 Good morning everybody and welcome to the eighth meeting of the criminal justice committee. There are no apologies this morning. The first agenda item is to agree whether to take items 3 and 4 in private, which is consideration of today's evidence and a discussion about our work programme. Are we all agreed? Thank you very much. The next agenda item is a short series, sorry, the next agenda item is the next in a series of roundtables. Today we are looking at the misuse of drugs and the criminal justice system and I refer members to papers 1 to 3. I welcome our panel of witnesses this morning. We have Mr Anthony McGeehan, Procurator Fiscal, Policy and Engagement, Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service, Mr Peter Crykant, Activist and Campaigner, Natalie Logan-McLean, Chief Executive Officer of Sustainable Interventions Supporting Change Outside, Superintendent Norman Conway of Police Scotland, Leanne Hughes, Shine Programme Mentor and Louise Stevenson, Lived Experience Participant of SACRO, Neil Richardson, OBE, Vice Chair and Becky Wood, Lived Living Experience Representative of the Scottish Drugs Deaths Task Force and Mr David Liddell, Chief Executive Officer of the Scottish Drugs Forum. We appreciate the time that you have taken to join us this morning. I thank the witnesses for their written submissions. They are now available online and I intend to allow around about two hours for discussion this morning. Please can I ask members to indicate which witness you are directing your remarks to and we can then open the floor to other witnesses for comments. If other witnesses wish to respond, can I ask you to indicate to me or the clerks that you want to come in and I'll bring you in then, if time permits. If you are merely agreeing with what the witness is saying, there's no need to intervene to say so. You can just let us know that you want to come in by typing an R in the chat thread. We will now move directly to questions and please can members and our invited guests keep questions and comments as succinct as possible. I would like to open up the discussion this morning with a fairly general question for Peter, Louise, Natalie and then Becky. Perhaps if I start with Peter, I would like to ask you to what extent you want to share with us. Can you tell us about your personal experience and how we deal with drugs misuse in the criminal justice system and how that may have impacted on you personally and how accessible you have found support in order to give people a route to recovery from drug misuse and addiction in Scotland? Peter, if you would like to start things off. Thank you very much and thank you for inviting me to give evidence. If I look back to my early drug use, facilitated involvement with the criminal justice system as early as the age of 16, I was in a young offenders institution, which is now closed long ago, and prior to going into long ago, I was not a heroin user, more or less straight away, as soon as I got released from long ago. After spending three months in that institution, I became a heroin user. The offer and the support that was available in order to try to address some of the underlying things that were going on from me, some of the adverse childhood experiences and trauma that I had suffered growing up, just wasn't available. I suppose that today that's the frustrating thing that, 25 years later, we still don't have access to the support that we need to keep people from recycling through the criminal justice system for street-level drug use. Also, people who are currently in the supply of drugs, who are simply supplying drugs in order to try and feed their own drug dependency issues, just don't have the support. More than 25 years on, since I was in that situation, I am a homeless public injecting drug user using drugs in alleyways and behind bins and prone to infection and disease. We are still in exactly the same position here in Scotland as we were all those years ago, when we have internationally recognised evidence-based ways to reduce the harm caused by drug use that we are simply not allowed to implement at this time. We are not finding a way to do that when there are clear ways that we can implement evidence-based ways that can support people of illicit drugs and on to medication, which keeps them well and allows them to be productive members of society. That's very helpful. I'll move on to Louise. I'll ask the same question a little bit about your personal experience in relation to how we deal with drug misuse issues within the criminal justice system, how that's impacted on you personally and any other comments that you have that would be helpful for us. Louise, over to you. Hi, thanks for inviting me to this. As Peter says there—sorry, there's an echo in the room and it's putting me off—I'm all about safe consumption rooms. That is my goal, would be to get safe consumption rooms around everywhere. In my own area, we definitely need them. In other areas, Glasgow, the central bell, everywhere, we need them. I definitely agree with Peter on that. The criminal justice here, they are quite good at helping, but that's if you tell them the truth. You have to tell them the truth for them to help you. Thank you for that, Louise. I think we've managed to sort out the echo on the line. That's very helpful. Natalie, can I bring you in just with the same questions? My experience with addiction was that I was one of the children that was born into the heroin epidemic. Unfortunately, if you lived in a disadvantaged or deprived area, you were going to be one of the children that experienced the neglect of that generation of drugs. Although I did have a family that loved and cared for me, they were unfortunately unable to raise me because crime and drugs took prevalence over my education or nurtured me to become strong independent women. Drilling was difficult for me because I moved from a chaotic area into quite a fluent area where I didn't fit in. My family was still criminals, so I was trying to fit into a world where I really didn't belong and I got a bit lost. Drugs were very accessible to me because I had family members that sold them, so having come from a bit of use of that kind, I was hoping blanket became using drugs and substances. Unfortunately, when I did want to get help, there wasn't any help available back in 2006 or 2007 or 2008 or 2009 for that matter. What I've witnessed over the years is there's been an absolute decrease in the support available, and there is no longer any choice. That's what we're lacking, being able to offer same-day prescriptions, being able to have safe consumption vans in deprived areas, being able to access holistic methods of support, whether that be residential or day programmes. I was one of the fortunate ones that had a care manager that cared, and that, for me, is missing in a lot of services. The care element, we work in a system of care, and not all staff members care about your journey, nor do they care if you abstain from the drugs that's potentially killing you. I could go on about my issues all day, and I think that, for the purpose of this today, it's about exploring the gaps that's missing and trying to pull the evidence together. Thank you, Natalie. There are a few really important and interesting points covered there. Finally, Becky, can I come to you and just open the floor to you? Thank you for inviting me along this morning. My experience is a little bit different from the experiences that have been described so far, but I think that it's quite typical of women in Scotland. I didn't come to use illegal drugs, although I believe that I had an addiction and had an addictive personality and had issues with substances right up until I started using illegal drugs. I didn't come to that until later on in my life, I was in my 30s, and I believe that it was the culmination of things that contributed to making my life difficult over that period. I was brought up in a small Scottish town, I was brought up in poverty, there was a lack of jobs available to people in the town that I lived in. I'm quite old, so the age test, and I suffered trauma. I was in a violent relationship for quite a long time, for about 15 years, before I managed to get the strength to come out of that relationship. By that time, I was traumatised and quite broken and desperate and using drugs. To me, at that point, seemed to be the answer to the pain going on in my head, and the experiences that I had were criminal justice. It varied depending on what was going on for me. I lived with a drug user, he was known by the police, he used and sold drugs. I was often caught up in that situation, so were my children. The experience that I had at that time depended on what the situation was and who it was that came to that situation. I had some quite positive experiences with community police officers who were a bit more understanding of the local circumstances and had a different job. It wasn't their job to be deciding whether I was a drug user, a drug dealer or buying drugs illegally, and that wasn't their job. I think that we're drug enforcement officers, so obviously their jobs are different. It was less helpful to me as somebody who really had a health problem and needed help to be arrested, locked up. Thankfully, I didn't get a prison sentence, but I was arrested over and over again. That takes me on to my co-experience. I feel really grateful that I lived in Clackmannanshire, where I was a sheriff. His way of working with people who had drug problems was really helpful. He gave people opportunities to do community service or be on a payback order and supported people to get help for their addiction. That was a good experience for me. That really gave me the feeling that I was being given a chance. I was going to say that you've made some really powerful points. Just so that I can give members the opportunity to come in with some other questions for the four of you, Peter, Louise, Natalie and yourself. I'll maybe just stop you there for the moment and open up questions to any of the other members who maybe want to come in. Thank you, convener, and good morning to our panel. I thank our first three speakers for sharing their own personal experiences. I know that it's often difficult to speak about them in public, but we value their experiences. There seemed to be a common theme that came through the three answers. There always seemed to be a trigger. There always seemed to be a first time, if you like, when you were either proactively trying drugs for the first time, or you might have been coerced or into it, or you felt pressurised in some way due to the peer network you were in. What do you think could have been done differently at that time, in terms of early intervention, so that that first time never led to the second, or the third, or the fourth, and the addiction that it therefore created thereafter? What do you think could have been done at that point to stop that spiral from even starting in the first place? That's open to anyone. You can just wave your hand if you want to answer. Thank you. Peter, would you like to come in on that? I think that you were wanting to come in anyway. Thanks, Jamie, for the question. I don't think for me there was a particular instance in my life that sparked problematic substance use. Where I grew up, a small village on the outskirts of Falkirk, a lot of my peer group were experimenting with substances like cannabis and alcohol, poppers and LSD and amphetamines and ecstasy. I got to say that I had some of the best times in my life on drugs. The issue is not drugs yet. The issue is how we place drugs. The issue is an unregulated market that leads to so many people dying. The fact that you yourself can walk into any safe consumption facility in the UK and order half a pint of lager or a vodka and you know that that's not going to kill you, you can wake up every morning and put caffeine in your body, but if you go and get a substance that is controlled by a criminal gang and you have no idea what's in it, you are dicing with death every time you use it, that's where our real issues lie. In terms of that being catapulchied into problematic substance use, a lot of that was how we are currently placing things. I was arrested for a small possession charge at a very young age of cannabis, which catapulchied me into the criminal justice system, which didn't help in any way, shape or form, with what led to real problematic substances for me. It's not about the substances, it's about how we regulate substances. If we had a regulated market, so many people would not be dying right now. People are dying because of the criminal gangs controlling the market. It's that simple. Thanks, Peter. I think that the issue of organised crime in their place will come up later and also the issue of people accessing drugs for the first time whilst in detention either young offenders or adult prisoners. I think that those are issues that make them up later. I think that Louise wanted to talk to me a little bit about that as well. Yeah, I did, thanks. For me, it wasn't just one thing, like Peter said, that made them turn them into drugs. It was many things going on in my life, those were alive. Other people, like you say, peers and also people who you would trust, that you think you would be able to trust actually, given your drugs at a young age. I mean, I stuck in at school. I was like six years, I've done hires. For me, it's no whether you've got the biggest brain in the world, you're a clever, you're intelligent. My younger sister, for instance, she's got no experience at school because she left in third year due to bullying, because she's now working as a nurse with old people, with dementia. I see that as, you didn't have to just stick in at school to be, oh, get a job, get this, get that, get in. I've been in prison and I want to now better my life and I hope that this actually gives me an opportunity to do that. I've never done anything like this in my life before, but I do like talking. I do agree with Peter's safe consumption rooms, vans, ambulances, whatever you want to call it. I think that that is what we need in this country, because who wants to walk past trees and see needles sticking out of a tree? Who wants to go and see somebody lying next to a bush overdosed? Nobody wants to see that. For me, if we've got safe consumption rooms, all around every one in Kirkcaldy, one in Glenruth, I'm 55 by the way, so that's where I'm saying these terms, at least there's one, and then let it grow. He didn't want to see people lying their dead and all, we could have saved that person in the lock zone, but we never, because oh, we haven't got the lock zone and oh, there isn't any safe consumption rooms. I mean, I see people all the time, bosses, no, even in the clothes, they're standing at the doorway at the clothes so they can get some light. It's crazy, and most of the drugs in my area is crack. The crack is an epidemic in my town, and all around, like