The next item of business is a statement by Neil Gray on the national mission to reduce deaths and improve the lives of people impacted by drugs and alcohol. As the cabinet secretary will take questions at the end of his statement, there should be no interruptions or interventions.
14:25
I would like to update Parliament, following the most recent drug and alcohol death statistics for Scotland, which were published recently by National Records of Scotland. Importantly, I will outline the action that we are taking as part of the national mission to reduce harm and fatalities. Before I do, I hope that all colleagues will join me in wishing Christina McKelvie well in the treatment that she is receiving for cancer in her medical leave of absence. [Applause.]
In 2023, tragically, we lost 1,172 lives to drugs and 1,277 lives to alcohol. Every single one of those lives lost is a profound tragedy; behind those stark statistics are children, parents and friends who have left behind families and loved ones grieving unimaginable losses. The NRS statistics show that 2023 was the second-lowest figure in six years for drug deaths. However, the rise of 12 per cent from 2022 is, of course, a heartbreaking disappointment and worry. I offer my sympathies to every person who is affected by the death of a loved one to drugs or alcohol. Those losses are shared by all of us and they serve as a reminder of the work that we still have ahead of us.
Deprivation has a clear influence on the numbers of drug and alcohol deaths, with people in our most deprived areas being 15 times more likely to die from drug misuse than people in the least deprived areas and four and a half times more likely to die from alcohol misuse. That highlights that drug and alcohol dependency is not purely medical. It is deeply rooted in social determinants and structural inequalities.
As in previous years, we continue to see a high level of polydrug use. Opiates continue to be the drug that is most commonly implicated in deaths. However, deaths where cocaine was implicated have increased. The increasing prevalence of cocaine, especially injected cocaine, presents new challenges for our services.
We are also confronting a dangerously and continuously evolving drug landscape, with synthetic drugs increasingly infiltrating the market. Those highly toxic and potent substances elevate the risks of overdose and death, and their rapidly evolving composition makes regulation and enforcement exceedingly challenging. Public Health Scotland has recently issued public health alerts for nitazenes and xylazine through its rapid action drug alerts and response—RADAR—surveillance system. I urge colleagues to share those alerts and sign up to the RADAR reporting system.
It remains essential that we continue the work of our national mission to prevent deaths, reduce harm and improve lives. That unwavering commitment is driven by the belief that change is possible and necessary. It is important to acknowledge the significant progress that has been made through the national mission. Our approach has been ambitious, and we have pushed beyond existing levels of service provision, focusing on harm reduction, improving treatment, supporting our workforce and taking a holistic, person-centred approach.
Widening access to residential rehabilitation for people who use drugs and alcohol is a key part of our national mission. We have made £100 million available from 2021 to 2026 to ensure that 1,000 people receive public funding for their placement each year by 2026. We are on track to meet that target, with 938 publicly funded placements approved in 2023-24.
We have also seen significant advances in harm reduction. Police Scotland is the first force in the United Kingdom to issue naloxone kits to all front-line officers, and it has now administered the life-saving drug more than 450 times. Public Health Scotland estimates that, by the end of 2023, take-home naloxone had been supplied to nearly three quarters of all people in Scotland who are at risk of an opioid overdose. Those are remarkable strides, and we will continue to push for more widespread access.
The opening of Scotland’s first safer drug consumption facility, scheduled for next month, is another significant milestone. The evidence-based initiative will provide a safe space for those who are most at risk of overdose and will serve as a model for other areas.
On our 10 medication assisted treatment standards, the progress has been equally encouraging. By July 2024, 90 per cent of MAT standards 1 to 5 were fully implemented, and MAT standards 6 to 10 showed strong early progress, with 91 per cent provisionally green.
Experiential feedback highlights improvements, fewer and shorter delays in accessing treatment, more choice being offered for opioid substitution therapy and an increased sense of care and support from workers. That reflects the heart of our mission, which is to ensure that people receive the help that they need when they need it.
As we enter the delivery intensification phase of the national mission, we are putting in place a strategic framework to consider how we can carefully and collectively drive delivery and monitor progress. As the MAT standards benchmarking report of July 2024 showed, although we see tremendous progress in standards 1 to 5, we need to accelerate our efforts in areas such as psychosocial care and mental health support, which are critical components of treatment, especially for non-opiate substances.
We are developing a national specification for drug and alcohol care services, which will go further than our previously planned treatment target. That will provide clarity on what treatment and recovery services should look like and will ensure that people have access to high-quality, stigma-free, trauma-informed services.
