Prevention of Drug Deaths Debate
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Douglas McAllister
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Prevention of Drug Deaths
Douglas McAllister Excerpts(6 days, 6 hours ago)
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Douglas McAllister (West Dunbartonshire) (Lab)
It is a pleasure, Dr Murrison, to serve under your chairship. I thank and congratulate the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) for securing this vital Westminster Hall debate.
With your leave, Dr Murrison, I will begin by paying tribute to Christina McKelvie, MSP and Scottish Government Minister, who sadly died earlier today. Christina was taking leave for cancer treatment. She was the Scottish Government Minister for Drugs and Alcohol Policy in the Scottish Parliament. Our thoughts are with her partner, Keith Brown MSP, and her family.
In my West Dunbartonshire constituency, drug-related deaths increased this year. Figures released in August 2024 from National Records of Scotland showed that in Scotland 1,172 people died due to drug misuse, which was an increase of 121 deaths on the previous period. In the West Dunbartonshire local authority area, which is a very small one, the rise was from 20 to 26, comprising the deaths of nine females and 17 males. Opioids, including heroin, morphine and methadone, were implicated in 80% of those deaths. I pay tribute to Alternatives, a West Dunbartonshire community drug service. Its staff and volunteers do incredible work to tackle drug addiction, offering support across my constituency, as does the West Dunbartonshire Drug and Alcohol Partnership. Of course, as the hon. Member for Strangford said in his opening remarks, there are a person, a family and a story behind every statistic, and it is very important to remember that.
People in the most deprived areas of Scotland are more than 15 times as likely to die from drug misuse as people in less deprived areas, and I suspect that the same is true for Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom. The Scottish Government and the UK Government need to do more.
The “Evaluation of the National Mission on Drug Deaths” report, which was released last month, found that only one in three alcohol and drug partnership co-ordinators believed that Scottish Government leadership was effective. The report makes it clear that those who understand the drug deaths crisis best do not have faith in the SNP Scottish Government’s leadership. So, the SNP must listen to frontline workers and work with them to deliver the funding that this essential mission needs, properly fund local government, and reverse the cuts to our local health and social care partnerships, which fund and support the frontline organisations across West Dunbartonshire, such as Alternatives, and across our country.