the central belt of life over at Stirling, Glasgow, Edinburgh, I'm sure, maybe Dundee as well, but it's more nowadays crack than heroin or benzodiazepines. I mean, I'm not saying that's not still going on, because it is, but it's crack, cocaine is the worst drug, and I've lived it myself. I've been there, I've been in prison, I've been in prison for robbing shops or to get crack, which I wouldn't have done for heroin. People are doing things nowadays for crack that they would never have dreamed of doing for heroin, and that's what we need to change. Thank you, Louise. I know that that's very powerful, and we like you talking. It's very helpful. Can I maybe bring in Natalie? I think you were quite keen to come in, and then I think we'll move things on a wee bit. Natalie? Yeah, just for me, I think, when I was younger, we had a lot of these campaigns, and it was the just say no campaigns, and I think probably for everyone around the table, if you tell a child, don't do something, curiosity will absolutely want us to do something. So campaigns like that absolutely didn't help, and what they did was they created a lot more stigma than they probably anticipated they were going to, but I think we continue to get lost. People are already lost. Drugs are absolutely a symptom. They're not the cause. When we look at addiction, most people addicted to substances come from deprivation. We know within those deprived areas in communities that trauma is prevalent, abuse, neglect, sexual, physical. We know that literacy and numeracy within the schools are not being met, so I think that if we continue to look at addiction and symptom and not looking at the cause, what is the environment of the child? How are they being raised? Is removing them for the parent going to be helpful? In my experience of my own addiction, the system created the failure within me by removing me from my mother. My mother was never unfit to look after me nor was she a drug addict. My father was a drug addict, but the system removed me from my mother and my sister and put me to live with my grandparents, and they were the ones who created the trauma in my father to begin with. We have generations of systematic failures where we continue to look at drugs being the problem. Drugs are just the symptom. We need to look at the cause. What is the cause of individual using these to begin with? Thank you, Natalie. I know a number of members who would like to come in with some final questions, so I would like to bring in Rona Mackay and Fulton McGregor. I would like to ask Natalie the first time that you spoke, you alluded to a gap in services that should be there. I wonder if you want to expand a wee bit on that and your thoughts on that? In gaps in service provision? You spoke about it. I think that those were the words you used, that there were gaps, so just maybe expand a wee bit. I can give you my personal experience and my experience today as a professional. My personal experience is that when I went to seek help, no one knew what to do with me, because I lived in Bishop Riggs, which was a quite advantaged area. I had a relatively good job at the time. I had children that schooled in Bishop Riggs, so when I went to the GP to say, you know, I can't live my life like this anymore, my GP didn't know what to do with me, and then he was saying, you know, we can refer you into the community addiction team, but I don't know if that would be okay for you. My GP was stigmatising what a community addiction team would be or who fits into the criteria going there. Then, when I went to the community addiction team, I was dealt with. The social work department then removed my children because I admitted that I had a problem. For me, the gaps there was no one was nurturing me to say, you know, this is how to be a better mother or this is how to keep your children or this is what we're going to do to support you. Again, my choice of drug was not heroin, or at that time injecting needles into my body. It was alcohol and cocaine, and I guess in society we accept that a little bit more than we do with harder drugs. It was maybe seen as a superficial addiction, so the community addiction team didn't know what to do with me because they couldn't put me on methadone. It wasn't an opioid-related addiction. I was passed to four different addiction workers. That was in a two-year period where I got progressively worse and deteriorated because going to environments like community addiction teams, you start to meet people that you wouldn't typically meet in my life anyway, so I was then exposed to new drug types. It was my fourth addiction worker that recognised, actually, that you shouldn't have been here all that time. Let's look at getting into rehab, and that was the Willy Wonka golden ticket for me. I have to be honest, going far between back in 2011 got the opportunity of residential rehab, but she recognised that I wasn't in fact a terrible mother. I wasn't in fact a bad person. I was a professional person that just got lost, so I fortunately got into rehab, and as soon as I was released from rehab, I got into a community day programme that they cease to be around anymore because we used to be closed all community day programmes. That's my experience, Shona. My professional experience is that there is very little service provision, so the gaps for me is that we work within the Scottish Prison Service, and we can do fantastic work women in the prison service. We know that 47 per cent of men and women in prison go under the age of 11, with numeracy and literacy, so we know that if we develop them skills, support, CV build, we look at their wellbeing, we look at what their family support network is when they leave, we can build a really good care plan from the prison. However, it's the gaps when they leave. They are liberated to no GP, their benefits are not secured, they have to present a homeless case work team to find out what accommodation they're going to have on that day. There is no sustainable plan for individuals in that element, and even every single day I'll have a family member or a chaotic drug user phone in me saying, can you help me? What support is available in my area? How can I engage in your service? There's no fluency, and the reason for that is because we have very little choice in Scotland. What we've done for the past 20 years is invest into a medical model, which is great. Medicine helps, but where is the holistic rehabilitation to support the medical model? I think that that was a really important contribution and informative. If I can say, I think that your story has been quite inspirational the way you've turned your life around, but what you've told us there is really so useful with your experience of what you've been through in the system. I'm going to bring in, just before I go to Eufilton, and I'm just going to bring in Becky. I think that you would like to make a couple of points if they can be fairly brief. Thank you. I'll try and be brief. It's not one of my strong points, sorry. I just wanted to pick up on just a point about—it's really a very complex problem, isn't it? I think that there's a range of options that need to be put in place to support people before they enter the drug scene and those supports for people that have ended up in the criminal justice system. I completely agree with everything that Natalie said about the holistic approach. There are some good projects going on around the country with children about what we're talking about today. The long-term solution to that is about making our children's homes a safer place and letting children know what's acceptable and what's not acceptable in their lives and giving them opportunities to get support and to be able to talk if they're having difficulties. Thank you, Becky. I'll bring in Fulton now, and then I'll bring you in Louise. I know that you're keen to come in, but I'll bring in Fulton Margagher first. Thank you, convener. It's again a broad question to the four people who have spoken to us about their lived experience, which I really, really appreciate and I think is very helpful for the committee. I just want to say before starting my question that I also am a big believer in safe consumption rooms, and I do think that we need to find a way to make that happen. My question is about, and you've all touched on it already, the interaction with the various justice services that this committee has a remit for, and we'll hear from many of them later today, on how trauma-informed that is when those services are interacting with people who are using drugs, whether that's criminal justice social work, whether that's the police, whether that's the courts and prosecution services, etc. How trauma-informed do you think that is? Is there a stigma within the agencies and within the organisations about drug users? Natalie, I think that you touched on that a wee bit there, and how can we get better with that? The convener realised that's quite a general question as well, so I'm happy for you to pick out who you think. I'll maybe bring Louise, I know that you were keen to come in. I wonder if you might like to respond to that and then maybe go back to the point that you were keen to make earlier. I'm really sorry, I was just focused on what I was going to say, so I'm not 100 per cent what the guy has just said there. My point was off the back at Natalie. My son was removed from me when I was 10, when he was 10 days old. I never got the chance to bring him up, I never got no opportunities. I think my life, well I know my life, would be different, completely different had I been given the chance to bring my son up, but because I had no family support, I wasn't using drugs at the time, I was using drugs when I found out that I was pregnant, they put me on 30 mils of methadone, that was enough for me, then they actually put me up an extra 10 mils. Although I said that 30 mils was enough, I was being sick with it, because it was on the prescription and my addiction's worker was on holiday, they couldn't take it away, which is beyond me, they could have given me a new prescription for somebody else, but they put me up to 40 mils. When I was pregnant, I was being sick every day and then the morning of the sickness started, but my point is that I didn't get a chance to bring him up and I know that would have made my life different, because when I gave birth to my son in 2013, I then started getting the jail in 2014. I never got the jail before that. I'd heard my son, like I said, in August 2013, got the jail in May 2014 and it's been a revolving door and I've been out for six months now and I've done great, so I'm happy to be doing this today and I'm actually quite excited about it. Louise, you're a powerful witness. I'm going to bring in Peter. Perhaps you would like to make a few comments in response to Fulton's question. Peter. Yeah, thanks very much and thanks, Fulton. I think the support for overdose prevention sites in Scotland is well appreciated. Harman-Ram, the unsanctioned one in Glasgow, had a lot of front-line interaction with Police Scotland and I've got to say that it was one of the highlights of running that service was the interaction with Police Scotland. Front-line officers in my experience now, in comparison to my experience being in the system and part of the system 25 years ago, is completely different. I do think that officers are a lot more aware of trauma, there are a lot more trauma informed now. They do want their ability to divert people away from the criminal justice system and into the treatment services that people so desperately need rather than going through the court system. I think that we have a lot more solicitors now who are trauma informed. We have sheriffs who are aware of the situation, but sometimes when it gets to court, if somebody is charged even with a simple possession of a class A substance and it gets to court, sheriffs are often their hands are tied so they have no other option than to divert them into the criminal justice system or sentence them into the criminal justice system, especially if they have a prior history of being in and out the justice system already. That's why the evidence that I submitted on behalf of the organisation that I work for now, Cranston, is really important in terms of how a divert system works. Often people get caught with small amounts of cocaine that are out at a nightclub or a little bit of MDNA. They turn up in the court system on a Monday morning. The sheriff then needs to divert them into a treatment service. They don't need to be there. Treatment services are already under the cosh with the amount of the caseloads that they have, so if we can divert those people from prosecution at the beginning and into an education programme, keep them out of the criminal justice system. Let's get it right. How many high-ranking politicians have admitted to small amounts of substance use in the past? They certainly wouldn't need to be diverted into the treatment services. They could be kept out of that. Therefore, keeping them out of the treatment services that need to deal with problematic substance users would be to do so. In terms of trauma, we are a lot more aware of it. There is a lot better practice, but our hands are still tied with the 50-year-old misures of drugs act. One of the longest-running pieces of legislation that has had no reform outdated is not fit for purpose. Drugs are different now. They are consumed in a different way. We need to push the UK Government to deal with that act of law so that we can have better practice here in Scotland. I know that Becky and Louise are keen to come back in. I would like to bring in Collette Stevenson just so that members have all got an opportunity to ask some questions. Some of the evidence that you have produced so far has been so powerful, and I take my hat off to each of you. We talk about pet person-centred approach throughout your recovery when you are going through it. From my own experience, as a family member, I wanted to ask you more about this. It was almost like the guilt and the stigma as well, going through all of that. Again, as a family member who has experienced something similar to what you have spoke about was the advice that you got was that you are only feeding their habit. You need to wait till you hit rock bottom. When I reflect on that now and I see some of the things that some of the places such as the Beacons are doing in South Lanarkshire, it was the totally wrong advice. Have you seen a shift change in terms of that approach in getting that person-centred support and place as well as your family? Arguably, most families are pretty scared when it comes to stuff like that. I would be keen to know if you have seen a change. I have experience as a family member as well, probably because addiction is a family disease. I totally understand the difficulties for family members. There is progress that has been made. My experience is that I work for a recovery