Patricia Ferguson MP: speeches

Speeches

• 22 Oct 2025 · Devolution in Scotland · Hansard source

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  I am sure you will take this in the spirit in which it is intended, Madam Deputy Speaker, but I have to tell the hon. Member that unfortunately that request has been rejected by the Art Committee. I am not sure that I will necessarily take that lying down, as he would imagine, but it has been rejected as things stand, and I thought it important for him to know that.

• 22 Oct 2025 · Devolution in Scotland · Hansard source

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  My recollection of the system is that it worked very well indeed. I do not know whether standards have slipped since the days when I and other hon. Members present were Members of the Scottish Parliament. What the hon. Lady describes did happen—I admit that—but very rarely. I was for some time in the Chair, announcing those decisions, and I genuinely do not remember that happening very often at all.

• 22 Oct 2025 · Devolution in Scotland · Hansard source

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  Does my hon. Friend agree that it is ironic that it is only because BAE Systems won the contract with Norway that it is able to give work to Ferguson Marine, which is owned by the Scottish Government, to keep it going? At the time, the Scottish Government were saying, “We will not have anything to do with defence procurement.” The irony of that is appalling, given that people’s jobs are at stake.

• 22 Oct 2025 · Devolution in Scotland · Hansard source

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  It is very interesting to hear my hon. Friend outline so succinctly how Scotland could be better served if the UK Labour Government’s policies were copied elsewhere. I believe that symbols can sometimes be very important, so does she agree that the fact that there are more Labour Scottish Ministers sitting on the Front Bench than there are SNP Members attending this debate says a lot about people’s priorities, and about the priorities of this Government compared with those of the SNP?

• 22 Oct 2025 · Devolution in Scotland · Hansard source

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  Before I give way, may I just say that I really did not imagine that that one line would create such a response?

• 16 Oct 2025 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  A constituent of mine—an elderly gentleman in his 90s—recently tried to change his energy tariff to one that was cheaper. Unfortunately, when he applied it transpired that he could only do so if he was online, which was not possible for him. Does the Leader of the House agree that this is an unacceptable form of digital exclusion, and can he suggest how we might try to address it?

• 14 Oct 2025 · Middle East · Hansard source

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  I very much welcome the Prime Minister’s statement today, and I thank him, his ministerial team and their advisers for all the work that has been done over many months to get us to this point, where there is some hope for peace in Gaza and also for peace for Israel. In this process, as we go forward and try to build peace, can he ensure that the voices of women, who are so often excluded from such processes, are heard, and that women are at the table when decisions are being made?

• 13 Oct 2025 · Glasgow Safer Drug Consumption Facility · Hansard source

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  To be perfectly frank, I cannot answer the hon. Member’s question because we did not take evidence on the situation elsewhere in the UK and were particularly focused on Scotland, as one would expect of the Scottish Affairs Committee. It may be that the prosecutorial discretion that the Lord Advocate has offered is something that others wish to look to, but whether or not the law in England and Wales would allow that is not for me to say because I genuinely do not know.

• 13 Oct 2025 · Glasgow Safer Drug Consumption Facility · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend for his question. We did not look closely into that issue; if someone is going to inject drugs, they will buy them and take them almost immediately, so the reach of the Thistle will never be much further than the localised community around the building. For that reason, we have not looked at the issue in the way that he suggests. It will be interesting to see from the evaluation whether there has been more of a reach than was imagined at the beginning, when the facility was being scoped. But that is certainly not the experience that people have had until now.

• 13 Oct 2025 · Glasgow Safer Drug Consumption Facility · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is absolutely right to say that public confidence in the facility is paramount if it is to have a future—and even for the duration of the three-year pilot. Committee members who attended the forum were very struck by the fact that although forum members from the community and local businesses were raising questions with the operators of the Thistle and those involved most closely with it, there was no mechanism for a response to be given between meetings. We suggested that the communications strategy needed to be much more responsive so that if a problem is raised, or a good comment made, the Thistle can respond to it rather than wait until the next meeting. That would give the public a lot more confidence and reassurance that their concerns were being addressed.

