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There have been some historical issues with the judicial complaints process, which resulted in the first judicial complaints reviewer, who said that the role was pretty toothless, standing down. It is worth seeing whether anything has changed.

No, on the review relating to victims and witnesses. I do not know whether that is a problem or not. It is fine that the police have responded and appear to have told us what they are doing in relation to stalking, but the issue goes much deeper than that. It is about the courts, the lack of communication, the Crown Office and decisions that are made but not communicated. There is no response on that. That would not reassure a victim.

To continue on the media stuff, I do not know if there is any detail on this, but I have been told that something like 20 to 30 per cent of those who could apply—which is about 1,700, I believe—were expected to apply, but it turns out that 80 per cent of them have applied. That has serious potential implications.

With regard to legal aid, the committee had asked the Scottish Government to look at the role of the Public Defence Solicitors Office and whether that could be expanded to address the long-running dispute involving criminal defence solicitors doing legal aid work.

On page 11 of his submission, Keith Brown recognises the value of the PDSO. However, it is only when we turn to paper 2 that we see that, in response to our request, the Government

“indicated it was grateful for the role played ... but there was no commitment to a review”.

That just seems a little bit short sighted, perhaps; no explanation is really given as to why. Saying no is fine but it would be nice to know why.

I have past experience of trying to obtain court transcripts. It is not easy; indeed, it can be almost impossible. I am not surprised by the survivor’s experience. I wonder whether the process is designed not to be easy. I do not see any good reason why transcripts should not be freely available.

I notice a running theme: a tendency for the Government to amalgamate numbers for a bunch of years and present them without enabling us to break them down year by year, to see whether there is any pattern or direction of travel. It might be useful to get a table with the amounts recovered by year.

It is worth noting that, in relation to victims, there was no response from the Crown Office, the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service or the Parole Board for Scotland on—

Picking up on Pauline McNeill’s point, there has been a 60 per cent increase, year on year, in deaths in custody. Each of those is subject to a fatal accident inquiry, but those inquiries are beset by chronic delays that predate Covid. Some of them can take years. Very few of them make any form of recommendation in respect of deaths in custody—I think that 90 per cent of them do not. What is said in this part of the table feels slightly superficial, as so much of the Government’s response does, because of the volume and the huge amount of ground that is being covered. It will be very interesting to find out what the Government’s update says in summer 2022, how thorough and detailed that is, and whether it is a tinkering or a serious attempt to do something about the issue.

There is reference to a revised serious organised crime strategy. “The Vision for Justice in Scotland” says that the strategy is to be finalised by spring 2022. Is there any way of getting an update as to when that might be published and whether it will be a public document? That would be helpful to know.

Right. If that age group is causing most of the criminality, is it not quite a simple fix?