community in North Lanarkshire. We are also attached to the recovery community in Faux Valley. We have a whole-family approach in supporting people into recovery. That is the answer to that, but we are a small charity. We do not have a lot of pool with other organisations. My experience of family members receiving the guidance and support that they need in my experience has not really changed much. I have a friend whose son recently overdosed on one occasion. His dad managed to resuscitate him, so the ambulance did not arrive to take him to hospital on that occasion. He said that if he was revived, he would be okay. It should never happen. It would not have happened if he had been having a stroke and then felt better. Secondly, when he did access the service, he was told that his addiction was not severe enough to need treatment. The family did not give him information. They were not supported. They were not given any explanation of why their son did not appear to fit into the service. There is a lot of work still to be done now, but engagement with the recovery community is definitely the way forward. We have community members who are family members. They have lived experience, as I do. It is important to involve the whole family and get that holistic approach. That is pretty much what I was going to say. In my area, police officers do not seem to have enough training to work with people with mental health. They do not have any empathy. They just take you and that is you. I do not think that that is fair. I do not think that it is right. They need the training to then deter whether you should be in that cell or whether you should be in the hospital. Again, we do get treated like sitting class citizens. I have been in hospital and I have had bod taking. They never noticed my needle marks at the time. I am talking like 8, 9 or 10 years ago. As soon as they noticed my marks on my arms, they did not care. They treated me like a sitting class citizen. I do not think that they have a duty here, regardless of what they do or if they take drugs or if they do not take drugs. However, they have a duty here, but some of them do not. Thank you, Louise. I will hand back to Collette Stevenson. I know that Natalie and Peter want to come in after. We had a debate in the chamber yesterday. It was more like the stigma on how we tackle the stigma. I would like to hear your comments on how we tackle that stigma as well, using words like junkie, even the impact that the criminal justice system has on the stigma there as well, and how we move away from that. Natalie, would you like to come in, followed by Peter? I think that, for me, we get very comfortable using very tokenistic words like person-centred and a hear service provider to family members. Do not worry about it. We are going to use a very person-centred approach and we are going to make sure that everything is okay. It is a great word and it sounds very fancy, but what does that mean to the individual? Person-centred, for me, is answered on the phone to someone at 11 o'clock at night or 12 o'clock at night, or knowing that my background issues might be different from your Collette. That, to me, is person-centred. My first drug death was in 1986, and I have had six family members pass away since then. It has not gotten any better. Society is all responsible now. The media play a massive part in the language that they use. Lots of the stigma comes from the media and the language that they are using and how they portray individuals who have addiction issues. If we start to look at addiction as a health inequality, that will maybe reduce the stigma that is attached to it. Thank you, Natalie. Anything else? I was just to find out what Peter, if Peter had a comment. Sorry, Peter, apologies. Would you like to come in? No. Thank you. Thanks, Collette. This is still really raw for me. Just a few weeks ago, I carried family members' coffin to a graveside and stood over his grave where his five-year-old daughter said that he would climb out of there. We all know that he is never going to climb out of there. He was not a problematic drug user every day. For my family, it was really hard to understand, especially his brother, who wanted to go and get the person who sold him the drugs and do something bad to him. I know the person who sold him the drugs and the person who sold him the drugs is nearly dying as well. You just need to look at that person to see that he is nearly dying, and he is not the person to blame. In the stigmatisation and the hurt and the pain, families do not want to stand up and say, we have lost our loved ones to a heroin overdose or a deep benzodiazepine overdose. We do not want to say it publicly, but now we are starting to see more and more families standing up and saying that we need change, we need things to be different. I love the work of everyone's child, where brave family members have come forward and said that their children or their brothers or sisters or mothers and fathers would still be here today if it was not for the outdated way that we are trying to deal with that problem and the issue of illicit substances. As I say, it is still very raw for me to talk about that experience of those in family members. Things need to change or we are going to continue to see thousands of people dying every year in Scotland if we do not change the way that we are dealing with that just now. I am sure that we all extend our condolences at the death of your family member. I can only imagine that this is a really difficult time for you, so we appreciate your contribution. I would like to open up what we have been exploring this morning to other witnesses who have been waiting patiently. I will open it up to ask if any of you would like to comment on some of the issues that have been raised so far. I will give you a second to indicate that in the chat. If there is nothing, I will start off by asking Mr Liddell. I think that you have perhaps indicated. I have, yes. I thank the invitation to contribute today. The main thing that I wanted to say first of all was just through the experience that has been highlighted by Peter Lewis, Natalie and Becky, is the issues around poverty and trauma. For most folk, it is self-medication, so, as Natalie says, drug use is the symptom of underlying issues. Just to go back to the issue of poverty, the route of Scotland's massive drug problem from 60,000 people or so goes back to the 1980s in terms of significant unemployment, etc. If you compare Scotland to other countries with very different drug policies, for example Sweden and the Netherlands, both of those countries have very much smaller drug problems per head of population than us. That is because their societies are more equal and more cohesive than ours. That is an important point to make in terms of the origins of the problem. We have poverty, but then we have, as people have described, issues around trauma that overlay that over a number of generations. That is the problems that we need to address. I think that the second point was around the points that have been made around the need for a wide range of holistic services that I absolutely agree with, including things like early family support, etc. We definitely are facing a public health crisis around the drug-related deaths, and we need to do a lot of things very quickly, particularly around no-one has mentioned so far the medication-assisted treatment standards that are being introduced, but things like the same day prescribing. One of the challenges that we have with the existing services is that people do not stay long enough for the services to help them appropriately. That impacts on the wider issue of the criminal justice system, so people are dropping out of services. We have heard a little bit of that. People may then, for a range of reasons, but a lot of the time it can be quite punitive practice in community services that people do not engage or probably do not attend for appointments, and therefore they may be removed from a methadone programme, etc., and then may commit crime. We have to see that holistically in terms of the need for community services to be better than they currently are, and then look at how the criminal justice response relates to that and helps that public health community response. I am guessing—I might finish on this point—we have 7,500 people in the prison system. Probably half of that population has an underlying issue around trauma and a drug problem, so we need to keep those folk as much as possible out of the criminal justice system and out of prison, and that is much more cost effective. The best way to do that is to have much better community services and a range of those community services. Thank you very much, David. Staying on the issue of trauma-informed approaches and care, I will bring in Superintendent Conway, who is followed by Mr McGeehan from the fiscal service, to ask a little bit about how trauma-informed your respective services are. Mr Conway, I will open it up to you in relation to how that is being built into policing. I will bring in Mr McGeehan. Good morning, thank you. I represent a department with a new division within Police Scotland. It is a merge of the former safer communities department, and we are working very closely with the Scottish violence reduction unit and the public health approaches that they have tested over time, probably the last 15 years, in showing that they work. We also work with the international development unit. Our new division formed on 1 April this year, and we are heavily focused on public health approaches to policing, trying to embed that across the force. We have people working with NHS education for Scotland and Government colleagues where we are looking at a full trauma-informed package for the whole force. There has already been work done with some of the specialist divisions, but we are actually looking to roll that out right across the force. Over and above that, I would just like to pick up just a couple of points that have been raised. This morning's conversation has been really insightful in terms of some of the wider system challenges that we have. I think that there are huge opportunities just now around the work of the drugs death task force. Mr Richardson will obviously talk about that. There is a subgroup on multiple complex needs. From a policing perspective, looking across the partnerships, there are overlaps and gaps, and quite a lot of the funding is allocated to the symptoms that have been picked up on this morning—mental health, suicide, drugs, violence, poverty, homelessness—in the co-ordination of that funding probably could be better. It is leading to overlaps and gaps in activity. Some of the work that has now been taken forward under the stewardship of the drugs death task force around multiple complex needs—the use of peer navigators—is a real positive opportunity to try to redesign the system and make it more person and family-centred and help people to get to the right service at the right time when they need it. I can confirm that, as a prosecutor, I personally have received training in relation to a trauma-informed approach. I have received inputs from organisations such as the Violence Reduction Unit, and many of those inputs echo the powerful testimony that the committee has heard this morning. That is my personal experience, but, as an organisation, we are similarly engaged with the Scottish Government work, referred to by my Police Scotland colleague, whereby, as a criminal justice system, we are looking to develop a wider trauma-informed training package for all criminal justice practitioners. I will bring in Louise finally, while we are having a look at the issue of trauma-informed approaches and care. I would like to move on to another topic, looking at issues around drug supply and links with serious and organised crime. Louise, if you would like to make a brief point as you can. Thank you very much. It was on the back of what somebody else had said. Drugs are worse now than when I was a child, adolescent, because I did not see half as much drugs when I was younger, or hear about it. I have seen it in my family, so it was there, but I did not see the crime or police were in the streets checking for people breaking into houses and stuff like that as bad as it is now. I know that some people do not go to such social work appointments because they do not get on with their workers. For me, that is something that I have personally been through myself. I have not liked my worker, I have asked to change my worker, or there is not any that you have to stick to that worker. If you are not going to like that worker, you are not going to go and tell them your story or tell them what has happened that month. If you do not like that person or you just do not click with that person, how are you meant to thrive after not speaking to them, basically? Thank you, Louise. I think that we understand and appreciate that that issue around relationships is really important. Thank you for this session that has been really insightful and informative. If I may, I would like to move things on now and look at issues around the supply of drugs and links with serious and organised crime. I will bring in Russell Finlay. Thank you. First of all, I would like to thank Peter, Becky, Louise and Natalie for your testimony today. It was very moving in condolences to Peter for your loss. So far, much of the focus has been on what might be described as such street-level drug use and drug dealing, but every single pill, rock, tenor bag comes from organised crime. Organised crime activities are estimated to cost the Scottish economy in the region of £2 billion a year. It is a much-quoted figure and I am entirely sure where it comes from. Yet, according to the Crown Office's submission to the committee, the value of proceeds of crime confiscation orders relating to drugs last year was in the region of £1 million. It is long been said by many people involved in criminal justice that the proceeds of crime act has failed and is failing. I would like to ask Mr McGeehan and Mr Conway whether they agree with that interpretation and what could be done to improve targeting those at the high end of organised crime. Mr Conway, first. Mr Conway, go ahead. Certainly, in relation to the first proposition from Mr Finlay that the proceeds of crime act has failed, I do not accept that characterisation. Prosecutors are committed to recovering criminal profits from organised criminals in the event of a conviction. That is the critical issue in terms of the wider narrative that is described by Mr Finlay. Procedors can only proceed to recover criminal profits where prosecution results in a successful conviction and where assets are being recovered. That perhaps explains the apparent discrepancy between the value of the illicit criminal market in Scotland and the sums recovered from criminals upon conviction. The challenge in recovering criminal profits is reflecting