 Rydw i'n gynnwys angenir y ddylch yn haes yn gyfer Y Cadw Llywodraeth, Y Gŵrraeth Yngrifin, Y Rhyw Hesbwrth, Y Rhyw Dawr, Y Rhyw Letys, Y Llywodraeth, Ysgwyrraeth Yngrifin, Aelwch Fyllte,を dweud theyig i'n ei filiad mewn angenir. Rydw i'n gynnwys angenir y ddylch yn gynnwys angenir y ddylch yn gŵrraeth yr angenir y dywch gwaith a'i ddod o'r ddylch yn gweithio'r mus offline eichdom fan envelope i techydig niw. Ieitho fod ein hoffi a'u cais i chi i dissawnON Hittmallt House MP, Minister of State for Crime, Policing and Probation and Marcus Starling, Head of the Misuse of Drugs and Firearms Unit at the Home Office, the UK Government. I welcome both. I invite the minister to make some brief opening remarks for me for around three minutes. I thank you very much indeed for asking me to your meeting this afternoon, such as the importance of the issue of the misuse of drugs and particularly drug deaths to the whole of the United Kingdom, but particularly to Scotland, that I have said many times that I am happy to engage with anybody who wants to talk to me about how we can improve our joint efforts to tackle this problem in all parts of the home nations. When the Prime Minister stood on the steps of Downing Street back in 2019, he identified drugs and, in particular, the pernicious problems of the county lines drugs distribution model as a key objective of his Government to get on top of. We started pretty immediately with a very assertive plan on county lines, closing down many hundreds of lines and restricting supply as much as we possibly could, particularly into our smaller towns and villages. Alongside that, we recognised that work needs to be done on deaths and, in particular, from the health and rehabilitation point of view. We established what we call ADER projects in five areas of England and Wales to look at how we could better bring those therapeutic interventions, if you like, together, along with the policing effort to get on top of the problem. Obviously, as part of that, we recognised that there was a whole UK effort required on drugs. We initiated a series of drug summits, the first of which was held in Glasgow back in 2020, to work out how we could better learn from each other as a set of four nations and improve, as I say, our game. That all culminated last December in the launch of a national drugs plan for England and Wales called From Harm to Hope, with three broad strands restricting supply at which we are getting better and better, building a world-class treatment system, rehabilitation system, particularly initially focused on those 300,000 heroin and crack users, who are causing so much problem, and then, more widely, how we could reduce demand. In all that, we obviously are pledged to work very closely with the Scottish Government. We recognise that, while my job is about crime and that drugs drive an awful lot of crime, it is also critical to the solution of so many social problems in terms of family breakdown, degradation and, indeed, that drugs drive so much poverty and deprivation that we want to get on top of it. Our relationship with the Scottish Government has been very constructive, albeit that the issue of drug consumption rooms, where we differ—one of the few areas where we differ, no doubt we want to talk about that—is one that we still continue to chew on. However, my relationship with Angela Constance is very good and constructive, and we have certainly had good conversations at the summits that we have attended. I very much welcome your inquiry and your natural and very well-focused attempt to drive both the Scottish Government and the United Kingdom to greater and greater efforts in this regard. We will move straight on to questions now. If I may, I would like to start with an opening question about safe drug consumption rooms. You will know that many experts, people with lived experience committees such as the Scottish Affairs Committee at Westminster, have recommended the introduction of safe consumption rooms in terms of the contribution that they can make to reducing drugs deaths in the UK. Similarly, Douglas Ross has said that he would not oppose the introduction of an overdose prevention centre in Scotland, and neither should the UK Government. If the UK Government is still resistant to its introduction, and if so, why, given the strength of the evidence that seems to be behind such an approach? As I said earlier, this is an issue where I am afraid that we do differ with the Scottish Government. While I have been open to reviewing evidence—in particular, any new evidence—I remain open to reviewing that whenever and wherever it is available. Having looked at the balance of evidence, much of it is about a small number of locations. It is quite limited. Although it points to some benefits, it is hard to disassociate from a wider health-led approach in which those facilities generally sit. In the past, when the debate was initiated what two years ago, when we had our first summit, my view was that DCRs were missing the wider point. The Scottish—in particular, the SNP—push on DCRs was missing the wider point, which is that, truly to solve that problem, we needed a wider, much more extensive and assertive health and rehabilitation approach. Happily, more investment is going into that in Scotland. Certainly, at the last spending review, we secured unprecedented investment into building this world-class treatment system here in England and Wales. Alongside that, we do believe that there are more complicated issues at play that need to be considered around DCRs, not least some of the legal obstacles that have to be overcome. For example, if you were to put a drug consumption room in Govan, would people in possession of drugs in Bersden on their way to Govan, would they be open to be arrested? If the drugs are supplied just outside, is that a crime? We also believe that there are civil liability issues that may attach to those individuals who work in DCRs and who may administer the drugs in the awful eventuality of being a death or some kind of medical problem. There are lots and lots of practical issues that would take time to work through, even if we were to step over that line and agree. The problem, in my view, is so urgent in Scotland, as it is in England and Wales. The numbers are so high that we will achieve much more by focusing hard on re-rolling out strong and assertive health intervention and, in particular, some of the new pharmacological interventions that we are seeing now rolling out. For example, we have seen great success in south Wales and, indeed now, further afield in England and Wales with depo buprenorphine, a product called buvidal, which is an opioid agonist but that has a ceiling to it. We have seen transformational effect from the administration of this drug much better than morphine. I know that the Scottish Government is looking carefully at how it can roll it out as part of the effort. The areas of expenditure that we think will show much more benefit are much more closely evidenced, and I would like to have much more of a wider impact than I was wrestling with the legal and practical difficulties of putting a DCR in place. I am quite happy to look at new evidence, and I have said that I remain open-minded. However, while