Hansard

He was in Polmont twice: for 10 days at the age of 16, and then for seven months at the age of 17. He got more drugs in prison than he did in the community. He took an allergic reaction in prison—his mouth swelled up, but he was left that way. His lawyer had to write to the governor to ask for better care. He had brittle asthma. At times, due to staff shortages, he was locked up for 23 hours at a time, with little outside time for fresh air. He needed rehab and treatment instead of being locked up. He died on Tuesday, aged 20, at Carmondean in Livingston, in my and the minister’s constituency, having used heroin and benzodiazepine. He was one of the three people to die a preventable death in Scotland that day.

We have the worst drugs death rate in the developed world—worse than that of the US. That is a shameful, damning indictment of 20 years of this institution being in control of justice and health policy. The Government cut the drugs budget and then wondered why the number of deaths rose. Peter Krykant is forced to go out each day in an auld van that he had to buy at his own expense to save lives, while ministers pretend that they are powerless to provide the same services and engage in constitutional games.

The simple fact is that people cannot access the services that they need. The waiting time for an appointment to see a psychologist in Lothian is between 18 and 24 months just now; it is supposed to be 18 weeks. Are we not all ashamed of what is happening on the streets, yards from us, in every one of our constituencies? We bloody well should be.

It was watching Thatcher’s class war against communities like mine that sparked my political interest and awakening. Today, in those very same communities, working-class lives are ending unnecessarily because of a failed drugs policy. Think of all the families who have lost a child or a partner, lying in a manky alleyway with a needle in their arm or a fake benzo in their belly—and then think of the footballer, the nurse or the tradesperson that they could have been. Think of that waste of talent—of the deaths of people like me, my family, my pals and my community. That is what drives my campaigning on this. I have said it many times, but if this carnage was happening in the leafy suburbs or commuter villages, it would have been sorted a long time ago.

There will be no political leaders canvassing homeless drug users, and they will not be in here getting canapés and warm wine. But we will walk past them on the way to the train tonight—I will—and the minister and her colleagues will drive past them on their way home in their ministerial cars. We need a revolution in drugs policy: decriminalisation, massive investment in care and treatment, and an all-out attack on the inequalities that feed despair and hopelessness. If we do not have that revolution, the bodies will pile higher and higher and higher.

With your indulgence, Presiding Officer, I will say a wee bit about my time in Parliament. I have to say that no-one was more surprised than me when I made it through the Labour Party vetting process, never mind got elected. People from the left were not particularly welcome then; I am not sure that they are particularly welcome now. I had been in this building only twice before becoming an MSP, and the only MSP I knew was my pal Elaine Smith, but I made a pledge to have a go, and others can decide whether I succeeded.

I thank my parliamentary team of Caitlin, Mary Theresa, Jordan, Mhari and Tommy—they are wonderful colleagues and friends. I also thank my family and pals, who have kept my feet firmly on the ground, and my wife, Fiona, and daughter, Chloe.

I do not think that it is a surprise to anybody that I have enjoyed myself most when on the back benches, working with, for example, the magnificent Scottish mesh survivors. Together, we secured a suspension and a fund to support injured women.

I also worked with the Scottish miners and secured the independent review and a commitment to a pardon after almost 40 years. I worked with the families of the children who will continue to use the children’s ward at St John’s because we prevented its downgrading. I worked with the communities that successfully stopped the expansion of Edinburgh airport’s flight path. I worked with the blacklisted construction workers—this week, we mourn the loss of Francie Graham, who was a stalwart of the campaign.

I worked with the then political editor of the Daily Record, David Clegg, to convince the newspaper to take up the cause of drugs, and to go a step further and call for decriminalisation. I am so pleased that it did so, as it has been very influential.

I have enjoyed every day that I called for well-funded, publicly owned services and an end to the madness of privatisation; every day that I worked with the families of care home residents, exposing the human rights abuse of our older people; every day that I worked with the trade unions; and every day that I represented my constituents on a huge range of issues.

I even enjoyed the 60-odd public meetings at which I spoke during the independence referendum, arguing for devo max. I will continue to argue that that is the best option for Scotland’s future.

I enjoyed chairing my friend Jeremy Corbyn’s two leadership campaigns in Scotland—by God, how I wish we had won the 2017 election and radically changed our country for the better.

I even enjoyed standing for Labour leader—well, we have all had a go at some point—on a socialist platform. I enjoyed the times that I screwed up by sending my entire budget speech to Derek Mackay minutes before the budget or sending everybody in the Parliament a reply to a confidential email from Mike Russell. Information technology was never my strong point.

I have a saying that a person cannot be a socialist and a pessimist. I remember using that line in a debate and David McLetchie intervening to ask, “Well, if that is the case, why do you all look so bloody miserable?” I liked debating with McLetchie. However, I am not miserable and I am not pessimistic. More than ever, I believe that socialism is the answer to the biggest questions that we have to deal with: poverty, climate change, hunger, conflict and exploitation. It is because of free-market capitalism that we are here, on the precipice of a disaster for our planet. Those questions can be addressed only by a planned economy, public ownership and international solidarity. Irrespective of our political views, we are all brothers and sisters, and we have as much of a duty to feed and educate a child in war-torn Yemen as we do a child in the school next door, but those principles are alien to anyone who believes in capitalism.

I make a plea to those who follow me: speak up, challenge others and your own party, be awkward, do not accept the line that that is how it has always been done, take up issues, do not be afraid to be rebuffed, and come back again with the same issue until you win. Finally, I say to them, “Enjoy yourself”—I certainly have. [Applause.]