the fact that, in Scotland, it is not only criminal confiscation that is available as a tool to try to recover those profits from organised criminals. We obviously have, in parallel, not dealt with by COPFS, but a civil recovery system that also attempts to address the ill that Mr Finlay has identified. I do not have those statistics because they are out with the control of COPFS, but the criminal confiscation figures that we have provided should be supplemented and understood sitting alongside a civil recovery regime that all exists in Scotland. That is helpful. Mr Finlay would like to answer that in respect of the police perspective on proceeds of crime, whether it is robust enough, whether it could be improved. Proceeds of crime are not my area of expertise. I am a former detective. I was nine years as a DCI and largely focused on organised crime and enforcement. We know that enforcement does not work in isolation. My detective colleagues and specialist crime division are heavily focused on organised criminals. We know through organised crime mapping that drug trafficking remains the largest criminal market in Scotland and that it is very lucrative. It is almost as if, as you take someone out and put them into the criminal justice system, they are replaced by someone else. There is a lot of investment going into it, but probably not my area of expertise in relation to proceeds of crime. I am sorry that I cannot give you a detailed response in relation to that. The general direction of travel is to treat Scotland's drugs problem, drugs crisis, as a public health issue. However, as we know, there are large numbers of serious organised criminals making a lot of money out of the death of people across communities in Scotland and inflicting violence in our streets. In one of the submissions that were made to the committee by the Crown Office, there are a number of cases where, as I suppose, there have been successful prosecutions against organised crime and one that stood out related to an individual who has not been identified but is apparent from just googling who that is. This individual has a high-level links to organised crime both in Scotland and overseas. The value of the drugs that he was involved in was multimillion pounds and was ultimately sentenced to eight years imprisonment, which realistically means that he could be out after as little as four. Now, this is not a problem drug user, this is not a public health issue, this is a high-level organised criminal. I just wonder again, Mr McGeehan and Mr Conway, whether you think that the courts are truly understanding what needs to be done in respect of those people who are making so much money from drugs. Mr McGeehan, would you want to come in? I can come in, but my comment is necessarily limited. I am sentencing as a matter for the independent judiciary, but I will comment on it as a prosecutor. Do not have strong views on the sentencing of the organised criminals, and I am not familiar with that case. Serious crime prevention orders that came in in 2007, according to the submission to the committee, have been used on 70 occasions for those who have been convicted, and on one occasion for someone who has not been convicted. The 13 of those 70 are now in the community and subject of monitoring. Presumably the other 53 will join them in due course. I would like to ask Police Scotland whether they believe that they have sufficient resources to effectively monitor those people upon their release. My knowledge in this area is limited, and if possible, I would like to feedback a bit in response to that question, if that is okay. Sure. In which case, it would be quite interesting to know whether this is a stand-alone unit that has that remit, or whether it is put on to the divisions who have already got a lot of competing pressures and roles to fulfil. Thank you very much. If that is you finished, I will maybe move on. I know that Louise and Peter are quite keen to come in, so I can ask you to be very brief, and then I would like to move on. Do you want the help to get off the drugs? You will get it, but nobody can help you until you are ready. That is my last thing that I would like to say. Thank you, Louise and Peter. You are very welcome. I think that, with utmost respect to Mr Finlay, the questions that are being asked are their own questions. I would certainly look at the UN international treaty on drug trafficking and whether we want to continue to be signed up to the UN international treaty on drug trafficking and how we impact the long-term proceeds that are going to criminal gangs at the moment by changing the way that we deal with the system. We have tried for 50 years now, and May this year was the 50th anniversary of the Missus of Drugs Act every time we see criminal gang getting sentence going to prison. A bust recovering sometimes hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of heroin or street benzodiazepines leads to no impact to the amount of drugs that are available on our streets. We had an international lockdown where restricted travel in and out of the country. All travel was restricted for a long period of time, and it had absolutely no impact to the drugs that were available on our streets while, at the same time, criminal gangs were continuing to be arrested and caught with substances. I would say to Mr Finlay, please have a look if, as a country, we want to stay part of the UN international treaty on drug trafficking and whether we actually want to change the regulations on how we deal with drugs and drug trafficking and drug supply, because what we are doing clearly is not working. Thank you very much, Peter. I would now like to move the discussion on and focus on our next theme, which is policing and prosecution. We are looking at issues around decision making for prosecution and the response to the drug task force recommendations that were made earlier this year around zero tolerance and other issues. If I can maybe start off with Rona Mackay and then come on to Jamie. I would like to ask Superintendent Conway and then about the police referral system and the factors that are taken into account when deciding what action to take. I will then move on to Neil Richardson to discuss a wee bit about the drug task force. Superintendent Conway, can you give us—I am not asking for an exact figure—just an approximate level of how many referrals to services are made when you encounter someone who has been using drugs? I think that the next question is probably for Neil Richardson. What do your officers look for and how do they make that judgment at the time? If you can just tell us a wee bit about that. I do not have a number for you, but in terms of multiple complex needs in dealing with individuals in the community, there are a large number of referrals made to partner agencies, both statutory and third sector. It is done predominantly through our vulnerable persons database. Some of the challenge that we experience from policing is the capacity of partners to respond. That is a challenge that we know that statutory partners are struggling to meet demand. Quite often their service provisions are targeted towards the most critical end of the spectrum, and I know that there is work on going on within Government looking at the national care service and how we can make the system better. Our officers are dealing with individuals in need day-in, day-out and 24-7. We are identifying a large number of people, and we refer the people into partners. The challenge is roundabout some of the wider system issues where we potentially have people who do not get the right service at the right time when they need it. Just to clarify, are you saying that when you make the referrals, you are then told that no one is available to take those people? Is that what you mean? How do you know that they are struggling? In the most critical end of the spectrum, I think that our statutory partners respond really well. I think that some of the wider concerns in relation to the adults and children that go to statutory partners need to prioritise their resources. I do not think that demand and capacity meet each other, and that is where often our third sector partners fill the gap. I do think that there are probably some wider system issues that there are opportunities to work in this area to try and improve. Would you be able to send to the committee the number or approximate number of referrals that you make by letter, if that would be possible? Would it be specifically in relation to drugs or would you like a overview of multiple complex needs in terms of what we are referring to any partners? I am happy to do either. Drugs primarily—I do not know how easy it is for you to get the other figures, but certainly on the drug side it would be interesting to know just how many people were being directed to services. On the issue of how you make the judgment, is it up to each individual officer about whether they say that someone should be referred? Are there guidelines for officers for that? I think that our officers, as was picked up earlier in the conversation, are more informed now and more aware of individual needs. There are no rigid guidelines for our officers. A lot of it is based on their training and professional judgment. I ask Neil Richardson, just for an update on the drug's death task force and the pilot schemes that have been going on. If you could maybe, I do not know much about the medics against violence pilot programme in Inverness, if you can tell us a wee bit about that just to give us a rounded picture of it. I am very happy to do that. The key work in relation to criminal justice is obviously wrapped up in the report that was published on 6 September on drug law reform. What led to that was considerable consultation and discussion with a range of different groups. One of the first pieces of work that we looked at at the start of the subgroup coming together was a detailed systems breakdown of how things work, blow by blow stage by stage. I am trying to identify where the potential rubbing points were and what might bring about a difference. The pilot scheme or the pathfinder scheme that you mentioned that is in operation up in Inverness effectively pulls together some of the learnings from that work to try and bring what was just described there in terms of the rubbing between demand and capacity closer together. It is fairly clear from the evidence that we have that there is quite a lot of failure demand there. That failure demand where people are either referred but not then dealt with or not dealt with in a timely fashion or they are referred somewhere that then is not appropriate and there is no real remedy for them there. All of that experience breaks down the trust and the confidence that individuals have in that statutory provision support help in the first place. When we talk about multiple and complex needs and when we talk about the real complexities of the system and what we heard Natalie so eloquently talk about earlier on about the person centredness that really is not all that person centred and the lack of care and compassion in the system, that is all true and that is all my experience of having done that breakdown and worked with partners. It is not that anybody is trying to be malicious or trying not to be compassionate, it is just the pulling together of an incredibly complex series of organisations that are trying to do their best in difficult circumstances and with limited budgets. Ultimately what we were trying to do as a task force and what the pilot that you mentioned is doing is trying to develop evidence to enable informed decisions to be made moving forward with regard to where we allocate money, resource and energy. The hope would be that in the same way that we are employing what has been generally described as a navigator approach, that we are doing that with overdose response and it has demonstrated some really, really positive results, the medics against violence and the violence reduction team have been operating with navigator models for really quite considerable time and have a lot of evidence there to draw on. Effectively what is taking place in Burness is a similar kind of utilisation of a navigator concept where you are providing assertive and persistent outreach support to individuals that need it and rather than just signposting or giving somebody a card to say phone them or go on to this website, which we know is ineffective except for a very small number of people. This type of navigator approach is one that is demonstrating a more caring and empathetic persistent and assertive way to pull together the facilities that are available with people that need it. What we are doing as a task force, not just in this area but in all areas, we are trying to develop evidence. It is a really hot area but there are many views and opinions but what we are seeking to try and do is hold on to and advise on remedies that are supported by evidence of successful outcomes and then generate hopefully improvement. That is in three areas, the short term, the medium term and the long term because nobody expects that we can reform the law quickly. Some of that navigator activity is really quite exciting because it is making a difference on the ground now. Thanks very much. That is really, really interesting and helpful. Do you have an end point for that? Is there a timescale that you are working within to produce this evidence? Yes, there are different timescales. The task force is aiming towards a final report this time next year, in fact, so we have a year to run. We are also all very aware of the fact that any task force is not the solution that our job was not to provide the ultimate end game solution. The solution is within the system. Our job is to put a spotlight on things that can be accelerated, done better, to challenge the existing thinking or ways of working and bring about that stimulus for improvement. We have a time frame, some of which we hope will be concluded by the time we write our final report but it might well be in some areas that that evidence is still being gathered. However, our hope would be where there is a sufficiency. We do not wait. If you look at some of the things that have already been discussed this morning, there is compelling international and national evidence to support very positive outcomes and consumption rooms is a case in point. The question that we would wish to ask is how much is enough? How much evidence do you require before you can take a decision on some of those issues? I guess that what we would be keen to encourage, given the scale of the challenges that Scotland is facing right now in relation to drug deaths, is that there is possibly a scope to be a little more ambitious in terms of moving quickly. I will hand straight over to Jamie Greene and then I will bring in Collette Stevenson and then Katie Clark. Thank you everyone so far. No, we haven't got a huge amount of time left. I