Additionally, we are stepping up our response to the growing threat of synthetic drugs. Public Health Scotland is expanding its surveillance data to help us to respond more swiftly and to identify any sudden increases in the number of overdoses. We plan to establish public-use drug-checking facilities in Dundee, Glasgow and Aberdeen, and applications for the necessary Home Office licences are currently being processed. Those will be complemented by a national testing laboratory, located in and supported by the University of Dundee, to provide further confirmatory testing of samples.
Further, when it comes to the wider health and social care landscape—the national care service, regulation, inspection and funding—we are looking beyond 2026.
Recovery communities provide essential support, hope and a sense of purpose and belonging. During a recent visit to the Scottish Maritime Museum in West Dunbartonshire, I spoke to individuals who are benefiting from the Skylark IX Recovery Trust project, which is funded through the national mission Corra Foundation funds. Witnessing the dedication of the volunteers and staff, I was reminded of the widespread passion that fuels our efforts. The Skylark IX project is just one of 300 local and grass-roots projects that have been supported since the start of the mission. I thank the people who work on the front line, in the vital national health service, local partnership and third sector organisations, alongside the dozens of mutual aid and recovery communities who provide hope in such challenging circumstances. Their dedication is saving lives.
I turn to our focus on the prevention of alcohol harm. The Scottish Government has taken steps in its world-leading minimum unit pricing policy, with the minimum price increasing to 65p per unit from 30 September. That is intended to ensure that the public health benefits of the policy—the hospitalisations averted and the lives saved—continue and, indeed, increase. In The Lancet, international public health experts stated:
“Policy makers can be confident that there are several hundred people with low income in Scotland who would have died as a result of alcohol, who are alive today as a result of minimum unit pricing.”
However, we know that we need to do more to reduce harm. The earlier consultation on potential restrictions on alcohol advertising and marketing, which closed in 2023, made it clear that there is a wide range of views. I know that our doctors and nurses, who see harm to health from alcohol misuse every day, want action to be taken on alcohol marketing. I have also listened to business and industry concerns. I take all those concerns seriously. We remain committed to progressing that work to ensure that it will have the greatest impact, particularly on children and young people who are exposed to alcohol advertising and marketing, while striking the right balance when it comes to potential effects on business and industry. We need a route to achieve that.
It is clear that steps to reduce alcohol harm are vital to supporting good public health and to reducing alcohol-specific deaths. It is therefore vital that we are clear on the evidence that proposals would be effective, that action to reduce alcohol harm supports good public health and would reduce alcohol-specific deaths, and that the decisions that we take are led by evidence, balanced with the potential impact on the wider economy. Therefore, I will commission Public Health Scotland to carry out a review of the evidence on the range of options to reduce exposure to alcohol marketing in order to help us in that aim.
That work is for the future. We are also taking action right now by ensuring that people with problematic alcohol use continue to receive the same quality of care as those with problematic drug use. I can therefore confirm that the forthcoming alcohol treatment guidelines will also provide support for alcohol treatment, similar to the medication assisted treatment standards for drugs. In addition, the publication of Public Health Scotland’s review of how alcohol brief interventions are delivered is imminent, and we will incorporate its recommendations into our national treatment specification for drug and alcohol treatment.
We also continue to support innovative pilots, such as the managed alcohol programme and the primary care alcohol nurse outreach service, which has recently been embedded into mainstream services in the Glasgow city alcohol and drug partnership.
We continue to strive to prevent deaths, reduce harm and improve lives, and we do that at a time of unprecedented and significant financial challenge. This Government has consistently warned of the challenge ahead with regard to our public finances, but we will continue to support people in services where they need it most. That is why, this year, the Government has made more than £150 million available to continue the progress that we have made as a result of the national mission. Three quarters of that funding is delivered through local alcohol and drug partnerships, which play a central role in delivery and responding to local need.
It is essential that we continue to address the stark inequalities that exist in drug deaths, particularly in our most deprived areas. We must focus on prevention through education. We must also target the structural and social determinants of health. That will require increased collaboration across Government departments and statutory and third sector partners.
It is clear that no single service can tackle the issue alone. No single intervention is or will be enough. Only by working together to deliver a range of harm reduction support opportunities can we create a Scotland where everyone has the support that they need. We must pull together, harness the incredible work that has already been done and drive forward with a shared sense of purpose.
