Chamber and committees

Thank you very much. The committee is one of the most dynamic and interesting ones, and I look forward to working with you all over the next five years.

As some of my fellow members are, I am an elected member, of East Ayrshire Council.

To ask the Scottish Government what action it is taking to ensure that the prosecution system delivers fairer and more effective justice. (S6O-00042)

I rise to speak in support of the motion. After working on the front line supporting people experiencing multiple disadvantage for almost two decades, I finally have cause to believe that we will work collectively to drive forward the whole-system and cultural changes that are necessary to tackle the drug deaths emergency.

Recently, I sat at yet another funeral for a young person, with unbridled tears streaming down my face, mourning the loss of a talented and outspoken individual—a disruptor. I had grief for their loved ones and an almost visceral sense of impotence and a seeming inability to find a way forward that would stop so many needless and preventable deaths in Ayrshire and across Scotland. How much potential and talent have we collectively lost?

I have seen the harms that are caused by addiction up close and personal. I have spent countless hours helping people to try to navigate the disjointed, confusing, unyielding and often bureaucratic and linear world of homelessness services, addiction services, mental health services, prison services and social work services. Those services are full of people who are trying their very best but who are not always able to join up the dots for the individual in the middle.

Some 20 years ago, before trauma-informed care was even spoken about, I and my colleagues on the front lines knew that those we supported were often self-medicating to blunt the sharp and painful edges of their lived experience. I knew that the young woman I was supporting fresh from care who had been abused and abandoned as a child now felt abandoned by the care service and her corporate parents. She was all too easily trafficked from Ayrshire to Glasgow by those intent on profiting from her body and her misery. I tried to pick up the pieces as she sank into a spiral of heroin addiction and prostitution, with little control over any aspect of her young life. At the time, I was only 26. I had a case load of more than 40 at-risk young people to support. We were both drowning in a system that was neither life preserver nor lifeboat.

I do not know what happened to that woman. I think about her often, as I think of the many people I supported who have died through drugs, self-harm or violence. Again, think of all that lost potential. What could they have been, and what could they have done? What has their loss done to those left behind? The trauma ripples right through the very fabric of our country.

I have every confidence that my colleague Angela Constance will deliver the change that is needed on this crucial agenda. She has the experience of being a social worker in a prison environment, ensuring that she understands what sticky support is and why it is critical to the success of someone’s recovery. Like Brian Whittle, I have spent a lot of time with Mark and the team at Recovery Enterprises Scotland. I have also spent time with other grass-roots organisations such as the Patchwork Recovery Community. Those organisations epitomise sticky support.

The minister has written to the UK Government to urgently request a summit so that we can look at what drug law reforms are required and so that drug misuse can at last be understood and treated as a public health crisis. Current legislation hinders our ability to fully align the law with a public health response. Doing so would enable us to deploy all the measures that the Parliament could collectively agree to. I urge members from all parties to see how crucial the reforms are to the overall picture.

Legislation needs to be reformed to treat drug misuse as a health matter and not as a criminal justice matter. Too often, I would see my service users lifted on a warrant—sometimes on a Friday—taken into custody, and then being on remand for months, which in effect wiped out the countless hours of solid support work and progress that we had made. They would then be released into homelessness, thus starting the cycle again.

I whole-heartedly welcome the new MAT standards, as I have always understood that same-day access to services and treatment is vital for recovery. When someone is asking for help for addiction, they need it there and then and not in three months’ time. People need to be at the heart of decision making, and they must have choice over what is appropriate for them. If that includes residential rehab, we must ensure that it is available in every part of the country.

I agree. From what our minister has set out, I think that that is definitely the way that we are going. However, there is the wider issue of who can prescribe. Members have mentioned the need to have advanced nurse practitioners and so on. We need to have a huge skills audit to see where we need to divert the moneys. I absolutely agree with Michael Marra.

That was my first intervention, and now I have lost my place—hold on.

We need to make sure that there is a collective effort across the sectors to break down the silos. We need to remember that those with lived experience and tireless grass-roots organisations, operating on shoestrings, will play an absolutely vital role in this work. We must provide them with funding opportunities; I was happy to hear the minister reiterate that, and talk about making sure that the funding that is out there is getting to where it needs to go.

We need to dismantle a system that was created decades ago by building single-issue services, and we need to see that as part of a bigger whole. We are finally in a place where housing first and rapid rehousing are being rolled out, with wraparound support for those with complex needs. We are exploring how a duty to prevent homelessness could significantly reduce incidences of homelessness by making sure that the duty goes beyond the door of the housing department.

We have gold-standard domestic abuse laws. We have collective understanding of trauma-informed practice and of how adverse childhood experiences impact on life chances. We are moving towards a community justice model—a smart justice model—that seeks to understand offending behaviour and offer up the tools required for real and meaningful behaviour change without sending somebody down the road of incarceration. By knitting all those golden threads together, we will ensure that people in Scotland can access the sticky, consistent, effective and flexible support that is required to prevent those harms—which, collectively, harm all of us.

I thank the cabinet secretary for that answer and for the previous commitment to consult on the not proven verdict. There is growing recognition across the chamber that there is a strong case for abolition of that verdict. Will the cabinet secretary encourage a wide range of stakeholders and those with lived experience to respond to the consultation when it is launched later in the current session of Parliament in order to inform the best policy decisions on the matter?

I thank Patrick Harvie for raising the issue, and I welcome the cabinet secretary to her role. She has already touched on the question that—[Inaudible.] Are there plans to continue with the cross-sector housing resilience groups that were established at the height of the pandemic?

To ask the Scottish Government what action it is taking to support communities to play their part in achieving Scotland’s net zero targets. (S6O-00006)

The transition to net zero will require every one of us to play our part. The cabinet secretary will be aware that investment through the Ayrshire growth deal would see Cumnock leading by example and propelling us on to the world stage in its ambition to become the first carbon-neutral town. Scotland is centre stage this year with COP26 taking place in Glasgow. Will the cabinet secretary outline the Scottish Government’s plans to help secure a Glasgow agreement that will see all countries committing to taking the action that is needed to tackle the climate crisis?

In the light of the recent news that Portugal has been placed on the amber list, taking effect today, it is clear that international travel for holiday purposes remains risky and subject to sudden change. What steps is the Scottish Government taking to support our local tourism industry, particularly as many people are seeking to holiday at home this year?