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As you know, MAT standards are important for laying a foundation for change. The implementation and embedding of the new MAT standards is really important for making further progress and building on that foundation, particularly when it comes to widening access to treatment, integrating addiction and mental health services further and making the links with primary care that we discussed earlier.

For the first time, we have published the MAT standards. There is a financial resource for their implementation: £4 million was allocated to that for this financial year. Crucially—and this lies at the nub of Mr O’Kane’s question—we have the MAT standards implementation support team, or MIST. It is examining the reported progress from different areas, testing that progress and engaging with people in local areas about what support they need. I was very keen for us to have MIST.

The scale of the challenge in implementing MAT is significant: we are moving away from the three-week waiting-time target that our system operates around, turning the ship around and providing MAT standard 1, for example, for same-day prescribing. There is a lot of work to do; progress is being made, but it needs to happen over the whole area. As with other matters, we will keep the Parliament informed.

Although we are absolutely serious about the April 2022 target, support will not simply stop at that point. As the quality improvement, quality assurance and support role played by MIST is part of a three-year programme, it will continue. What we cannot do is get this over the line and embedded and then go, “Whew! Job done!”; we are going to have to keep on it. The target is next April, but we will continue that monitoring and support role, and there are also some clear asks from particular local authority areas for resource and help that we are seeking to deliver on as quickly as possible.

On alcohol and drug partnerships, I think that it is fair to say that we are making a bigger ask of them as part of the quid pro quo for the bigger investment in funding that has been made. They have had an uplift this year of £13.5 million from the national mission funds, and we have been specific about the proportions of that fund that are to be spent on family and child services, residential rehabilitation and aftercare and other front-line services.

We have also agreed a framework in and around governance with the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities. I will speak with COSLA to see whether it has information on that which might be of interest to the committee. Reporting is not just writing an annual report on what has been done—it is about undertaking more work to assess local need and evaluate what is being done. There is some external validation built into the process. It is essentially about forward planning and what the partnerships will do over the next year. Again, we are supporting ADPs in and around how to do that.

We also came to agreements with COSLA on the role of chief finance officers in integration joint boards in this area and the role of service-level agreements between alcohol and drug partnerships and the people with whom they commission services. I am cognisant too of the role of alcohol and drug partnerships vis-à-vis the role of integration joint boards.

On your fundamental question about understanding the total spend, there is a clear need for Government, in the drugs policy division, to articulate how much we are spending and what it is spent on. There is information on what we spend on drug and alcohol services overall in all our budget documentation. However, I appreciate that, when we look at what local government puts in from its funds, and at the additional funds that come from IJBs or the NHS, the picture becomes far more complex.

I understand the committee’s interest in this area. It would indeed be beneficial to know the size of the total investment; I too am interested in that question. I hope that some of the work that we are undertaking in Government might help with that, but it may be helpful, when I next meet Councillor Currie of COSLA, for me to discuss these issues with him.

I know that the committee has expressed an interest in these matters over a number of years, and I will discuss with Councillor Currie, who is COSLA’s health and social care spokesperson, the need to look ahead, building on the new governance arrangements that we have agreed for the here and now, and think about how we might begin to shed light on that.

The information should be available at a local level, but we will try to unravel the issue. I add, for the sake of my officials, that we will not necessarily do so quickly, because they are engaged in increasing capacity in residential rehab, implementing MAT standards and a whole host of other work. I undertake, however, to at least explore the issue with COSLA.

You are absolutely right to make those vital connections. We have a national mission in the first place because we need to take a helicopter, whole-systems, approach. At the core of that approach we have early intervention and prevention, which includes our work on poverty and with young people in our health and education systems.

We probably know much more now about what works with young people than we did, say, 20 years ago. In the context of curriculum for excellence, we note that young people respond better to approaches that are about upskilling them and increasing their personal resilience, self-esteem and confidence. There are also opportunities for diversionary activities in communities.

The point about housing is well made. There is massive investment planned to increase the supply of affordable housing over the current session of Parliament, with some very stretching goals, including provision of 110,000 houses by 2032. All that work must connect with the getting it right for every child and keeping the promise agendas. There are, in the drugs policy part of my portfolio, examples of our investment in supporting family-inclusive approaches, including specific funds for work with families and children. It is vital that drugs policy be connected with every aspect of Government policy.

I am keen to look at the bill in detail; it needs to be published before I can consider it fully. If Ms Wells pursues a member’s bill, she will follow a well-trodden path for the requirements on the member to consult, engage with and convince others of their proposition and a well-trodden path for the considerations that the Government applies to a member’s bill.