• 13 Oct 2025 · Glasgow Safer Drug Consumption Facility · Hansard source

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  I am very grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for affording me the opportunity to make a statement on the publication of the Scottish Affairs Committee’s third report of this Session, on the pilot safer drug consumption facility in Glasgow’s east end. Despite a reduction in deaths this year, Scotland continues to face the highest rate of drug-related deaths in Europe. Without a doubt, that is the most pressing public health issue facing Scotland, and it is in that context that the Committee agreed to undertake a thorough examination of the pilot facility on Hunter Street, called the Thistle. The Committee’s inquiry follows up on excellent work conducted by our predecessor Committee on problem drug use in Scotland, and I take this opportunity to express our thanks to everyone who contributed to this inquiry, in particular Dr Saket Priyadarshi and the team at the Thistle for their continued engagement with our work. This is a challenging issue, and I express my gratitude to the members of the Scottish Affairs Committee for their thoughtful and collaborative work on this report. In 2024, some 1,017 people died from drug-related causes—a figure expected to rise in 2025—with the highest concentration of deaths occurring in the Glasgow city area. The problem is not new. High levels of drug deaths have been a concern in the city for over a decade, and other harms, such as the transmission of blood-borne viruses, remain prevalent. Between 2014 and 2020, an outbreak of HIV among people who inject drugs saw 188 new diagnoses reported in the Greater Glasgow area. To address those harms, Glasgow city health and social care partnership, NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde and other partners launched the Thistle, the UK’s first sanctioned safer drug consumption facility. The Thistle was opened as a three-year pilot. At the Thistle, visitors can self-administer drugs in safe, hygienic conditions under medical supervision. Staff can reverse overdoses, treat wounds and provide hygienic injecting equipment. Of equal importance to the immediate medical harm reduction is the space the facility provides for expert clinicians to build trusting relationships with people whom it would otherwise be hard for support services to reach. Those relationships can be a pathway to engagement with other health and social services, such as drug treatment, counselling and housing services, which can help address the drivers of problem drug use. When we visited the facility shortly after it opened, we were particularly impressed by the expertise and dedication of the staff we met. The opening of the Thistle marks a radical change in approach to drug use in the UK, but internationally, safer drug consumption facilities are not uncommon; similar facilities already operate in 60 cities across the world. None of those facilities have ever reported an overdose death on the premises. As part of our inquiry, we visited Norway and Lisbon. We saw how safer drug consumption facilities have been a core part of Portugal’s strategy to reduce drug harms. We looked carefully at what Portugal has done, given that it has achieved a radical reduction in drug harms; it has achieved an 80% reduction in the number of drug-related deaths over the past 20 years. We also travelled to Oslo and Bergen, where we saw how facilities can be successfully integrated into local communities. Above all else, our report calls on the UK Government to adopt an evidence-based approach, and not to make up their mind about the Thistle before the trial has concluded. To that end, our report also argues that experts in the evidence, rather than those with preconceived ideas, should determine the facility’s future. There is no statutory basis for a safer drug consumption facility to open or operate in the UK. Instead, the Thistle has been able to open because of prosecutorial discretion applied by Scotland’s Lord Advocate. The Lord Advocate has decided that it would not be in the public interest to prosecute users of the facility for possession offences. While the Lord Advocate’s dispensation has been crucial to enabling the Thistle to open, our Committee found that prosecutorial discretion is not a substitute for a considered legal framework. Our report also considers the cost of the Thistle. The Scottish Government have committed up to £2.3 million per