Chamber and committees

We move to questions from Foysol Choudhury. If we have time, I will open the session up to a couple of supplementary questions before we finish.

I will bring in Gillian Martin, and then I will bring the session to a close.

I hand over to Gillian Martin.

Thank you very much, David. I will start off with a very general question. You mentioned that you were appointed as chair just a matter of weeks ago—I think that you said that it was three weeks ago—and you outlined the role of the task force in gathering evidence and making recommendations, and the milestones that the task force seeks to achieve. I am interested to hear your early views on, in particular, the remit and terms of reference of the task force. Are they fit for purpose? Is the focus of the task force the right one? Are the timescales for delivery that have been set by the Scottish Government achievable? That was a bit of a roll-up of questions, but I am interested to hear your views.

Thank you for that. I open up the questioning to members and will bring in Paul O’Kane.

Thank you. We have a little bit of time in hand, so I am happy to bring Miles Briggs back in, because I cut him off a bit earlier on.

Elena Whitham has a follow-up question.

Thank you very much indeed. I am going to bring the session to a close, but I want to pick up on a point that you made about the implementation of the task force’s recommendations. You said that you would be looking for an update on that, and I wonder whether it would be possible for that to be shared with the committees. We would be really interested to know about that, so if that would be possible, it would be appreciated.

In the meantime, many thanks for attending. It has been an interesting session. If members have additional matters that they would like to follow up on, we will do that in writing.

We will have a short suspension before we hear from our next witness. We will reconvene at 11.15.

I welcome to the meeting the Minister for Drugs Policy, Angela Constance, and, from the Scottish Government, Morris Fraser, who is head of the delivery and support unit in the drugs policy division, and Henry Acres, who is the Drug Deaths Taskforce support team leader.

I thank the minister for her written evidence and invite her to make some brief opening remarks. Minister, you have around three minutes.

As a quick follow-up question on that point, I note that you have talked about the importance of following the evidence. In the previous evidence-taking session, David Strang highlighted in response to a question from Sue Webber the need to look not only at the wider—perhaps international—context but at what is happening closer to home. He certainly felt that we should be doing both things. Is that your view, too, minister?