 The next item of business is a statement by Angela Constance on medication-assisted treatment standards. The minister will take questions at the end of her statement, so there should be no interventions or interruptions. I call on Angela Constance up to 10 minutes, please minister. Every life loss to drugs is as tragic as it is unacceptable. I offer my condolences to everyone who has felt this loss and my continuing determination to turn the tide of this public health emergency. Families and people with real life experience of drug and alcohol problems tell me that, at the very heart of our national mission, there must be a commitment to change and accountability at all levels from the front line to national leaders, and I agree. That is why Public Health Scotland has published today's comprehensive benchmarking report on the implementation of the medication-assisted treatment standard. I will spend little time on the areas where progress has been made, welcome though this is. I want to make clear to Parliament that, overall, the pace and the scale of change is neither good enough nor quick enough. The medication-assisted treatment standards published in May 2021 are designed to give clear criteria and principles to help care providers, and those who will benefit from services understand what must be an offer to support people in their mat treatment and in recovery. Those are not standards that should be considered as nice to have or nice to do. My view is unequivocal. They must be delivered. Those standards are a demonstration of our commitment to a whole system approach to care and are fundamental to our rights-based approach in Scotland. In recognition of the ambitious challenge that I set local areas through our national mission, we are providing more than £10 million funding per year for local areas to implement the standards. We established the MATS implementation support team to provide consistent support across the country. We are providing more practical and financial support than ever before. The Public Health Scotland report for the first time gives us an area-by-area breakdown of where each ADP is on implementing the standards, with a particular in-depth focus on the key standards 1 to 5. Those are the standards on same-day treatment, informed choice of treatment, a certificate outreach, harm reduction support alongside treatment and making sure treatment lasts as long as people want it. The report also summarises on MATS standards 6010. There is less data available on those standards, which rely more on experiential feedback from people and services. Of the 145 indicators, 26 have not been implemented, 25 have been implemented in full and 94 are partially implemented. That shows that standards are being embedded and implemented on the ground, particularly in relation to informed choice, proactively identifying those at risk, harm reduction and keeping people in treatment. In many cases, the service standards are in place within an area, but not consistently across the whole area for all people. What I am most concerned about is the lack of progress against MATS standards 1. All of those standards are crucially important and connected, but access to same-day treatment is life-saving. In that regard, borders that I visited recently stand out as a beacon for what can be achieved. My challenge to other areas is simple. If borders can do it, why can't you? The report includes eight detailed recommendations and some actions that are already being taken, as well as achieving implementation of the original standards themselves. We can't stand still there. The standards will have to be developed to be more bespoken to young people, to women and for custodial settings. The recommendations call for immediate improvement in plans to set out how each local area will achieve full implementation. Those are being developed with ADPs right now and will be published in August. I cannot stress enough how vital it is that ADPs fully implement the MATS standards. In particular, standard 1 on same-day treatment. We all want people to have the right to treatment, but that will be for nothing if the services are not in place. That is why I am today using powers of direction available to Scottish ministers under the Public Bodies Joint Working Act 2014 to compel local partners to implement those standards. This ministerial direction has been issued to all health boards, integration authorities and local authorities, spelling out what must be achieved and the oversight arrangements that I am putting in place to hold local leaders to account for implementing the MATS standards fully. The Scottish Government, this Parliament and most importantly of all communities require a whole systems response across these three partners. Oversight of that will now be through the following measures. Improvement plans on implementing the standards will be required in all areas. We will require them to be signed off by all chief executives and chief officers. Those improvement plans will be informed by the local assessments being published in August to supplement the benchmarking report. The chief executives and chief officers will have shared and visible responsibility for delivering the MATS standards and will identify one senior leader to take responsibility for driving the changes necessary and reporting on progress. Most will be expected to deliver quarterly reports in progress. However, areas of particular concern where drug deaths are particularly high and today's report shows that MATS standard 1 on same day treatment has not been delivered, those reports will be monthly. The new oversight arrangements that I am putting in place will also strengthen accountability to communities through the involvement of lived and living experience in the quarterly or monthly reporting that is now required. If necessary, we may also consider further powers to intervene through