Seòmar agus comataidhean

I am not sure that the questions will be sweet, but they are a suite of questions.

Thank you very much for the evidence that you have given. I have been listening with great interest.

Where do I start? Ms Lamb, let me put this in context. This coming Sunday will mark 22 years since I lost my dad to drugs and alcohol. I was 22 years of age at the time, and he was 42. I am now two years older than he was when he succumbed to those diseases. You might thus appreciate my sense of sadness, frustration and perhaps even anger that we are having this conversation, two decades later. Far too many people in Scotland are still going through what I went through as a young boy.

We have talked about a lot of statistics today, and behind every one of those statistics is a person. Year on year, more and more people are dying of drugs and alcohol in Scotland—two decades on from when I thought that things could not get any worse.

I guess that what I am asking is this: do you understand why so many people are so frustrated and so angry at the direction of travel with the statistics? Do you understand why so many people have lost confidence in the Scottish Government and in your ability to manage the problem?

It is impossibly difficult, particularly if you are young. Many young people are living through the experience of being the carer for their parents who are struggling with alcohol and drug problems. That is indescribable, to put it mildly.

I had the unfortunate experience of having to repeat the situation a couple of years ago with another close member of the family, so I have gone through all the experiences that we have talked about today more recently—everything from the ADPs to the rehab options to the primary care options. I do not say this to score points, but I can tell you from first-hand experience that it was incredibly difficult and nigh-on impossible to get support for someone who was struggling with an alcohol addiction. That was just a couple of years ago, in modern-day Scotland, and years and years after my previous experience. Personally, I do not think that things are getting better, and I think that many people watching this session will share that view, unfortunately.

Here is what I do not understand. I appreciate all the money that has been pumped into this: you talked at great length about the doubling of the budget from £70 million to £160 million between 2013 and 2023-2024, the ring-fenced money for ADPs and the national mission cash that has gone into all of this. I have heard a lot about that, and it is all very welcome—it really is. However, despite that, year on year, the numbers still go up: there were 527 drug deaths in 2013 and 1,172 in 2023. It seems as if cash is not solving the problem. We can keep pumping money into it, but the statistics are still heading in the wrong direction. I cannot get my head around that. Please help me to understand why pumping more money into the problem has not solved it.

I have heard two phrases used a lot this morning: one is that the issue is complicated, and the other is that it is complex. I do not disagree with you. There are so many intertwining issues that make it complicated. These are long-standing generational problems in communities such as the ones that I grew up in—I understand and appreciate that—and many of the wider macroeconomic factors that have been affecting the issue over the years are outside your control.

However, hearing that the issue is complicated and complex does not fill me with confidence that we are heading in the right direction. I came to this evidence session with an open mind, and I wanted to leave full of confidence that the problem is understood, that there is a strategy and that the direction of travel is right, and having seen that there is some honesty about any failures that have happened. I have heard responses that give me some confidence in that respect, but I have heard other responses that do not. This is your opportunity to say to people, yes, it might be complicated and complex, but it has always been complicated and complex. It was complicated and complex 20 years ago—that has not changed.

Yes and, obviously, Police Scotland has a massive role in that as well.

I cannot let the evidence session pass without raising the joint letter that the committee has received from Alcohol Focus Scotland and Scottish Health Action on Alcohol Problems. Those are two organisations for which many MSPs will have a huge amount of time and respect. Perhaps we will not all agree on every issue, but that is not the point.

The letter is short, but I am afraid that it is stark and critical. Alcohol Focus Scotland and SHAAP simply want us to ask you to respond to their letter. They welcome many of the measures that you are taking—there is no doubt about that—but their view is that

“this is an inadequate, piecemeal approach and the actions ... do not add up to a coordinated plan to respond to the ... ‘public health emergency’”.

They go on to say:

“We would be very interested to hear views from”

the witnesses

“as to how the actions listed in”

your letter, Ms Lamb—including

“a real terms cut to the Alcohol and Drugs Policy budget line—square with ... comments”

and recommendations

“made by the Auditor General.”

Here is your opportunity to respond.

If I may ask a very specific question, are you as nervous as I am that we are on the precipice of a major problem with fentanyl in Scotland? We have seen what has been happening in other countries. If that arrives on our doorstep and the serious organised criminal gangs find a cheap and easy pathway to get that drug on to our streets, we will not be talking about 1,100 people dying—we will be talking about 10,000 or 11,000 people dying of drugs in Scotland.

Okay. I presume that any underspend on people costs at the end of the financial year is set. There is no rolling over of budget for people, for example.

Audit firms will incur increased national insurance costs for their own staff. Is that factored into the increase that you have agreed with them for the work that they undertake, or will there have to be an NIC increase over and above what you have agreed?

Good—so they should be.

That is very helpful. I appreciate that there are a number of moving parts, and that complexity makes it difficult to take a snapshot in relation to a budget ask and present it in that way. For future years, it might be helpful to get a snapshot of those moving parts in order to see, for example, how the average salary is changing and to get a feel for the number of people that you have and, relatively, how much that costs.

In effect, year on year, you come back to ask for more money for people. That seems to be off the back of annual pay rises as opposed to fluctuations in the types or number of people that you have. The other side of that is marrying that up with the type of work that you are doing and the implementation of automation and AI, for example. I am looking for more of a medium-term strategy, rather than this annual snapshot that we seem to get. However, perhaps that is for another session on another day.

I am glad that modernisation has been mentioned a few times, because I want to talk about that. I have a specific question on this year’s budget ask. Apart from national insurance contributions, the biggest chunk of your 10 per cent year-on-year increase relates to your request for £672,000 for audit modernisation. Why is that a people cost? The commission assumed that that would be a cost for consultancy, an agency, software or development work or some form of pre-implementation cost, but that budget line seems to be a cost for people. Why is that?

How reliable is that estimate? With the greatest respect, public bodies do not have the best track record in forecasting budgets for software and modernisation projects. I am concerned that, although £672,000 this year is a big chunk, you might be loading the costs towards the end of the project and that, in a year or two, we will find that you come back to ask for £2 million or £3 million, because the cost of the whole thing has just ballooned.

That follows on nicely from the chair’s line of questioning with regard to your passing on the uplift in fees, which is much lower than what you are being charged by external companies. What is the strategy in that respect? For example, given that a small handful of very big companies perform the lion’s share of such audit work, is there a risk that, in future, they might simply not bid for it in light of the relatively low margins for such work or the nature of the bodies that they are required to audit?