Seòmar agus comataidhean

I will be very quick. The cabinet secretary read my mind when he mentioned prison phones. We will not reheat everything that has been said about mobile phones and the problems that have been caused by some of them, but, in Teresa Medhurst’s evidence to the committee, she said that that model was not adopted in Addiewell and Kilmarnock because of the hard-wired infrastructure in those modern prisons. With that in mind, have you sought to ensure that similar infrastructure will be part of the new prisons in the pipeline, to provide safe and secure communications down the line?

How much will the victims commissioner cost?

I have a quick point about budgets. Jamie Greene has already questioned some of the language used about UK Government funding to the Scottish Government and the contentious use of the phrase “major cuts”, which we strongly disagree with. You referred to borrowing powers. The Scottish Government has the ability to borrow. In 2020-21, it planned to borrow £450 million but actually ended up borrowing £200 million. If you are not using the borrowing powers that you already have and you have cited issues with borrowing as a reason for being unable to do the things that you would like to do, why not use those powers initially?

Okay. My next question is on a similar theme, which is the role of senior management. It has been suggested to me that many people in senior positions, including you, are in interim posts, temporary posts or similar. It has further been suggested that that is causing some uncertainty for the staff, and there are some—cynical, perhaps—suggestions that the reason why so many people are in such posts, if indeed that is the case, is that the service saves money by not putting people into permanent positions. Do you recognise that?

As well as filling the vacancies, will the approach affect the large number of temporary or acting posts?

That is interesting; thank you.

Are those figures for financial years?

Do you just have to deal with those as part of your overall budget?

Good morning to you both, and welcome. I begin by echoing my colleague Jamie Greene’s opening comments.

The level of the backlog of criminal cases is startling and the figures that you have provided today really bring that home. There is perhaps a public perception that you work primarily or entirely on criminal cases, whereas you are also responsible for investigating a large number of deaths that are not homicides. The COPFS submission refers to a year-on-year increase from just under 11,000 death reports to almost 16,000, and many of those will be Covid deaths.

I have read about a Covid investigation unit, although I do not know whether it is called that or whether it is a stand-alone thing. Forgive me for my question being a bit woolly. Will you expand on the nature of that unit and the challenges, which I would guess are primarily financial, that arise from that huge increase in the numbers? Will you also say whether every Covid death merits the same type of investigation or whether it depends on the individual circumstances? That question perhaps drifts away from finance, but I suppose that it relates to the financial cost that Covid is bringing to the Crown.

Perhaps it is also fair to say that the budget for that unit is based on the entire budget and what the unit requires to do its job. There are not really stand-alone figures.