we are considering that look here, we must step forward assertively in those other areas and do what we can to save lives. I will hand over shortly to members to open up questioning. If we have time at the end, I may come back to the point that you have raised around the legality of safer consumption rooms and the current position on that that is being taken by our Lord Advocate in terms of looking at a proposal for Scotland on that. I will now hand over to Russell Finlay. Hi, good afternoon, Mr Walthouse and Mr Sterling. Quite rightly, the Scotland's drug death crisis is being treated as a matter of public health, but I wonder whether sometimes we might lose sight of the highly dangerous and organised gangs who make lots of money from killing so many people. Can you explain who you are thinking behind that? We firmly believe that law enforcement is a critical part of the solution, and that while we absolutely have to make sure that we get health and rehabilitation right, we need to deal with demand. We also need to deal with supply. You are right that there are large and sophisticated, very violent and unpleasant groups of individuals, both in the UK and externally, who are feeding the drugs in. They are doing it for money and they are making a hell of a lot of money, as we speak. We want to concentrate very much on that. That is what we have been doing over the past couple of years with some success, but there is definitely much more that we can do. In particular geographies, we think that policing can play a big part. For example, if you look at Blackpool, which is one of our outer areas, we have put an outer project in, which is where we are co-ordinating the health and social interventions, housing, employment, yes health therapy, treatment rehabilitation, lived experience workers who can have contact with heroin and crack addicts. It is also critical that the police are throwing a ring of steel around Blackpool to restrict supply. We have seen a rest for drug supply go up by 400 per cent in Blackpool just over the last year or so. The reason for that is that we want to make it less likely that when a heroin addict walks out of a therapeutic appointment with somebody, they are less likely to walk straight into the hands of a dealer, and when an acquisitive criminal whose crime is driven by addiction, when they leave prison and go back to Blackpool, into the accommodation that they are providing for them, they are not going back into the hands of a dealer. We think that restricting supply is critical, and we are very focused on that at all levels of policing in Wales. In your opening statement, you talked about the importance of joint efforts working together, yet the Scottish Government rejected an offer to extend adder into Scotland. Can you, in any way, quantify what the detriment might have been from that decision, or do you think that because there is already a national crime agency operating at the UK level, thankfully, we continue to see those benefits? You absolutely benefit from the effort of the national crime agency. I know that Police Scotland works hand-in-glove with the NCA on some of that work. In fact, Scotland benefits from some of the enforcement work that takes place in England, because most of the drugs that come to Scotland emanate in England. For example, you might have seen that it was in early 2021 that the NCA and Kent Police bussed open a manufacturing facility in Kent that was producing street benzos for Glasgow. As part of that bus, they confiscated 27 million benzo tablets that were going to Glasgow, 27 million tablets that were adding north of the border, and incredible volumes that were coming from that factory. God knows how many they sent up before we managed to get ahead of them. We think that we can do something in terms of restricting supply, and we would love to do more. In terms of the ADER project, I would be keen to see an ADER approach in Scotland. I think that it would have benefits. I know that there is a lot of work going on through the drug desk task force, and they are part of our kind of ADER information network, because part of the mission with ADER was to create a sense of movement, a sense of a learning network that could look at different practice in different areas and move towards a model that would have the most impact. I know that they will be looking very carefully. However, I would be keen to see as much assertive restriction supply from Police Scotland as they could probably muster—not least also, because geographically, from my point of view, Scotland has a huge advantage, which is that the exit and egress from your wonderful nation is quite limited. Essentially, there are a couple of railway lines and a couple of major roads—I know that there are more than that—but, in essence, and between us, it should not be too hard to intercept and restrict that supply that is travelling up and down the M1 and the M6 and the two rail lines to restrict the supply and to see what happens. We have some good relationships. There are organised crime partnerships between the Northern forces, Merseyside, Manchester and Police Scotland. We would love to see more of that, but it is absolutely the case. I think that you are pointing to something that is very important, is that the drugs gangs do not care whether it is Scotland, England or Wales. They just care where they can make money. We need to make sure that, between us, we are on top of them as much as we can be. I think that I may not have any more time. I am not entirely sure. I am sorry. No, no, that is fine. Thank you very much, minister. If we have time, we will come back to members who wish to ask for more questions. I am now going to bring in Gillian Mackay, followed by Pauline McNeill. Thank you, convener. Good afternoon, minister. Does the minister believe that the war on drugs has been a success? Well, first of all, I would not characterise it necessarily as a war on drugs, but do I think that the work that has been done over the last, whatever, 30 or 40 years has meant that the situation is less worse than it might otherwise have been? Yes, but do I think that the battle against drugs or, indeed, crime is a linear one where you can ever declare a success? I would say no, it is always two steps forward, one step back in my humble experiences and I have been involved in fighting crime for over a decade now. I guess that you are asking me a hypothetical, but if we had not had enforcement against drugs and we had not done the work that we have done on treatment, even though we now want to ramp it up even more, you have to ask yourself whether the situation would be even worse than it is now. If you look at Scotland, for example, the Scottish drug deaths are very high and all-time high now. That is driven by demographics, so that is driven by a cohort of individuals who sadly started taking drugs back in the 1970s and 80s when enforcement perhaps was not as strong as it might otherwise have been. Unfortunately, their bodies can no longer take it and very, very sadly we are seeing numbers of deaths rise. Now, you have to ask yourself, will that continue in the future? I certainly hope not if we put our minds together and drive the numbers down in a co-ordinated way. So we