Seòmar agus comataidhean

Before I bring in Fulton MacGregor, I invite Becky Wood to make a couple of points. It would be helpful if they could be brief.

I ask that Natalie Logan MacLean comes in, to be followed by Peter Krykant. I ask that you keep your comments fairly brief.

I will bring in Jamie Greene before bringing in Collette Stevenson and Katy Clark.

Pauline McNeill is keen to come in.

Ms McNeill, do you want to come in on this subject?

Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the seventh meeting in 2021 of the Criminal Justice Committee. Apologies have been received from Katy Clark.

The first agenda item is to decide whether to take in private items 4 and 5, which are to consider today’s evidence and to discuss our work programme. Do we agree to take those items in private?

Members indicated agreement.

That perhaps covers my follow-up question, which was about how specialist criminal law firms might need to change their model of practice and what budget considerations might need to be taken into account to allow that to happen. Do you want to add anything on that?

That is a helpful response.

That concludes the public part of our meeting. Our next meeting will be on Wednesday 27 October, when we will hold a round-table evidence session on the role of the Scottish criminal justice sector in tackling the misuse of drugs.

I wonder whether post-Covid recovery provides an opportunity and could be used as a platform for reform. That brings me on to issues around changing demand. There has to be a balance between how we promote reform and the change in demand on the police service. In the report “Five year financial planning”, you talk about changing demand arising from the changing nature of crime, community expectations and needs and so on. We recently visited the Scottish crime campus and had quite a helpful discussion about the challenges of recruiting specialist staff to tackle, for example, cybercrime. Bearing that in mind, what might be the budgetary implications around changing demand and the specialist nature of some of that new demand? How might that impact on budgetary considerations?