scotland’s third sector and justice social work services across the country.

The examples that I have touched on are making a real difference and will continue to do so. They are, however, just some of the steps that we have taken so far and which need to be taken. We know that this is a complex issue; it is not easy and it will require further action, further investment and a collective will to address the challenges ahead.

Although the approach that we are taking is not an easy one, we are absolutely clear that it is the right one to deliver lasting improvements. It is based on evidence of what works and is focused on actions that are effective in tackling drug-related deaths and harm and, ultimately, actions that make our communities safer.

The Scottish Government will continue to take this forward at pace and we welcome the opportunity to work with everyone across the chamber in doing so.

I move,

That the Parliament believes that every drug-related death is unacceptable and that drugs deaths are a public health emergency; commits to save and improve lives through the National Mission and supports the implementation of the Medication Assisted Treatment (MAT) standards; agrees with the Scottish Government’s long-term aim that imprisonment should be reserved for individuals who pose a risk of serious harm; determines that access to high-quality drug treatment, rehabilitation and recovery services at appropriate points in the justice system, including in prison and police care, is vital; recognises the stigma associated with services and service users and the need to tackle this; supports the transformation of community justice services such as bail supervision and community sentences; reinforces the commitment to continue to improve support for people leaving prison, including access to community services upon liberation, and throughcare; welcomes the decision by the Chief Constable to roll out the carriage of naloxone across Police Scotland and the support of officers to help preserve life and keep people safe; supports the exploration of options to deliver safer drug consumption facilities, within the existing legal framework, to help save lives, and agrees that the development of treatment targets will drive forward the expansion of protective treatment services alongside investment, and that further consultation is needed to gauge public attitudes and explore the limitations of a public health response restricted by the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971.

The recruitment of police officers is a matter for the chief constable, who considers the size and shape of the policing workforce in light of changing demand. The latest figures show that there were 17,117 police officers in Police Scotland as at 31 December 2021. The current Scottish Government statistics show that we currently have around 32 officers per 10,000 population, compared with around 23 per 10,000 population in England and Wales.

Along with the First Minister, who addressed the Parliament on international women’s day, I welcome the recommendations in the report and have thanked Baroness Helena Kennedy and the working group for their efforts over the past year. Their work is pivotal in challenging society’s tolerance of misogyny and sending a clear message that male attitudes that emanate from prejudice and misogyny have no place in a modern, equal Scotland.

We will now consider the recommendations and will provide our response in due course, once we have had the benefit of time to examine them further. It is now incumbent on the Scottish Government to examine the recommendations with a view to ensuring that any provisions that are recommended to Parliament are workable and can meet the expectations of and intentions behind the working group’s report.