can wait if we focus, as might be. Just to follow up, convener, on safe consumption rooms, minister, you said you needed more evidence. There are at least 39 sites in Canada up here, reviewed articles from Portugal, evidence bases in San Francisco, Seattle, Boston, Vermont, Delaware, Portland and Oregon, and that is just three countries from a very cursory glance at safe consumption rooms around the world. The evidence is well established that these places save lives. The Scottish Parliament has backed safe consumption rooms. Given the evidence and the democratic mandate, what would the minister say to the families of those who could be helped by safe consumption rooms but currently cannot be because of your Government's decisions? I would say that if you look, for example, at Portugal, which you pointed to, people always point to the drug consumption rooms and they never mention that the Portuguese made a massive investment in health and rehabilitation. That is what has had the pivotal impact on reducing the number of deaths in that country. You also have not mentioned the drug consumption rooms, the number that has been open and then closed down because they did not work. I am happy to look at new evidence. Quite a lot of the evidence that we have seen and we have reviewed all that evidence is around a small number of locations, and it is not necessarily up to date or telling us anything that we did not know already. The big picture here is widespread, assertive and comprehensive investment in health and rehabilitation over a long period. If you have a solution to those practical and legal problems that I have enunciated, by all means let us know what that solution is. How should police Scotland police drug dealers around a drug consumption room? Where should they be? How do people travel? If somebody dies in a drug consumption room, is anybody liable? All of those questions would need to be teased out. While we have that debate—I am happy to have it and, as I say, I am happy to look at the evidence—it is critical that we do not lose focus, that you as a committee do not let me or Angela off the hook on making sure that we roll out that rehabilitation and do our best to restrict supply. I am sure that that is not your intention, but I recognise that the media discourse is dominated by this DCR thing, whereas it should be dominated, in my view, by a sense of urgency in getting that roll-out right on health and rehabilitation, critically looking at those new pharmacological developments. If you get the chance, please do go and google Bovedal and find some of the YouTube videos that have been put up there by medical professionals who are using this thing on the front line now in England and Wales. I watched one the other day, very effectively, two front-line drug-prescribing GPs who are using it in south Wales. I think that the video was when they just started back in 2021. They talk about transformation in some of the most entrenched heroin and crack addicts that they have come across. That is the kind of thing that we can agree on and that we can make fast progress on if we concentrate. Am I in time, convener? I think that for the moment I am afraid that you are jillian, so I am running to you on and it is a stable comeback if we have time. I am going to hand over to Pauline McNeill now and then I will bring in Sue Weber. Pauline. Thank you very much. Good afternoon, minister, and thank you for appearing before us. I do want to press you further on safe drug consumption names, but I want to be clear that that is not because I do not agree with everything else that you are saying. I get the point that you make, but of the sites that Gillian Mackay refers to, I mean the 66 cities across the country and there have been no deaths. 300 health professionals in England and Wales had signed a letter following the Health and Social Committee calling for that. Are you aware that the Lord Advocate in Scotland has said on the record, so this is Dorothy Bain, has said that if she is asked to consider the question in the context, of course, of riding deaths and the public health context, if she is asked to make a decision about whether it would be in the public interest to prosecute in safe consumption rooms, then she will deliver a decision on that. I would give our caveat that minister was saying exactly as you said there. There are complicated questions, but complicated questions can be answered in law. The example that you gave in Govan, to me, is quite clear that the law can clarify that the law in the public interest would not be applied in order to save lives but in the areas that you would designate. Okay, so let me give you another example. Say that a DCR was to open in Govan, but a drug user in Edinburgh wanted to jump on the train and go and use it. If they are apprehended on the train at the station in Edinburgh, should they be arrested and prosecuted if they say that they are on the way to the drug consumption room? My concern is that Police Scotland might be put in a tricky position in terms of what prosecutions they put forward and what they don't. We have to be quite careful about the signal that we send more widely on drugs and drug consumption and whether it is acceptable and whether we want to drive that number down. You will have seen today, for example, in the media reports about the impact of cannabis on mental health in Scotland and the rising number of cases of people who are showing signs of psychosis and other mental health problems because of excessive cannabis use. Now, we have seen some of that in England and Wales as well. It gives cause for concern about the confused signals that we might send around that and the position that the police are in where those messages are given. Now, look, I respect the position of your Lord Advocate. Obviously, that is for her to decide. From my point of view, I think that we need to be clear about the position, clear about the law, invest in health and rehabilitation and then do our best to try to drive down demand, particularly among young people who are taking drugs on a kind of casual thoughtless, unthinking way, because there is no good way to take drugs. It is not good for your health. It absolutely is not. That is something that we need to hammer home, I think. Will you acknowledge that the evidence so far suggests that it does not send out the wrong message, that it does not tend to encourage people to take further drug use, is the evidence that I have seen? Secondly, will you not also agree that, as you say, the question is about how would the police address it, I told to the game with it on that point, but could be dealt with? I suppose that that is the decision that a Lord Advocate would have to wrestle with or, indeed, anyone else as to what guidance would be issued in order to... I do accept that it is complicated, but I do not agree, minister, that it could be done. Well, in a sovereign parliament, anything could be done, but what I am saying to you is that I think that there would be practical difficulties that might make it tricky to do so from a legal point of view, notwithstanding the kind of principled objection that some people may have. There are lots of issues around geography, around travel time, around