Seòmar agus comataidhean

I thank the cabinet secretary and her officials for joining us.

That concludes our business for the morning. There is no formal committee meeting next week, as planned.

Thank you very much, cabinet secretary. In a paper that the Scottish Police Federation submitted to the committee ahead of today’s meeting, it outlined its position and made a number of comments on the proposed constitution of the Police Negotiating Board for Scotland in the Scottish statutory instrument. Have you had the opportunity to see that paper and, if so, do you have any comments on the points that the Scottish Police Federation set out?

On that note, the SPF made a number of comments, and my understanding is that there is no scope to incorporate them in the SSI at the moment. If you are not aware of them, we will perhaps come back to this question, given that we are looking at the SSI in its current form.

Good morning, and welcome to the 18th meeting in 2023 of the Criminal Justice Committee. We have received apologies from Pauline McNeill, and Katy Clark is joining us online.

Our main item of business is consideration of a draft affirmative instrument: the Police Negotiating Board for Scotland (Constitution, Arbitration and Qualifying Cases) Regulations 2023. I am pleased to welcome to the meeting the Cabinet Secretary for Justice and Home Affairs, Angela Constance, and her Scottish Government officials. We are joined by Peter Jamieson and Graham Thomson, from the police division, and Louise Miller, from the legal directorate.

I refer members to paper 1 and annex B in our briefing paper, and I thank the Scottish Police Federation for its comments.

I invite the cabinet secretary to speak to the regulations.

Before I bring in Jamie Greene, I will come back to Collette Stevenson’s earlier questioning on the impact on victims’ families. I would be interested, Daljeet Dagon, to hear a little bit about the work of Barnardo’s on supporting children, whether they are victims or are, as Alison Penman mentioned in her opening remarks, becoming perpetrators—for want of a better word—in their own right. What are you seeing in Barnardo’s on that?

Martin MacLean has a final word.

Yes, I am happy with that. It is appropriate that we keep track of progress and ask to be updated as and when there are developments. Thank you very much indeed.

That concludes our business in public for this morning. We now move into private session.

Our next item of business is an evidence-taking session on tackling online child abuse, grooming and exploitation. This is the committee’s second evidence session on the issue, following our initial consideration in May last year.

I am very pleased to welcome to this morning’s meeting Daljeet Dagon, who is programme manager at Barnardo’s Scotland; Stuart Allardyce, who is director of Stop It Now! Scotland for the Lucy Faithfull Foundation; Wendy Hart, who is deputy director for threat leadership and child sexual abuse at the National Crime Agency; Joanne Smith, who is policy and public affairs manager at the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children Scotland; Detective Superintendent Martin MacLean, who is the head of the national child abuse investigation unit in the specialist crime division of Police Scotland; and Alison Penman, who is a senior manager at Dumfries and Galloway Council, and depute chair of the child protection group of Social Work Scotland. A warm welcome to you all, and thank you for your written evidence. I refer members to papers 2 and 3.

I intend to allow around 90 minutes for this session, so we will move straight to questions. To kick things off, I invite each of the witnesses to make some short opening remarks about the work that their respective organisations are undertaking and have been developing on the issue. I will start with Daljeet Dagon.

Thanks very much. Gosh! There was a lot in those opening remarks, and a lot for us to try to unpick in our questions.

I will now open it up to members, who I know have some questions that they want to ask. We will start with Russell Findlay.

I suggest to members that they should direct their questions to specific panel members so that we use our time as efficiently as we can.