FORMER Tory leadership contender Penny Mordaunt has been challenged for her “ignorant and contemptuous” dismissal of Scotland’s drug consumption room pilot by an MP who lost his brother to a drug overdose.
The Commons leader last week was criticised after she dismissed the SNP’s plans for a drug consumption room in Glasgow as a “safe and warm place to take heroin”.
Stewart McDonald, the SNP MP for Glasgow South, has previously spoken of the death of his brother Malcolm in 2020 of a drug overdose.
On Thursday, he challenged Mordaunt (below) directly over her comments and demanded an apology.
He said: “A few short years ago, my brother died by himself at home and alone having taken an overdose of drugs following a life of serious harmful addiction.
"Last week [Mordaunt] stood at that despatch box and dismissed the pilot in Scotland of drug consumption facilities.
"She dismissed them as 'somewhere safe and warm' for heroin users, people like my brother, to take their heroin.
"But it's a healthcare facility designed to help people with addiction problems and turn their lives around.
"She did it in the most ignorant and contemptuous way possible.”
McDonald (below) invited the Commons leader to his constituency to “meet with the families who are thankful that a pilot is finally taking place” and suggested she might make an apology for her comments afterwards.
Mordaunt insisted that was not what she had said as McDonald shouted “yes it is” and insisted she had said drug consumption rooms would be a “legacy” of the SNP.
She added: “What I was criticising the Scottish National Party for is having letting down a generation of children by destroying an education system, reducing the number of teachers that are there, by starving schools of resources, for widening the attainment gap and many other things.
“I am sorry, I am genuinely sorry for [McDonald’s] loss and I know a great deal about the particular pilot and this Government is supportive of the Scottish Government doing this pilot.
“But I would just say to the honourable gentleman: His obligations to the children of Scotland are important and they are failing them, and I will not apologise for holding him and his party to account.”
