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As you will have heard Mr Kevin Stewart often say, the national care service is the biggest reform of the national health service since 1948. Although it will be immensely complex and challenging to build such a service and deliver it over the lifetime of this parliamentary session, the proposition itself is also very significant and exciting. At a fundamental level, it is about how we care for people and how we value those who do so. Given that people with drug-related difficulties are amongst the most marginalised, excluded and stigmatised in our communities, it is important that we ask about the benefits of making drug and alcohol services part of the biggest change in our national service in over 70 years.

Some of the synergies in what we are trying to do to improve services have a strong connection with the work on the national care service and its focus on person-centred care and informed choice. It is not just about caring and treating folk but about helping them live their lives, and I therefore feel strongly that questions about drug and alcohol services should be part of that consultation. What we need to test and explore in the consultation are opportunities via the national care service to improve accountability, governance and, indeed, the status of drug and alcohol work. I know people working in and delivering these services who feel that it is not just those whom they serve who are stigmatised; sometimes they, too, feel a bit forgotten and that the service itself is somewhat stigmatised. I also believe very much in accountability at every level and I have an interest in and focus on governance in that respect.

The challenge with alcohol and drug partnerships is that partnership needs to happen at a local level—and sometimes at a very local level if we are going to reach into the most deprived and disadvantaged communities. Those are the issues that we are testing at the moment.

The national care service is about taking a rights-based approach, which fits with what we are trying to achieve in drug and alcohol services. It is in the consultation, and there are some quite deep and fundamental issues that we need to test out.

People experienced challenges in accessing services during lockdown. The work of the lived-experience community was particularly helpful and imaginative. The Government worked with organisations such as the Scottish Recovery Consortium on guidance about how to continue having meetings, whether online, in open-air settings or over the phone. I know that the recovery community in Glasgow did amazing work throughout the pandemic.

Other smaller organisations such as Recovery Enterprises Scotland, which is based in East Ayrshire, were under enormous strain during the pandemic. That is why some of the new funds that I introduced are particularly geared at smaller and more local grass-roots organisations and give them access to funding that can help with work in their communities. We have worked hard to make it as easy as possible to access that funding.

There is no doubt that so-called welfare reforms have an impact on the lives of the poorest. The frustration for many of us round the table is that, although increasing investment in the Scottish child payment will lift tens of thousands of children out of poverty, the ending of the temporary increase to universal credit means that £20 a week will be taken away from people when we are still not out of Covid and are far away from recovery, both socially and economically.

Primary care is multidisciplinary and often led by general practitioners, and it is located in our communities. It is often the first port of call and is supported by nursing staff. There are efforts to connect GP practices with the voluntary sector and welfare advice, such as the work around deep-end practices. I am sure that my health and public health colleagues may have a more technical definition or description, but that is how I see general practices.

Practice varies. For example, my understanding from NHS Lothian is that the majority of GPs are involved or could be involved in prescribing medication-assisted treatment to their patients. In other parts of the country, such as Tayside, the practice has been that people have been referred to more specialist centralised addiction services. As well as supporting GP practices with the resources and the range of services and support that they need to serve our communities, we have to recognise that there are vital connections for patients who are receiving medication-assisted treatment and who have primary care needs.

Laying aside the issue of who prescribes a medication-assisted treatment, every GP that I have engaged with says that they could do more at a community level—for example, for the physical needs that people who live with drug use experience. You will know better than me that people often have other health issues that can be addressed by accessing primary care.

Thank you for that question. On the information that was published this morning on suspected drug deaths, you are correct to point out that it is based on police divisions. It concerns deaths that are suspected to involve drugs, on the basis of enquiries by attending police officers. The information does not tell us things such as what substances are involved. We get that level of detail from the annual report on confirmed cases.

A lot is being done. A few weeks ago, I visited the Glasgow overdose response team. That service seeks to quickly follow up with people who have survived a near-fatal overdose. We know from successive annual reports that more than half our people who die have a history of overdosing, so when people survive a near-fatal overdose, we really need services to kick in quickly.

A range of projects are funded through the new community funds that we have opened—for example, through local alcohol and drug partnerships. Some of the drug death task force projects are specific to Glasgow.

Information is available by region on specific services and projects or tests of change. It might be helpful if I were to pull that together to share with the committee. The committee includes a broad selection of ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ from across the country; I know that you will be very interested to look at that in detail.

We know that there is often great fear among women with regard to reaching out for help and disclosing the level of their drug use, especially when they have children. That is one of the reasons—there are many—why we are investing in whole-family approaches and family-inclusive practice.

The committee might recall that I announced in my statement to Parliament on 3 August substantial investment in an organisation called Phoenix Futures, which is to establish a national residential family service for the whole of Scotland. The announcement outlined that, subject to various approvals and consultation within communities, the facility would be able to accommodate up to 20 families, including mums and dads who have children aged from birth to 11. As well as thinking about services at the national level, we need to think about them at the regional level. That is one example of a step forward. There will be other work and announcements, in due course.

We have channelled funding through alcohol and drug partnerships, in which there is a specific allocation of £3.5 million for local ADPs to invest in whole-family approaches.

We need to support families as collective units, but we also need, within families, to support individuals in their own right. We will publish a framework on what family-inclusive practice should look and feel like on the ground. We are making progress in that area, and I will keep the committee informed.

I have a focus on governance and implementation. I answered the same question from Mr O’Kane. As well as the practical support provided through MIST to get the 10 standards embedded by next April, its work covers at least a three-year period for quality improvement and quality assurance. I said to Mr O’Kane that the last thing we want to do is to put all that additional investment, time, resource and support to embed the standards and then sit back and relax. We cannot sit back and relax; we need to keep on this.

We know from that information that 13 per cent of beds that were accessed in that timeframe came from alcohol and drug partnership funding, and that there were also publicly funded places from housing benefit and social security. People would be accessing private and charitable funding as well.

Regarding the first quarter of this calendar year, you might recall that we published information on how the emergency funding was used. In the period from January to March, we quickly initiated £5 million out the door, and £3 million of that went to ADPs. Some of that money was for a separate improvement fund that people could apply for. There was also a grass-roots fund. We published information on how ADPs allocated that money, so that is available. We are currently gathering further information from ADPs and, again, we will make that available.

As for what we know about current capacity, earlier this year we published information on how, overall, the 20 facilities in Scotland were operating at about two-thirds capacity, so we know that there is capacity there to be utilised. I have given a commitment to return to Parliament with our milestones over the next five years. That is about how to improve access—and, as Ms Wells rightly points out, it is also about the extent to which we will improve capacity over the next five years. We will come to Parliament with much more detail on that.

Social isolation is also a public health issue. Committee members might be aware that a few years back the Government introduced a tackling isolation and loneliness strategy, and there is a range of investments and funds around that.

With regard to tackling drug-related deaths, I have to point to the lived experience and recovery community, because much of what they do is based on their own, real-life experience and the expertise that they bring to the community.

Mobilising the lived-experience community can help to reach people that services might struggle to reach. The relationship aspect of support is crucially important. The peer navigator system that Medics Against Violence have been strong proponents of in our prisons and hospitals is also really important. Peer navigators with lived experience from organisations such as Aid & Abet make contact with people when they come into police custody. All of that is about making connections and building relationships with people to support and help them in their onward journey, and it goes along with referring them to services.