The cabinet secretary will now take questions on the issues raised in his statement. I intend to allow around 20 minutes for that, after which we will need to move on to the next item of business. I encourage members who wish to ask a question to press their request-to-speak buttons if they have not already done so.
I thank the cabinet secretary for providing early sight of his statement. I, too, wish Christina McKelvie well and wish her a speedy recovery.
This week’s harrowing statistics expose the total failure of the Scottish National Party to tackle this health crisis. It claims that significant progress has been made through its national mission, yet this week we learned that 1,172 people died from drug misuse in 2023, which represents an increase of 12 per cent on the previous year. In addition, this week’s provisional data revealed that there have already been 589 suspected drug deaths in the first six months of 2024. As that represents a 2 per cent drop from the same period in 2023, some might mistakenly claim that a corner has been turned, but the figure is up 5 per cent on 2022. Nothing is changing.
The SNP came to power more than 17 years ago and, in that time, more than 33,000 Scots have lost their lives to drug or alcohol-related illnesses. That is a damning indictment of the SNP’s continued mismanagement. SNP politicians should hang their heads in shame, but, instead, they carry on, determined to prioritise decriminalisation and harm reduction over recovery. That is the wrong message. Where is the focus on recovery and rehabilitation? The SNP has no idea what it is doing. The University of Strathclyde’s Scottish health equity research unit confirms that there is a “critical gap” between the SNP’s understanding of inequalities—
I need a question, Ms Webber.
—and what works to tackle them. It is clear that the SNP’s strategies lack a rigorous evaluation of their effectiveness.
Does the cabinet secretary really believe that the right level of response to learning that alcohol deaths are at their highest level for 15 years is to commission a review into adverts?
I thank Sue Webber for her contribution. I do not in any way shirk the responsibility that we have for the harrowing figures that are before us, and I absolutely do not deny the scale of the challenge that is before us. That is why I do not believe that any single intervention or single area of response is appropriate. We need to have a range of responses available to us, which is why we have been increasing the opportunity for support to be provided for recovery as well as for harm reduction. We can see from the statistics that are available from Police Scotland and alcohol and drug partnerships that the likes of naloxone have saved hundreds of lives.
Therefore, rather than focusing on one area at the expense of another, we must ensure that we take a range of approaches, including on alcohol advertising. We know that we cannot continue in the way that we are going. We need to see improvement in our relationships with drugs and with alcohol.
I echo the best wishes that have been expressed to Christina McKelvie for successful treatment.
I welcome the cabinet secretary’s visit to the Skylark IX Recovery Trust, as it does great work in my constituency. However, last year’s figure of 1,277 alcohol deaths is the highest number in the past 15 years, and it is a tragedy for each of the families affected. It is clear that what we are doing currently, for both drugs and alcohol, is not yet working. There is a suggestion that the Government’s priority is tackling drugs, and that that is eclipsing the efforts and resources that are needed to tackle alcohol problems.
Those of us with long memories will recall the SNP’s cuts to alcohol and drug treatment services. Some £46 million was sliced out of the budget before the national mission was in place, and now we learn that there has been a 40 per cent decline in the number of people being referred to structured alcohol services.
Will the cabinet secretary separate the alcohol and drugs funding streams so that there is transparency? If he is looking to raise revenue, what consideration has been given to a targeted levy to claw back the money that supermarkets will make from the increased revenue from minimum unit pricing for alcohol?
First, I once again pay tribute to the incredible work that is being delivered through Skylark IX and by a range of community and grass-roots organisations across Scotland. Although it was incredibly harrowing to hear the stories of families who have been impacted by losing family members through problematic drug use and drug dependency, it filled me with great hope that the family members in particular focused on the impact that has been made in reducing stigma over recent years, and the impact that the national mission has had on people, with both those with drug dependency and their families feeling that there are services and support for them. I put on the record my thanks to them for that incredible work.
On the investments that we are making into alcohol and drug partnerships, I hope that Jackie Baillie can take from the statement that I have just made that tackling alcohol and drugs is both a shared endeavour and an area of shared priority; it is not one over the other. Furthermore, I hope that the work that we are seeking to do on alcohol services is clear from my statement.
Jackie Baillie will know that consideration has been given to whether a levy should be administered as a result of the increase in minimum unit pricing, and we will give further updates on that in due course.
As members might expect, there is a lot of interest in the issue. Therefore, we will have to have brief questions and brief responses wherever possible.
