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No, I could not tell you that off the top of my head.

I think that it is significantly faster for that. For example, Dr Priyadarshi described the situation that occurred at the Thistle in which some of the paraphernalia was tested, and that was pretty rapid—they were able to get information almost instantaneously. There is, on occasion, a delay for post-mortem toxicology. I was asked about that last week at the Criminal Justice Committee and I said that I would supply written information afterwards. I will certainly be happy to furnish you with that information if it is specifically post-mortem toxicology that you are asking about.

Yes. A couple of weeks ago, we had a four-nations meeting in Edinburgh, and it was very helpful. By the end of that day, it was clear to me that it was helpful to meet my UK counterparts, but it is also clear that we are facing a very different challenge in Scotland. We have a significant number of drug deaths and we need to take action to tackle that. That is not the situation that my counterparts are experiencing in Northern Ireland or in England, and they do not feel the urgency to look at creative solutions to the challenges that they are facing.

That was the week of the Government reshuffle, so all the Home Office ministers had changed and none of them came to Edinburgh. I think that we have written subsequently, or we are writing subsequently, with specific requests. I spoke to the Home Office officials on the day about asking the minister whether they were willing to look at the question of inhalation pipes and harm reduction opportunities in providing paraphernalia to people who are using drugs. If they are not, we will have the clarity that we need to pursue solutions for Scotland alone.

The time period that the national mission covers comes to an end in 2026, and, early next year, before the Parliament is dissolved, we are keen to set out the national drug and alcohol strategy, which we see as the next phase. There will be significant changes in there. We will be looking at drugs and alcohol together—they require different approaches, but we will look at them in one strategy for a number of reasons.

On the funding, I hope that there will be some clarity in the budget process this year. I cannot pre-empt the budget process, but it obviously sits alongside the strategy. My personal view is that now is not the time to cut funding to these services, and I am keen to offer assurance that what comes next is unlikely to be smaller.

That is a really good question. I do not have a sense of where we would be if there were no barriers, but I do have sense of where the need might arise and where local stakeholders are already looking into it. If you look at a map of Scotland, you can see quite easily where there are concentrations of drug deaths, and those would seem sensible places to consider such a facility.

At the moment, work is coming forward from Edinburgh and, at a very early stage, from Dundee, to consider safer drug consumption facilities. Given the number of deaths that occur in both those localities, that is reasonable. Edinburgh is a little more advanced, and the two sites that it has identified seem reasonable. It appears to have matched up the potential sites with where the deaths are occurring. In the past three years, there have been 34 deaths within a 15-minute walk of one of them, and there have been 36 deaths in the past three years within a 15-minute walk of the other site that is being considered. It is important that local areas look at what is happening in their locality.

Earlier this week, I met partners in Inverclyde. Drug use and drug deaths are significantly more scattered in that part of the country, but the area is very high in the national statistics. It is clear that creative thought needs to go into how to rise to and meet that challenge, but a fixed drug consumption room may not be the appropriate solution for that locality, because drug deaths are happening throughout it.

We need to be careful about setting expectations around that. The service is life saving, as we have heard. An earlier witness—I think that it might have been Kelda Gaffney—made the point that, if people are not alive, they cannot be rehabilitated. The profound importance of saving lives should not be underestimated.

Then we need to think about the first steps on the recovery journey and how we achieve person-centred, individualised recovery. I am pretty clear that abstinence is not recovery. We should not mistake the two things.

Often, the first step on the recovery journey is stabilising housing and people having a secure roof over their heads. We heard from Tara Shivaji that people who have unstable housing are at a significantly higher risk of death. I am concerned about the narrative that suggests that the high rate of referral for housing might not be a success. I know that that is not what you are saying, Pauline—

The Home Office has approved a licence for Glasgow, so people there are working hard to deliver that facility. There are three other proposed facilities—in Aberdeen, Dundee and Edinburgh. Edinburgh is a little behind the other two; it came quite late to the pilot. The proposals for Aberdeen and Dundee are quite developed, but they require a drug-testing facility in Dundee. The national testing and reference laboratory needs to be up and running for those facilities to be able to finalise their application to the Home Office.

I met representatives of the Leverhulme last week. I am confident in the progress, and we are supporting as much as we can the process of getting the national testing and reference laboratory up and running. I know that you have made a request to meet me, and I am happy to meet you some time soon over the next few weeks, so that I can update you fully on where we are. We are on the cusp of progress; I am pretty sure that we are just doing the final touches.

The model in both Aberdeen and Dundee requires the Dundee lab to be a part of it.

It is fair to say that the situation that the university as a whole has faced has probably slowed progress slightly over the past year, but we are motoring now.

It is really important that the community’s concerns are listened to. We heard from the previous panel about the forum that is available to hear those concerns.

The drugs market is entirely unregulated. We do not have access to drugs on any legal basis in Scotland. Organised crime is a huge part of the drugs market in Scotland, and a suite of work is going on across the UK to tackle that organised crime activity and disrupt the market. However, it is really challenging.

When we had the four-nations meeting, one of the people who attended from a justice background talked about a £75 million haul of cocaine that was achieved in Glasgow. Although £75 million-worth of cocaine was taken out of the market there, it made not a jot of difference to that market. It gives us some idea of how resilient the market is—and how resilient the supply in some parts of Scotland is—that even removing £75 million-worth of drugs from it does not make a difference to the supply.

With the new synthetics, we are up against different challenges, in that they are very potent drugs. As a paramedic described it to me, what used to be a suitcase is now a matchbox-sized package of synthetic opioids. That means that people are able to get them into the country and, in fact, manufacture them in the country. Some manufacturing of synthetic opioids is happening in the UK—not in Scotland, as far as I know, but certainly in the UK. Disrupting the supply is undoubtedly challenging, but our justice partners are working really hard to stay one step ahead of the criminals who are causing such distress in our communities.