Chamber and committees

I bring in Miles Briggs.

The new chair has been in post for more than a year now.

She was appointed in December 2023, I think.

That was if the bill was heavily amended. You accepted that in the debate that we had in the chamber.

You did accept that the bill needs to be heavily amended.

Do you not accept that the bill that you presented at stage 1 was deficient in a number of areas, which is why the committee unanimously agreed that it will have to be heavily amended?

So you do not think that there is anything wrong with the bill as you presented it, but you accept that it needs to be heavily amended.

The money should come from the wider Scottish Government budget. We could spend all morning discussing where it could come from—undoubtedly, my priorities would be different from yours, Mr Mason. However, it is important. For far too long, that group of people has not had support from the Parliament or multiple Governments. How often have we stood up—annually, when we get the figures—and said that this is Scotland’s national shame and that something must be done about it, but without anything ever changing?

The only thing that changes is that the figures get worse and worse. Sometimes we get a slight dip, but then the numbers go back up again. We cannot continue doing the same thing time and again and expect different results. Therefore, I think that putting the provisions into law and giving people the reassurance that the treatment that has been deemed as being right to provide them with will be helpful not just to the individuals involved but to Scotland. As a country, we are shamed by our annual figures for the number of our fellow Scots who die needlessly from drugs and alcohol.

Yes, absolutely. As I said, the main aim of the bill is to save lives, but if improved data can better inform the decisions of the Government and the Parliament, that will also be a benefit of the legislation. That is why the proposals that are included in the bill about reporting to the Parliament and the costs that are associated with that in the financial memorandum are important to improve that data set.

On raising awareness, the bill has continued to shine a light on the appalling tragedies that we see in Scotland every year from drug and alcohol deaths, and we should continue to do that during the process of the bill and until we get those figures down.

The fact that we are still not just the worst in the United Kingdom for drug and alcohol deaths but the worst of many countries across Europe—for drug deaths, we are certainly the worst across Europe—shows us that this is a problem that we must tackle. In my view, it should have been tackled some time ago, but we are where we are. In 2025, we can send a very strong signal by passing this legislation, putting it into law and starting to save lives by ensuring that people get the treatment that is right for them.

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.