 The next item of business is topical questions in order to get in as many members as possible. Shortens the sink questions and responses would be appreciated. At question number one, I'll allow a moment. At question number one, I call Claire Baker. Thank you. To ask the Scottish Government what its response is to the Mental Welfare Commission's report. Ending exclusion, care, treatment and support for people with mental ill health and problem substance misuse in Scotland. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I'd like to begin by reaffirming the commitment from myself and from the Minister for Drugs Policy, Angela Constance and the rest of the Scottish Government to saving and improving lives of people living with poor mental health and addiction. I fully support the position that Ms Constance recently set out in the chamber that every drug death is one too many and this remains a public health emergency. I'd also like to thank the Mental Welfare Commission for producing this timely report. We will of course carefully consider its findings in detail over the coming weeks. The commission has made clear our focus must be on delivery. Members will be aware through the national drugs mission and our work across mental health that there is a significant amount of activity underway to deliver more effective and joined up care for people with co-concurring mental health and substance use. That includes work led by Health Improvement Scotland to create better working links between substance use and mental health services. The on-going rapid review of mental health and substance use services, the implementation of the medicated assisted treatment standards alongside the development and the implementation of standards for adult secondary mental health services. I thank the minister for that reply. The Mental Welfare Commission report is damming. It talks about little or no out-of-hours support for people, a lack of trauma-informed care. People rejected access to mental health services due to the addiction and services being understaffed and underfunded. One service user said that people felt abandoned by a broken system. Another said, I just want to see change. All I see is people dying or being forgotten about. The delivery of match standards 6 to 10, which is central to addressing mental health and addiction, has been extended with an implementation date of 2025. That is three years later than what was originally promised. Following the statement from the drugs minister in June, can I ask the minister if the senior leaders have been appointed across Scotland and how the minister will work with the drugs policy minister to drive forward delivery of match standards 6 to 10, which are central to mental health and ensure that they are not neglected as the focus will be on 1 to 5, which will have to be delivered by next year. Minister. Let me make it quite clear to the chamber that both the Minister for Drugs Policy and I believe that mental health and substance use services must be joined at the hip. We have been clear on that standard that we want to see all of the standards fully embedded as soon as possible. The progress made to date has not been good enough or quick enough as far as we are concerned. At the end of the last parliamentary session, the Minister for Drugs Policy wrote a letter of direction to all territorial health boards, integration authorities and local authorities. That directed that by the end of September, chief officers and chief executives must personally sign specific and timed improvement plans for implementing those match standards. The Minister for Drugs Policy will update Parliament further on the progress of those standards in December. Clear Baker. Presiding Officer, all of this activity that I recognise has taken place requires investment. Although the drug's death task force acknowledged recent funding commitments, it said that they did not go far enough to deliver transformational change, they described the funding as woefully inadequate. While the drugs minister does lead on policy in this area, as the mental health minister recognises, partly his responsibility because many of the match standards focus on the relationship between drug services and mental health. Is he confident that the £10 million a year for the implementation of the match standards is enough, given concerns that have been raised around the risk of staff burn-out? Minister. Thank you very much. I welcome the opportunity to answer that question. We are supporting the delivery of the standards with that £10 million a year for the next four years as Ms Baker rightly highlights, but there is more than that going on. I and the drugs policy minister are jointly funding Health Improvement Scotland with funding of over £2 million to improve pathways between mental health and substance use services. His work will be directly with local partners to ensure that people are receiving person-centred care. Let me go beyond that because it is my expectation and Ms Constance's expectation that we use existing expenditure at health board level, at IJB level, at local authority level to get that absolutely right. That is a joint project between all spheres of government here in order to get that right for people. What we will do is ensure that that investment is made properly and beyond that we all need to work together to change cultures and that is why his work is so important in that regard too. Tess White. Minister, I know from conversations with police officers in the north-east that they are often the stand-in for other services when someone is in crisis out of ours. This is starkly reflected in the Mental Welfare Commission's report, which quotes officers as saying that the police and ambulance service are the constant fall-back for other services when neither are the appropriate services to offer meaningful assistance beyond an assessment at A&E. What immediate steps is the Scottish Government taking to ensure that people in crisis can be swiftly and reliably referred to the right help and interventions out of ours? Minister. Crisis interventions are one of the areas that are being looked at by the drugs task force. Beyond that, we have on-the-ground support at this moment. Take, for example, distress brief intervention and Ms White mentions the north-east of Scotland. In my own city of Aberdeen, the distress brief intervention project there is dealing with people in crisis on a day-to-day basis. Talking to police officers in my own patch, that is making a real difference in taking pressure off of them. Beyond that, the member may well be aware, Presiding Officer, of the pilots that we have going on with the Scottish Ambulance Service, including in Dundee in the north-east of Scotland, where there is quick interventions for people who have mental health crisis. Those things are already happening in many parts of the country. I am quite happy for Ms White to write to me or to Ms Constance. We can update on all the actions that are happening in the north-east corner of our country. Emma Harper. We are all aware that getting people into treatment and recovery that is right for them at the right time is at the core of the national mission to save and improve lives. Residential rehabilitation is one of a wide range of options. Can the minister provide an update on plans to expand access to residential rehabilitation placements? I remind members that I am co-convener of the mental health cross-party group. I welcome that question from Emma Harper, Presiding Officer. Over the course of this Parliament, we are working to increase the overall residential rehabilitation capacity from 425 beds to 650 beds and for 1,000 people to receive statutory funding for their state and residential rehabilitation. The Government has committed over £23 million in funding for the development of projects, the Phoenix Futures, Rivergarden, NHS Lothian and Aberlour. Investment in the four projects combined will provide a total increase of 85 beds by 2526, boosting the current rehab capacity in Scotland from 425 to 510 beds. In addition, we have been working with alcohol and drug partnerships to aid the development of clear pathways into residential rehabilitation. The results of that can be seen in Public Health Scotland's most recent interim report published on 27 September, which found that 218 statutory funded residential rehab placements had been approved across Scotland between April and June of this year, an increase of 85 from the previous quarter. To ask the Scottish Government when it expects to meet air quality limit values in light of the recent report from Environmental Standards Scotland. Current data indicate that EU limit and target values have been achieved across Scotland for all air quality pollutants except for six locations for nitrogen dioxide, three in North Lanarkshire, two in Glasgow and one in Edinburgh. The most recent assessment projections estimate that all of these, bar one location in North Lanarkshire, will be compliant during 2022 and that that remaining North Lanarkshire location will follow in 2023. Maurice Golden. I thank the minister for that answer. The report highlighted that monitoring guidance might not provide a comprehensive picture of air quality in our cities, especially around areas with vulnerable people, such as schools and hospitals. Does the minister agree with me that we should install air quality monitors at every Scottish school? Minister. I thank the member for the question. I want to briefly say before moving on to the specifics that I very much welcome the report on environmental standards Scotland. Indeed, I welcome that we were able, with a great deal of work, including by my previous assessor, to make sure that environmental standards Scotland was set up and that there was no governance gap as a result of EU exit. I am statutorily obliged to respond to the report and that within six months, and I will do that. I am not going to pre-empt the response to any of that today, including on the specific point that the member raises, although I think that it is a good one. I will bring it back to the Parliament, but I want to be clear today that I absolutely welcome the recommendations and I am committed to working with ESS to progress them. Maurice Golden. The report concludes that current attempts to improve air quality are not enough, that the system contains significant weaknesses and that areas of non-compliance will likely remain. I understand from the minister's answer that the Government will make a formal response to the report, but can the minister at least give us an assurance that those failures will be recognised so that progress can be made? Minister. Our ambition is for Scotland to have the best air quality in the EU in Europe. I absolutely, whilst working very hard with Scottish Government officials across our stakeholders, we are driving forward progress. We are always alive to where improvements need to be made, including those that are highlighted by Environmental Standards Scotland. I think that it is important to note that we have seen over recent decades a significant reduction in pollution. That has been because of improved fuel quality, cleaner vehicles and an increased focus on sustainable transport. Between 2005 and 2019, which is the year for which we have the most recent statistics, nitrogen oxide emissions have decreased by 53 per cent, fine particulate matter by 30 per cent and sulphur dioxide by 85 per cent. As I say, we are not complacent and we will continue to work through the Clean Air for Scotland to strategy and on the recommendations of ESS in continuing to improve that. Natalie Dawn. Thank you, Presiding Officer. Could the minister give an indication of how the level of air quality in Scotland compares to the rest of the UK and other parts of Europe, and how the Scottish Government will deliver on its commitment to further improve air quality here in Scotland? Compared to the rest of the UK, and indeed other parts of Europe, Scotland enjoys a very high level of air quality. Targets are being met across the vast majority of Scotland and levels of main air pollutants have declined significantly over the last three decades, some of those which I pulled out in my previous answer. Of course, the introduction of low emission zones in our four largest cities, as of May this year, is a key initiative in further improving urban air quality. We have committed to investing at least £320 million or 10 per cent of the total active travel budget by 2024-25, and that's almost triple what it is today. Colin Smyth. Thank you, Presiding Officer. Electric vehicles do impact on air pollution through break and tear dust, so we need fewer cars, not just cleaner cars. AVs don't admit NO2, so they're part of the solution in improving air quality. The Climate Change Committee estimates that we'll need at least 30,000 public AV charging points in Scotland by 2030, but the Government's target is just over 4,000 in the next few years. With only 395 public charging points that were sold last year, when does the minister think that Scotland will reach the 30,000 public AV points that we desperately need in Scotland? Presiding Officer, I should allow my colleague the Transport Minister to respond directly on questions of transport and, indeed, charging infrastructure as it relates to that. Having said that, part of the cleaner air for Scotland to strategy is about bringing together recognising that air quality is a drastic issue that requires to work across Government. I am working closely with the Transport Minister as well as with planning and health colleagues. I suppose that what I'm saying is that I'll have to come back to the member with an estimation of when the roll-out of AV infrastructure will be where he thinks it ought to be. I would draw the chamber's attention to two key provisions for transport as they are linked to air quality. Firstly, our commitment to reduce driving by 20 per cent by 2030 and, indeed, to phase out new petrol and diesel vehicles by the same date. Both of those will have a significant impact on air quality in Scotland. Mark Ruskell. Lung conditions are the third leading cause of death in the UK, with over 2,500 premature deaths per year attributed to air pollution alone in Scotland. In that context, what action the Scottish Government is taking to ensure that local authorities are required to deliver robust and up-to-date air quality action plans with specified target dates? I am in no doubt that air pollution and physical health are very much connected with the very young, older adults and those with underlying health conditions being most impacted. However, the relationship is complex. It is widely accepted that pollution has a negative impact on health, but we also know that the types of illnesses that air pollution exacerbates are also impacted by other factors like smoking. However, on the member's point directly, we have committed under our air quality strategy, Cleaner Air for Scotland 2, to develop that more systematic approach to action plan production and implementation, including our standardised format and a methodology for both agreeing and setting defined time scales for completing individual measures and revoking air quality management areas and reporting progress. We will also commission a review of air quality data collection and reporting in Scotland to identify any notable gaps in data provision with recommendations on how to fill these. Again, this is all part of Cleaner Air for Scotland 2, which we are currently progressing. That concludes topical questions.