users, around civil liability. There are lots and lots of issues that need to be addressed, and even if we were to say yesterday, doing all of that work would take time. I guess what I am trying to communicate to you is that the nature of the problem is so urgent, and so much more of a difference can be made by building that treatment system fast, by rolling out these new interventions, that I think that we can overcome and certainly reverse the trend much more quickly that way that we can with it. It is a question of division of ethic. My colleague Marcus has reminded me, convener. I am very sorry. There are other brands of boop and all free and available other than boob and all. It is a bit like a BBC. I have been advertising the brand too much. No apology needed, minister. Thank you very much. I am now going to bring in Sue Weber, followed by Gillian Martin. Thank you, convener. I would just like to set the record straight before we get going in terms of my leader, Douglas Roberts, on drug consumption rooms. He does not oppose a trial of drug consumption rooms. Unlike the chief constable Ian Livingstone, he thinks that there needs to be much stronger evidence than existed presence before it can be taken on more publicly to support it, so I just want to make that clear for the record at the committee today. Thank you, Mr Mollhouse, for coming along. It seems, from some discussions that I have had, that the SNP Government has refused to sign up to the UK wide scheme to tackle drug dealings through project adder. Are there discussions on going on the scheme, or is the SNP Government still refusing to co-operate? What reasons have they given for refusing to participate in the project? In your opinion, and in the opinion of the UK Government, does that stand up to scrutiny? To put one more question on, what resources might we have had in Scotland had we been taking part in this? Obviously, you will have to ask Angela Constance for her reasoning behind not going the full adder. We tried to encourage Scotland to have at least one. I was very keen to try and get one going in Dundee, for example, but as a specific geographic problem, it would work well from an adder point of view. I think that the issue between us is one of what role the police take. Fundamentally, we both believe in a public health approach to that, if that is the jug and the people want to use. My view is that a critical part of that is police activity. To be honest, you have seen that in the Scottish experience in the past. All those years ago, when knife crime was a massive problem in Glasgow and the knife crime task force got going and a public health approach was adopted under Karen McCluskey, who I met then and I know well, because I was struggling with the same problem in London. People forget that the early years of that public health approach involved enormous police enforcement on knives. There was a big role for the police to create the space for the longer-term work to take a hold. We think that the same is true with drugs. That is certainly what we are seeing in Glasgow and in south Wales and in Norwich and in Hastings and in Middlesbrough, where we have the five initial schemes. We have now got eight accelerators in more urban areas. It is amazing work. I have to say that if you wanted to come, any of you, and visit and add a project in England or Wales just to inform yourself about the difference of the nuance, that would be more than welcome. That would be a great thing to do. I do not want to use it as a point of friction, because our relationship is a very positive one. As I say, the Scottish Government is part of the Adder Network, and it is watching and learning. At our summits, we present to each other about how we are getting on, and we are trying to learn from each other as we go. It would be great to have an Adder in Scotland, where Police Scotland could show what a massive contribution it could make to that effort. I will now bring in Gillian Martin and, after Gillian, I will bring in Paul O'Kane. Gillian Martin, I am coming from the perspective of the health convener and the health convener in the Scottish Parliament. That is a very simple question. Would Mr Malthouse agree that people who are addicted to drugs are unwell? Yes, I think that they obviously have an afflitch. The phrase that we use sometimes between us is that they are sad rather than bad, and we do think that it is treatable by some pharmacological means. In response to the recommendations to the drugs desk task force, Mr Malt has said that safe consumption facilities—I am sorry to go on about that—may condone drug use. If I have said that straight off, is that maybe your overriding concern that it is a case of public perception rather than looking at it as a health intervention is what is driving your opposition to them? No, I think that it can be both. As I said earlier, we have to be careful about the signals that we send about drug consumption and its acceptability or otherwise, particularly to young people, if you like the normalisation of it. It is also possible to say that— Do you think that people actively want to become addicted to drugs? My experience is that the people will take drugs for a number of reasons. They will not take drugs just because they are illegal. They are taking them probably because they are in deprived communities and they have issues in their life that drive them to take drugs. I do not think that that is the university of the case. I think that that is a generalisation. I think that there are a number of people who progress through drugs, who start recreationally with what are known as gateway drugs and unfortunately get in snare. I think that there are some people who are victimised into taking drugs. I think that there are some young people who just experiment. Unfortunately, things go wrong. There are undoubtedly some people who take drugs as there are some people who drink to try and overcome their own personal and emotional problems. I do not think that there is any one particular route to addiction. Addiction is indiscriminate. I think that there are lots of rich, well-educated people who are addicted as there are poorer people. In Scotland, if we look at the statistics about drug deaths, it seems to be particular areas of deprivation. The minister is asking Angela Constance for evidence. She has written to you today to point to the trials in New York. I have a letter here. She says that 59 people have been saved in the three weeks since they opened. Is the minister content to look at that new evidence and, as Sue Webber said, to facilitate a trial that would give us Scotland-based evidence so that we can make decisions from a public health perspective? I am certainly willing to look at the new evidence. Angela Constance has written to me today, but we will certainly look that out and look at it urgently. That has always been my offer, and I remain open-minded. We will have a look at what the wider health intervention in New York has been, as well as the safe consumption route. I do not think that you and I are particularly different. My view on that is that the way to deal with the issue, particularly the unfortunate heroin and crack addicts who are afflicted by this addiction, is to