the implementation of the national care service, which will introduce a more formal, single framework of accountability. I will provide Parliament with regular updates of the progress of this implementation and its oversight. I do not want to give the impression that there has been no progress made. Some areas are clearly on that journey, such as East South and North Ayrshire. In West Lothian, where I visited today, the Change, Grow, Live, Recovery service in Bathgate, which is part of the West Lothian drug and alcohol services, offers same-day treatment, so has implemented MATS 1. However, I know that this change has made a huge difference to those being supported there. However, the challenge ahead for West Lothian and other areas is to scale that level of service up across the whole council area. There are innovations being taken forward by ADPs and local partnerships to help address drug deaths. One that I know is of interest to the chamber is the potential use of safer drug consumption facilities. I have been clear before that we would support work to try and make these facilities available within the constraints and limits of the currently reserved drugs law. Glasgow Health and Social Care partnership has been developing such a proposal for some time. It has engaged extensively and I thank them for their work. Following detailed partnership working between the Scottish Government, Glasgow Health and Social Care partnership, Police Scotland and the Crown Office, details of a new service specification have been developed and shared with the Crown Office. The specification that seeks to meet the parameters set out in the Lord Advocate statement on 3 November will now be considered by the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service. If appropriate, it will then be referred to the Lord Advocate for consideration of any related statement of prosecution policy. Improving services and embedding standards requires having the necessary workforce in place. That is why the majority of £10 million per year funding is targeted on recruiting more than 100 additional staff to be able to offer services that meet the MAT standards. That increase in staff is part of our national mission planning for further workforce recruitment and development. I intend to return to Parliament in the autumn to set out our plan to expand and upskill the workforce. Over this summer, we will be drawing on the experience of people at the heart of workforce policy as part of the expert group to help to develop and implement the planning necessary. Those standards are not an optional extra. They are essential to getting more people more quickly into the protection of life-saving treatment. I pay tribute to local leaders, families and those with lived and living experience and the voluntary sector who have worked together to deliver demonstrable change on the ground where it matters the most. I thank the MAT standards implementation team for their continuing hands-on support working alongside local areas and Public Health Scotland for their vital report. MAT standards are about delivering faster, more responsive services, but they are also about changing hearts and minds and tackling stigma and discrimination. MAT standards are empowering people to demand the treatment that they deserve. There is no going back, and we can now only go forward. We all need to dig deep to do the hard miles ahead, and all senior leaders within and outside Government must pick up the pace and deliver a public health response to this public health emergency and do it now. The minister will now take questions on the issues raised in her statement. I intend to allow around 28 minutes for questions, after which we will move on to the next item of business. It would be helpful if those members who would wish to ask a question were to press the request-to-speak buttons now, and I call Sue Webber. I thank the minister for advance sight of her statement and acknowledge some of the challenging comments that she has laid bare into the chamber today on progress with the standards. Today's statement does lay bare the damning truth that this critical target has been missed. Drug-related deaths are Scotland's national shame, yet once again, this Government's actions have fallen short and families continue to be let down. Despite setting a target last year to ensure that the MAT standards would be fully embedded across the country by April 2022, the report shows that the target was nothing more than a pipe dream. Just 17 per cent of the standards have been fully implemented and, shamefully, MAT standard 1 has only been implemented in one ADP area, the borders. That is a 97 per cent failure rate. What is the new recommendation from Public Health Scotland to push back the target by a year and water it down? The new recommendation is that only half the standards are to be implemented by April 2023 with only partial implementation for the others. Across Scotland, there has been unwarranted variation in the implementation of those standards, and there could be no clearer illustration of that than the drug-related death statistics released last week, which showed welcome declines in Glasgow, whilst masking increases in Edinburgh, Fife, Dumfries and Galloway. What urgent steps is the Government taking to close the postcode lottery and what support will the minister offer those ADPs that have fallen so far behind? I thank Ms Webber for her questions. The support by Public Health Scotland does not pull its punches, it does not mince its words and nor will I. I will state again that progress is not good enough and it is not fast enough. Obviously, there are responsibilities within Government, but there are also responsibilities that lay in the shoulders of those out with Government, and, of course, I have announced today immediate action around issuing letters of ministerial direction, which are not asking. I