year to fund the facility for the duration of the three-year pilot. Evidence to our inquiry found that facilities like the Thistle can be value for money, generating savings elsewhere. Such facilities reduce costs associated with public injecting, hospital admissions, ambulance call-outs and treating blood-borne viruses. For example, preventing just six to eight cases of HIV annually could generate savings equivalent to the annual cost of the Thistle. While it is right that the cost of the Thistle be properly considered, the context of Scotland’s drug crisis cannot be forgotten. The Committee argues that the scale of Scotland’s emergency—there were over 1,000 deaths in 2024 alone—necessitates a commensurate response and significant investment. While the Thistle has not diverted funding from other services, we did hear concerns during our inquiry about the need to strike the right balance between investing in services like the Thistle and investing in traditional recovery services. We know that safer drug consumption facilities are not the only tool available for addressing problem drug use, and we are clear in our report that this facility is complementary to and works in tandem with traditional recovery services. In other words, it is not an either/or. Our report recognises that drug trends in Scotland are changing. The facility offers supervision for only the injection of drugs, but inhalation is becoming more prevalent and can be a safer method of consumption. The Thistle must be able to adapt to meet the needs of the population it is trying to help. An inhalation space is currently not possible due to both reserved and devolved legislation, and our report encourages the Lord Advocate and the Scottish Government to consider any future application for an inhalation room on its merits. The Thistle opened in Glasgow’s east end—an area with long-standing issues around public injecting. Since its opening, we have heard concerns about its impact, particularly regarding drug-related litter. We know that community support is of paramount importance to the pilot’s success. That is why consultation work was undertaken about the opening of the Thistle and continues through the community engagement forum. When members of our Committee attended a community engagement forum meeting in August, they were able to see that consultation work in action, but we encourage the Thistle to go one step further and develop a more responsive communication strategy to maintain dialogue between meetings. As I said, an independent evaluation is under way to assess the facility’s impact on people who inject drugs, local residents, businesses and public services. That includes examining the service’s effectiveness, reach, costs and potential long-term savings. Community concerns must be taken seriously, but it is also important to allow time for the pilot’s local impact to be properly understood, and we await the results of that evaluation, which will provide an objective assessment of the Thistle’s impact. If the Lord Advocate continues to apply her discretion beyond the three-year pilot, the Thistle and any future facilities in Scotland could continue to operate without UK Government support, perhaps indefinitely. However, the Committee has found that the legal position of the pilot is fundamentally precarious, and the arrangement is undesirable in the longer term. We therefore conclude that if the independent evaluation deems the pilot a success and the Thistle is to be made permanent, the UK Government should ensure that there is a full legal framework for safer drug consumption facilities in Scotland. I am grateful to my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North and Cottingham (Dame Diana Johnson), who was then the Home Office Minister with responsibility for this area, for giving oral evidence to our inquiry. She told us that the UK Government will not introduce safer drug consumption facilities, and pointed instead to alternative ongoing interventions to address drug-related harms. While those approaches are needed, the evidence we have heard is clear that the sustained scale of Scotland’s drug death crisis demands further action. I will conclude by echoing the sentiment in the report that any intervention that is found to be effective at saving lives and reducing harm deserves the Government’s serious consideration. The Committee looks forward to the Government’s response, which I hope will reflect serious consideration of our recommendations.

