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If more people receive treatment, it is clear, surely, that the level of support that is required will also rise commensurately.

You have mentioned that the level of the demand is hidden. Scottish Health Action on Alcohol Problems mentioned that 22 per cent of adults have alcohol problems. However, the bill will only really apply to those people who have been diagnosed with such a problem. With regard to drugs, paragraph 23 of the financial memorandum says that

“the number of individuals with problem drug use in Scotland is 57,300”,

but the number of people who had initial assessments for specialist drug treatment has varied from 6,275 to 7,867 in recent years. Therefore, the untapped demand is huge.

We mentioned earlier that the average cost of treatment is about £18,000 per person. If we take even a small proportion of those 50,000 people who have been identified as drug addicts—there are undoubtedly more whom we do not know about—it is not necessary to be an arithmetic genius to realise that the cost of £28 million to £38 million that is spelled out in the financial memorandum will be breached pretty early on simply in relation to treatment for drugs, let alone treatment for alcohol.

Indeed.

Agenda item 3 is formal consideration of motion S6M-16546. I invite the minister to speak to and move the motion.

Motion moved,

That the Finance and Public Administration Committee recommends that the Scottish Landfill Tax (Standard Rate and Lower Rate) Order 2025 (SSI 2025/41) be approved.—[Ivan McKee]

Motion agreed to.

They will be “lost forever”? You are saying that there is no pressure on the committee, then.

One thing that is said under your policy objectives is that the order will make things

“more streamlined and flexible than primary legislation”.

Has the Scottish Government considered at any point trying to make the process of primary legislation more streamlined and flexible?

You represent the rural Highlands and Islands region. One concern that has been raised is about how we ensure that we are able to provide an equitable service. I have rural areas in my constituency, as do most members around the table, with the exception of John Mason and possibly Michelle Thomson. That is a real issue for many of us and for many communities. How would you ensure that the provisions of the bill are delivered equitably, from Stranraer to Shetland?

I appreciate that.

That has exhausted committee members’ questions, but I still have one or two more.

Going back to the issue that John Mason raised of the £38 million, I think that the concern is not with the policy issue itself but whether the figure is accurate. In other words, the issue is not where you find £38 million, but whether the £38 million—or even the £28 million mentioned—is the right figure.

Even if it were, the Scottish Ambulance Service has said:

“In a time of economic downturn with current budget cuts and constraints it is challenging to imagine how the costs of providing what is outlined in the Bill could be achieved not to mention the ability to develop the associated workforce and infrastructure.”

COSLA, too, has said that

“whilst we agree there would be significant initial costs, we do not agree that there would be a flattening and declining costs in the medium-to-longer term.”

That is notwithstanding the fact that it has access to the same Dame Carol Black report that you have. Moreover, I note that Alcohol Focus Scotland has said that

“estimates for additional investment in services contained in the Financial Memorandum to deliver the aims of the Bill fall short of what is required to ensure equitable access to all of those requiring support.”

You have said that you have used the databases that are available to come up with the £38 million figure, but one of the things that has come through in the evidence that we have received is that there has been an underestimation of on-going and capital support. The Aberdeen city alcohol and drug partnership, which you have touched on, says:

“The Bill uses baseline figures and assumes those figures can all be attributed to a proposed narrow definition of substance use ‘treatment’ with a clinical diagnosis. In reality the current pot of resource available will also go into a wider range of activity drug education, children / family services, justice services, a huge range of third sector services, injecting equipment provision, harm reduction, justice services, consumables, medicines, travel, administration and other indirect costs such as recruitment and training ... To achieve the proposal of all existing funding going into the defined list of ‘treatments’ there would be huge reductions in cross system activity and a significant impact on indirect costs.”

The committee took evidence on the National Care Service (Scotland) Bill. As you know, we were unhappy with that financial memorandum, and the Government came back with another. We were also not happy with the Police (Ethics, Conduct and Scrutiny) (Scotland) Bill’s financial memorandum, because it was not as up to date as it could have been, and we had the cabinet secretary come back to us in that regard. Given the kinds of issue that have been raised in the submissions that we have received, the fact that there appears to be an underestimation in on-going cost—capital and so on—and that, as you said yourself, the financial memorandum was prepared before the change in employer national insurance contributions was perceived, is there an argument for revisiting the financial memorandum?

That would be very helpful to you in getting the bill through. I will not go through the further comments that have been made by the Aberdeen city partnership, but you will know that it has raised a number of concerns around housing, employment, deprivation and the long-term availability of substances. If those issues could be looked at and you could come back with something a lot more robust, that would be very helpful.

I turn to Dame Carol Black’s comments about preventative spend, which, arguably, the bill involves. We and our predecessor committees have wrestled with that topic since 2011, and it is an absolute nightmare. Whenever we look at the budget for the forthcoming year or slightly further ahead, many organisations come to us and say that, if we will just spend X amount this year, they can save us three, four, five, six or seven times more in some indeterminate period ahead. Therefore, if more could be done to pin down the relevant savings over a specific time period, that would also be very helpful.

In saying that, I think that this has been a very worthwhile session, and I appreciate the responses that the committee has received.

Yes, why not? That is something that we should look at.