have announced the importance of improvement plans and the reporting oversight arrangements that will now be in place and, in some instances, those reporting arrangements will be monthly. That is about driving up faster progress and also the consistency of progress. What the Public Health Scotland report shows is that some areas, despite the challenge and environment that everybody is working in, have been successful either in implementing changes or have been well on that journey. We all need to pick up the pace because people across Scotland deserve a consistency of service. I am well aware of the commitments that I have made as a Government minister, and I am well aware of what I said should have happened with those statements. However, I am going to continue to set the very highest standards with the very highest of expectations, and I will continue to provide both financial and practical support. I will continue to be accountable to this Parliament, and I will continue to do everything that I can to overcome each and every challenge that gets in our way to overcome difficulties, because we have a national mission that is about saving and improving lives. Some of our people are dying, and we have to remember each and every day that these deaths are preventable. I thank the minister for advance sight of the statement. The number of deaths from drugs in Scotland remains too high, and more than 11,000 people have died over the past 14 years at 11,000 preventable deaths. The publication of the benchmarking report today is welcome, but I am afraid that its content is not. It is a disaster. A year ago, the minister talked about embedding and implementing the MAT standards within a year, and 18 months ago, the First Minister said that there would be rapid implementation. Those claims are now in tatters. A year later, we have seen an abject lack of delivery against what was promised. That is a flagship policy that is now in disarray. It is appalling that, after the promises made, only one ADP is fully delivering, same day prescribing, while almost 60 per cent are making no progress. While the minister talks of players to compelled delivery, she still has to take responsibility for the difficulties that are still being identified by the sector. Concern from ADPs about insufficient funding to deliver a burnt-out workforce and a lack of staff. Can we really have confidence that standards 1 through 5 will be implemented by next June, when progress in the past year has been so slow? How can the minister give an implementation date of 2025 for standards 6 to 10? That is unacceptable. The level of detail in the first benchmark and report means that there is no hide-and-place either for national leaders or local leaders. That is why we will continue to invest £10 million per annum, most of which will support the workforce. The recommendations in the report are public health Scotland's recommendations, and they are recommendations that public health Scotland has published prior to my announcement today on the immediate action that we are taking in and around ministerial direction. I, for one, will want to see much quicker progress. I will, of course, be reporting back to this Parliament and also making sure that we follow the 67 per cent increase investment according to Audit Scotland that has been secured since 2014-15 till now as a result of this national mission. Public health Scotland was very clear about the role of leadership, not just at a national level. I am not asking people to do something that I will not do myself, but it was very clear that we needed that whole systems approach and that we needed these leadership right across the public sector, from NHS boards, from local authorities and from integrated authorities in particular. Each and every one of us now has to step up to the plate. I have announced immediate action that will take place today. Once we have seen the improvement assessments and improvement plans, I will certainly be coming back to Parliament later on the year to provide further updates. I call Stuart McMillan to be followed by Sandra Scohani. The match standards emphasise a multi-pronged approach to treatment and residential rehabilitation as one potential course for support in the work to ensure that match standards are met, whether they will also be oversight on ADPs' efforts to increase access to residential rehab. There is already oversight from the Government through an evaluation and monitoring programme of our investment in residential rehab. There has been an uplift to ADPs of £20 million. There is a portion of that that is specifically allocated, identified for residential rehab placements and crucially aftercare. When I reported to Parliament two statements ago, I confirmed that 326 placements had been funded through ADPs in the first nine months of last year. There are figures available on this area by area. Mr McMillan will be able to, of course, check on the progress that has been made by Inverclyde because one of the purpose of us publishing, gathering and publishing more data than ever before is so that MSPs in this Parliament can be scrutinising what is happening in their own areas as well as scrutinising the Government. Of course, our overall target in that is that, over the next five years, over the lifetime of this Parliament, at least 1,000 people are publicly funded for their residential rehabilitation placements. Overall, nearly three quarters of alcohol and drug partnerships were unable to provide documented policies, guidelines and standard operating procedures sufficient to demonstrate full and consistent implementation of the MAT standards. Shockingly, no data was provided for 14 per cent of standards. Let me quote directly from the report. There is a risk that, as a result of the systems to collect numerical and experimental information not being set up, data for improvement work is not