Chamber and committees

That is a feature in the Bail and Release from Custody (Scotland) Bill, which is at stage 1. I have been a longstanding advocate of ending Friday liberation. It just does not make sense to me. I appreciate that there are significant operational issues for the Scottish Prison Service to consider in all of this, but when I think of my time as a prison social worker—admittedly that was a long time ago now—I know that releasing large numbers of people on a Friday because people cannot be liberated on Saturday or Sunday can often lead to people not being liberated until later in the day. Although people’s care arrangements should be in place before they are liberated, which is part of the proposed justice legislation that the cabinet secretary is taking through Parliament, people have practical issues to contend with on the first day of their release that mean that it does not make sense that it should be on a Friday. If they face any challenges, it can mean that they have to wait until Monday.

We have to follow the evidence that shows that any period of transition and change comes with its risks. We know that people being released from custody means them going through a period of elevated risk, so we need to plan to mitigate that risk. At a commonsense level, Friday liberations do not make sense.

Mr Sweeney knows of my enthusiasm for safer drug consumption facilities, and we are doing everything possible, within our powers, to leave no stone unturned to achieve the goal of a pilot site in Glasgow.

The short answer is that the Crown Office is now in a position to advise the Lord Advocate. As you know, I cannot speak on behalf of either the Crown Office or the Lord Advocate but, along with our partners in Glasgow, we have done an extensive amount of work on the matter and pursued it to the nth degree. It is not a silver bullet, but it is one piece of the jigsaw and, given the scale of the challenge that we face in Scotland, we need all the bits of the jigsaw.

Thank you, convener, for inviting me along this morning. This is my first appearance at the committee in my capacity as Minister for Drugs Policy.

I want to start by thanking the committee and the petitioner for the work that they have done on this matter. Access to the right treatment at the right time for each and every person is at the very heart of the national mission. I support the aims of the petition and agree that the people who are detained in police custody must have access to their prescribed medication, including medication assisted treatment such as methadone.

Mr Sweeney’s broader point, whether it is in relation to safer drug consumption facilities or any other service, is about the connectivity between services. To go back to the petition, one of the improvements made by the Elgin custody suite was to put in place systems whereby the local service is informed when people are brought into custody, when they are on an OST prescription, and when they are to be released. The issue that we are all concerned about is what happens while someone is in custody and whether they are getting the medically prescribed treatment to which they are entitled and which should, under no circumstances, be disrupted unless there are exceptional health and safety issues.

It is not so much about a gap in the information as the availability and transparency of the information at the national level. More information is gathered about what happens with the prescription of OST in police custody settings than in other settings. That goes back to the nub of the issue. We have lots of information about where OST is dispensed, whether it be from a hospital or pharmacy, but we have much less information about where it is administered. The amount of information that is gathered in the police custody setting is much greater than that gathered in, say, homeless settings, where there are in-reach medical provisions.

That is an accurate summation about the information that is currently gathered by Police Scotland. In terms of me satisfying myself about what is happening on the ground, the major stream of work on that is around the implementation of MAT standards. We have a lot of granular information about what is happening at the local level. Colleagues might be aware of the supplementary information that was published in August that gives an area-by-area breakdown of where individual areas are with their MAT standards. The MAT standards implementation support team—MIST—is providing practical, hands-on support to local areas on how to gather information better and how to change the ways in which they are working while being fully cognisant of the need to challenge stigma, discrimination and culture. We have improvement plans in from all areas. We also have quarterly—or monthly, in some cases—reporting.

Through the serious and significant endeavours to implement MAT standards, we have much more information at the local level, which gives us a real connectivity between government and communities that we have not had previously.

In general, I agree that community pharmacies are an underused resource. The task force has made some interesting recommendations about an enhanced service contract, and there are some parallels with that around arrangements with general practitioners and primary care.

There are 1,250 pharmacies in Scotland. That is quite an extensive network that we could be tapping into. There is innovative, progressive and helpful use of pharmacist services in different parts of Scotland, but there is a network and expertise there that we need to make more use of. It is imperative that we use all the assets that are at our disposal and community pharmacies are very much part of that.

That is an area that we have given considerable thought to, and I understood that the committee was raising the issue because there could be a gap in information. Part of the underpinning evaluation of our national mission to save and improve lives is to ensure that we have the right measurements in place.

I will not repeat what I have said about MAT standards, but ultimately issues such as these are resolved through the delivery of MAT standards.

I will just take a slight step back from the question to introduce some context. Public Health Scotland already publishes a range of information about OST, such as the number of people who are in treatment, for example. The committee is also well aware of the information that is held on the prescription of healthcare at the local level. The information that we are talking about is available, but it is held in Police Scotland’s national custody records. We are giving some thought to that. The task force has made more broad recommendations about ensuring that our healthcare and justice systems speak to each other, and other important recommendations about information sharing.

On information that is held by a statutory organisation such as Police Scotland, there are particular complexities around unravelling that. I am aware that His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary in Scotland has access to a range of information that is held by Police Scotland, so I am contemplating whether that is a potential route and whether I, as minister, should engage with the inspectorate.

I do not know whether the committee has considered that. The information is available to the inspectorate through the inspections that it has done. Indeed, this time last year, it did an inspection that involved the Elgin custody suite and it made a number of recommendations. I am informed that that led to increasing nursing provision in custody so that there is now full-time nursing cover in that centre.

There is a lot of work to do, and a lot of work is on-going. Members will be aware of the ministerial direction that I issued in June because I was not content with the scale and pace of progress. Part of the purpose of the statement that I will make to Parliament next week is to reflect on the information that all areas have provided on their improvement plans. All areas are subject to regular reporting on progress. For most areas, that will be done quarterly, but for areas that have particular difficulties, it will be monthly.

The other purpose of my statement next week is to inform Parliament of the Government’s view not just of the task force’s recommendations but those of Public Health Scotland’s benchmarking report, which was published in June.

I very much welcomed the task force’s report, as I had been looking forward to receiving its vital recommendations. The task force has made a comprehensive suite of 20 recommendations with 139 action points, and we will issue our full response to those at the start of the new year.

We have given an initial response to the report to the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee, the Criminal Justice Committee and the Social Justice and Social Security Committee. We gave some indication of our direction of travel, but the culmination of our response will be presented to Parliament at the turn of the year.