There is absolutely no escaping the deep complexities that are associated with tackling drug and alcohol harm. I know that the cabinet secretary agrees that the commitment of those working in the sphere cannot be overstated.
In his statement, the cabinet secretary made reference to the workforce. Through my engagement with local ADP services, I am aware that concerns exist about workforce planning, specifically in relation to the option of a national qualification and a national training plan. Will the cabinet secretary provide an update on the work that is being done to address those concerns, thereby ensuring that we develop a highly skilled workforce and secure improved retention?
I thank Audrey Nicoll for her question and for the engagement that she has had with her local ADP services in the north-east. The Scottish Government’s drug and alcohol workforce action plan sets out the actions that we are taking to support improved workforce planning and to ensure that staff have the skills and knowledge that are required to deliver services.
Specifically, the plan commits us to developing a learning pathway to communicate and signpost available training opportunities to the entire drug and alcohol workforce; to facilitate the development of competencies for workers who support people who use drugs and alcohol; to identify training opportunities; and to provide support for the development of continuous career development opportunities.
Across Scotland, training providers provide high-quality education to learners at all levels in support of that. We will continue to fund national health service boards to support their work in that endeavour, too.
I have to say that that was a very underwhelming statement on such a crucial issue. Sadly, it follows earlier statements that we have heard from the health team. Asked 10 times whether his Government had failed people who are suffering from drug abuse, the cabinet secretary refused to answer.
Just this week, the Minister for Public Health and Women’s Health called the level of alcohol deaths “disappointing”. They are not “disappointing”; they are tragic, appalling—and avoidable, with the right policies.
The cabinet secretary will know that my member’s bill, the Right to Addiction Recovery (Scotland) Bill, has been published and is in the public domain. Is there anything in that bill that he cannot support? If not, will he tell us today that SNP members will support the bill?
On Douglas Ross’s point about the stark figures that are before us, I said in my statement that I accept that those are unacceptable and tragic. I echo his words in that regard. There is no hiding from the fact that that is an appalling set of statistics—of course it is. That is why the Government has committed to engaging with Mr Ross on the measures in his bill.
I do not believe that there is a single answer to the questions that are before us; we need to make progress in a multitude of areas. Mr Ross, the First Minister and I have a meeting coming up in order to discuss his bill. We will seek to progress further interventions on both the harm reduction and recovery aspects that I described in my statement. I believe that there is hope and that we will see a difference being made through working together in the way that Mr Ross suggests.
I refer members to my entry in the register of members’ interests in that I am chair of Moving On Inverclyde, which is a recovery service in my local area.
The cabinet secretary will be aware that Inverclyde has the third-highest level of drug deaths and the highest level of alcohol deaths in Scotland. Recently, I hosted a round-table meeting of third sector and public sector organisations to enable them to share information and understand the issues that my community faces. What consideration will the cabinet secretary give to ensuring that Inverclyde is classed as a priority area for funding and for creating new initiatives to support local organisations in saving the lives of people in my community?
I thank Mr McMillan for all his work to help local partners in Inverclyde to rise to the challenges that people face there. I received incredibly good feedback from Alison Byrne about the round-table meeting that he organised. Although we recognise the innovative approach that is being taken, and the commitment that delivery partners in the area share, we also note the particular needs of people in Inverclyde. With those in mind, we are keen to ensure that all possible support is available to partners in that area, and that will be a major consideration in future planning.
We need to ensure that support is available to people in all parts of Scotland. However, I point out that the distribution of national mission funding, adjusted through the NHS Scotland resource allocation committee—NRAC—formula, takes account of levels of deprivation and specific need.
The first overdose prevention centre in Scotland opened four years ago yesterday. Staffed by volunteers, it supervised around 1,000 injections and saved eight lives. Now, four years later, the state has finally caught up with the challenges that drug and alcohol issues present, but hundreds of people have died unnecessarily in the interim period.
I welcome the opening of the new OPC in Glasgow next month, but can the cabinet secretary assure members that it will not simply involve a box-ticking exercise? Will the centre be progressed to 24-hour operation and full integration with the routes to rehabilitation and other support services that are so critical to people’s recovery?
The first person who came to the OPC four years ago said, “I am sorry—I am not used to people treating me so nicely.” The core principles of our approach must be to ensure human dignity and to support people to access the pathways that they need if they are to survive.
