Seòmar agus comataidhean

I have another quick question. I understand that the SFRS was created 11 years ago and that there were eight legacy brigades. Are the terms and conditions of employment all universal now? Do they go Scotland wide?

Why is that?

It is not just about the money, then—it is about employment rights and different workplace issues. Right now, there are still eight separate deals in place.

I want to quickly ask about the wildfire strategy. We heard from the earlier witnesses that the strategy document has been five-plus years in the making. Is that how it should be? When is that likely to be completed?

I was going to ask about the ATVs for wildfires, because you took delivery of those last year and a minister posed for a photograph in one of them this year, but they will not be in action until next year. They have been sitting in a shed somewhere for two years. Is that a problem for the people who are trying to deal with wildfires?

I will try to be brief. It is good to acknowledge that there is a starting point, which is that each and every one of those prisoners is there after a full independent judicial process and that sentencing is due to judges, who are privy to the full facts, which we as politicians are not. It is a hugely significant decision to release up to 550 prisoners before the end of their sentences.

The reasons why we are here are threefold: there has been a failure to invest properly in community sentencing, there has been a failure to invest in technology for bail and parole and there has been a failure to build new prisons—not additional prisons, but replacement prisons. I do not buy the apparent surprise when we reach a crisis point, with half the prisons in Scotland at red status.

As we know from Covid, the reality is that, when the mass release takes place, it will result in more crime. There was a 40 per cent reoffending rate within six months the previous time. [Interruption.] There is a bit of a noise here somewhere—sorry.

The multiple Victim Support Scotland submissions to the committee are pretty damning. First, victims are not being told proactively; they will have to ask, and they will have to work out how to do so. Today, I attempted to ask a question on several occasions, which was whether, in some circumstances, the person who perpetrated the crime against a victim would already have been released by the time the victim had established that they were going to be released. I did not get an answer—or I certainly felt that I did not get an answer. All that suggests that victims’ rights are an afterthought at best, and it makes a bit of a mockery of the Scottish Government’s talk of being trauma informed.

The implementation of the measures has been poor. Ultimately—

We have so little time and I have a lot more questions. The answers are not good enough. Why cannot you just admit that that will happen?

We have heard a lot about how this will be administered, but my question is about how we have reached this particular point. The Scottish Government has often said that far too many people are in prison, but I will read something that was said to us last week by His Majesty’s chief inspector of prisons. She said:

“We would have to invest in genuinely robust community alternatives that satisfy the public and also satisfy the sheriffs, and those do not currently exist.”—[Official Report, Criminal Justice Committee, 5 June 2024; c 34.]

That seems extraordinary, so my question for the cabinet secretary is why, after 17 years of this Government, those community sentences that will satisfy the public and sheriffs have not been created.

We have also not touched on the issue of the prisons that have not been built and are now overdue. Because of those two factors, there is a risk that the mass early release that we are experiencing now might become a new normal.

Right—I will give way, then.

Absolutely.