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There will be different forms of treatment for different people. For some, rehab is the right approach. We rely heavily on that in the bill, because many of the organisations speak about the benefits of rehab. Faces and Voices of Recovery UK said that

“quality residential treatment can help improve mental and physical health, reduce offending, improve employability and enhance social functioning.”

For some people, that approach will absolutely be the right one to take, while a variety of treatment options will be right for others.

The number of people who are treated and supported would, indeed, increase with the proposed legislation, but I would not want to pick a figure out of thin air. I would not try to provide alternative figures that were not backed up by the data. That is the difficulty. I get what you are saying about taking the 57,300 figure and then looking at the wider number of people who will require treatment. As I said in my opening remarks, the cost is at the lower end of expectations, but it is very difficult.

It is telling that, in its response to the bill, the Scottish Government did not provide a figure for the alternative level of funding that it thinks would be required. I know that it has done so with other bills, but it could not come up with a figure to suggest what my bill would cost.

It is an overall figure. Perhaps we can look at the matter through parliamentary questions. I would be keen to lodge some to get more information, if that is possible. The report was not looking at Scotland in particular—it was done for the UK Government—but people can see that the financial benefits are well above the £4 to £1 ratio, and the personal benefit of lives being saved is perhaps the most crucial benefit.

That is a very good question. I stress, and will continue to stress throughout the process of the bill, that it does not seek to supersede or replace any other forms of support; rather, it is to complement that support.

In the financial memorandum, we look at the number of people who are suggested for residential rehab and certain other treatments who do not complete that treatment. The bill is about the cohort of people for whom experts have determined that those treatments are the right approach, but for reasons of time or cost, or for multiple reasons that we do not yet know about, they do not complete the full treatment that has been suggested. We want to give people the legal footing of a guarantee, backed by law and passed in the Parliament, that, if they are told that a treatment will help them with their drug or alcohol addiction problems, they will get that treatment. It would not prevent people from getting other forms of help, support and treatment but would complement, as you said, what is already in existence.

No. The research that we did was through health boards and ADPs. Some of the figures and data will be fed in through the ADPs and integration joint boards, which obviously have council representatives on them. I am happy to go away to try to get some figures, because they would be helpful for you and for other members.

But I do not really want to get into that political point.

There will be opportunities in a £64 billion budget to find savings. If you want me to go away and research that, I will do so. I do not want to give you a figure and say that this or that saving would cover half of the £38 million, but then find that the figure is wrong, because—knowing your background as an accountant, Mr Mason—you will have the figures at your fingertips. I do not. I am quite happy to write to you after the meeting with £38 million of savings from the current budget, and we can scrutinise that, going forward. I am saying, however, that they will be my savings—they might not be the savings that my party colleagues Ms Smith or Mr Hoy might make. If you are asking me to find savings of £38 million in the budget, I will do so for you.

Thank you, convener, and good morning. It is a real pleasure to be in front of you today—I hope that I am still saying that at the end of your scrutiny. For me, it marks another significant step forward for the bill, which I have been working on for some time. I know that the scrutiny of your committee and that of the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee, which begins its evidence taking next week, will be important.

The latest statistics show that the number of annual drug deaths continues to rise and has more than doubled in the past 10 years. Scotland’s drug death rate is more than twice as high as the rate in Wales and almost three times higher than the rate in England and Northern Ireland. Drug deaths are 15 times more likely to occur in our most deprived areas than in our least deprived areas, with areas in Glasgow and Dundee that are represented by members of this committee being particularly badly affected.

However, it is not just an issue with large urban areas. Despite having relatively low figures, my own area of Moray has seen big percentage increases. Between 2020 and 2021, a 70 per cent increase in drug deaths in Moray represented the highest increase anywhere in the country.

The bill covers alcohol addiction as well as drug addiction. The number of alcohol-specific deaths is at its highest level since 2008—again, the highest anywhere in the United Kingdom—and it is four times as high in our most deprived areas as in our least deprived communities. I do not believe that it is an exaggeration to say that that is a national scandal.

Every four hours, on average, a Scot will die because of drugs or alcohol. They will die a needless and avoidable death because they were not given the right care and support at the right time. This is a national emergency and it deserves to be treated as such.

When the Parliament was reconstituted, the late Donald Dewar said that it should deliver Scottish solutions to Scottish problems. I genuinely believe that there can be no better issue to make that statement true than the drug and alcohol emergency that we are facing. I say that not to make a political point but simply to reinforce to the committee the gravity of the situation and the motivation for introducing the Right to Addiction Recovery (Scotland) Bill.

