Chamber and committees

This is also my first time at the committee, and it has been fascinating and entertaining. I must come back.

Others have laid out the case for franchising. As you know, convener, too many areas of Scotland are not well served by buses. I describe some of those areas as bus deserts. I live in a place where the bus service is not good enough, and it leads to many people using their cars, because they do not have a choice. Franchising, if implemented, has the potential to provide a solution, but the frustration that colleagues have already expressed is that, in Scotland, it is taking far too long. I think that that is where the petitioners are coming from, too.

I invite the committee to look at the process. It might also wish to look at some of the suggested legislation from the new UK Government. There is the proposed buses bill, which will speed up the process of franchising down south. I think that we need something similar in Scotland, because of the frustration that things are taking far too long. Mr Ruskell mentioned, quite rightly, the Parliament’s recent tied vote on bus franchising, in which the final vote went to the Presiding Officer. The concern in that respect related to the undemocratic nature of the panel, which could quash any work that had already been done on franchising.

The only game in town at the moment is the Strathclyde Partnership for Transport, which covers the convener’s constituency and is looking at franchising. If it did go down that road, it would spend a lot of time and money only to, ultimately, come up against a three-person panel that could stop it from going ahead. I do not think that that is a very good system at all.

So, the Scottish Government does not know that, but what is your assessment?

Okay. I have a final question, which you might or might not be able to answer. Are we getting value for money from all the money that we are spending on drug and alcohol services?

In terms of leadership, are we or are we not clear about what this minister is doing or is responsible for in this space?

Just before he does, I will add one point. Paragraph 18 of your report refers to a report by Public Health Scotland that

“estimated that the policy had reduced the number of deaths directly caused by alcohol consumption by 13 per cent”.

It was an estimate. I do not know whether you have looked at the issue in any detail, but can we say with any certainty that there has been that reduction?

I think that you have summed it up very well: we do not know what is making a difference, and we do not know whether we are getting value for money. I will leave it there, convener.

You also say that there has been a real-terms decrease in funding for the partnerships in the past two years. Does that suggest that there has been a loss of confidence in them?

Thanks, convener. On the previous point, I guess that you would expect the Minister for Drugs and Alcohol Policy to be all over this and to be able to answer why there is such wide variation across Scotland. Has having a Minister for Drugs and Alcohol Policy made a difference?

All right—we can look at that if we get the Scottish Government in. It is not fair to ask you about it.

I want to ask about an issue that has come up previously about the alcohol and drug partnerships. Do we know what they actually do?

I raise the point because, as you say in the report,

“the role of ADPs is not always widely known across other services.”

If the people who are meant to be providing those services do not know what ADPs are meant to be doing, what are they there for?