guess that I wanted to broach the point that has been raised a number of times and that's the legislative framework that operates both within the UK but specifically in Scotland, given that we have two very separate legal systems. I may start with a question to the Procurator Fiscal's Office. I'm just looking at the statistics. Around five years ago, the number of charges for single offence possession has roughly stayed the same. There's a marginal increase from 9,700 to 10,000 but the number of diversions five years ago were classified as around 88, which is very low and there's clearly been a big shift in policy towards diversion. That figure last year was over 1,000. My first question is, given that that increase has been so dramatic but the year on year sad roll call of drug fatalities has also increased year on year, is there any correlation that we can make between the success of the diversion concept to reducing the overall harm and deaths from drugs in Scotland? In other words, has that policy been a success in your view? The causes of drug deaths in Scotland are complex and those causes have been examined by the Scottish Affairs Committee in 2019. That complex set of contributing factors has been identified and discussed during the course of today's session. When it comes to procedural decision making, our focus is trying to do the right thing. The right thing will mean different approaches for different offences and different accused persons. In 2019, the then Lord Advocate refocused prostitution policy and confirmed the diversion to be considered for all offences at where there is an identifiable need that has contributed to that offending. Drug dependency or drug use may be such an identifiable need and it has not been focusing or re-energising of prostitution policy that has resulted in the increased numbers of diversion that are being offered in relation to simple section 5 to offences. What I am satisfied is that in those cases that was the right outcome in the public interest and it is an approach that prosecutors will continue to apply and thereby hope to reduce harm and hope to reduce the wider impact of drugs upon Scotland and individuals in Scotland society. Thank you for that. I will make it more clear in my questioning. There has been a year-on-year increase in the number of diversions from prosecution and there are arguments for and against that. That is not the point of my question, but there has also been a year-on-year increase in sadly the number of people who are dying from drugs. The number of diversions doubled from 500 to 1,000 in one year alone and that is a substantial increase. Is it the case that it is just too early to say whether that policy is one that is working from a public health point of view? Or do we have sufficient data to make a correlation between that policy and the health outcomes? I would not attempt to make that correlation, Mr Greene. I would perhaps use more individual examples of success and the impact that diversions can have on individual accused. The committee may want to refer to the 2018 report on the process of young persons prepared by the inspector of prosecution. In that report, the inspector used three real-life case examples illustrating the positive impact of diversion for individual accused. Those are useful reference points for the type of analysis that you are proposing. If I can use one illustrative example, because one of those illustrative examples was in relation to possession of drugs, and it perhaps illustrates again the trauma-informed approach that police officers and prosecutors are adopting. One of the examples identified by the inspector of prosecution related to a young person who was found in possession of drugs in the vicinity of a school where drugs had been a problem. A police officer who was also a youth engagement officer took time to speak to the school and established that the offender had been seeking help for drug addiction. In the police report, the police officer advised that the offender was remorseful and was being referred to a local addiction team and recommended to the prosecutor that diversion may steer the young person away from offending. The prosecutor took that advice, and the social work completion report after diversion advised that the offender engaged throughout, and it started college at the time of the inspector's report that the offender had not re-offended. For me, that is an illustration of the positive impact that a diversion can have on persons reported by the police to the prosecutor's service. Thank you for that illustration, and I think that we all would welcome many positive outcomes from those interventions. Is there a role for the Crown Office in terms of analysis of what happens next? We often focus on the discussion on diversion, but not necessarily what we are diverting people to and the success of those programmes. Do we know, for example, of the 500 people who went through a diversion route instead of prosecution in last year, met a successful outcome? Do we know what percentage of them attended rehabilitation or produced an outcome? Do we know how many of them re-offended or back in the system in that lighter figure of 1,000 the following year, for example? What sort of analysis is done by the Crown Office in terms of the on-going monitoring of those who are diverted from prosecution? In relation to the individuals who are diverted from prosecution, the Procative Fiscal Service receiver report on the completion of the diversion programme from Social Work Scotland on the successor otherwise of the person's engagement with Social Work Scotland and the diversion support services that have been offered. Of those, for example, 1,000 persons who were referred for possible diversion, CLPFS can provide statistics to the committee in relation to the outcome of those diversions for those individual persons. One final question is a point that Peter raised earlier, and that is that not everyone who will be stopped by police with a single-charge possession or a first-time possession offence would necessarily be classed as those with an addiction. They may be those who have been stopped with recreational drug uses but may not be suitable for the sort of diversion programmes that some of our other witnesses referred to today. What does the prosecution service think that the advice to police is in that respect? How do you differentiate or indeed how do you decide or analyse whether someone who is stopped and caught possession would benefit more from full treatment, diversion rehabilitation or simply a recreational drug user who is simply breaking the law? There may be a very fine line between the two. As far as the reports that are received by CLPFS, Police Scotland has an opportunity to provide information in relation to vulnerabilities of an accused person or the circumstances in which they were found possession of the drugs or their criminal record or any other relevant factors in relation to the circumstances of the individual accused and the offence, that enables prosecutors to select from a range of disposals, including diversion but not limited to diversion, so prosecutors in Scotland have a wider range of disposals than other jurisdictions. We are able to select from, for example, a warning, a fine, diversion, a fiscal work order or in some cases prosecution and therefore we have a menu of options from which to select the most appropriate outcome for the individual offence and the individual offender. I wonder if Police Scotland would like to answer the same question. Can I maybe just move things on and we'll maybe come back to the foot time? Collette Stevenson and then Katie Clark and then I'll bring in Pauline McNeill. Yes, thanks, convener. I just wanted to ask Mr McGee can and draw more in terms of what you were talking about about prosecution and diversionary, so the structured deferred sentencing, there was a pilot scheme run I think it was in 2019 within the Hamiltonshire of Court. Now I know that it is specifically aimed more at women going through the justice system as well as low level young people who have been offending as well and you talk about what you've got at your disposal in terms of sentencing or diversionary. How good is that being used? How effective has it been throughout the courts? And could we do better or just like to know your thoughts on that? Mr McGee. Again, I'm afraid a structured deferred sentence is a sentencing disposal of the courts. It is not a disposal of the prosecution service. That would be a decision for an assessment to be made by the independent judiciary and therefore I'm afraid I can't offer any comment in relation to that deferred sentence disposal. Katie Clark and then I'll bring in Pauline McNeill. Thank you. Again, my question may be one that the witnesses feel they're not best place to answer, but we've already heard that there's been a significant increase in deferrals from prosecution and indeed the Lord Advocate as you probably know came to Parliament fairly recently to announce a significant policy shift in relation to class A possession. Is there any evidence that there is the resource being put in place to ensure that we're able to adequately deal with that change in policy? Is there any information about the likely increases that we're going to see in terms of deferral from prosecution as a result of that policy shift, which has obviously been happening over quite a long period of time? I'm going to ask the Crown Office, but it may be that they can give some comments, but it may feel that they're not best place to give the definitive answer. I would differentiate between the announcement made by the Lord Advocate in relation to recorded police warnings and a deferral of a prosecution decision pending the potential provision of support through a diversion programme. The two are separate, and your question appears to be directed towards the latter element, which is a situation whereby the Procurator Fiscal receives a report. He or she decides that diversion may be an appropriate disposal and they refer the matter to the local authority, the local authority to assess first whether or not the person is suitable for diversion and secondly whether or not there is a support programme that they can put in place for that person. Normally, that support programme would be allowed to run and then Social Work Scotland would report the outcome of that diversion or support programme to the Procurator Fiscal to make a final decision on whether or not prostitution should take place. I'm afraid that that's a very long explanation for me to arrive at the conclusion that you've anticipated, which is that in relation to the service provision or the resources available to local authorities to deliver those diversion programmes, I'm afraid that as a prostitution service we are not best place to comment on that and local authorities would be best place to provide a comment on whether or not they have sufficient resources to provide the diversion programmes that they would wish in relation to offenders referred to them. If I could put the same question to Police Scotland and I take on board the points that are being made that local authorities may be better placed, but in Police Scotland's experience is the resource being put in place, given that this is a significant shift in policy? I can probably say a bit about recorded police warnings. I do have some stats here. Obviously, the Lord Advocate's guidelines changed at the end of September, so I don't have anything specific in terms of stats in relation to the Class A change. However, some stats round about the use of recorded police warnings by Police Scotland between October 2020 and September 2021, in total we issued just under 20,000, so 19,770 were issued and 5,735 of them were in relation to drugs. About 29 per cent of the recorded police warnings that we have used across the board in the last year have been in relation to drug offences. In terms of resourcing, that has a positive impact on the individual, because it diverts them. It does not reach the Crown Office. Obviously, there is police time saved in not having to do full reports, etc. There are positives both for the individual and for our organisation in the use of these warnings. I have a question about legislation. I am not sure whether it would be appropriate to put it at this point on that. I know that Mr Richardson would like to come in on that, and then I will hand back to you, Katie Clark. Thank you very much, convener. It is simply to say that I think that that is a really good question, and it is certainly something from a task force point of view as we work through the implementation of the recommendations. That is a question that I am going to be keen to pursue, just in terms of ensuring that the appropriate resource is being allocated and provided to ensure that we can help to deliver effective outcomes. What might help is the recent publication from the auditor general. His most recent publication talks about community justice, and there are a number of really significant findings in that report, at least from my perspective. However, one that I am sure the committee will be interested in is the cost, so, although it may be an open question as to whether there is sufficient resource from a local authority perspective, what can be seen pretty clearly is that there is insufficient alternative resource, i.e. prison space, because we are already seeing a resurgence of pressure on the prisons that needs to be managed. The auditor general sets out in his report that it costs, on average, £37,000 to keep somebody in custody for a year. In contrast, for a community payback order, it is somewhere in the region of £2,000, and the outcome measures that have been indicated, again quoted by the auditor general, indicate that, in terms of reconviction as a sole measure, that imprisonment has a 49 per cent reconviction outcome, as opposed to 30 per cent for the community-based sanction. If that is a tall indicative of a broader context that may or may not involve the matters that we are discussing this morning, that is pretty influential evidence to suggest that there is a better use of public money in community-based remedies, rather than reverting to prison. The witnesses have made very clear that this problem is primarily driven by wider social and economic issues, but clearly the legislative framework is exceptionally important. People have talked about safe consumption rooms, and there is obviously a debate going on about the legality and the legal framework around that, but I ask the witnesses, in terms of the misuse of drugs at, what kind of changes are they looking for in terms of the legislative framework? What do they believe can be done within the current legislation? Are they arguing for devolution of drugs policy? What would that mean in terms of what actual real changes are they looking for? If I could start off by asking some of the campaigners and