Chamber and committees

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?

Thank you. I will now open up the questioning to Paul O’Kane, first of all, to be followed by Russell Findlay.

Yes.

I call Sue Webber, to be followed by Foysol Choudhury.

We move to questions from Pauline McNeill. Are you there, Pauline?

Can you hear us?