treat them. That means a long-term rehabilitative treatment. That will include residential treatment and treatment of the community, and looking at what more we can do and some of the new developments in pharmacology. There are lots that can be done there, and we should be focusing massively on that, because that will be where the big wins are. Does the minister accept that safe drug consumption facilities might be a gateway for people to get treatment? Well, there are a number of gateways. As I say, I am happy to look at the evidence. At the moment, I do not remain convinced that this is the silver bullet that everybody thinks it is. No, exactly. As I have said many times before, when we first started this debate, headlines in the daily record that I said drug consumption were a distraction, and, shortly thereafter, or a year or so later, the S&P Government announced big new investment in health and rehabilitation, which is exactly the right thing to do, as we have announced in the past few months. Let us crack on with that and see the big difference that is going to make in people's lives. I am going to hand over to Paul O'Kane, and then I will bring in Eleanor Whitton after that. Thank you, convener, and good afternoon, minister. I suppose that, following on from the themes that we perhaps already have learned, I am the deputy convener of the health committee and want to focus on public health approach to that. First of all, do you view our action to tackle drug deaths as a public health intervention and that requirement for that, or do you see it as a criminal justice issue? As I said before, I think that when you are dealing with heroin and crack addicts, particularly, because those are the individuals who are most concerned, I know that there is a lot of poly-drug usage, and most of those who sadly die in Scotland often have a number of substances in their existence. Nevertheless, the fundamental basis of that is heroin and crack. When you are dealing with those individuals, my view is that those therapeutic and assistance medical interventions are fighting for those individuals with one hand behind their back if you are doing nothing or very little about supply. Restricting supply through the smart use of policing is critical to success. It was critical to success, as I said earlier, in the early days of Glasgow's fight against knife crime, and I think that it would be critical to success on drugs. If you look at Blackpool, if you look at Tower Hamlets, where we are doing, we have got an agile project, the police are absolutely integral partners. Very often, they are leading the project in Blackpool. We have a superintendent there who said the other day that she has been in policing for 27 years in and around Blackpool. It is the first time that she has felt that there was hope on drugs. People have got to bear in mind that the police are not just about punishment. The police can be critical assistance partners in making sure that the doctors, the drugs workers and the councillors have the chance and the space to win that battle for that human being over the drug dealers. That is why we think that the two go together. Would you accept that we are in the throes of a national emergency on that and that it needs the response that is akin to how we would react to other public health crises? You talked about a silver bullet in a previous answer. I do not think that anyone is saying that there is a silver bullet to that. I think that it is about a basket of measures about communities being well resourced and supported to take the interventions that are right for them. Do you recognise that poverty is an underlying cause and an issue that needs to be tackled in order to deal with this crisis? No, I do not. I think that it is the other way around. The same is true of violence. I think that drugs and violence drive poverty, not that poverty drives those too. There are lots and lots of people who live in deprived areas who do not take drugs and who are not violent, yet the drugs in their area and the violence drives them or holds them back. My view is that if you can remove the drugs and you can remove the violence, generally communities and neighbourhoods fly. There are examples of that around the world. I think that often we are guilty of trying to solve poverty and deprivation. We should try to do that as well. There is a moral obligation to that too. Thinking that that will somehow mean that there will be fewer drugs and less violence does not follow. There is quite an interesting book that came out a couple of years ago by an American academic called Thomas Apte called Bleeding Out, where he posits that if you reverse that equation, if you deal with the violence, he is particularly focused on violence, if you deal with the violence and you drive that out of a neighbourhood, generally that neighbourhood will fly. Your job of building that ladder out of poverty and deprivation is so much easier because you have removed the violence in the first place. I think that the same is true with drugs. I am sitting here in the middle of London in the Ministry of Justice and I was in London Government for eight years. There are lots of parts of London that are deprived or where the vast majority of the population are not taking drugs. They object to the drugs being in their community and they see the impact of housing their kids. We have an obligation to deal with that as much as we do to try and use the various tools of the economy and social mobility to deal with poverty and think that that will somehow solve the drugs. On the policing thing, I do agree with you that the numbers are so alarming that we should be treating this as an emergency. That is why we have published a 10-year plan that is really well funded and will rebuild the treatment system in England and Wales. However, I do not understand why one of your most powerful tools, your most powerful clubs, would leave in your bag, which is the COPS. Thank you very much, Paul. I take it that's you finished. Thanks very much. I will hand over in that case to Elena Whitham and then I will bring in Jeremy Balfour after that, Elena. Thank you very much, convener, and welcome to you minister. My questions are coming from my convener, the social justice and social security committee, but also a former women's aid worker and homelessness worker who spent a lot of time supporting people in their work misuse. My first question is about poverty, and you were just speaking about it. We know that there are very strong links between poverty, deprivation, adverse childhood experiences, trauma and drugs deaths, especially here in Scotland. We know that it is a very complex, multifaceted issue to address. Do you agree with the opinion that Scotland's particularly high rate of drugs deaths reflects radical patterns resulting from economic policies of the 1980s? You can also see that in the north-east of England. Do you have views on which particular anti-poverty programmes will have the greatest impact on reducing drugs harms, for example the Scottish Government's new child payment? It's definitely the case, as I said earlier, that there is a demographic element of the drug deaths that has seen Scotland of people who started taking drugs in the 70s