Seòmar agus comataidhean

This has been my first committee appearance on the bill. It has been useful to tease out some financial and data issues at this point. I am sure that those will also be considered by the lead committee. I take on board the points that members have raised and will seek to come back to you with that additional information.

If there is a surge of people coming forward because of awareness of the proposed legislation, and, hopefully, its becoming law, I believe that that will be a good thing. You will note that, although I do not specify this in the bill, in the financial memorandum, I encourage the Scottish Government to take part in a publicity campaign to raise awareness of the right. I believe that a surge would be a good thing. If people who need treatment, support and assistance are aware that it will be made available to them and that there is no option for someone to say, “You cannot have that because it’s too expensive,” and if that ultimately saves lives and deals with the shocking number of deaths that we have, that will be a good thing.

On your point about the varying costs of public and private residential rehab, it is not just about the weekly costs. You are right to highlight those, but the financial memorandum also specifies at paragraph 38 the time that some people spend in residential rehab, which can go from just a few weeks to potentially years in some cases. We have to look at those significant costs.

We mention in the financial memorandum that there is a tipping point. At some stage, as more people are treated and get help and support—which we believe needs to happen—that will reduce costs elsewhere in the public service. I go back to Dame Carol Black’s point that, for every £1 spent on intervention, we can save £4 elsewhere in the public services. It is important to bear that in mind.

You also asked whether the Government would use private providers more. Clearly, that is an option, and it is up to the Government—we state that very clearly—to decide how the treatment is delivered. However, as the Government provides more beds in the national health service, that will hopefully reduce some of the need to go to the private sector. I do not want to use the word “competitive”, but there will be more opportunities for people to go to the private sector or to the NHS to get their treatment. I hope that we would see some of the costs at the higher end stabilised and brought down.

Of course, people will get the treatment that a medical expert believes that they should get. It is not a self-referral process; it involves someone going through an assessment with a medical expert, and that medical expert—or, if this treatment is initially refused, the medical expert who gives a second opinion—deciding that this is the best course of treatment for that person to get over their addiction issues.

Those are on-going costs that will occur regardless of whether the bill is passed.

Again, as you will know, convener, the range of £28.5 million to £38 million is the additional cost.

I think that we are, but it is taking too long to get and the data is clearly still not complete. As I said to the convener, annual reporting to the Parliament will significantly improve that data because the Government will be duty bound to include it in a statement to the Parliament and will be held accountable for that. The Government will have to work with integration joint boards, health boards and others to get that data.

I make this point sincerely: I have had constructive meetings with a number of drugs ministers, the cabinet secretary for health and the First Minister. I had a joint meeting with the First Minister and the cabinet secretary last autumn and I think that there was agreement at that meeting that we need to focus on data and to improve the data in the future. When I get such reassurance from the top of the Government, that is encouraging and it might have been facilitated by the bill.

That is true, as it sometimes is when your party is in opposition in a different Parliament in the United Kingdom. The same charge could be made against it.

To make a serious point, we are talking about a significant figure, but, in the context of a £64 billion budget, I believe that the funding can and should be found for something that most, if not all, of us agree is a national emergency.

The increased costs in the bill will go to the Scottish Government, and the Scottish Government makes the funding decisions. We would not limit it to putting money into ADPs or health boards. The money that the Scottish Government currently provides to ADPs or through ADPs goes through councils, so there are opportunities for councils to spend and receive a greater proportion of funding if the Scottish Government believes that that would be the best way to deliver what would be required by the bill. We have tried to keep that as open as possible so that we do not limit the Scottish Government’s ability to deliver the objectives of the bill.

We feel that it is an accurate assessment of roughly where we could get to. We are not going to get 100 per cent of people who did not complete their treatments, but 50 per cent would be a not insignificant increase; however, getting to two thirds would be a larger proportion of people who do not complete their treatments than was the case in the past. By having that enshrined in law, they could—and should—be able to do so. I hope that they will, through health authorities taking a person-centred approach, be more encouraged to do that and to continue the discussion about their treatment options. The aim was to provide a range of opportunities for people who are currently not completing the treatment that experts have deemed to be appropriate for them.

I disagree, given how serious and crucial the issue is. As I mentioned, the Scottish budget is about £64 billion annually, and I am asking us to spend less than £200 million a year on supporting people who have addiction problems. Given what people with addiction have suffered and continue to suffer—to go back to Ross Greer’s point about stigma and the impact being not just on the person and their family—getting people over their addiction is money well spent. Remember, those people want to get better; they have struggled and suffered for far too long, and they have sought help and support.

I have countless testimonies from people who were told that residential rehab or other forms of treatment were right for them but they could not get that treatment because of either cost or availability. In 2025, here in Scotland, no one should be unable to get the help and support that they need to get off their addiction and turn their lives around. People who have gone through the process successfully and have turned their lives around make an amazing impact on our community and society.

Again, I could go on, as I did in a previous role, about savings that the Government could make in major projects. We could discuss ferries, for example, or we could discuss the money that was wasted on the information technology system for farm payments back in 2016. We could discuss—