available and the improvement cannot take place. Over a year after the standards were drafted, it is shocking that there is still no standardised method of data collection and improvement work cannot take place because these systems have not been set up. Why? As the Minister knows, standardisation of data collection is key to knowing what is going on across Scotland. Did we not know, and what work is the Government undertaking to correct these identified laws? The point that Mr Gohan makes about data is certainly not misting me, I can assure him of that, but, despite the difficulties or the frustrations that Public Health Scotland has faced here in terms of the data, nonetheless, it has, for the first time, produced a benchmarking report that, to be blunt, is a watch and all assessment of what is happening in every ADP, local authority and health board area. I make the point that data is important because we are not just relying on self-reports here. There is a range of work on-going within and outwith Government to strengthen the data, and some of that is around days, some of it is around announcements that I made at the end of last year around the drug-related death database and data linkages and some of other studies that are taking place in emergency departments as well, helping us with quicker warning systems about what is happening on the ground. The real point about data that really strikes me in this report is that, in many areas, people still need to get with the programme about the role and the importance of experiential data because we can collect people's operational policies, they are very important, we can collect the numbers and the data, that is also important, but I will tell you what else is important is the experience that is folk in the ground, so local areas need to be speaking to local people about their experience on the ground of what services are and aren't meeting their needs. Before I call the next speaker, I would just point out that we have eight members who wish to ask a question. I would like to take all eight, but we must therefore have shorter questions and shorter answers. I call Audrey Nicol, to be followed by Paul Sweeney. The creation of a national care service may provide opportunities to give greater statutory oversight to ADPs in the delivery of match standards. Now that a national care service bill has been introduced, can the minister outline what steps will be taken to determine if greater statutory powers are needed in this area? I suppose that there is a bit of a twin-track approach here. There is the work that is going on in and around the national care service. I am a proponent of a national care service. I want drug and alcohol services in the national care service because I think that it is really important that we have a single framework of accountability and I think that the national care service could be a really important vehicle in terms of delivering person-centred care and providing joined up services. It is not good enough for folk to be bouncing about between services, whether that is addiction or mental health services. Of course, the work that we are doing in and around MATE in terms of the local assessments on the improvements that need to be made that will be published in August, and when we get into the quarterly or monthly reporting cycles that are now required of all agencies, that will certainly feed in to the work that we are doing to build a national care service that will help to ensure that we end the postcode lottery and can deliver consistency of care to people afflicted with drug and alcohol problems. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I welcome the news that there has been some progress on what has been done on overdose prevention centres. The minister and I whole-heartedly agree that they are desperately needed, particularly in a city like Glasgow, with my member's bill-out consultation at present. However, what Glasgow also needs is full implementation of those MATE standards that the Government has committed to. I find it appalling that Glasgow, a city with the highest drug death rate in Scotland, has not fully implemented a single MATE standard by this target date. I accept that the minister is standing here today saying that this is not good enough, but what exactly is the minister and this Government doing to turn it around? Every time we miss this target, more people are dying and no amount of warm words will fix that. I would have thought that I have demonstrated to Mr Sweeney that I am prepared to do the hard miles when it comes to issues such as safer drug consumption rooms. We have worked steadfastly and that decision will now be taken elsewhere, and that work will now be scrutinised elsewhere. However, I have also demonstrated in my statement today not just warm words but tough words of action. We will dig deep and do the hard miles. When it comes to implementing MATE standards, I am not asking and I am not taking no for an answer. I thank the minister for her statement. I know that she would be disappointed that she has had to take the measures that were announced in her statement today. However, there is excellent work taking place across Scotland that we should not lose sight of. Just last week, I visited the Lockheed hub in my constituency. The hub is supported by significant Scottish Government funding via Cora to deliver the five-tier recovery programme that is aligned with the MATE standards. Can I invite the minister to join me on a visit to the hub? Can the minister provide an update on the range of support that is being provided to Dundee to fully implement the MATE standards? Can she say anything on discussions about potential provision of drug checking and heroin-assisted treatment in the city? There is a lot in that question, but if I can say to Mr FitzPatrick that I am no stranger to the good city of Dundee, I very much look forward