and 80s and continued to do so and whose bodies now are unable to tolerate it and, therefore, sadly, are dying in numbers that are too high. Having said that, what I don't understand is why it's so particularly bad in Scotland versus, say, the north of England or other parts of the United Kingdom. It's so much worse in Scotland that I don't have an answer as to why that is. You probably know more than me. On the poverty issue, I would be careful about the difference between correlation and causation. As I said before, just in my previous answer, there have been lots and lots of attempts at dealing with the underlying problems of poverty and deprivation in the hope that that would deal with what was perceived at the time to be the product of it, violence and drugs and all that kind of stuff. In fact, more often than not, where we've seen around the world, where it's the other way around, where you deal with the violence and you deal with the drugs first, generally people who live in those areas will fly. In particular, young people will fly. There's a very interesting project in the States, an area that's of Miami called Tangelo Park, which was a neighbourhood that was ridden by crime and low achievement, lots and lots of people unemployed, ethnically a very diverse area. An American philanthropist might be a dentist who runs some kind of medical thing. He decided to adopt this neighbourhood and he promised them two things. One was free preschool childcare and two, he said that anybody who could get to college would get a college education for free. Over the intervening whatever 10 or 15 years, the incentive and the intervention meant that that area has now absolutely flown. Alongside that, they dealt with all the social problems of Ireland and others that had held them back, because the community was given control of that stuff. It's more complicated than just saying poverty drives these things. If I could push you and turn you back to Scotland, we know that the cohort of people who were seeing the most drug deaths at the moment are people my age who were born in the 70s, who experienced the lack of a just transition from the closure of our pits and our industries, and it's those individuals who are now seeing multiple deprivation and problematic drug use. We know that there's an issue with poly-drug use in Scotland, but I would like to now turn to my anytime that I've got and just push you again on the issue of public health approach versus a criminal justice approach. It seems to me that the UK Government's tenure strategy really heavily focuses on a criminal justice approach, and it has been somebody who has supported people facing criminal justice for their problematic drug use with all the underlying social problems that they have. I know that having a criminal justice approach to it would lead those people not to engage, so it's just wondering how do we square that circle. You spoke about Karen Mplusky and the violence reduction unit and the policing that was involved in that, but that was policing that sought to deter. That was the policing that sought to have amnesty on naif crime as opposed to slowly criminalising people. So it's just to push you a little bit more on that. Well, there are quite a lot of arrests, as I remember for drug-affirmed naif possession at the time. But look, just on your first point, right, to going back to that time where you are putting the problems down to the economic issues in the area, it would be interesting, wouldn't it, to go back and look at what the approach to drugs was at that time? How assertive was the policing at the time? How much intervention was there from a social point of view? What were the medical interventions like at the time? If all of those things were absent, maybe that was the problem and not the other, because there are lots of areas of the wider UK who have the same economic issues that don't have the same problem as those parts of Scotland. So, as I say, I think it's an easy assumption to make, but there's a difference in correlation and causation, and sometimes we have to look a little more deeply to understand what the causes of it are. Just on your second question, you said a public health approach versus criminal justice, right? I wouldn't put the verses in between the two. I think they go hand in glove, as I said earlier. I think you've got an incredibly powerful tool in Police Scotland, right? They are a large and sophisticated organisation with thousands of men and women out on the front line, engaging in communities every single day. The idea that you would leave them in the clubhouse when you're going into bat on such a huge problem as drugs seems to me fighting with one arm behind your back, and I think that the police could have an enormous role to play in assisting those health professionals and those who can give counselling and emotional support, all the rest of it is required to turn somebody around from drugs by making sure that there are fewer drug dealers in Scotland and less drugs. How can that be a bad thing? I don't think anybody is saying that's a bad thing. I think that we recognise that it's a basket of measures. That's what I'm saying, so we don't have this binary approach. We think that the whole system has to work together, and that includes the police. Thank you very much indeed. I'm going to move swiftly on, and I'm going to bring in Jeremy Dalfour, followed by Faisel Shoundry. Over to you, Jeremy. Thank you, convener, and good afternoon, minister. Can you tell me the amount of money that has been invested in project adder cities that have been set across England and Wales? Do you know that, if Scotland had bought into this, what the Barnett consequences would have been for that? I will have to come back to you on the Barnett consequence, because I know that it's a complicated mathematical equation that gets to where it might be. On adder overall, how much do we spend in total? We'll write to you. It's now running into the many millions, because we've just expanded. You've got me on that one, but it's quite a lot. We'll come back to you on that number, and we'll come back to you on the Barnett consequences might be. To be honest with you, if I could, I would have given you some of my budget to establish an adder in Dundee. I don't know what the legal position on that would have been, but I would have been quite happy to contribute. It would be helpful if you could come back to us, minister, with that in mind. The second thing that I just wanted to explore is in regard to treatment and the availability of treatment. If somebody is wanting to come off drugs and clearly needs that treatment, I mean, would you agree with me that that treatment has to be available as soon as possible for that person? Even weeks and months delay on a waiting list will then put people off looking for that treatment. The key fact around any health prevention is making sure that treatment is available when that individual wants and needs it. You're exactly spot on. I mean, we in England and Wales are not yet in that position, but we also recognise that there are critical moments in people's lives when they want to access that treatment. There are moments in our existence when we can either entice them or when