Seòmar agus comataidhean

My question is not for right now, convener; I was just going to say that I can come in after Alasdair Allan.

Good morning. I have no interests to declare.

Thank you for breaking down the finances.

Much has been made of the cost of residential rehab. The Castle Craig clinic, which is mentioned in a BBC article, costs £2,500 a week for one person. There is a variety of residential approaches. The number of residential beds in Scotland has increased to 418, which is up from 365 previously. That is good news. There is a breadth of residential rehabilitation and a variety of costs. The Scottish Government is looking at a tailored person-centred approach that fits each person. You have talked about families and about Phoenix Futures.

Will you report back to us, in the chamber or in committee, on your assessment of all those pathways for funding and how they are working?

I have a quick question. The issue of drug-related deaths is complex and work is being done in many strands. In previous questions in the chamber, I was interested in the tackling of stigma. We know that the Scottish drugs task force, in collaboration with other partners, has a strategy for addressing stigmatisation among people, communities and families. Stigmatisation is an issue in rural areas as well.

How important is it to tackle stigma, so that the media uses correct images, or better ones, and so that healthcare professionals who do not work in direct services with alcohol and drug users—people such as myself, when I worked in the recovery room—have a better understanding around the use of stigmatising language?

All the matters that we have discussed this morning involve financial input, and I am aware that the Scottish Government has committed to increasing funding. There was £5 million at the end of the previous financial year, and an allocation of an additional £50 million of funding each year, which will total £250 million over this session of Parliament. That will support further investment in a range of community-based interventions, including primary prevention and the expansion of residential rehabilitation, which you have covered a wee bit. Will you provide a breakdown of how that funding is allocated? Will we have reporting from the alcohol and drug partnerships that spend the money, and will we get an idea of how that spending will be assessed and evaluated?

Recovery must continue after someone’s stay in residential rehab. That is also part of the funding. Assertive outreach is another part. There are lots of strands that support people through the process. The third sector and charities are important to any funding model that we consider.

I will pick up on what the convener was saying about naloxone. Front-line workers are carrying out testing for the naloxone pilot, and ambulance crews, front-line police officers and even families are being trained to use naloxone. How is that being received? Has being engaged in the naloxone testing been positive for front-line workers?

I thank the convener for having me here, and the committee for considering the petition. I am aware of the petition, as I know Dr Gordon Baird very well. He lodged it on behalf of himself and the Galloway community hospital action group, and another retired GP, Dr Angela Armstrong.

The petition calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to create an agency to ensure that health boards offer fair and reasonable management of rural and remote healthcare issues. Dumfries and Galloway is part of my South Scotland region and Stranraer is the town where I was born and lived until moving to the Dumfries area when I was 12. I am very familiar with the rurality of the south-west part of my constituency. I often hear from constituents that they feel forgotten, as many people automatically look to places north of the central belt, and even to the islands, when providing examples of remote and rural places in Scotland.

I will share a couple of examples, one of which the convener has already touched on. NHS Dumfries and Galloway is part of the south-east Scotland cancer network, meaning that people who live in Wigtownshire, Dumfries, Canonbie and Lockerbie are included in cancer pathways and treatment plans such that they sometimes have to go to Edinburgh for some types of cancer care, such as radiotherapy. That is a 266-mile round trip for folk living in Stranraer.

Based on the response to questions raised with the previous health secretary about the cancer pathway issue, my understanding is that patients in Dumfries and Galloway are offered a choice of place to attend as part of their treatment. If their treatment choice is Glasgow, that would therefore be the place to attend. However, nowhere in Dumfries and Galloway is closer to Edinburgh by travel time than Glasgow and the Beatson, for instance.

A second example to highlight regarding fairness is that persons in other health board areas such as Ayrshire and Arran and Highlands and Islands are offered travel reimbursement for journeys of more than 30 miles. That is not the case in Dumfries and Galloway, where people are means tested for any travel costs to be reimbursed. Those are only two examples.

The Scottish National Party’s manifesto proposes a centre of excellence for remote and rural health and social care. I have already had a response from Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care, Humza Yousaf, regarding initial progress on that. I welcome the Government’s introduction of the Scottish graduate entry to medicine programme. We also passed the University of St. Andrews (Degrees in Medicine and Dentistry) Bill in the most recent session of Parliament. ScotGEM has a focus on increasing the number of graduate doctors with a rural focus.

I would be grateful to the petitions committee for progressing this petition. I would seek to be proactive and objective and to have those proactive and objective measures taken forward. We need to highlight the health challenges in remote and rural areas. I would therefore welcome the petitions committee’s continued progression of the petition.

I know that the transport secretary met petitioners here in Parliament and also at the meeting in Stranraer that I organised and to which all colleagues were invited. I wanted to make it clear that this is not a political issue; instead, it is about safety, transport and access.

If publication of the strategic transport review is imminent, I think that it would be worth while hearing about that first instead of having another round-table meeting. I know how concerned the transport secretary is right now and I know that he is aware that people in the south-west of Scotland, too, have a high level of concern.

Thank you, convener, and thank you for having us at this morning’s committee meeting to discuss this important petition.

Like my colleague Finlay Carson, I have asked numerous questions in the chamber on this matter, and we had three debates on it in the previous five-year session. The issue is of great interest to people in the south-west of Scotland, given that the A75 and the A77 are the main arterial routes connecting us to the European Union, and I absolutely agree that they need to be improved.

I am therefore interested in finding out how we are going to move forward with the petition. I am aware that the south-west roads review has fed into the strategic transport review, which is due to be released imminently, and I am keen to see what improvements the Government will be committing to.

When Michael Matheson became cabinet secretary with responsibility for this issue, he visited Stranraer to meet members of the A75 and A77 action groups, and we were able to hear from him on the matter. From freedom of information requests that have been put in on this matter, we are aware of challenges with regard to safety, collisions, fatalities and so on, and we have tried to use that evidence to make the argument for investment in these roads. We also know how many lorries are on the roads when ferries arrive and depart.

I am keen to see what the committee can do to chivvy the Government along into taking action and making improvements on both roads.