Chamber and committees

Those are on-going costs that will occur regardless of whether the bill is passed.

Again, as you will know, convener, the range of £28.5 million to £38 million is the additional cost.

I think that we are, but it is taking too long to get and the data is clearly still not complete. As I said to the convener, annual reporting to the Parliament will significantly improve that data because the Government will be duty bound to include it in a statement to the Parliament and will be held accountable for that. The Government will have to work with integration joint boards, health boards and others to get that data.

I make this point sincerely: I have had constructive meetings with a number of drugs ministers, the cabinet secretary for health and the First Minister. I had a joint meeting with the First Minister and the cabinet secretary last autumn and I think that there was agreement at that meeting that we need to focus on data and to improve the data in the future. When I get such reassurance from the top of the Government, that is encouraging and it might have been facilitated by the bill.

That is true, as it sometimes is when your party is in opposition in a different Parliament in the United Kingdom. The same charge could be made against it.

To make a serious point, we are talking about a significant figure, but, in the context of a £64 billion budget, I believe that the funding can and should be found for something that most, if not all, of us agree is a national emergency.

The increased costs in the bill will go to the Scottish Government, and the Scottish Government makes the funding decisions. We would not limit it to putting money into ADPs or health boards. The money that the Scottish Government currently provides to ADPs or through ADPs goes through councils, so there are opportunities for councils to spend and receive a greater proportion of funding if the Scottish Government believes that that would be the best way to deliver what would be required by the bill. We have tried to keep that as open as possible so that we do not limit the Scottish Government’s ability to deliver the objectives of the bill.

We feel that it is an accurate assessment of roughly where we could get to. We are not going to get 100 per cent of people who did not complete their treatments, but 50 per cent would be a not insignificant increase; however, getting to two thirds would be a larger proportion of people who do not complete their treatments than was the case in the past. By having that enshrined in law, they could—and should—be able to do so. I hope that they will, through health authorities taking a person-centred approach, be more encouraged to do that and to continue the discussion about their treatment options. The aim was to provide a range of opportunities for people who are currently not completing the treatment that experts have deemed to be appropriate for them.

I disagree, given how serious and crucial the issue is. As I mentioned, the Scottish budget is about £64 billion annually, and I am asking us to spend less than £200 million a year on supporting people who have addiction problems. Given what people with addiction have suffered and continue to suffer—to go back to Ross Greer’s point about stigma and the impact being not just on the person and their family—getting people over their addiction is money well spent. Remember, those people want to get better; they have struggled and suffered for far too long, and they have sought help and support.

I have countless testimonies from people who were told that residential rehab or other forms of treatment were right for them but they could not get that treatment because of either cost or availability. In 2025, here in Scotland, no one should be unable to get the help and support that they need to get off their addiction and turn their lives around. People who have gone through the process successfully and have turned their lives around make an amazing impact on our community and society.

Again, I could go on, as I did in a previous role, about savings that the Government could make in major projects. We could discuss ferries, for example, or we could discuss the money that was wasted on the information technology system for farm payments back in 2016. We could discuss—

There are two routes that we could go down. We could use the data that is available—which I, as the member in charge, accept is not ideal. That view is shared by many. Alternatively, we could look at that data and then add 10, 20 or 50 per cent; however, I would then be coming before this committee and struggling to defend that in any way.

I have looked at how this committee has scrutinised members’ bills and Government bills, and I think that it is right for it to look for the figures presented to be backed up by data, which is what we have tried to do with this financial memorandum.

I have also heard what the committee has said in the past about providing a range, which is why there is a range, with lower and upper-end expectations. Also, if the bill is passed, by including a proposal for annual reporting to Parliament, there is an opportunity for us to have better data to inform our decisions. Although, ultimately, the bill is designed to save lives and improve opportunities for people who are addicted to drugs and alcohol, there is another benefit, in that we will be able to gather better data across Scotland, which can inform our decisions, including financial ones.

On the impact of the bill that some respondents to your call for evidence cited, there was a lot of discussion about wider issues that affect people with addiction being included in the bill. That was not possible, because the bill is a non-Government one and so has to be quite narrow in scope. We have done as much as we can within that narrowness, but there are undoubtedly areas of spend in public life that are affected and impacted by people being addicted to drugs or alcohol that are not included in the bill. However, the bill will not stop that spend or prevent that issue from being looked at going forward.

We address the issue of capital in the financial memorandum. The Scottish Government has been clear that it wants to get up to 650 residential rehab beds by March of next year, which is in 12 months’ time. The Government believes that it is on course to achieve that, and I hope that it does. Therefore, a large proportion of the funding that is needed for that has already been guaranteed by the Scottish Government, in previous budgets and the current budget. There is £160 million there, which is the baseline that we used for our calculations. A large proportion of that will be spent on increasing the number of residential rehab beds.

It is important that we recognise that in the financial memorandum. Although we do not separate out the capital costs, there is no need to do so, because there is that commitment from the Government, which it has backed up with its funding commitment of £160 million.

Professor McKendrick produced 20 recommendations in that report, and the Scottish Government agreed with, or partly agreed with, 19 of them. The one that you disagreed with was about extending his remit into tertiary education. I have heard the reason for that, but do you want to explain the reason for that further and say whether that continues to be the position of the Scottish Government?