Seòmar agus comataidhean

I welcome both witnesses. Teresa Medhurst touched on absences and said that sickness levels have fluctuated and have not reached the levels of 2019. I appreciate and respect the officers in your service, who do an incredible job. In the past few weeks, I have heard from a number of them, as you will be aware. In effect, some have become whistleblowers and have talked about significant absence levels. The levels across the board might not be those that have previously been seen, but are there hotspots in particular establishments that have high absence levels?

You said that some establishments are back to the two-shift system.

Okay. I have a final question on a different topic. Much has been said about the introduction of mobile phones and the cost of that. I do not have the figure in front of me but, off the top of my head, I think that it was £3 million or thereabouts. I understand that the private prisons chose a different model whereby they have phones that can be used communally attached to the wall and, as a result, they have not had the security issues that we have seen with the model that was adopted elsewhere.

Given that that money has been spent and the phones are in circulation, is there any discussion about perhaps phasing that out and moving towards the other, apparently more secure model?

I have a very specific question. With regard to the £35.3 million that has gone out in both cases, I understand that there was an indication that there was a commitment that the Crown would pay tax if the payment resulted in there being a tax liability for those litigants. Do you know whether that has happened? Has the money been paid yet? Do the litigants know whether they are going to have a tax liability?

I will move on to a more specific issue. I am mindful that there are still on-going matters in relation to the Rangers cases, but there has been a lot of speculation in the media about the overall figures. I am not asking you to predict outcomes, but can you tell us where we are right now on pay-outs that have left and are no longer live?

Yes. Obviously, the fatal accident inquiry backlog is as significant as the criminal case backlog and the other deaths backlog. There have been significant reports indicating what appears to be a rise in cases of deaths in custody. Have you seen any discernible rise in deaths in custody, and what are the budgetary implications of that?

I thank Peter Krykant, Becky Wood, Louise Stevenson and Natalie Logan MacLean for their testimonies, which were very moving. I express my condolences to Peter for his loss.

So far, much of our focus has been on what might be described as street-level drug use and drug dealing, but every single pill, rock or tenner bag comes from organised crime, and organised crime activities are estimated to cost the Scottish economy about £2 billion a year. That is a much-quoted figure, although I am not entirely sure where it comes from. According to the Crown Office’s submission to the committee, the value of proceeds of crime confiscation orders relating to drugs last year was about £1 million. It has long been said by many people who are involved in criminal justice that the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 has failed and is failing. Mr McGeehan and Mr Conway, do you agree with that interpretation? What can be done to improve the targeting of those at the high end of organised crime?

That is helpful.

I wonder whether Mr Conway would like to answer that point from the police perspective. Is the proceeds of crime legislation robust enough, or could it be improved?

According to a written submission to the committee, serious crime prevention orders, which I think were introduced in 2007, have been used on 70 occasions for those who have been convicted and on one occasion for someone who had not been convicted. Of those 70 who had the orders, 13 are now in the community and subject to monitoring. I presume that the other 57 will join them in due course. Does Police Scotland believe that it has sufficient resources to monitor those people effectively on their release?

No problem.

Another issue is that the general direction of travel is to treat Scotland’s drugs problem—or drugs crisis—as a public health issue. As we know, however, a large number of serious organised criminals are making a lot of money out of the death of people across communities in Scotland and are inflicting violence on our streets. In one of the submissions that it made to the committee, the Crown Office lists a number of cases as examples of successful prosecutions against organised crime. One that stood out related to an individual who has not been identified—although it is apparent who it is just from googling—who has high-level links to organised crime, both in Scotland and overseas. The drugs that he was involved in had a multimillion-pound value. Ultimately, he was sentenced to eight years’ imprisonment, which means, realistically, that he could be out after as little as four years. He is not a problem drug user, and this is not a public health issue—he is a high-level organised criminal. I just wonder, Mr McGeehan and Mr Conway, whether you think that the courts truly understand what needs to be done in respect of those people, who are making so much money from drugs.