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Hi, Linda. Thank you for coming in.

I cannot imagine what you have been put through these past five years. In that time, we know that more than 200 people have died in Scottish prisons, and many of them will be young people who have died by suicide. You are still waiting for your fatal accident inquiry to begin, which has partly been due to the attempt to criminally prosecute people, which, in October last year, was rejected, I understand. Do you know whether that rejection was due to the Crown not being able to prosecute or is it entirely at its discretion?

On a similar theme, the Auditor General said last year that data on drugs and alcohol is not good enough and that there is a lack of transparency. Have improvements been made in that respect?

Good afternoon, minister. When was the last time that you spoke with anyone from Police Scotland or the Crown Office in respect of drugs consumption rooms?

I will begin by apologising for my colleague Sue Webber, who cannot be here today. She was keen to be here but she has a clash with the Education, Children and Young People Committee, which she also sits on. I think that she has asked whether this joint committee might meet on another day in future, so we will see whether that transpires.

As often happens, you come to these meetings with a number of questions and then hear the evidence and the benefit—or perhaps it is not a benefit—of being last is that you have way more questions than you have time to ask. However, I would like to pick up on something that Kirsten Horsburgh referred to at the outset, and that is the drug consumption rooms issue.

Kirsten, you said something along the lines of a case having been made for those rooms seven years ago in Glasgow. You also said that these rooms could be introduced now, as far as the legal issues are concerned.

The Scottish Drug Deaths Taskforce called for those rooms last July in its final report. Yet, in January of this year, the Criminal Justice Committee, of which Audrey Nicoll and I are members, received a letter from the Crown Office that essentially says that the Crown Office is still in communication with Police Scotland about the issue. We know that there was opposition to those rooms from Police Scotland. However, what struck me when the issue arose at the Criminal Justice Committee was some surprise that they were still just talking about it if there is no legal blockage and it is purely about practicalities.

Do you understand why there are still concerns about the ability to introduce drug consumption rooms? Do you think that it will happen? If there is a logjam involving the police and the Crown, is there something that the Scottish Government can do to break that logjam?

Justina Murray, some of your written evidence was similar to what you have said—perhaps even stronger. One part that jumped out at me was:

“Families repeatedly find there is no accountability in the system – no-one is accountable for repeated service and system failures, and their concerns are just dismissed”,

and that is on top of the implementation gap, which is a neat way of describing the difference between all the millions of words saying what we should be doing and what is actually happening. This might be a bit of a broad question, but why is there a gap? Is it about money or inflexibility? What can be done to improve delivery?

Another thing about this letter from the Crown Office is that there is no indication in that as to timescale—there is no sense of urgency. Going back to the original question, should the Scottish Government intervene? What would you suggest?

You cannot recall when the last conversations were.

Around this time last year, Audit Scotland said that drug and alcohol data is not good enough and that there is a lack of transparency on how money is spent, which means that it is hard to assess the effectiveness of how funding is used. Has that been improved? Has the lack of transparency been fixed?

I do not think that the concerns are about the cost, as such, but about working out the effectiveness of such treatments and the significantly higher costs of going down these routes. That will be assessed in due course.

It has been two years since the Scottish Government declared its national mission to respond to the needless deaths of thousands of people through drugs, but we have just heard evidence from Aberlour that residential rehab is still sometimes seen as the last resort or is not being offered as quickly as it could be and from Scottish Families Affected by Alcohol and Drugs that no one is accountable for repeated service and system failures. Those are pretty stark assessments of the landscape, and given that it has been two years since the national mission was declared, they are quite damning assessments, too. What would you say in response to those criticisms?

Yes. Will information on Government money that goes into those services be published quarterly?