Current Petitions

PE789 is on methadone prescriptions. It was submitted by Eric Brown, who has already attended the committee, and it calls on the Scottish Parliament to take a view on the need for regulation to ensure that methadone prescriptions are taken by the patient while they are being supervised by a suitably qualified medical practitioner. We have papers and responses in front of us. Are there any strong views on how to deal with the petition?I invite Iain Gray to come to the table. He is Mr Brown's constituency member and he has raised the matter with me. Given that other MSPs have had the chance to speak, I do not think that it is fair that he should be sitting at the back. Would you like to give the committee your view on some of the issues raised by the petition?

Thank you, convener. The committee has considered the petition before. Four years ago, Mr Brown suffered a personal tragedy involving methadone. Since then, he has done a considerable amount of research into issues surrounding methadone. He has found some telling statistics that demonstrate that, for example, in the majority of drug deaths involving methadone the methadone had not been prescribed but had passed on to the street. When the committee considered the petition, it wrote to the Government for information and three reports were returned to the committee; they are part of the committee's papers. The reports were quite telling in that, although they all refer to the report from the Scottish Advisory Committee on Drug Misuse, which said that methadone should continue to be the primary treatment for opiate addiction, they all said that the administration of the methadone programme could be significantly improved. Mr Brown has written to this committee—and I have written to support his point of view—to suggest that the Health and Sport Committee might be the appropriate committee to consider what those significant improvements might be and how they could be taken forward.

Thank you. Are there any strong views on the petition? We had a good discussion about it before.

I am on the Health and Sport Committee, which is examining drug and alcohol problems across several budget headings—health, justice and communities—as part of its budget scrutiny. It might be an idea for us to send the petition to that committee as soon as possible for it to consider. There are spending implications to what the petitioner wants, but one of the points that has come out of the work that the Health and Sport Committee has done so far is that, if we spend more in one place, we will make savings in another. However, if we spend most of our money dealing with the issues that arise rather than trying to prevent them from arising, we could end up spending more. The petition would fit well into that consideration.

I see Robin Harper nodding in agreement. Is he comfortable with that suggestion? This committee has been good at trying to deal with petitions itself rather than send them to other committees but, every so often, issues pop up that require more interrogation on policy and implementation than we can provide. It is reasonable to think about referring the petition to the Health and Sport Committee, because it connects with other issues that that committee is considering.

I have always wanted to use that word in a committee, so well done.

That is a positive suggestion from committee members. I thank Iain Gray for submitting his view as the petitioner's constituency member. I also thank the petitioner.