I have a track record of always giving members a fair hearing and I will look at the proposal on its merits. I have never ruled out further legislation, but I will want to test whether the bill would do what is claimed. I do not want the legislative process to hold us back from doing things now. I will want to see how any bill would help us with the integration of services.

I have outlined my rationale for why I wanted alcohol and drug services to be part of the national care service consultation. Before the Government introduces a bill to establish that service, the consultation responses will help to inform whether and how drug and alcohol services are part of that.

In thinking about the national care service, I note that there is a strong argument for national commissioning of residential rehabilitation. I can say more about that if members wish.

Further down the track, the Government is also committed to human rights and implementing international treaties. How do we make human rights real in people’s lives and communities? That broad issue will inform my thinking about my response to the proposed bill.

I apologise for the time that I am taking, convener, but it is also important to say that we have made a commitment to a national collaborative on how those with lived and living experience plug into the national mission. A national collaborative is not something that we will do to people; it will enable the wider lived and living experience community to have its say on a range of issues.

We will look at the detail of the proposed bill when it comes.

I will not repeat what I said in response to Mr O’Kane about the purpose of getting more data and what we are doing to acquire more meaningful information, but I assure Ms McNair that the purpose of the work that I am leading in the Government is to turn words into actions.

On the link between deprivation and drug deaths, I refer to my answers to Ms Mackay about the additional funding and action on measures such as the child poverty action plan and annual report; the tracking work; the fair work agenda; the work that is being done in and around social security; the massive expansion of early years provision for our youngest citizens; and the work to reduce the attainment gap. All that is absolutely connected and, at its core, it addresses the impacts of deprivation on every aspect of people’s lives.

That is a really important question, Mr Gulhane; I know that you are a former GP. I often talk about our life-saving work being connected to the work to improve people’s lives. You and I may take the role of primary care for granted in our own lives, but I know that many general practices are the front line of our communities and are already doing great work to support people and their families who are struggling with drug use.

We are finding across Scotland that there are different pictures of the organisation of services. In some areas, GPs can offer more services to people who are affected by drug use, while in others pathways and routes point more towards specialist services. Regional variation is fine as long as it works.

However, in taking a public health approach, GPs can play an absolutely core role. Part of my job is to engage with clinicians from all backgrounds—psychiatrists, GPs and clinicians from specialist addiction services. The connection between the important issue of harm reduction and immediate access to treatment for a drug problem and primary care is made in standard 7 of the new medication-assisted treatment standards. People should have choice with regard to the connections between their MAT and primary care.

There are two important strands to that question, but the committee will appreciate that my work on reducing drug-related deaths focuses primarily, although not exclusively, on illicit drug use. My colleagues in public health focus more on how we reduce dependency on prescribed drugs.

The issue is of interest to me, however, because we know—I am not telling you anything that you do not know—that people can, and do, become addicted to prescribed drugs. A consultation took place on the recommendations of the short-life working group, and health colleagues are implementing an action plan about prescribing guidance and assessing, monitoring and recording prescriptions.

It is a side issue, but the Royal Pharmaceutical Society is interested in how it could work with Government to implement a tool that better records the amount of over-the-counter medications that people buy, because that is an issue for some people as well.

The prescribing guidance around proscribed drugs is complementary to the prescribing guidance around illicit benzodiazepine use. For the drugs policy division, the work to reduce dependency on and the use of illicit benzodiazepines in our communities is connected to the work around prescribed benzodiazepines, for example. We are involved in a range of work—in devolved and reserved areas—to tackle the issue around street Valium as well. I will stop here, convener. Someone might want to pick up the benzodiazepine issue later.

You are quite correct to be making all those connections. It is important that strategies and approaches complement and connect with one another. There is a lot to learn from other campaigns and approaches.

One example is the use of Buvidal, which was introduced into the prison estate during the pandemic. Buvidal is a long-acting buprenorphine that can be administered as an injection weekly or monthly; it does not require a daily dosage. The use of Buvidal in prisons was evaluated very positively. It will not suit everybody—it is important to stress that no treatment will meet the needs of everyone—but it had some benefits in terms of clarity of thought and of not tying people to daily dispensing. It is also rarely associated with overdose, because it is a protective factor in relation to how opioids attach to brain receptors. It is a bit like a blocker: if you take an opioid on top of your Buvidal, you do not get the high from the opioid.

Having looked at the results of Buvidal in some of our prison estate, I was keen to find out how we could introduce it to the community and widen access to treatment. That is why this financial year there is a £4 million investment in widening choice to people, and that includes Buvidal. Widening that choice of treatment is a change in practice that occurred in response to the pandemic, but it is one that we want to continue and to implement further.

The committee has already spoken about our work around naloxone as well and how its distribution has widened during the pandemic. We do not want to detract from that change.