• 13 Oct 2025 · Glasgow Safer Drug Consumption Facility · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question. Many reports have been done on international facilities, which he might want to bring to the attention of his colleagues in Belfast. He is absolutely right that it is not just Glasgow or Scotland that have these problems, although Scotland seems to be suffering particularly badly. There are other models. In Lisbon, we saw a mobile model that accompanied the fixed facility. That seemed to be popular; a queue of people was waiting to use it when we were there—a small queue, but a queue. There are other ways of addressing the issue, and he may wish to consider those.

• 13 Oct 2025 · Glasgow Safer Drug Consumption Facility · Hansard source

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  I hope that my hon. Friend will forgive me, as the impartial Chair of the Committee, for not criticising or commenting on the failings or otherwise of the SNP, whose Members are not, as he points out, here this evening. He is absolutely right that this is not an either/or. It is important that the provision is part of a range of options offered. If any of those options can help to reduce the drug death numbers in Scotland, they must be considered seriously, and that is what we suggest.

• 13 Oct 2025 · Glasgow Safer Drug Consumption Facility · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend for that question. It is important to understand that, although prosecutorial discretion is offered by the Lord Advocate, the Thistle is quite limited in what it can offer. At the moment, it would like to be able to offer tourniquets, for example, to allow people to inject more easily. It has also applied to become a drug testing centre. There is an increasing incidence of synthetic opioids, which can be very dangerous, coming on to the market in Scotland. Testing would allow the police and academics to track those and take them off the streets more easily. Things like that can be done, but permissions need to be given to do them. At the moment, the facility does not have such permissions and it is simply an injecting centre. That is not to say that staff are not able to refer people to other facilities, perhaps those where recovery or housing services are more of an option, or where there is a space for people to have a really good wash, get some clean clothes and go out feeling better. However, at this facility people are able to talk. No one leaves the premises immediately after injecting, so people will sit around having conversations with each other and with the professionals at the facility, who are trying hard to be really supportive.

• 13 Oct 2025 · Glasgow Safer Drug Consumption Facility · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend for that question. She is absolutely right: it cannot be one thing or another. A holistic attitude must be taken towards eradicating drug misuse. Given Scotland’s particular situation, we have to be open to considering any and all options. But recovery facilities are certainly vital.

• 13 Oct 2025 · Glasgow Safer Drug Consumption Facility · Hansard source

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  I hope the hon. Lady does not mind if I call her my hon. Friend. I thank her for her question. I think it fair to say that the issues we looked at challenged us all. Many of us were considering issues that we had never reflected upon before, so it was a challenge, and I perfectly understand that we will have disagreements about how to go forward. The thing about inhalation that was highlighted to us is that for many people, inhalation is safer than injecting, which has all sorts of risks attached—infected wounds and blood-borne viruses, for example. Inhalation does not have those problems, and is becoming increasingly popular as a method of using drugs, so it seemed to the Committee that we could encourage its consideration. We are not suggesting that there should be further injection spaces at this time—we think it is important to see what the evaluation says, and that any decisions should be based on that particular finding—but we are aware that other places in Scotland are looking at the Thistle with interest, and may well make those applications, although that is not the gist of the report.

• 10 Sept 2025 · Occupied Palestinian Territories: Humanitarian Access · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Cowdenbeath and Kirkcaldy (Melanie Ward) for an excellent contribution that clearly came from the heart. We know that the humanitarian situation in Gaza is appalling and has been for far too long. That aid cannot get in is despicable, but that aid workers are not able to get in is also despicable, not least because we cannot just give food to starving people; we have to introduce a comprehensive refeeding programme to allow them to cope with the food that eventually arrives. We need to be taking that seriously, otherwise we will end up with many more casualties than we expect. In his response, will the Minister tell us a bit more about the evacuation of injured children to the UK? My understanding is that of all the children evacuated from Gaza, only 0.03% have come to the UK so far. Clearly, we need to do more. If the Minister has time, could he also talk about the need to evacuate scholars—the people of the future for Gaza—to the UK? One of my constituents had been told that she could come, but her family—her children—could not. She has now been told that she cannot come either, because she cannot get a visa.

• 8 Sept 2025 · Defence Industrial Strategy · Hansard source

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  On Thursday, I had the pleasure of visiting BAE Systems in my constituency with the Prime Minister. I spoke to many of the apprentices there, who are looking forward to a very long and secure future in their jobs. Can the training academy model used at Scotstoun be considered for integration into the defence academies? Might Glasgow be one of the locations for such an academy, presumably following discussions with the Scottish Government?

• 8 Sept 2025 · Palestine Action: Proscription and Protests · Hansard source

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  Does the Minister agree that the continued mass arrest of peaceful protesters, many of whom are protesting about the proscription of Palestine Action but would not for a moment support the activities of Palestine Action, is something that we should distinguish and that we should advise prosectors and the police about—not least because the furore around the arrests risks drowning out the rightful protests about the difficult situation in Palestine and Gaza, to which the Minister has referred?