to an invitation to visit the Lockheed community hub or, indeed, anywhere else where members would like to invite me to. I have engaged with the Dundee commission. I have engaged with the Dundee partnership. My officials continue to be in discussions with the Dundee partnership. Through the miss team, we have provided programme management support to assist with the implementation of MATE standards. We are funding work in primary care, which relates to MATE standards 7. We have been in discussions with Dundee and other areas of Scotland in and around the provision of heroin-assisted treatment. We need to turn interests into commitments in some of those initiatives and others, but I very much look forward to continuing to support the good city of Dundee. I also know that there is work under way to establish a pilot drug-checking facility. Thank you very much, Deputy Presiding Officer. The minister knows that she and I share a lot of common ground on this, and I want her to succeed. I am disappointed by this statement. I am disappointed by the explanations given. I say that because she is doing exactly what she has criticised others for in the past, and that is blaming staff. I say that also because yesterday a whistleblower approached my party to say that the reason that many of the MATE standards have not been delivered or that data is accurately collated is because the Scottish Government money only made money available to achieve them very, very recently. I ask the minister to tell Parliament right now when that money was released. I have been to this chamber a number of times to outline action on a range of issues, and I have also verbally written a number of times in the chamber, given the assurance that, as I have continuity of funding, that continuity of funding is also passed on to ADPs and front-line services. We have also delivered five-year funding opportunities for the voluntary sector. Where there are blockages in the system, I can assure Mr Cole-Hamilton that I will get in and about it and unblock those blockages. I am sure that people have, because I certainly recall signing off letters confirming funding, so people should have received those, and if they are not, I will certainly go and check that. My final point to Mr Cole-Hamilton is that I am not digging out staff here. I am not digging out front-line workers. If I can just quote from the Public Health Scotland report, it talks about commitment and senior leadership from health and social care partnerships will be necessary. It is necessary to allocate resources that are required for successful implementation. I know the money that I am putting out the door, and I am determined to follow that money to make sure that it gets to the front line, and it does not sit in reserves anywhere. There is no point in putting savings away for a rainy day—this is more than a rainy day—and money that is allocated by this Government needs to be committed and spent. I have four more members who wish to ask a question. I will not get all of them in unless we now have succinct questions and succinct answers. I call Jenny Mintwood to be followed by Jolene Mackay. Can the minister outline the next step that she understands that the Crown Office and the Lord Advocate will undertake to consider the proposals for a safer consumption facility? If I can be brief and dismissment of what is further information, I am happy to discuss it with, but those proposals are now with the Crown Office, and it is for the Crown Office to submit those to the Lord Advocate. It is somewhat inappropriate for me to comment any further than that, other than to thank partners, Police Scotland, the Glasgow Partnership and, indeed, my officials and as well as Crown Office officials who have worked very hard to get a specification together and have worked to meet the outline of what would be required when the Lord Advocate attended the Justice Committee on 3 November last year. The Scottish Drugs Forum has highlighted that stigma is still acting as a barrier to people accessing mat. It causes people to present later for treatment and means that they are often not being as fully supported as they might be. What action will the minister take to tackle this and ensure that no-one is prevented from accessing mat due to stigma? Will she consider requiring mandatory stigma training for all staff working in ADPs? I know that there is an organisation called Reach Advocacy that has provided training to 15 ADP areas. That is about taking a human rights approach. It is about mat standards. It is about tackling stigma. Ms Mackay is absolutely correct to say that stigma is a barrier to treatment, but some of the work that is required to implement in full, particularly mat standards 1 to 5, is crucial in tackling those attitudes of discrimination and stigma. Ms Mackay will be aware of the work that the Government has done to date and in and around our stigma campaign. Some of that will figure in our workforce plans that we bring forward in the months ahead. Deputy Presiding Officer and Minister, I apologise for my lateness today. Can the minister outline what urgent action the Scottish Government is taking to address workforce shortages among ADPs? I have a very important point that Ms White raises. For the first time a few months ago this year, we published the first-ever survey of the drug and alcohol workforce that gives the size and shape of that workforce. It is about 3,500 full-time equivalents. It also begins to unpick some of the issues in and around recruitment, training and retention. We also need to do the work in terms of supporting the welfare of staff. I will be, as I intimated on my statement, be coming back to chamber with a fuller detail of the plans to be undertaken. Of course, it is important to note that the much of the £10 million per annum that is going into the implementation of mat standards is to recruit staff.