Seòmar agus comataidhean

I will bring in Russell Findlay. I apologise, Russell; I should have brought you in earlier. I know that you are interested in asking some questions around safe consumption rooms.

I wish you a very good morning, and welcome you to the second joint meeting in 2023 of members of the Criminal Justice Committee, the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee and the Social Justice and Social Security Committee, to consider the progress that has been made in implementing the recommendations of the Scottish Drug Deaths Taskforce.

We have received apologies from Paul O’Kane, who is attending a meeting of the Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee.

Before we begin, I place on record our thanks to Clare Haughey and Sue Webber for visiting Aberlour’s mother and child unit on our behalf, and for the helpful note that they provided of their meeting. I also thank Aberlour for facilitating the visit, and I particularly thank the two women who took the time to talk about their personal experiences. We are very grateful.

Agenda item 1 is a decision on taking business in private. Do members agree to take in private item 3, which is a review of today’s evidence?

Members indicated agreement.

Agenda item 2 is an evidence-taking session on tackling drug deaths and drug harm. I am pleased to warmly welcome to the meeting our first panel of witnesses. Kirsten Horsburgh is chief executive officer, and Wez Steele is senior training and development officer, at the Scottish Drugs Forum; Simon Rayner is service lead at Aberdeen alcohol and drug partnership; and Tracey McFall is chairperson of the Scottish Recovery Consortium. I refer members to papers 1 and 2 and thank witnesses who have provided written submissions.

We move straight to questions. As ever, I will open with a question just to set the scene and get the discussion under way.

I wonder whether panel members can give us a broad response to the statistics on drug-related deaths, on which there has been a lot of commentary and coverage. The most recent publication of the statistics shows a decline; according to those figures, which have been published by National Records of Scotland, 1,051 people died due to drug misuse in 2022. That is a decrease on the figure for 2021 and the lowest annual total since 2017. However, given that drug death numbers remain stubbornly high, I ask individual witnesses for their response to, and any commentary that they might have on, those recent statistics. Do you feel that we have perhaps started to turn the corner a bit?

I will start with Kirsten Horsburgh and then work across the panel.

Okay. We have covered a lot. I really appreciate your forbearance, because we have gone quite a bit over time. Thanks very much to all of you for a very helpful session.

We were hoping to have the Minister for Drugs and Alcohol Policy, Elena Whitham, join us on a second panel to give evidence. Unfortunately, she is very unwell and not able to attend the meeting. We wish her a speedy recovery.

Tracey McFall, you mentioned the challenge caused by high staff turnover. It might be helpful if you could expand on that.

I know that some members are interested in asking questions on stigma. I will bring in Clare Haughey and then Gillian Mackay on that.

Of course.

I was going to move on to the cross-Government action plan but there is a lot to cover so, if we have time, I will come back to that. We will instead move on to some questions on safe consumption rooms, which is no surprise. I will bring in Sue Webber.

I will bring you back in if we have time, Russell, but next I will bring in Katy Clark on the issue of law reform and then we will move to questions on MAT standards. I am watching the time. Is everyone happy to stay on a little bit beyond 10.30? I am loth to cut things off when such helpful discussions are going on.

Do any other folks want to come in on that?