Seòmar agus comataidhean

Good morning. I would also like to put on record that I am very pleased that the United Kingdom Government has secured the prestigious event and decided to host it in Glasgow. I agree with the Minister for Security, Tom Tugendhat, who says that it

“underlines the UK’s role as a global leader when it comes to security and policing”.

I am grateful to all the members who have supported my parliamentary motion, which I have taken the opportunity to briefly plug.

I was going to ask the same question that Jamie Greene asked about the road traffic accident exemption. Do you know whether the exemption was arrived at due to the high-profile case in which a young man was killed by an overseas diplomat in the UK?

I have another, more general, question. Is this pretty much the same situation as COP26 and there is no meaningful difference to the exemptions in the order?

Okay. Thank you.

Another ask is for a Scottish deterrence campaign. Again, there is a difference. There is no campaign currently, but similar things are happening elsewhere. Do you know whether that is progressing?

That is helpful. Thank you very much.

There is another interesting thing in the child protection statistics. In Scotland, 22 children per 100,000 are on the child protection register, but the figure is significantly higher elsewhere in the UK—it is 43 in England, 45 in Northern Ireland and 52 in Wales. I do not quite know what to make of those figures. I do not know whether they mean that there is an overly cautious approach elsewhere and children are being added on grounds that would not be used to add children in Scotland or whether they mean that Scotland is sometimes not adding children when they, arguably, should be added. It is such a stark difference. I do not know whether that question would be for the NSPCC or Barnardo’s or Social Work Scotland.

I will be selective. The letter from the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service says:

“SCTS successfully achieved customer service excellence”.

I have no idea what that is, so it would be good to know. We have asked the SCTS about its complaints process and been told how wonderful it all is, but there is no data about the number of complaints, whether that number is going up or down, or how complaints are resolved. That might be interesting to know.

I have a few other points about the letters from COSLA and the SFRS, but I will leave those for now.

I would quickly like to put on record my appreciation for yesterday’s trip to the prison and to thank the official who answered so many questions. It was fascinating. Seeing the new building alongside the old one showed the contrast quite well. It is also worth putting on record our appreciation for the staff. There is a board up in the new prison that shows that some members of staff have more than 40 years of service, with others having 20 or 30.

It is also worth noting that, over the years, many women took their own lives at Cornton Vale.

I pretty much repeat that, but I also want to understand what is expected of us today. What are our options? I am still not entirely clear.

There is a lot in here, and I am sure that colleagues will cover parts that I do not. In respect of the assessment of the new HMP Stirling and the two new community custody units for women, during our visit to the prison yesterday, we were told that the University of Glasgow had just been awarded a contract to conduct that assessment work. It might be that the minister’s response was written prior to that being known, but it might be worth exploring further what the terms of the process are, when it is likely to conclude and so on. I assume that it will not begin until July, as that is when HMP Stirling opens.

On the numbers of young people in secure accommodation, I cannot remember what we asked. If we only asked about numbers, then the information on page 5 of the response deals with it. However, I thought that we had perhaps asked more about the funding arrangements. From the evidence that we heard, when the provision to send young people into secure accommodation rather than prison comes into force, that will put a greater strain on bed numbers, which are limited. If I understand the situation correctly, the fact that others elsewhere in the UK are paying more for those beds might have an impact in relation to where the funding would come from to subsidise the policy in Scotland.

I will be quick. I have some specific questions about in-cell telephones, which are referred to in the letter dated 26 April. The letter says that the relevant work in all establishments should be completed by the end of April, which was last month. It would be useful to know whether that happened.

The context is also important. We know that more than £4 million was spent on providing mobile phones initially during Covid, but we also know that that was abused on more than 7,000 different occasions by more than 4,000 prisoners. Those phones were also used in the commission of some serious crimes.

My questions are about the cost of in-cell telephony. Will it replace the mobile phones or will the two types of phone run in tandem? I think that it is safe to assume that it will replace the mobile phones, but the letter does not state that. If it is the latter, how much will it cost to run both schemes? Crucially, given the problems with the mobile phones that we were told would not happen but did happen, what measures is the SPS taking to ensure that the in-cell telephony will not be abused in the same way?