• 1 Sept 2025 · Middle East · Hansard source

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  I thank the Foreign Secretary very much for the action taken by him and his colleagues to enable the safe passage of scholars to the UK, a number of whom hope to come to the University of Glasgow. I am also grateful for the work being done to evacuate critically injured children. The Foreign Secretary has enumerated the number of children who have already died of famine—119, with 132,000 under-fives also at risk of starvation in the next year. But we have already seen 17,000 children killed as a result of the conflict. I refuse to call it a war because it is not a war; there is one side that has arms and another side that does not have an equality of arms. The Foreign Secretary previously said that he would never rule out anything that could be helpful in this regard. I understand why he will not commit to further sanctions at the Dispatch Box, but can he assure the House that he has not ruled out further sanctions, or any other actions that might be helpful, both in the run-up to the UN meeting and beyond?

• 1 Sept 2025 · Ukraine · Hansard source

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  The Secretary of State will be aware that the Clyde is a wide river that straddles the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South West (Dr Ahmed) and mine, so I join my colleague in welcoming the deal with Norway that was concluded at the weekend. Not only will it secure a bright future for the 100-plus apprentices at BAE Systems on the Clyde, it will secure the future of shipbuilding on the Clyde, including at the Scottish Government-owned Ferguson Marine, which is a subcontractor to BAE Systems. There are perhaps 10 billion reasons why the Scottish Government should welcome the deal. The Secretary of State mentioned the diminution of Putin’s strength. Does he agree that the deal will help to further that diminution, particularly in the high north?

• 1 Sept 2025 · Borders and Asylum · Hansard source

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  I was struck by the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Dame Meg Hillier) about the importance of good and appropriate legal advice for people seeking immigration status in the UK. I recall two cases in which constituents have been very badly let down by their solicitors, and I have brought those two cases to the attention of the Home Office. Given that justice is devolved to the Scottish Government, when changes are made to the regulation of this issue will the Home Secretary commit to discussing this with the Scottish Government and, if necessary, the Law Society of Scotland?

• 21 Jul 2025 · Middle East · Hansard source

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  I thank my right hon. Friend for his statement, and I note the agreement reached with the 30 other nations. However, as we know, Israel has already rejected it. It seems to me that Israel is becoming more and more emboldened by the lack of concrete action by the international community. While people starve or are killed while queuing for food, and while those sheltering in the Caritas Jerusalem shelter were bombed at the weekend, it really does begin to look as though there is genocide unfolding before our eyes. I realise that the Foreign Secretary will want to take a legalistic view of that, but to those of us looking at it from a moral and logical point of view, there can be no other words for it. Although I understand and I agree with the Foreign Secretary that recognising the state of Palestine will not bring this to an end, it would at least give the people of Palestine something to cling on to and some hope, so can we please not discount the opportunities to raise that issue, but advocate for it and declare that we regard Palestine as a state?

• 17 Jul 2025 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  Residents in areas of my constituency have raised the poor postal service they have been receiving in recent weeks, which has led to their not receiving important financial information on time and missing hospital appointments. I realise that that issue is often raised with the Leader of the House, but will she join me in saying that Royal Mail and Ofcom really do need to get their act together and ensure that my constituents do not continue to receive such a second-class service?

• 17 Jul 2025 · Strategy for Elections · Hansard source

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  Will my hon. Friend reflect on the fact that my experience of being elected under three electoral systems—additional member system, single transferable vote and first past the post—suggests that none of them are perfect? However, there are advantages to first past the post that we should be very careful about doing away with. The other two systems that I have been elected with served my constituents far worse than first past the post does. Voting for 16 and 17-year-olds was passed by the Scottish Parliament a number of years ago and enabled young people to vote in elections as of 2016 in Scotland. I was delighted to vote for that measure, as were all members of the Scottish Parliament, so will the Scottish Conservatives give a lesson to their colleagues at Westminster about why they voted for it in 2016?