Chamber and committees

Before I bring in our next member, I will pick up on the points that you were making, Dr Fletcher, about feedback on toxicology, given the issues that we are facing at the moment around the timescales for post-mortems. You articulated that in some detail, but I am interested to know what timescale we are looking at. Is it weeks, or longer?

I welcome our second panel of witnesses: Christina McKelvie, who is the Minister for Drugs and Alcohol Policy—congratulations on your new role—Michael Crook, who is head of the harm reduction team, and Alison Crockett, who is unit head of the whole systems unit in the drugs policy division, both at the Scottish Government; and Dr Saket Priyadarshi, who is associate medical director of the Glasgow alcohol and drug recovery services. A warm welcome to you all.

I ask the minister to make some brief opening remarks.

Russell, am I right that you would like to ask a supplementary question on stigma?

I have to move things on, because we only have about 15 minutes left and three members still want to come in. Succinct questions and answers would be helpful. I call Collette Stevenson, to be followed by Paul O’Kane.

I am not aware that the specific issue of hospital admissions has been raised, highlighted or, indeed, discussed in our previous committee meetings. Do you have any views on what is behind that decrease, which is reported to be around 24 per cent?

Thank you. I am sure that other members will want to probe that a little more.

I come to Justina Murray. In your comprehensive written submission, you state that, although

“It is welcome that family members have the opportunity to engage and influence”

the development of approaches to tackling drug harm, they are not reporting the level of change on the ground that you would expect to see at this stage, and that there remains an

“implementation gap”

between policy and delivery. From your perspective, how do we start to close, or address, that gap?

I want to move things on—we can come back to that issue if we have time.

I will bring in Paul Sweeney.

Okay, thank you. Before I bring in Clare Haughey, I think that Pauline McNeill wanted to ask a follow-up question.

Do you want to come in on that, Kirsten or Justina?

That is really interesting. I am aware that work is under way to address the wider challenge of access to pathology services in Scotland, and we will be looking at that closely.