Alison Thewliss
Main Page: Alison Thewliss (Scottish National Party - Glasgow Central)Department Debates - View all Alison Thewliss's debates with the Home Office
(5 years, 5 months ago)
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Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)
Thank you for calling me to speak, Mrs Moon; I did not think that I would be called, because earlier I was chairing an all-party parliamentary group meeting. I am more than happy to speak in the debate and to represent my constituents on this really important issue. As other Members have said, the issue of drug consumption rooms in Glasgow has reached a public health crisis point. We absolutely need to do something. Glasgow has a well thought through and evidenced proposal for a drug consumption room in the city.
[Sir Edward Leigh in the Chair]
What frustrates me hugely is that all the Home Office Ministers are happy to sit behind their desks down here in London, but they are not happy to come to Glasgow to meet people from the Scottish Drugs Forum or the doctors and experts within the Glasgow health and social care partnership who have worked on this proposal and who know their field extremely well. They do not want to come and listen to the stories of the families in Glasgow whose lives have been blighted by drug misuse for many years. Some families have lost not just one child but two children, and there are grandchildren who now face the prospect of growing up without parents.
The Government are literally deaf to those people’s complaints. They are unwilling to come and listen to those who have come through recovery, who have used such a facility, and who have seen the difference it made to their lives. They have seen the difference, rather than injecting in dirty back lanes, in bin shelters and in tenement closes in the area I represent and beyond. The Minister will not come and listen to those who use drugs right now.
The Scottish Drugs Forum has done a huge amount of work on this. They have talked to people who inject drugs in the city centre of Glasgow and they have said to them, “What facility would help you to normalise your life and get into treatment?” A drug consumption room would enable people to come in at a lower level. They do not have to commit to a treatment programme, but they can take the first step towards treatment and a better, more stable life for themselves and their extended family.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East (Tommy Sheppard) said, those people are not just junkies. We should get rid of that horrible term from our vocabulary, because it helps nobody. It stigmatises and is cruel, and it signals that we do not value those people in society. We need to turn that around and give those people the support they need to come back from the brink and give their lives some semblance of order. We cannot write anybody off in society. Doing so is not fair to those people or their families. It also costs us an absolute fortune, as people make repeated visits to accident and emergency departments, and we have to pick up the pieces of the chaos it causes. Housing associations have to pick up needles day in, day out, because this problem is not going away. The Minister can bury her head in the sand, but I challenge her to come to Glasgow, meet the people I meet, and not just make decisions from behind her desk in Westminster.