I absolutely agree with Paul Sweeney. I pay tribute to the work that he has done in that area, along with other members, and to Peter Krykant, who led so much of the campaigning for the centre to take shape. Mr Sweeney is right to say that our approach should be to provide person-centred dignified support for people who have often experienced lifetimes of trauma and stigma. We must treat them with dignity and respect, in a way that reduces harm, saves lives and helps them on the path to recovery. I absolutely take on board Mr Sweeney’s questions about how we might further embed and expand such an approach. I will respond to him on those matters in due course.
In our constituencies across Scotland, we are all aware of the countless unsung heroes and organisations that do so much to support people whose lives have been impacted by drugs and alcohol. Groups such as Men Matter Scotland in Drumchapel support 500 men per week on a variety of issues. Will the cabinet secretary join me in recognising and thanking those unsung heroes for their invaluable work? What support is the Scottish Government providing to such groups, in particular at this time of budget constraint?
I echo Bill Kidd’s thanks to the Men Matter support network in Drumchapel. I firmly believe that the progress that we have made on the national mission would not have been possible without the work of our front-line workers and volunteers in statutory services, third sector organisations and grass-roots projects such as Men Matter. Their dedication provides hope in the darkest of times, and I thank them for their tireless efforts.
Through the national mission Corra funds, we have distributed £13 million of funding this year to more than 300 projects across Scotland. The organisations that are delivering the projects are diverse—they range from small community groups to public sector bodies that, together, have supported nearly 34,000 people this year. As I said, I have had the privilege of attending one of those projects—Skylark—to see the positive impact that it has made on the lives of people with drug and alcohol dependency, their families and their local communities.
I extend my condolences and deepest sympathies to every person who has been affected by these tragic deaths. Year after year, the figures offer a grim picture of the situation. Although I recognise the efforts that the cabinet secretary outlined to prevent deaths, they are clearly not enough.
Alcohol harm in Scotland is a public health emergency and a human rights issue. The cabinet secretary referenced the earlier consultation on restrictions on alcohol advertising and marketing, but no legislation was confirmed in last week’s programme for government. Many advocates criticised the lack of progress on that issue. Will the cabinet secretary confirm whether the Scottish Government is committed to introducing those measures in this parliamentary session? If not, what actions are being taken in that area?
I recognise Maggie Chapman’s interest and her long-standing work on advocating on this front. I set out in the statement the work that I will be commissioning Public Health Scotland to do to review the evidence—as we have seen through minimum unit pricing, it is important to lead such work on an evidential basis. Depending on what we see in the report that comes back from Public Health Scotland on that evidence, we will consult on what more steps we can take to reduce the impact of alcohol advertising and marketing. Our response has to be proportionate and based on evidence, and we are taking those steps to ensure that that is the case.
I am grateful to the Government for acquiescing to Liberal Democrat members’ requests for the statement this afternoon. I have been in Parliament for eight years and, in that time, the news on this topic has never been good; it is always getting worse—occasionally, it gets less bad, but here we are again.
As we heard, next month, the new overdose prevention centre will finally become operational, and the UK Home Office has signalled that it may be willing to look at our evidence and roll out the approach across the UK. However, we cannot wait for the end of that pilot to start the preparatory work on rolling out those centres, particularly in rural areas. Therefore, will the cabinet secretary say how swiftly following the conclusion of that pilot we can roll out those centres across the country?
I recognise Mr Cole-Hamilton’s points and the efforts that he has made. The pilot’s value is obvious in terms of gathering the evidence, but we should not be looking at that in isolation, given the other work that is being done, which I hope will make a major difference.
The testing centres that we hope to see in Aberdeen, Dundee and Glasgow are potentially game changing, because of the new challenge that we are facing in relation to synthetic opioids and other substances that are coming into the market, such as nitazines and xylazine. Those substances pose a dangerous threat, as people literally do not know what they are taking or the quantities to take, so there is a huge risk of overdose. Alongside the safe consumption room pilot, those drug testing facilities have an opportunity to enhance the harm reduction that we want to see.
The cabinet secretary spoke about alcohol and drug partnerships. Will he confirm that the Scottish Government has positive relationships with ADPs across the country, particularly in Dumfries and Galloway and the Borders, and say how their crucial work will continue to be supported and encouraged?
Yes. There is a programme of regular engagement between Scottish Government officials and ADP co-ordinators that is in place to ensure vital regular information exchange and collaboration on policy development at the working level. Our partners in Public Health Scotland work closely with us to actively support local areas in their MAT implementation effort and, although she is currently undertaking leave, the Minister for Drugs and Alcohol Policy is scheduled to meet local leaders across all localities to discuss progress on and improvement of partnership working and service delivery.
