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It is impossibly difficult, particularly if you are young. Many young people are living through the experience of being the carer for their parents who are struggling with alcohol and drug problems. That is indescribable, to put it mildly.

I had the unfortunate experience of having to repeat the situation a couple of years ago with another close member of the family, so I have gone through all the experiences that we have talked about today more recently—everything from the ADPs to the rehab options to the primary care options. I do not say this to score points, but I can tell you from first-hand experience that it was incredibly difficult and nigh-on impossible to get support for someone who was struggling with an alcohol addiction. That was just a couple of years ago, in modern-day Scotland, and years and years after my previous experience. Personally, I do not think that things are getting better, and I think that many people watching this session will share that view, unfortunately.

Here is what I do not understand. I appreciate all the money that has been pumped into this: you talked at great length about the doubling of the budget from £70 million to £160 million between 2013 and 2023-2024, the ring-fenced money for ADPs and the national mission cash that has gone into all of this. I have heard a lot about that, and it is all very welcome—it really is. However, despite that, year on year, the numbers still go up: there were 527 drug deaths in 2013 and 1,172 in 2023. It seems as if cash is not solving the problem. We can keep pumping money into it, but the statistics are still heading in the wrong direction. I cannot get my head around that. Please help me to understand why pumping more money into the problem has not solved it.

I have heard two phrases used a lot this morning: one is that the issue is complicated, and the other is that it is complex. I do not disagree with you. There are so many intertwining issues that make it complicated. These are long-standing generational problems in communities such as the ones that I grew up in—I understand and appreciate that—and many of the wider macroeconomic factors that have been affecting the issue over the years are outside your control.

However, hearing that the issue is complicated and complex does not fill me with confidence that we are heading in the right direction. I came to this evidence session with an open mind, and I wanted to leave full of confidence that the problem is understood, that there is a strategy and that the direction of travel is right, and having seen that there is some honesty about any failures that have happened. I have heard responses that give me some confidence in that respect, but I have heard other responses that do not. This is your opportunity to say to people, yes, it might be complicated and complex, but it has always been complicated and complex. It was complicated and complex 20 years ago—that has not changed.

Yes and, obviously, Police Scotland has a massive role in that as well.

I cannot let the evidence session pass without raising the joint letter that the committee has received from Alcohol Focus Scotland and Scottish Health Action on Alcohol Problems. Those are two organisations for which many MSPs will have a huge amount of time and respect. Perhaps we will not all agree on every issue, but that is not the point.

The letter is short, but I am afraid that it is stark and critical. Alcohol Focus Scotland and SHAAP simply want us to ask you to respond to their letter. They welcome many of the measures that you are taking—there is no doubt about that—but their view is that

“this is an inadequate, piecemeal approach and the actions ... do not add up to a coordinated plan to respond to the ... ‘public health emergency’”.

They go on to say:

“We would be very interested to hear views from”

the witnesses

“as to how the actions listed in”

your letter, Ms Lamb—including

“a real terms cut to the Alcohol and Drugs Policy budget line—square with ... comments”

and recommendations

“made by the Auditor General.”

Here is your opportunity to respond.

If I may ask a very specific question, are you as nervous as I am that we are on the precipice of a major problem with fentanyl in Scotland? We have seen what has been happening in other countries. If that arrives on our doorstep and the serious organised criminal gangs find a cheap and easy pathway to get that drug on to our streets, we will not be talking about 1,100 people dying—we will be talking about 10,000 or 11,000 people dying of drugs in Scotland.

Sorry to interrupt, but when you answer, I would really like to hear why you have chosen not to go down the fee increase route.

Good morning. You will be relieved to hear that I will ask my questions in two tranches and I will come back in later with the second tranche.

The first area that I will cover is basically about people. At the end of the day, audit work is about people, as much as we talk about automation and software. Let us look at some of your numbers. On page 12 of your budget proposal, you summarise the position on costs and you propose that your people costs will be £25.8 million for 2025-26. To give me an idea of how you perform against budget expectations, can you let me know what the result of last year’s budget is likely to be for people costs? What I am looking for is what you thought you would spend on people in 2024-25 versus what you expect to spend, just to give me an idea of how on track you are with the budget.

When was the £24.6 million adjusted? How does it match up with what you forecast at the beginning of the financial year that you would spend on people?

In your opening statement, Auditor General, you said that you audit 300 public bodies. Half a million pounds spread across hundreds of bodies would not be a huge cost increase for them, would it? Is that not a fairer approach? Ultimately, it is a pass-on cost. Again, there is a slight domino effect to all of this, and we do not really know where all those things will land in the next couple of months. However, it is not as if you are turning up at a public authority and asking for hundreds of thousands of pounds per authority, for example.

I guess that it is important not to look at the project through the prism of a single-year ask. Even though we are talking about just the first year of that three-year spend and the money is being spread out, you are essentially asking for sign-off of the whole project. We have spoken a lot about how much the project will cost and how much you need to do it, but we have not heard a huge amount about what comes out the other end. What are the savings involved? We probably do not have time to go into all that today, so I will park that there.

I would like to see a breakdown of the overall cost, particularly the £670,000 for this year, to understand the terminology of “resource” versus “capital” and so on. In providing that, you could perhaps paint a rosier picture of why spending £2 million on modernisation will save money down the line.

I had been saving up this question for when we came on to the fees issue, but I note that a third of your auditing is undertaken by external firms. I appreciate that you have a multiyear deal with them and that you are obliged to increase their fees to you—by 4 per cent this year, if I am not mistaken.