ask Peter perhaps if he could outline briefly where he thinks that we need to be moving in terms of the legislative framework in relation to drugs. I will start with a very small quote that I am sure that many people on the committee probably read in The Guardian from Richard Lewis, who is a servant chief constable in Cleveland Police. When the state offers a meaningful alternative to street drugs, that can be bought from organised crime groups. The demand for them decreases. It is great to see a servant chief constable come out and say that the war on drugs has been a failure and is a failure. In terms of the framework around safe injection facilities, I do not think that we need any changes to the misuse of drugs act. If we look at the framework within the misuse of drugs act, it talks about premises being used for substances such as opium to be prepared to be smoked and cannabis to be prepared to be smoked. That is why cannabis clubs have consistently got closed down when I ran the safe injection facility in Glasgow. There was no police intervention apart from a meaningless allegation of obstruction in the course of a search. We could go ahead and open those facilities with a simple divert scheme into those facilities. I already know that Police Scotland officers are seeing people publicly injecting in alleyways and diverting them to my ambulance to come and inject in a safe, supervised environment without the risk of HIV. It is important to remember why safe consumption facilities were first spoken about in Scotland. It was not to reduce drug-related deaths. It was because of the HIV outbreak. At the moment, we still have that on-going, with the largest outbreak that the UK has seen in the past 30 years. In terms of the framework of the misuse of drugs act, it is a complete failure. It means that it is completely scrapped. If we look prior to the misuse of drugs act, it was essentially brought in on the back of the American War on Drugs and President Nixon standing up in 1971 and saying that we need all that offensive because the UK do tend to go along the same lines. Prior to the misuse of drugs act, there were a couple of hundred heroin addicts in the whole of the United Kingdom. We knew who they were and they were all given diamorphine-assisted treatment. Right now, we have diamorphine-assisted treatment for 19 people in Glasgow, which I believe is pushing in around £2 million. Nicola Sturgeon announced earlier this year that we were going to roll that out throughout Scotland. We still only have the same limited amount of spaces because it is a medically supervised model. We do not have to have the medically supervised models that cost so much to implement and run. There are great examples of diamorphine-assisted treatment in other areas where it is so much cheaper. We consistently take so little of it that it remains very costly for us to do it, especially if we go down the medical model that is currently still in place. Just to wrap up on that, Kate, the misuse of drugs act lets completely throw it out the water. Let's get out of the international treaty signed up to the UN, which the UK are still part of, which very few countries have come out of. Let's look to the four pillars model in Switzerland. We often talk about the decriminalisation model in Portugal. We could implement the four pillars model in Switzerland right now in Scotland without any changes to the misuse of drugs act. Switzerland has been so successful in the implementation of how they deal with drugs that they are now closing safe consumption facilities because there is not the demand for them any more. I put the same question perhaps to David Liddell and maybe just ask if you agree with what Peter is saying. Yes, absolutely. I agree with Peter on the misuse of drugs act. I think that the frustration in the Scottish UK context has been the focus on the misuse of drugs act rather than Scotland doing things for itself. That was the evidence that we gave to the Scottish Affairs Select Committee, particularly around, for example, recorded warnings. However, as Peter has alluded to in terms of the drug consumption room that he ran, there was no public interest in prosecuting Peter and no prosecution followed. Therefore, it is a ridiculous state of affairs that he can run a service like that and not be prosecuted but greater Glasgow and Clyde health board that wants to run a service can't. I think that we should proceed with drug consumption rooms in Scotland under the current legislation. If that requires a letter of comfort from the Lord Advocate, that is what we have previously encouraged and pushed for. I think that the point around drug consumption rooms is that we should not just have one in Glasgow where we should have those across the country and that point has been made alongside a whole range of other interventions. That is the experience, for example, of British Columbia in terms of drug consumption rooms, where you have those across the country alongside medication-assisted treatment and a whole range of other interventions. That is what we need to look at. The other point around Naloxone and one of the things that we have been working very hard at is the peer supply of Naloxone to get Naloxone out to everybody and make sure that people carry it. The final point, the wider point, might be going back to the—it is not related specifically to this, but I guess it is—in terms of the police recorded warnings. Is that move in the direction that Peter has alluded to in terms of countries such as Switzerland and Portugal of a social inclusion model? I think that that is particularly important for people with a problem with drugs that they are not caught up within the criminal justice system for possession. The wider point that I made earlier is that most people in the prison system with a drug problem are there because of petty theft—housebreaking or shoplifting—and we need to do far more to keep those folk out of the criminal justice system as a whole. Overall, I agree with Peter's analysis that the problem is that the Misuse of Drugs Act is a UK legislation and we can bang on forever for the need to reform of the Misuse of Drugs Act, but we need to do things for ourselves in the meantime for sure and very, very quickly. I know that we are short of time. If there were other campaigners or those with lived experience that had a different view or a different approach, it would be useful to know. If not, perhaps the Crown Office could be asked whether it believes that safe consumption rooms are possible within the current legislative framework. I am happy to do that. I will bring in Pauline McNeill. I know that you have been waiting for a wee bit and you were keen to ask some questions around the prosecution side of things and you were quite interested in the safe consumption room. Can you bring that in as part of that? Thank you, convener. I was more probably wider than that. I am struck by how much work is going on. I have heard that we have a great deal of evidence, lived experience, and we have thought about the causes or what needs to be done. I am clear about the role of diversion, which most of all the papers talk about. I am also clear about the role of consumption rooms. Peter Caeclan has been running and we have debates in the Parliament. I wanted to ask Neil Richardson and Peter. I mean, it would be helpful to get some guidance from you as to what you think we as legislators and members have prioritised, because there are so many frameworks and organisations. I would like to focus a bit on what you think maybe the top two or three things that we as legislators need to do to, I suppose, build on the work that has been done and tackle this horrendous situation of Scotland having the highest number of drug deaths. Neil, I do not know if you want to go first on that. I am happy to do that. I mean, I suppose it is a really difficult question to answer, because what we have, effectively what the report has recommended, is that we need to do the analysis that would generate that answer. I think that the finding is that the misuse of drugs act ranges somewhere between now no longer fit for purpose and in need of significant reform, but the extent to which and what the priority should be is the devil that is in the detail. That said, I mean, I think that there is a fairly clear emphasis from the evidence that we have gathered today around the multiple and complex needs nature of all of this that needs to be reflected in whatever legislative change is made. I think that that is so, so important, particularly when you look around the landscape right now in Scotland and realise that there are some really post-Covid, there are some significant changes that are being proposed and worked on. The real risk is that these happen in isolation, so things like a national care service, things like the new strategy for community justice that is being worked on and in fact consulted on right now and the work of the drug deaths task force that has spent the last couple of years gathering evidence to try and find priority. I am not sure as joined up as they need to be particularly now that criminal justice and elements of the criminal justice world are being proposed at least to be incorporated within the national care service and that involves in its own right a fundamental change to accountability and governance arrangements. All of that is important when we are talking about how that fits in a post-pandemic Scotland and I suppose the timing of it all is important as well because what we do not want to do is replace legislation that has largely fallen out of favour because it no longer fits the needs of today with hasty legislation that does not properly reflect the needs of tomorrow. That is part of the reason that the task force is set out of phase 2, which is a broader public consultation, which should be a preview. If I could interrupt you if you do not mind, this is the problem that I am struggling with. I know the work that you have to commend during the work that the Scottish drugs task force has done. I did not know any of it until I read the papers, but I think that it needs to be boiled down for us as legislators. There is task force and frameworks when joined up. Those are all things that I know as a legislator. I suppose that I need to focus in on boil this down in ordinary terms. What are the two or three things that need to be actioned on? That is who I am driving at. I suppose that, within the task force support, there are some examples of whether they are the priorities or not. I am not sure. As we seem to be a more public health approach to this challenge, there are particular obstacles that the current legislation inhibits. We have been talking about consumption rooms. That is one. The evidence and the appetite is definitely there to support consumption rooms, but the law, as it stands, does not allow that. A more informed way to test drugs that people are using would also mitigate harm, but the legislation is preventing that from happening. Things such as pill presses are a real issue, because the drugs are changing all the time. Street benzers are the biggest issue that we are battling with right now, and it is really easy to manufacture them because there are no controls or restrictions or not effective controls or restrictions around pill presses. That would be another easy one—prescribing. For a very good reason, there are very tight controls on prescribing. As we move towards informed stabilisation arrangements that involve the third sector and others to provide meaningful help and support for people in addiction, it is more and more challenging if you have very tight arrangements for the prescribing of drugs. Of course, we are in the middle of a recruitment crisis that just compounds that. Those are some examples that are more developed and more detailed in the report itself, which is freely available on the website. That, hopefully, will provide at least a start, but I certainly would not want to be recommending that we grab on to a few of those, because the risk is that we end up leading to legislation that perhaps is not as rounded or sustainable as it needs to be for this really big problem. I mean that. That is really helpful. Peter, I wanted to also ask you about your opening statement when you talked about how you were not a drug user when you were 16 and in care. I noticed from the Transport Drug Policy Foundation submission that 13 per cent of people in prison were not drug users before they went to prison. For me, that is quite a big theme about people finding themselves in circumstances where they end up taking drugs because they are in prison or they are in care or whatever. So, Peter, I wonder if you could answer my question about what else should we be doing here to prevent that, and what do you think the priorities should be for the Parliament in building towards—I suppose that what Neil talked about is building the priorities to build a wider strategy that is going to make a difference to Scotland's drug deaths? Yes, thanks, Pauline. Within the current frameworks, it is difficult to take any legislation through the Scottish Parliament in terms of things such as safe consumption facilities that would most likely be challenged by the UK Government and the Supreme Court. What we need to do, like Professor David Knock, has said on multiple occasions, is go ahead and open these facilities. Once they are open, what are the UK Government going to do? Send in the times. We simply need a memorandum of understanding to go ahead and do that within the current framework. Given that safe injection facilities do not break any laws within the misuse of drugs act anyway, apart from the simple possession that can now be dealt with through the lack of prosecution when it comes to class A substances, the number one priorities or the priorities that I would lay out, because I understand those frustrations with task force and papers, because I am not an academic in multiple papers and multiple task force. That arm of that task force and that arm of that task force, the things that I would implement if I had the ability to make some changes would be to take what we currently do in terms of all the prescribing services that are currently in the hands of the NHS. We have a real risk adversity to prescribing in this country. I have to disagree with Neil in terms of the pill presses. That is just another fallacy that we are ever going to stop illegal or illicit drugs being distributed on our streets. It does not matter if pill presses or the legislation around that changes, but we need to give people an alternative to those street drugs in quantities that are enough for them not to have to seek out illicit supply change. I have already mentioned the medical model of diamorphine-assisted treatment in Glasgow and the extortionate costs of that. We have already got UK-based models, which are less than a third of the costs that are being delivered