I draw members’ attention to my declaration of interests, as I am a practising NHS general practitioner.
Really, there is nothing new in the statement. It is simply a rehash of previous decisions that have clearly failed the people of Scotland, failed families and failed the record number of people who died due to alcohol and drugs this year.
The facts are that alcohol treatment regimes work, and the SNP’s flagship MUP magic bullet has not been enough to stop alcohol deaths spiralling to a record 15-year high. Will the cabinet secretary increase funding to treatment centres? Will he take the opportunity to offer a genuine apology to the families of those who died—unlike Jenni Minto, in her pathetic and woefully inadequate response in her STV interview yesterday?
I thank Sandesh Gulhane for his question, although I do not think that personalising it in that way is helpful in addressing the very serious issue that is before us. The evidence is clear that minimum unit pricing has saved lives. The evaluation that was carried out by Public Health Scotland, which has been reviewed by the UK Statistics Authority and peer reviewed through The Lancet, has estimated that there has been a 13 per cent reduction in deaths as a result of minimum unit pricing. There is a particular impact in areas of higher deprivation, with the statistics clearly demonstrating the direct correlation between deprivation and alcohol and drug dependency.
As I have stated—I agree with Sandesh Gulhane on this point—no one measure or intervention is going to be enough; we need a range. I will therefore continue to engage with him and his colleagues on further areas that we can explore in order to reduce harm, save lives and get people on the path to recovery.
A number of members still want to ask questions, and I want to get them all in, so questions will need to be brief, with answers as brief as possible.
Just like their relatives, the families of people who are affected by substance use experience stigma and isolation. They are often the first responders to their loved ones’ crises. The rights of those family members must be protected and upheld, and they should be empowered to advocate for themselves and their loved ones. Will the cabinet secretary outline how the Scottish Government and its partners are funding support and working to ensure that it is available and accessible everywhere in Scotland?
Collette Stevenson is absolutely right. I have set out in response to other colleagues the first-person testimony that I have received from families about the reduction of stigma that has taken place and the greater awareness of services being available to those with alcohol or drug dependency and their families. Our families framework sets out how we will improve holistic support for families affected by drugs and alcohol, by taking a whole-family approach and ensuring that families receive support that is free from stigma and is trauma informed. The framework states that families should be involved in the development and delivery of services used by them and their loved ones, at both local and national levels.
We are working with local areas to implement family-inclusive practice across alcohol and drug services. That framework is supported by investment totalling £6.5 million a year over the parliamentary session and by providing ADPs with an additional £3.5 million per year over the session to help implement the framework locally.
I declare an interest as I led the team that produced the data that underpinned the work of the Dundee drugs commission in 2019.
I am afraid that the Government’s account of progress on MAT standards does not tally with the experience of service reform on the ground in many parts of the country. For example, some of the most basic recommendations of the Dundee drugs commission from as far back as 2019 are yet to be fulfilled. Can the cabinet secretary tell me today when Constitution house in Dundee will be closed? If he cannot, will he endeavour to find out when that will happen? Is the cabinet secretary confident that MAT standards are now being delivered to such a high extent? Has their efficacy in dealing with the problem not been called into question?
I have pointed out a number of times that no one single intervention will make a difference. In my statement, I set out the progress that has been demonstrated on the implementation of MAT standards, and I would be more than happy to meet Mr Marra to discuss the experience that he is narrating from his region. I believe that the progress that has been made is important and demonstrable, but I would be more than happy to meet him to discuss the issues that he raises.
What evidence will be available to the review that Public Health Scotland will undertake that was not made available to the previous review into alcohol marketing? Will the cabinet secretary be commissioning a new consultation? If so, what role will the alcohol industry play in that process?
The review that I will be commissioning Public Health Scotland to do will consider all the evidence that is available, both domestically and internationally, on the impact that alcohol advertising and marketing make. On the basis of the recommendations that come through the review and the evidence that is there, we will consult on any pragmatic and evidence-based measures that Public Health Scotland recommends would make a difference in reducing alcohol harm.
I will continue to have conversations with businesses about the economic impact, to make sure that that is proportionate, based on the evidence that is available, and I will seek to work with them so that they lead on areas where they can help us to reduce alcohol harm. There is important work to do here to make sure that we reduce harm, save lives and see people into recovery.
That concludes questions on the statement. Before we move to the next item of business, there will be a brief pause to allow those on the front benches to change seats.