Chamber and committees

I am very clear in my mind about the purpose of drug checking: its purpose is furnishing people with information. All of us recognise that information is power in every aspect of our lives.

I will always make robust representations when it comes to the portfolio and the individuals that my portfolio policy seeks to support across the country. However, at this point, I need to refute that there is any notion of reduction in budgets.

In the past budget as well. If we think about what happened last year, the money that was made available to ADPs never changed. As is fiscally prudent to ask any organisation to do when we are publicly funding it, we asked ADPs to make sure that any unspent reserves that they were carrying were used in the first instance and that they sought to draw down after that. Provision was made for any non-recurring spend that ADPs had perhaps earmarked against projects that they needed that funding for, but the full envelope of the money was there.

The total drugs and alcohol budget has steadily increased over the past few years: in 2021-22, it was £140.7 million; in 2022-23, it was £141.9 million; and, in 2023-24, it is projected to be £155.5 million. As I said, I will always seek to make representations in relation to my portfolio in the strongest of terms.

I also seek to reassure the joint committee that, as of next year, around two thirds of ADP funding will be baselined. That means that that funding is there and committed and that it will be recurring. I hope that that will allow ADPs to feel more comfortable in their long-term spending commitments and planning. I give you my guarantee that I will make robust representations in relation to the budget.

The 10 MAT standards came from the Scottish Drug Deaths Taskforce itself, and were created after a concerted effort and work with people with lived and living experience and other partners. If we think back to when the standards were first discussed, we were talking about an entire system and culture change to create services that would deliver at pace on the ground. That was made difficult from the beginning by the fact that ADPs and health and social care partnerships are all set up in different ways, so we started from a really difficult and complex position.

I will keep pushing for local areas to deliver on the MAT standards, because we need them to do that and we know that that will save lives, but the fact that two thirds of areas delivered standards 1 to 5 last year was a big step change. I am really conscious of the fact that standards 6 to 10 will be where we really start thinking about advocacy work, trauma-informed work, psychological and mental health support and how we start to embed the MAT standards within primary care, which will all be really tricky.

I will have to have robust conversations with local areas. Some areas have moved to monthly reporting, which is really important, but other areas where we have seen progress have gone back to quarterly reporting. Some specific situations will be tricky. There are some areas where drug deaths have not started to decline or where there are perennial issues, which means that I must have sit-down conversations with them. That will be very supportive, as opposed to me telling people what I think they should do, because that is not how we should work. We must ensure that we take areas with us. Despite progress not being as fast as I, or any of us, wanted it to be, we must recognise that people across the country have pulled out all the stops.

Also, because of the way that healthcare operates, we will find it tricky in our justice settings. Just last night, I met other ministers who are responsible for what healthcare should look like in a prison setting. We know that 76 per cent of those admitted to prison test positive for illicit substances and have significant substance use problems, so the MAT standards must work in justice settings.

I will continue pushing so that all 10 MAT standards are fully implemented by the end of 2025 and, by the time that we get to the end of this session of Parliament, the standards will be sustained and they will operate as business as usual.

All 10 should absolutely be implemented and operational by 2025 and they must be sustained by the end of this session of Parliament. We must find a way forward so that, beyond this session of Parliament and this Government, the MAT standards are treated as business as usual and will be what people can expect.

I have spoken with officials about the decision to split the standards into two groups after the first year, which predated my time as minister. The decision might have been about what was easier to measure: the first five standards were measures that officials within Government, and locally, thought could more easily be benchmarked.

We must not underestimate the work that the MAT standards implementation support team, which is based within public health, is doing at the moment. Members of the team have created entire data capture systems that did not exist beforehand. There is a massive amount of work to do in capturing experiential data, which is more difficult to quantify. That is why, if you look at the MAT standards, you will see that some are only provisionally marked as green because the experiential data, which will be led by people with lived experience, is being captured. Services say what they are doing, but the data will show how people are experiencing that service. It was quite tricky to set up the collection of that data, so we must recognise the sheer amount of work that has been undertaken.

Might I add to that?

Like you, I am very passionate about being trauma informed and ensuring that services are trauma responsive.

We need a full systems and cultural change if we are truly going to tackle stigma. Part of the Government’s response to the Scottish Drug Deaths Taskforce’s report was to launch a tackling stigma action plan. However, while we are in the process of rolling that out, we need to co-design what it looks like. Therefore, we are making sure that we work with our partners in the third sector, local government and the health and social care partnerships but also with the people who are experiencing the services. It is important for those people to be supported, by and large, by the third sector.

It will take a little time for us to co-design what the stigma action plan will look like, because co-design is not simple or easy. To do it effectively, we need to take a bit of time to ensure that we really hear from the voices of lived and living experience. With regard to our processes just now, I think that, sometimes—as you probably heard from witnesses last week—we can design stigma into our services by accident. We need to make sure that we hear what people who are living through substance use are telling us.

We also need to ensure that we think about some of the groups that are often not thought of when it comes to the designing of services. I am thinking about people from black and minority ethnic groups, who face substance use issues in the same way as everybody else, and I am thinking about services that we need to ensure are there for women and their specific needs. All too often, stigma can drive people away from services, so I am keen that we hear from all those voices. A lot of the time, the voices that we talk about as unheard are actually talking very loudly and we are just not listening to them. Therefore, for me, the co-design process is vital in getting that right, and it is going to take a wee bit of time.

I will also keep the committee informed about what can be learned from that case once I get a fuller picture back.

I do not know. I do not have any insight into that at the moment. Michael Crook might.

We know that Police Scotland has created an operational procedure that will dictate how any such facility is policed, and it is for Police Scotland to communicate that.

You are absolutely 100 per cent right, Ms Clark, to ask about how the staff of such a facility would be protected. It is for Susanne Millar to reassure us about the advice that Glasgow has taken on that. As the minister, I believe that the individuals who will be supporting some of our most vulnerable citizens should themselves be protected. I will hand over to Susanne to answer that.