in Glasgow currently. We want to see that as an option to people in Falkirk, Stuller and other places. Also, within the prison system, diamorphine-assisted treatment should be available in the prison system. The written evidence that I submitted on behalf of Cranston has a link to a 15-year study of diamorphine-assisted treatment in the special prison system. Those are things that we could implement without any legislation. We need to start taking those actions now, right now, to get those things done. It is not good enough for the First Minister to stand up in Parliament on 20 January and announce a wider roll-out of her heroin-assisted treatment throughout the country. It is still coming up to the end of this year only to have a limited amount of spaces in Glasgow, because it is so expensive—£2 million per year—with a budget that is already stretched. I saw an advertisement for a front-line service worker in the drug crisis centre in Glasgow, and the salary was just over £18,278. It is absolutely ridiculous. We need minimum wages for people working in those services, so we can attract people in and we can keep people working in this environment. My experience is the pain and trauma that you see on a daily basis and that you see every day working in this arena. It is so difficult to deal with. If you cannot even buy yourself a coffee on the way to work because you are getting paid so little money, it is absolutely ridiculous. Nobody gets into this work for the money, but people need to be getting enough to actually live. Those are some of the priorities that I would address right now. Thank you, Peter. We have got quite a lot of witnesses who are quite keen to come in on this, so we are beginning to cover a broad range of issues. Can I maybe just bring in David Liddell and then follow briefly, if possible, by Becky and then Superintendent Conway, if I may? Thank you. It was just really to pick up on the point about what we need to do now from Pauline. I know that it goes wider than the criminal justice system, but it is the implementation of the medication-assisted treatment standards. To do that, Governments set the deadline of next April to deliver those, and that is the most important bit. Currently, we have only potentially 35 per cent of the 60,000 people with drug problems in treatment. England, for example, has over 60 per cent, so that is what we should be looking to get to. Part of the issue with that has been that we have not been able to control the drug problem, if you like. We have seen the shift that has been mentioned by Louise to an increase in crack cocaine use, particularly among long-term heroin users. We need to have more people in treatment to help them and assist them in services over the long term, and then we need to look at wider issues. To pick up on the criminal justice things that we have not spoken about so far is people going into prison and the continuity of care. Certainly, with regard to through care, we have had various incarnations of through care over many, many years, and we need to look again at that issue in particular. We also have drug treatment and testing orders, which have, in my view, been very effective for a small group of people. They are targeted at people who, as an alternative to custody, but in Edinburgh there is also a DTPO2, which is for other offenders. We should be looking at expanding those programmes as well. Becky, if I can bring you in as briefly as possible and followed by Superintendent Conway. Thank you. Dave has just covered a lot of what I was going to say, so I will be very brief. I just wanted to make sure that people hear the voices of the people that I represent on behalf of the DDTF, which is a range of people who have experience of drug use prison and all sorts of life experiences related to that. There is definitely a consensus that the support that you require when you have a drug problem is not catered for when you are in prison. There are some projects that are doing some really great work, but it is not consistent. It is not standardised. If you arrive in prison with a drug problem, even if you do not have a drug problem but you are feeling frightened and alone and you are in a cell, it is not very surprising that the people that are going to support you and that you are going to gravitate towards are people who use drugs and have drugs available for you to help ease that pain. There has to be robust systems that are national that can provide that lived experience within the jail and offer some sense of hope to people that are in prison and that support needs to follow on, as Dave said, once you are released from jail. I am very briefly just to let people know that the MAT standards are implemented within jails as well. That is something that we maybe need to be really looking at how that is going to happen and making sure that they are going to be utilised within the jail, because those options are not available at the moment. We need to make sure that the MAT standards are implemented in exactly the same way that residents are present as they are on the outside and that they are still working in progress or so, not only shake our heads there but we have to ensure that the MAT standards are implemented within jails as they will be in the community. It is just to support a point that Neil Richardson raised in terms of trying to join the dots, there is significant work on going. Government run about Covid recovery and national care service working on getting it right for everyone. They are interconnected pieces of work that I think there is an opportunity to join the dots better. When we look at some of the funding that has been allocated to drugs, alcohol, mental health, suicide, violence, poverty, homelessness and jobs for young people, my impression is that the joining of the dots and the connection between the funding allocations probably could be stronger and that would be an opportunity for government to try and connect some of the funding schemes, which would then probably give better value for money. In many occasions, because a lot of those issues are public health issues, in many occasions all that funding has been targeted to the same people and the same families, but we actually have to label them or pigeonhole them into a symptom rather than actually trying to tackle the root causes. That is all that I want to say. Natalie, I will bring you in briefly, if possible, and then I will move the discussion on. I would like to cover the issues around drugs in prisons and naloxone before we round this session off at 12.30. I just wanted to commend us that we are discussing routes of diversion. Where do we divert people to if we are discussing a police level and if we are discussing a fiscal level? All services are saying that there is no method of diversion. Where do we divert people to because what is going to happen is that our police officers are going to become social workers? Thank you very much, Natalie. I am conscious of time, so I am going to move this session on. That has been a very helpful discussion. As I said, I would like to move on now to looking at issues around drugs in prisons. I know that there are a number of members who would like to focus on that. I will come back to Pauline McNeill. I know that you are interested in picking this up, and then I will bring in Rona Mackay. It was just if anyone had any comments around the 13 per cent of prisoners who enter prisons that have not had a previous history. I find this really worrying, as well as supporting people who are already on drugs when they go into prison, to find 13 per cent. I just wondered if anyone wanted to comment as to why that is and what they should be doing about it. I will bring in Neil Richardson on that. I am not really sure that I can provide any meaningful commentary on that. Anyone else in particular would like to come in on that. I am very happy to bring in anyone else who would like to make a comment. I think that it is not surprising that people who do not have a drug problem go into prison and end up using drugs. It is a frightening, lonely place where there is no support for people. As I just said, often the support that you get from other prisoners who may have access to drugs that help to make you feel better in a frightening environment. I would advocate that we try to support people before they get into prison, so that they do not end up in that position. I do not know what the answer is in particular other than to make sure that there are services provided in prison that look at your mental health, that look at your safety while you are in there, that offer an alternative to using drugs. I think that you would like to come in on David Liddell first. I think that what I have certainly witnessed working in the prisons over the past six years is that prisons are a hyper stressed environment. They are at times chaotic. Individuals can very often not find any peace within the walls of prison due to some of the levels of chaos. What we need to remember is that there is more time to think unless distraction is being in prison, especially during the pandemic, when you are locked up some quite often for 23 hours a day. If you are locked up with only your thoughts and we know that over 80 per cent of men in women going to prison have been previously traumatised, then we are going to look for a coping strategy, and it will not be a positive one. If we look at the research that has been done, we know that 47 per cent of individuals currently in prison score academically a reading, literacy and numeracy levels of under age 11. They cannot in their cells read or write letters to family members or do in-cell activities. We need to look at the boredom being probably one of the biggest issues around individuals who are in prison and an element of peer pressure. Mr Liddell, do you like to come in? I do not really have anything to add to that. I have talked previously about people self-medicating, and I think that there is an issue around people just using drugs as a coping mechanism, but you are right that there is a whole range of other measures and issues, so I do not have anything more to add to that. I would like to ask Leanne Hughes to pick up on your submission. You said that, from April to September, 63 per cent of all prison referrals in Shine are related to women on remand, usually for low-level offences. Some have serious drug dependency problems and may be on methadone, and personally I do not think that these women should be anywhere near prison. During sentences, women's tolerance to drugs reduces, but problems arise when they are released if they use drugs in the same way as before and it can lead to overdoses. You say that this has been a problem with many women and that it has been exacerbated during Covid because of the lack of access to GP services. I wonder if you could expand a wee bit on that for me, please. Anybody else who wants to come in until Leanne returns? Peter, would you like to come in on that? It was the last point, and it was more Pauline's point that I was coming in on, but I am happy to talk about that briefly until somebody else comes on. It was about the 13 per cent coming into prison without a drug problem. I think that people are going to be in prison, and that is a simple reality, but people are entering into the prison system for various different offences that are not related to drug use or problematic substances use. Then they start problematically using substances in the prison system. It is about how we stop illicit substances getting into the prison system, the same as we do stop illicit substances on our streets. It is about giving people the medication that they need in order to not have to use illicit substances. My point goes back to the diamorphine assisted treatment that is used in the prison system in Switzerland, where people do not show any extra cold mobility issues. They have a work-based system in that prison. People do not have any more time of work, and people can exit the prison system on the diamorphine assisted treatment and continue to live really healthy productive lives when they leave the prison system. How do we address 13 per cent of people coming into the system without any substance issues and start to take substances is by not having the demand for illicit substances in the prison system, the same as we do not need to have the demand for illicit substances out with the prison system? Shine Submission says that 63 per cent of all their prison referrals relating to women on remand, so 63 per cent is a high number. Some are seriously addicted at that point. Do you agree with me that prison is not the place for women who have committed low-level offences due to their addiction problem? I am not just for women, but for anybody. It is not the place to send somebody for low-level crimes in connection with problematic substance use. There is literally no point in sending somebody to a prison cell when they need a social-psychological support system in place. Often people get abstinent within the prison system. Often people who are recycling through the prison system have engaged with things such as methadone before, buprenorphine, mutual aid recovery groups, recovery communities, and they are still revolving through the system, so it is just not applicable to send people to prison. I have seen a story recently where a young man got sent to prison for 23 months for a few cannabis plants. We should be employing him. We should be sending him to prison. The UK is already the biggest producer of cannabis. We need to completely think ahead of what we are doing just now and look at the examples that are coming out of America, where we previously followed in relation to the issues of drugs act. We previously took things on board from America. We now have lots of states in America that have a regulated cannabis market. We have Oregon who have fully decriminalised all drugs. We need to look to the examples that are now becoming prevalent around the world of how we deal with them rather than our old outdated system of prison release. On the supervised consumption site in Glasgow, we often dealt with people. We often supported people who were coming right out of prison, often abstinent from drugs and coming straight back into that system of street-level drug use. I think that we have Leanne back. Leanne, I do not know if you heard my question originally, but I will just brief. I will not go through it all again. Basically, in your submission, you refer to women who have, during sentence, their tolerance to drugs reduces, they come out and they very often overdose and due to lack of access to GPs during Covid. That has been a problem. I just wondered if you could expand on that, please. I see this countless times. Women who are in for various lengths of time, they get themselves clean, they come back out, they have to wait on appointments for addiction services, trying to get re-registered with a GP is nigh on