Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 18 March 2021
Following the First Minister’s announcement in January of a national mission to save and improve lives, I am pleased that we have secured time for this very important debate before the end of the parliamentary session to update Parliament on the work that is being pursued to address rising drug-related deaths, which is Scotland’s other public health emergency and Scotland’s national shame.
I have spent much of my first few months in post meeting as many people with lived and living experience as possible, hearing first hand what they think my priorities should be. I am now more than ever convinced that we need to be informed in everything we do by those who have the greatest understanding and experience of the current system.
Many of those discussions have stuck with me, such as the one that I had with a group of women who still have a drug dependency but who are managing to engage with treatment services. The message that came through from that group was one of hopelessness; they felt that they had been forgotten about and that their lives did not matter. Although that is difficult to hear, it is vital that we respond in a way that can restore hope to those who most need it, to show that their lives matter and that they are valued as our fellow citizens.
To help with that, I am going to make sure that people are more involved in the decisions that affect them. Learning from what has worked well in other areas, such as the early years collaborative and social security experience panels, I will ensure that local panels of people with lived and living experience are involved in all local decision making, and that a national forum or collaborative is in place to better inform our national mission.
Recovery communities have provided a voice for lived experience and are an effective movement for change, and they can be assured of this Government’s continued support and funding. We need to bring together the voices of living experience—those who are still using substances—to help redesign our services in order to reach out to and support more people into treatment. We know that treatment has a protective factor and that it helps keep people alive.