Conservative minister Penny Mordaunt has attacked plans for a drug consumption room in Glasgow, describing it as part of the SNP’s “appalling legacy”.
She dismissed the facility as “somewhere safe and warm to take heroin.”
One SNP MP said the Leader of the House of Commons had disgraced herself with the Comment.
READ MORE: Robison: SNP ministers 'aim' to tell truth as Matheson to face probe
Ms Mordaunt's remark came during Business Questions in Parliament in response to a question from her SNP shadow, Diedre Brock.
The Tory criticised "the appalling legacy" that SNP had "ceded to a generation of Scottish children."
“A wrecked education system, a widening attainment gap, fewer teachers, maths scores declining in every Pisa survey, science at a low record and plummeting literacy rates.
“But they will have, of course, somewhere safe and warm to take heroin.
“I’m not going to take any lectures from [Ms Brock] about values, responsibility or performance in office.”
READ MORE: Drug Consumption Room will be 'restricted in what it can do'
The SNP Stewart McDonald hit out at Ms Mordaunt.
"You disgrace yourself, @PennyMordaunt," he wrote on X, the site formerly known as Twitter. "My brother died of a drug overdose at his home. If he had access to a healthcare facility such as a safe consumption room - somewhere ‘safe and warm’ as you put it - in order to manage his addiction then he might well still be alive today."
You disgrace yourself, @PennyMordaunt. My brother died of a drug overdose at his home. If he had access to a healthcare facility such as a safe consumption room - somewhere ‘safe and warm’ as you put it - in order to manage his addiction then he might well still be alive today. https://t.co/TZY5IxlshC
— Stewart McDonald MP (@StewartMcDonald) November 23, 2023
Mr McDonald's 40-year-old brother Malcolm died in January 2020. He was found by his support worker dead at his flat, having overdosed on gabapentin, methadone and cocaine.
Figures released by the National Records of Scotland (NRS) in September showed there were 1,051 deaths due to drug misuse in 2022 — down 279 on the previous year, a drop of 21%.
It is the second year in a row that the total number of drug fatalities has fallen.
However, Scotland’s death rate is still staggeringly grim, and around 2.7 times higher than the UK average.
The plans for a safe consumption room on Hunter Street in Glasgow were approved by NHS and council officials in Glasgow in September.
The green light came after Scotland’s Lord Advocate Dorothy Bain KC announced it would not be in the “public interest” to prosecute users of such a facility.
The Hunter Street centre already provides a heroin assisted treatment service.
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