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You are absolutely right. ABIs are a really useful tool. They are short, evidence-based, structured conversations about alcohol consumption. They are non-confrontational, motivating and supportive. They are really attractive tools for health professionals and others to use opportunistically when there is a chance to have a chat, and they have the potential to reduce the risk of harm from alcohol.

We began a piece of work to review the evidence on the current delivery of alcohol brief interventions, but that was yet another piece of work that was impacted by the pandemic. Public Health Scotland was carrying out that work for us and wanted to look at how ABIs could better meet individuals’ needs. We are just picking that work up again. We are establishing a revised strategy group to review and discuss the evidence, the purpose being to develop new recommendations on how best to take ABIs forward in Scotland. The terms of reference for that group are being finalised and Public Health Scotland will be the secretariat.

We are reviewing the evidence as a whole and we will look at what currently happens in practice. How people access general practice and primary care has also changed significantly over the pandemic. We will look carefully at who is best placed to deliver ABIs, where people access health and support and where such conversations might happen—that might involve members of the primary care team other than the GP.

We are keen to look at all that and come up with recommendations that will support the use of ABIs, which most people agree are quite a useful strategy for opening up conversations and beginning the process of motivation towards change. We will see what we can do.

I can. I agree that it is not easy to track the spending—the Government acknowledges that, and we are keen to improve the situation. I think that Angela Constance has responded in the chamber to an audit report on that matter. We want people to understand where the money is going and what outcomes we expect to achieve and are achieving from it.

The Scottish Government gives health boards £53.8 million a year in baseline funding, which the boards pass on to alcohol and drug partnerships. That supports alcohol and drug treatment and recovery services at local level. As well as that, in 2020-21, the Scottish Government allocated an additional £17 million to alcohol and drug partnerships, which continued the commitment that was made in the 2017-18 programme for government to improve the provision and quality of services for those with problem drug and alcohol use.

We are also undertaking a range of work specifically to improve alcohol treatment services across Scotland, including the development of a public health surveillance system and the implementation of UK-wide clinical guidelines for alcohol treatment. We have also invested in the Simon Community Scotland, which I mentioned. It has established a small-scale managed alcohol programme in Glasgow, and we are providing funding of £212,000 over three years for the pilot and evaluation.

The Scottish Government also provides funding to a number of third sector stakeholders—Alcohol Focus Scotland, Scottish Health Action on Alcohol Problems and the Scottish Alcohol Counselling Consortium—to develop their vital work.

The final thing to mention is the national drugs mission. The two issues are not separate. Services on the ground are usually delivered by alcohol and drug partnerships, and people go to the same services. In this session of Parliament, £250 million is being invested through the national drugs mission, £100 million of which is going directly to residential rehab services. The data for the past year shows that 45 per cent of the people who accessed residential rehab had alcohol problems, and about 20 per cent had combined drug and alcohol problems. Therefore, that investment benefits this population, too.

We are in a position where councillors can say no. They have considerable discretion to determine appropriate licensing arrangements according to their local priorities and circumstances and their legal advice. I do not think that it is appropriate for the Scottish Government to intervene in those matters, and certainly not in individual cases.

As I have said repeatedly, tell me if there is something that you think that I need to do at Scottish Government level to strengthen councils’ hand. However, we have seen—and our experience has certainly been—that, because the alcohol industry is very well funded and global, it is quite likely to use the law to challenge anything that impacts on its business. That is the reality. Local authorities have a responsibility to balance the needs of all the people living in their local area and to come to the decisions that are best for them. They, not central Government, are best placed to do that.

As I said, I am more than willing to hear from councils, stakeholders and politicians from any party if they think that there are things that we could do to support local authorities. As you know, much of the licensing is in the hands of our local authorities, in many respects, so that they can make decisions that are appropriate for their own communities, which is absolutely the right thing to do. If there are any suggestions for what we could do to strengthen councils’ ability to make decisions, I am more than happy to consider them.

You are absolutely right to think of it in that way. The World Health Organization talks about the three best buys being availability, affordability and attractiveness, and those wine, cider, gin or whisky clubs—there are many different versions of the same thing—target availability and attractiveness, and there is a great deal of marketing for them. Alcohol is delivered to your home every month, six weeks or whatever the frequency is without any effort, which encourages more drinking. We definitely need to think about things such as that.

As I said, we will not shift our relationship with alcohol overnight by pulling one lever. Things will come along that change our habits. The pandemic completely changed almost everyone’s behaviour overnight, and we do not know whether those changes will stick. I do not recall anyone being a member of a wine club when I was growing up, but it is not uncommon to have online tastings and things like that now. The world has changed and we need to keep considering how our behaviour has changed and ensuring that the measures that we are using keep us in the healthy zone. We are not aiming for abstinence or zero alcohol in Scotland; we are aiming for healthy drinking and a healthy relationship with alcohol, and we need to keep an eye on how our behaviour changes.

In essence, there are different tiers of intervention. We expect much to be resolved at the official level, as it currently is. We expect that to continue and ministers to be able to be pulled in to work together to resolve issues, should that be needed. However, I do not expect that to happen frequently.

That is a really excellent question. Last month, SHAAP published some interesting studies on a couple of areas of inequality. One was on LGBTQ+ people. Another, from the University of Dundee, looked at alcohol nurses in deep-end practices, which particularly target socioeconomic deprivation.

The evidence about LGBTQ+ people is that that particular community experiences more alcohol harm than others and uses alcohol in a different way. There are a number of reasons for that, but it is likely that being a minority group facing hostility and discrimination influences drinking behaviour. Historically, safe places for LGBTQ+ people were often bars and clubs. Society must reflect on that learning and think about how we can change that.

Most of the recommendations about making services inclusive were for those who deliver services on the ground. I absolutely support the work that has been done and the recommendations that have been made. I am keen for service delivery to reflect that learning.

I hear from a number of groups—not only from LGBTQ+ people—that services do not look as if they are for them. The study showed that most people perceive services as being for middle-aged heterosexual men. Women and young people feel as if they cannot access services. We must reflect on that. We have a problem with alcohol throughout society and we need our services to be inclusive and welcoming. It is hard for people to ask for help, so we need them to get that when they come in.

You are absolutely right. I represent a constituency in the far north that is quite sparsely populated and has a long history of alcohol harm. I am very interested in that subject.

We definitely need to improve access to alcohol treatment in every part of Scotland, and we need to think about all the health inequalities that play out in our health system, generally. We must consider geographical inequalities, women, poverty and LGBTQ+ people. It is a problem that occurs all over Scotland and perhaps to a greater extent in some of our more rural populations. We are very keen to ensure that services are delivered in rural areas.

Northern Ireland will automatically align with EU regulations, whereas Scotland will make a policy choice to align with EU regulations. I guess that that is the difference.