I take the opportunity to thank all those who have been involved in the formation of the bill to this point. As a member who has never sought to introduce a bill, I had not previously been involved in the work of the non-Government bills unit, but it has done a huge amount behind the scenes to bring us to this point today. I also thank the front-line experts who have been crucial in forming the bill and getting us to this stage. In particular, I would like to mention Stephen Wishart, Annemarie Ward and Faces & Voices of Recovery UK—FAVOR UK—who have been the real driving forces behind the bill.

To give a brief overview, the Right to Addiction Recovery (Scotland) Bill gives every person who has been diagnosed as having a drug or alcohol addiction the right to be informed about the appropriate treatment for their addiction and to be provided with that treatment. The bill sets out a procedure for health professionals to follow in determining treatment, including explaining the treatment options to the patient and encouraging them to participate in the decision-making process as much as possible. It also sets out a process and a right to a second opinion when treatment is deemed to be inappropriate or when no treatment is deemed to be appropriate. The bill requires that treatment that is identified be made available as soon as is reasonably possible and no later than three weeks after the determination is made.

The bill also requires that Scottish ministers publish and lay an annual report on the progress that has been made towards providing the treatments for drug and alcohol recovery. Finally, the bill requires Scottish ministers to prepare a code of practice that sets out how the duty to fulfil the right to treatment will be carried out by health boards and others, such as integration joint boards.

As this is the Finance and Public Administration Committee, I expect that many of the questions will be on the financial implications of the bill. I will not pre-empt what members might ask, but I will make one point, if I may. The figures that are included in the financial memorandum represent the best estimate of costs using the data that was available to us. However, as Audit Scotland said in its 2022 report on alcohol and drug services,

“it is still difficult to track spending and how it is being distributed and monitored.”

Further, Alcohol Focus Scotland said in its submission to the committee:

“we believe that the financial working that has been done exposes a significant and worrying gap in the available data”.

Also, in his letter to members of this committee and the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee, the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care said:

“it is extremely challenging to estimate demand and unmet need.”

In the light of those challenges, although I understand the view that those numbers are at the lower end of the expectations, they are the best figures that can be produced with the data that we have at the moment.

As Dame Carol Black said,

“£1 spent on treatment will save £4 from reduced demands on health, prison, law enforcement and emergency services.”

Therefore, although there are significant spending commitments in relation to the bill, there are also savings to be made—and I think that we can all agree that the biggest saving is the lives that will be saved by people getting the help and support that they need when they need it.

I know that there will be some who are just as passionate about wanting to tackle our shameful drug and alcohol death rate as I am but who disagree with the approach in the bill. To those individuals and organisations—and, indeed, to this committee—I say work with me to get this right. We are at the beginning of the process and there will be time for amendments, which I will look at in good faith—but do not let the perfect stand in the way of the good.

We cannot miss this opportunity to put the need to take action against this national scandal on a legal footing. It is right that the bill and the issue be given the time to be debated and considered by this committee and this Parliament. I believe that people with drug and alcohol dependencies, their families and those who have tragically lost loved ones deserve no less.

The money should come from the wider Scottish Government budget. We could spend all morning discussing where it could come from—undoubtedly, my priorities would be different from yours, Mr Mason. However, it is important. For far too long, that group of people has not had support from the Parliament or multiple Governments. How often have we stood up—annually, when we get the figures—and said that this is Scotland’s national shame and that something must be done about it, but without anything ever changing?

The only thing that changes is that the figures get worse and worse. Sometimes we get a slight dip, but then the numbers go back up again. We cannot continue doing the same thing time and again and expect different results. Therefore, I think that putting the provisions into law and giving people the reassurance that the treatment that has been deemed as being right to provide them with will be helpful not just to the individuals involved but to Scotland. As a country, we are shamed by our annual figures for the number of our fellow Scots who die needlessly from drugs and alcohol.

Yes, absolutely. As I said, the main aim of the bill is to save lives, but if improved data can better inform the decisions of the Government and the Parliament, that will also be a benefit of the legislation. That is why the proposals that are included in the bill about reporting to the Parliament and the costs that are associated with that in the financial memorandum are important to improve that data set.

On raising awareness, the bill has continued to shine a light on the appalling tragedies that we see in Scotland every year from drug and alcohol deaths, and we should continue to do that during the process of the bill and until we get those figures down.

The fact that we are still not just the worst in the United Kingdom for drug and alcohol deaths but the worst of many countries across Europe—for drug deaths, we are certainly the worst across Europe—shows us that this is a problem that we must tackle. In my view, it should have been tackled some time ago, but we are where we are. In 2025, we can send a very strong signal by passing this legislation, putting it into law and starting to save lives by ensuring that people get the treatment that is right for them.

Professor McKendrick produced 20 recommendations in that report, and the Scottish Government agreed with, or partly agreed with, 19 of them. The one that you disagreed with was about extending his remit into tertiary education. I have heard the reason for that, but do you want to explain the reason for that further and say whether that continues to be the position of the Scottish Government?