impossible. They turn to what they know, what they are used to and, unfortunately, that is problematic drug use. Before you know it, the cycle started again. They are back to re-offending and then they are back in prison. Again, for whatever lengthy time they come back out, they have lost their housing, they have lost their benefits, family members are nice speaking to them so their whole support network also was not there. It is a huge, huge problem. Sending the females to prison absolutely has, and it serves no purpose at all in most cases. Thank you very much, I am going just the time. I think that Becky would like to come in and then Neil Richardson. Becky, I will bring you in again briefly and then Mr Richardson briefly. Thank you. It was just to go over that point about women in prison. I think that it is well understood that the majority of women who are in prison are in prison because of situations that they have ended up in often due to abusive partners or just partners who are mixed up in criminality, especially to do with addiction. It was just to agree that it is not the answer to this particular problem, that it just creates more problems and it creates a cycle of addiction, criminality, costs a lot of money because children are often having to be cared for and that there has to be a better way of dealing with the issue of women in the criminal justice system, something that is more supportive in the community, something that provides the help and support that those individuals need in order to manage lives outside prison. Thank you very much, Mr Richardson. Thank you very much. I was just going to support the comments that have been made already. I suppose that, although they are absolutely relevant for women, they also apply to men. The task force took a view around all of that. Within the prison context, there were some very specific actions that could be taken forward and it seems to me that they are eminently deliverable. One is around through care, and it has been mentioned already, and we have experience in Scotland where we run pilots and we develop the understanding and outcome evidence, whereby we would have third sector people in prisons forming a non-authority figure. Relationships can be started with individuals prior to the release and the support or the connections can be made to assist them through that release process. That should be and could be reintroduced. The second thing relates to Friday release, and I understand that that is already being acted on, which is really positive. However, the issue that has been highlighted there in relation to old habits and old contacts—contacting individuals when they are vulnerable on release prior to any kind of support—is a very real one. Friday release is not helpful, particularly as you go into a weekend in which those services are in the main closed. The final recommendation that is made there is about alternatives, particularly in that remand space, where there is a lot of pressure caused by the remand population. There are alternatives, meaningful alternatives that could be deployed that would enable more meaningful support for the individuals concerned. Those are already recommendations, and although they are absolutely applicable for females, I would just make the point that they are general. Thank you very much, Mr Richardson. I am going to bring in Katie Clark. I think that you would like some questioning, and then I am going to move on to issues around naloxone use. Thank you. Just picking up on a couple of the points that have been made, Peter spoke about the production and supply of drugs. As he knows, drugs at the moment, the sector is completely tied up with organised crime, and a lot of the money ends up in places like Afghanistan. Does he believe that it would be possible to bring the whole of production and supply into a legal framework that would not still involve organised crime and, indeed, despotic regimes? Does he actually believe that that is possible? That seems to be the model that he is advocating. Do you think that it is completely possible? I can see how it might be in relation to drugs like cannabis, but for drugs like heroin, is that feasible? Yes. Thanks for the question, Katie. There are a couple of things that I would reference. Professor Alex Stevens from Kent University does a head talk about progressive decriminalisation. There is a book from the Transform Drug Policy Foundation called Stimulants and How to Regulate Them. That would be points of reference that I would point people towards, because it is often looked at as too difficult a question to ask politically about the regulation of all substances. When we talk about the regulation of all substances, we are not going to jump from a criminalised market to regulation. It is about progressing towards decriminalisation and then towards regulation. Regulation does not mean that you are going to see signs by your heroin here or by your cocaine here. It simply means that there is going to be a route for people who have problematic issues with those substances that are regulated and taken away from the criminal gangs. If we look to the past and we look to prohibition of alcohol and what we have learned from the regulation of alcohol and negating tobacco, we can implement those regulation techniques and how we regulate all substances. We are not going to start advertising cocaine on football shots, like we did with alcohol 30-20 years ago or even just 10 years ago, or tobacco products. We are going to restrict those within a regulated market, but there is so much to think about, because it is not the proceeds of crime in Afghanistan. It is the little farmer in Afghanistan who is supporting his family and the threat of the organised criminal gangs over there and places such as Mexico, where the organised criminal gangs are threatening the little farmer who is just making a living for himself and his family and going down to the street level drug dealer and often supporting their own drug addiction and making enough money to put electric in their electric metres to keep themselves, give themselves enough heat and be able to cook for themselves. How do we regulate to the point where we do not impact those chains of supplies and we do not have big multinational conglomerations coming in and taking over the market and turning it into a business very much like many other things associated with drug dependency? As an example, many residential rehabilitation centres are now a business. They are a money-making organisation rather than what the residential rehabilitation was originally designed to do to be a point of contact and a psychological support network for people who want to move towards perhaps in the space recovery. We need to move away from this being a business and make sure that it is done correctly. I hope to see it in my lifetime. I do not think that I will, but I hope that at least fully decriminalise market with a move towards a progressive and regulated market. We are not really talking about something equivalent to fair trade coffee then. What you are saying is that you are worried about the small farmers, but surely it is not the small farmers that make the big money out of the drugs industry. It is the drug cartels that are both dripping in money and blood. These are massive challenges, are not they? I understand that. One organised criminal gangs that are making money from us that are dripping in blood have the deaths of people on their hands. That includes the small farmers and the small street dealers, but we never get the kingpins. We never get them. We get the small town street dealers and they get locked up for a long period of time and then they come back out to the exact same. A lot of that conversation is focused on that today. The small town street dealers are often the people that get targeted as the really bad people, the ones that sell the drugs to somebody that dies. Ultimately, it is not. If we really want to take this out of the hands of the organised criminal gangs, look to what the chief constable of Cleveland police said a couple of days ago in the Guardian that the war on drugs has failed. We really need to give an alternative to the illicit drugs if we are going to impact and dissuade the criminal gangs from every single time a criminal gang gets busted and taken out and you see a police report on Twitter about £500,000 worth of heroin. Another criminal gang is waiting in the background going, yes, it creates a tough war, it creates more death in misery and another criminal gang gets even stronger. There is never a disruption in the supply chain. I have said that again and I will finish on this, despite international lockdown and restrictions on travel in and out of the United Kingdom for a long, long period of time through the Covid pandemic. Please still continue to try and disrupt the supply chain within that. We still did not impact drugs on the street. There was still as much drugs on the street as there has ever been. You make that point very, very powerfully. Those are important issues. Thinking through the detail of it is part of the discussion that we need to have on what the alternatives to the current legislative regime might be. The other question that I had was to the drug's task force. Given the discussion that we have had about prisons and the massive challenge that we face, it is probably the biggest thing that has changed over the past five decades, both the levels of drugs in this use in society, which are connected to crime but also drugs within prisons and how that impacts on how the Scottish Prison Service is able to manage prisons. Does the drug's task force think or believe that the recommendations made in April 2020 about adequate provision for prisoners after liberation, do they think that those recommendations have now been implemented? That would be a question for Neil. If I can just ask Mr Richard and if you can make your comments fairly brief, because I would like to just cover off some issues around naloxone before we finish. I am happy to do that. I am not sure if we have a task force position on that per se, but from my perspective and again beyond being a task force member, I am also in my day job, the chief executive of the third sector organisation that is heavily involved in the space. I would refer to my comments around throughcare. I think that there is clearly a gap that remains around adequately supporting people before, during and after a term of imprisonment. I think that that should be eminently resolvable and we have evidence to draw on what really works and makes a difference there. I believe that that is an area where there is work to be done. I would like that to be our last area this morning before we finish things. We will look on to issues around naloxone. If I can ask Superintendent Conway, just for a couple of comments, the Police Scotland submission on the current test of change for naloxone was very helpful and provided some update. I am aware that that process has not been concluded yet, but it was certainly helpful to understand a little bit about how that wider programme will support issues, for example, around awareness of stigma and a greater involvement in change within Police Scotland. One of the comments in the submission relates to public perceptions of the carrying of naloxone by police officers and how that has been generally very positive. I wonder if I can ask just a wee bit about how important that community consensus or support is, but I will also ask you a little bit about some concerns that have been raised about police carrying and using naloxone, for example, from the Scottish Police Federation and bearing in mind that the carrying of naloxone is voluntary. We are not the first police organisation in the UK to use naloxone, but we are probably the first organisation to use it on the scale that we are using it on. I know that there are some opposing views from colleagues in the Police Federation. My understanding with naloxone is that 14-year-olds in upwards can access to take home naloxone. There is significant investment in the training of police officers in the carrying of naloxone. We have got it in five areas of Scotland just now. In the paper, it refers to 46 Administrations. As of today, we have used it 50 times. Personal view, 50 lives saved in terms of that. I do not want to pre-empt. It is obviously subject to academic evaluation at the moment. We are hopeful that we will have a report towards the tail end of the year, maybe beginning of next year. On the back of that, our drug harm reduction team will then look at any learning from the evaluation and make further recommendations to the chief constable and the force executive about the way forward. Personally, it is really important that we are pleased by consent for public opinion, public confidence and policing is really important. We are not seeing a lot of negativity coming our way about the police use of that, with the exception of the police federation's views on the police carry. Personal view, perhaps 50 lives saved, would like to see the evaluation and to see what opportunities that presents in moving that on further. We are fully supportive of take home the locks on for working really closely with our partners. We are doing a lot of wider training and awareness across the organisation. We are designing cards at the moment that will encourage potential overdose cases for family members to use the really successful use of take home the locks on. The awareness is spreading across the country. We have been contacted quite frequently by partners and they are signposting them to the right organisations to access the locks on. Thank you very much. Do you know if that will be published and available publicly? I asked the timeline for this and we do not have a specific timeline, but I will get clarity if that will be a public facing report. We have in the region of 13 other police forces in the UK just now and some international forces that are in direct contact with us and they are actively awaiting the outcome of the evaluation. I will clarify that. I have taken a couple of actions to submit a couple of written submissions. I will clarify that point and get it into the committee. Thank you very much indeed, that is very helpful. We have run over time and I think that we would love to continue the discussion. However, I am grateful to all our witnesses this morning, some very powerful, insightful and very helpful testimony and personal accounts. If any of our witnesses have anything outstanding that they would like to share with the committee, please follow that up in writing and the committee will take that evidence into account. I am grateful to you all. That brings the public part of our meeting to a close. We meet again on 3 November to continue evidence-taking as part of the pre-budget scrutiny process. We will hear from Crown Office and Procurator, Fiscal Service and then the Scottish Prison Service.