The SNP’s Tartan Blob must be excised if devolution is to survive

While it has a crucial role in holding the administration of the day to account, it is above all a legislature. That is why it is a parliament and not a council or an assembly. It is intended to introduce good laws and remove commonly perceived bad laws. Or at least it should.

Last Thursday, 9th October, it chose to reject the Member’s Bill of Douglas Ross MSP called the Right to Recovery Bill. It would have given drug addicts the right to choose a recovery programme to help them beat their addiction – let’s just call it rehab for shorthand – over other public health programmes based on managing but continuing their addiction. Let’s call that approach harm reduction.

Harm reduction and associated officially approved programmes, coupled with what can at best be called the commonplace ambivalence towards the acceptance of widespread drug availability and drug abuse are what has brought Scotland to be the world beater at drug abuse deaths per capita.

When the opportunity of trying a different approach was presented to the SNP Government by its creators – an approach that meant not ending their cherished belief in harm reduction but supplementing their failing system with rehabilitation as an alternative – the Tartan Blob coalesced and rejected that chance. So too did the various SNP government funded quangos and supposedly independent but SNP government funded third sector agents.

Of course they did.

This is an SNP Government that defines itself by trying to do things differently from Westminster or Whitehall no matter how devastating or costly the outcomes. We saw it with Nicola Sturgeon’s handling of the Covid pandemic and we are again seeing it with John Swinney’s handling of our drug deaths crisis.

The Bill was never an opposition or unionist plot to cause division with the government; it was an attempt to bring about open reform with cross party support that everyone could sign up to. Having failed to attract the nation’s political leadership the baton was offered to others and Douglas Ross stepped up to the plate that others had turned away from.

It was then that Holyrood did what it does best; where clarity was needed obfuscation was provided, where evidence was invited falsehood and misrepresentation was supplied, where independent opinion was required cloning of official verbiage worthy of “Invasion of the body snatchers” was cultivated. The Holyrood committee system is a parasitic form of politics. It attaches itself to genuine cases of distress and then sucks the soul out of any arguments that might threaten the Tartan Blob’s existence.

Well intentioned witnesses to chronic suffering are patronised with false compassion and suffocated with intentionally impenetrable technocratic jargon. Just as the committee that brought us the Gender Recognition Bill perverted the witness system to skew the evidence in favour of the proposed transgender reforms, so the Bill committee could play the same game in calling supposed independent witnesses for evidence who receive SNP Government funding.

While you can hear a heart beating in the Tartan Blob you will never find one no matter how hard you look.

The first stage of a Member’s Bill is a vote on the principle of what is proposed, while the Second stage allows amendment to the initial draft legislation so that contradictions or oversights might be corrected. Last Thursday it was the principle that was at stake, a principle of having an alternative to official supply of addictive drugs that had obtained the backing of the majority of public respondents to the consultation.

One might think that a First Minister confronted with a truly embarrassing record on drug abuse deaths would win favour with the public if he were to commit his every last day in office over the remaining six months to saving the lives of drug addicts willing to seek the help of drug rehabilitation. It’s not as if it is more expensive than harm reduction. The new drug dens of Glasgow, otherwise known officially as “consumption rooms” and already being planned for Edinburgh, cost £7,000 a week for every addict admitted, whereas the cost of rehab per addict per week is only £1,000.

Yet when the vote on the Bill came every SNP and Green member present voted against the Bill, while every Conservative, every Labour, Reform and most Liberal Democrat MSPs voted in its favour. The Bill was lost by 63 votes to 52, with no abstentions and 14 not voting – but it shall no doubt resurface in the future after the Holyrood elections next year.

As Annemarie Ward, CEO of the addiction rehabilitation charity Recovery UK explained, when it came down to the principle, “the Right to Recovery Bill was meant to give every person seeking help for addiction the legal right to treatment. Not a request. Not a waiting list. A right. And on Thursday, the Scottish Parliament chose to say no”

The avoidable drug deaths in Scotland are devolution’s disgrace. They have risen to world record breaking levels in the decades of devolution and most particularly during the years that the SNP have been in power and John Swinney has been a minister.

If devolution is to be fit for purpose the Tartan Blob that promotes and protects the public health approach of harm reduction must be excised from Holyrood. The names of all those souls that could have been helped but were refused the opportunity of rehabilitation demands it. Nothing less will do. The current opposition parties must remember this principle when they come to decide who forms the new Holyrood administration after the votes have been counted.

Brian Monteith is a former member of the Scottish and European parliaments and editor of ThinkScotland.org