they decide for themselves what they want to do. For example, one of the key areas that we're focused on is exit from prison. We know that a huge proportion of people in prison have a drug addiction or did have, and I'd like you to go back to that when they leave. We're in a position now where we will be offering a place to every single person who leaves prison with a drug problem to make sure that we can try and transition them back into society. Similarly, we know where drug users have a moment of crisis in their life when they get into hospital because of a problem with their health, but that is a moment of which we're able to get them into a wider treatment framework. It's very important that you have the ability to do that stood up. I've got the add a number now. It's £59 million that we've invested. We will be investing, I think, over the next two or three years, and we'll come back to you on the Barnett consequential, but your point is exactly right. It needs to be like other urgent health treatment, free and available at the point of need. And finally, Minister, before my time is up, just to ask you, what would you think the third sector has in regard to that? Clearly, often they are working with local communities, no local communities. Funding a third sector organisation for your strategy down in England and Wales, is that a key thing to working with the third sector? It's absolutely critical to our success, and where we've seen this writ most large has been in those other projects. The most revelatory impact, the group that are driving this thing, is what we call lived experience workers. People who've been through the hell of addiction themselves and come out the other side are able to relate and talk to those people who are still in the grip of addiction and move them towards a better life. I've met a few of them now on my visits. They are remarkable individuals doing great work, and very often they are embedded in the third sector. This is a whole system approach, as I said before. When there is such an emergency, we can't afford to leave anybody back in the clubhouse. We all have to focus on those numbers. What Adam does is to make sure that everybody is focusing on the same people at the same time in the same place. That is sometimes quite a hard thing to achieve, but where you do, my belief is that you can have a huge impact. I'll hand over now to Faisal Shoudry, and then I'll bring in Piotr Swisher after that. Faisal, over to you. Thank you very much, convener. Good afternoon, minister Allan. The UK Government drug strategy launched in December seems very much focused on the outstead law in order to approach to tackling the drug crisis. Do you not agree that the response to drug addiction needs to be public health focus? As I said in my earlier answer, I think that that is a mischaracterisation of our approach. We believe that this is a whole system approach and that a public health approach involves the police in restricting supply. We have shown over the past couple of years that the police can have a huge impact on supply. We have closed 1,700 county lines. We have arrested over 7,400 drug dealers. We have critically rescued over 4,000 young vulnerable people who are victimised into drugs. We should not forget them from a health point of view. There are lots and lots that the policing can do, but the key to the policing of drugs is to remember two things. First of all, we very much have to focus on the jugglers, the people with unique skills who are driving this industry, not the front-end, low-level. They are very often victimised into this thing or brutalised into drug dealing. Secondly, we think that by focusing on drugs as a business, looking at the mechanics of the business that we can interfere with their business and make it harder for them to get drugs into all of our constituencies. The work that we have been doing with the three big sporting forces, Liverpool, West Midlands and London, where they have been developing their techniques of using the telecoms that these drug dealers use against them, now securing enormous numbers of convictions—I think that the matter is getting 90 per cent conviction now on telecoms evidence alone. This is the way to deter what is at the moment a high-return, low-risk business into a low-return, high-risk business, which is exactly where it ought to be. Please do not make the mistake of thinking that policing does not have a huge role to play in combating drug misuse alongside the health and therapeutic interventions. It is all a public health approach. My second question is that organised crime continues to blight our communities and prey on people suffering from drug addiction. Cross-border and co-operation between police forces and crime agencies has an essential role to play in tackling organised crime. Can you provide some detail on how Police Scotland and other police forces in the UK are working together to ensure that organised crime was based justice? Police Scotland has a number of operational relationships that hopefully assist them in the fight against organised crime. You are quite right to identify that this is a key driver. We know that there is a large and sophisticated logistics operation that brings drugs from South America and from Afghanistan into Scotland. We know that, because two years ago, the National Crime Agency, through a thing called Operation Venetic, cracked open a bespoke communication system that those networks have built for themselves. That is what has resulted in so many arrests in Scotland and elsewhere of those kingpins and drug dealers. Those relationships with northern forces are organised crime relationships with GMPs, with Merseysides. They have a close relationship with the Met just through the national frameworks and the National Crime Agency. Embedded in Garkosh, of course, where I went to visit last year, is very important that they have a close relationship. Could there be more to bind them into this overarching UK approach on drugs? Not least, for example, as we do more and more work to secure, for example, drugs coming in and out of the border, we want to make sure that stuff is not diverted around the coastline into other areas. There are lots of areas that we can cooperate on, and I would love to do more. I will bring in Beatrice Wishart next. If members are happy and are comfortable with extending the meeting, maybe by five minutes or so, and the minister as well, I am happy to do that in order that members can ask some follow-up questions. If that is an issue, please feel free to just update in the chat function. In the meantime, I will bring in Beatrice Wishart. Thank you, convener, and good afternoon, minister. You have indicated that we must all do what we can to work together to save lives and that you are focusing hard on health interventions in this drugs death crisis. Do you think that, in order to help to bring it under control, global mortality experts are needed to assist the drugs death task force in what many people consider to be a public health disaster in Scotland? In all areas of social policy, we have a moral duty to look around the world and seek assistance where we can. I have found in my career in borough and then city and now national government