Chamber and committees

Good morning, Mr Strang. Thank you for joining us. I will ask about a few issues that relate to Community Pharmacy Scotland’s role in the public health crisis. In your opening statement, you highlighted naloxone. Why has some of the work that was meant to be done on access to single records for individuals not been done?

That is helpful. Perhaps I will take up that detail with the Minister for Drugs Policy in our next evidence session.

All of us at the meeting support the naloxone programme, but it has not gone where we wanted it to. Part of the frustration about the task force is that some of the key recommendations that the Government accepted do not seem to have been implemented. I fully understand that you are new to the role, but can you tell me why those discussions with Community Pharmacy Scotland have not taken place?

It would be helpful to get an update on timescales. I was a member of the Health and Sport Committee in session 5, and we understood that the work would be moved forward quite quickly. The opportunity to provide some sort of traffic-light warning system for patients was discussed, but that does not seem to have materialised. I hope that that will become a genuine priority and that progress will be made on that.

I turn to review of available treatments, on which I have corresponded with you for some time. I am thinking about the potential availability of treatment such as neuro-electric therapy. Where is the Government with the work to enable people to feel that they are genuinely able to take decisions about what is best for them and their families, given where they are with their addictions, and to support their decision making and empowerment?

Finally, before I hand back to the convener—

Thank you, convener. I appreciate that.

Mr Strang, I was taken with what you said earlier about your work in mental health support in Dundee and the inquiry that you undertook there. Would you support a legal right to rehabilitation for people in Scotland? Is that a piece of work that the task force will start to look at? As you highlighted, it is very important that we make sure that people have the right to access those services and that they can take those decisions for themselves and drive their treatment. What is your view on that?

Good morning. I have a few questions about the naloxone programme and Community Pharmacy Scotland. We all support the naloxone programme, but I have been frustrated by the progress of the work of the task force in making a difference in that respect. Why is naloxone not included in the national supply line for pharmacists to access through Pharmacy First? On the task force’s recommendations, why has a single record for patients not been developed, given that we have a public health emergency, and given the improvement in outcomes that that measure could deliver?

I thank the witnesses for those answers. Tony Cain is right that it is an art form, and not necessarily a science.

Homes for Scotland’s useful briefing ahead of today’s meeting talked about flexibility and what that should look like. It highlighted that alternative sites could be given planning permission for housing if those that are allocated in local development plans prove not to be deliverable. If there is no change in how the estimates are formed, what would such flexibility look like? How can we direct new developments to where they are needed? What are the witnesses’ thoughts on that? I will bring in Nicola Barclay, as I mentioned Homes for Scotland’s call for flexibility.

Thank you. Convener, I am happy to hand back to you, given the time.

Good morning to the panel. Thank you for joining us. I have a few questions about the minimum all-tenure housing land requirement. First, what are your views on the process and methodology that have been used to establish it? I will start with you, Tony Cain, as you have touched on issues about housing in Lothian. If anyone else would like to come in, I ask them to type R in the chat function.

Congratulations on your appointment, convener. I, too, pass on my thanks to Neil Gray. We will miss his colourful socks in committee, when we are able to meet in person again.

Good morning, minister. I have a few questions that carry on the line that Foysol Choudhury developed. What is the Scottish Government’s view on the merits of a single disability benefit that would apply to children and to working age and older people?