very often that we are too reticent about looking elsewhere. There is a not-made-here kind of attitude. From my point of view, I am willing to and having the past scoured the world for better ideas than my own for dealing with those issues. If I can get assistance from around the world, as we have done, for example, on dealing with alcohol-related crime, then we will. Certainly, I would point you towards the work of the advisory council on the issues of drugs in England and Wales, which give us enormous help on gathering that evidence and looking at some of the issues that we face. We have a drug recovery champion, Ed Day, who similarly attends, looks at and feeds in information from around the world about what is happening on drugs so that we are in the best place to make an impact. You have also emphasised health and rehabilitation investment as being critical, but not the only action that can be taken. I realise that I am covering ground that other members have raised, but I wanted to ask about the importance of tackling poverty and deprivation within that health and rehabilitation strategy. I wonder if you could expand a bit more with your thoughts on that. As I said earlier, my general view is that certainly my job is to remove the drugs and the violence from neighbourhoods so that the other arms of regeneration, ambition and social mobility can do their work unimpeded by criminality and degradation. That seems to me to be the right way around. There is also the big area that we ought to talk about, which we have not been questioning on today, which is the role of so-called recreational drugs. There are lots and lots of people who are unthinkingly taking drugs, who regard themselves as not addicted, but who are nevertheless driving violence and degradation and are feeding profits into the same gangs that are causing the deaths in Glasgow, London, D and Edinburgh and elsewhere. Demand reduction and dealing with them, educating them and bringing them to understand the role they play in this vast international criminal network, is critical to success, too. Those, I think, are the three pillars. Police restricting supply, dealing with those poor people who are addicted on a health and therapeutic basis, but also doing something to drive down wider demand, particularly if a cocaine and cannabis across the whole of the United Kingdom. We have now come to the end of the session, but I have a bit of time, if members are happy, for us to extend to about 16.35. I am going to bring in Gillian Mackay, followed by Russell Finlay. Gillian Mackay, I think that we could have been here all afternoon discussing this. Minister, drugs are often cut with everything from baby powder to rat poison to even cement dust. Testing drugs would prevent poisoning and further pressure on health services, which are, of course, devolved. To ensure that we can save lives, would the minister devolve powers to allow the Scottish Government to set up drug testing? I would not devolve the powers, but, as you know, people who want to test drugs can apply for a licence. I know that my officials have had conversations with Minister Constance's officials about what that process might look like. Should people feel the need to apply for a licence to test? Obviously, you will understand that we do test ourselves in certain circumstances where we see that there is a rash, perhaps sadly, of deaths or people being hospitalised because of use of drugs, in particular, geographies, where we link together. It is being cut with horrible stuff. However, if that is required, licences can be applied for. However, that is a well-known home-office system. We can work with the Scottish Government to elucidate how that might work. I am going to bring in Russell Finlay now, who has been patiently waiting, and then, if there is time, I will bring in Faiso Shoudry and Julian Martin. Yes, indeed. Thank you. There is a lot being said about drugs consumption rooms and questions, which are from those who resusallously want these rolled out, presumably in every Scottish town and city. It is worth just repeating what the chief constable said, which is that he needs stronger evidence before he can support these. Should there not perhaps be greater emphasis on helping drug users to rehabilitate, then there is on encouraging drug taking. There is not a slight risk that, in focusing on this contentious issue, we are distracting from the SNP's own record, which has been to preside over a doubling of drugs deaths in Scotland since 2008 to now become the drugs death capital of Europe. As I said to all those two years ago, when I came to Glasgow and had the first drug summit, my view was that there was a distraction from the big picture. I was urging then for major investment in health treatment, and, happily, that is what happened just before the last election for the Scottish Parliament. I very welcome that investment as well. I completely agree with you that the big win here is on investment in health. I have been successful in persuading the UK Government of that, and we have hundreds of millions of pounds to rebuild that system here in England and Wales. I hope that the same will happen in Scotland. I have said again and again that I think that it is a distraction from the important work of building that system. You are right that we are better in the long run to rehabilitate people away from drugs rather than put in place. I will look at new evidence when it comes, but at the moment I am not convinced. I am going to bring in Gillian Martin to ask the final question. I want to pick up on what Gillian Mackay asked the minister there, and he mentioned that licences might be available to assist in drug kicking. I am not aware of the licensing system. It is the first time that I have heard of it. If there is a licence available for that kind of facility, could that also be a vehicle for a pilot project for a safe consumption facility? Well, no, because, as I said before, a number of offences would be committed in that facility at the moment. The home office has a licensing system. In the past, we have granted licences for back-end checking of drugs, i.e., for drugs that are surrendered so that they are not returned. As I said, we look at every application on its own merits, and that is what we would be happy to do in this situation. However, do not forget that, to put a DCR in place, primary legislation will be needed to overcome any of those ones if, indeed, legally they could be overcome. It is very hard to have a series of laws that create a kind of amnesty over other crimes, unless you restrict the geography, I suppose. I am not a lawyer. It would take a smarter mind than mine to work out how you overcome those obstacles. Thank you very much indeed. That completes the evidence session. Time, as usual, is against us, but I think that we have covered a lot this afternoon. Can I extend my thanks, minister, and your officials, for attending this afternoon? If members obviously have any further questions, we will follow them up in writing with you. My thanks again. That concludes our meeting today. We will meet again tomorrow to hear from the minister for drugs policy and the new chair of the drugs death task force. Thank you very much, everybody.