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I appreciate that you are speaking for COSLA and that, because we do not have any detail, it is very difficult for you to respond. If the model was a commissioning model and if responsibility was taken away from local government, such that local authorities would have to enter into a tendering exercise, could there be a risk that local government, or at least some councils, might not get involved in that?

You picked out HMP Greenock in particular and you described the conditions there as shocking. In your report last year, you said that it was in urgent need of replacement and was clearly

“ill-suited to a modern prison system.”

However, also last year, the cabinet secretary said that it was unlikely that the Scottish Prison Service would be able to commence such a replacement before 2025-26.

Our calculation is that the cuts that we are considering for the justice sector will be in the region of 20 per cent over the coming years. If the forecast was 2025-26 last year, that suggests that it could be some time before there will be any serious proposals on Greenock prison’s replacement. Is that a massive concern? What will be the implications of a lack of substantial investment, given the current condition of that prison?

That is helpful information.

You have said clearly that you believe that there is a need for radical reform of justice. Politicians have been arguing for that since the creation of the Scottish Parliament and before it. They have said that there is no need for a full women’s prison in Scotland, that that is not the right way to dispose of woman prisoners and that prison is also not the right way to deal with the offending behaviour of many male prisoners. Those debates have been going on for many years. Why has the radical justice reform that you have spoken about not happened? Why has it been impossible to drive change in the system? What are your thoughts on that?

Some of what I was going to ask about has already been covered.

Is it fair to say that the main reasons for Kilmarnock prison’s being cheaper to run are the staff terms and conditions and the staffing levels there? You said that the pay might be comparable but that some of the other terms and conditions might be less beneficial for staff at Kilmarnock than for those in the mainstream prison estate. My understanding of the staffing levels at Kilmarnock, based on what I have heard, has always been that they are poor, particularly at night. Therefore, the reason for its being cheaper to run is that it employs fewer staff in addition to those staff having poorer terms and conditions. Are those the main reasons? I ask because you obviously have a level of knowledge about the place, given your previous role there.

I have a further question about Kilmarnock prison, but perhaps you could respond to that first.

It has closed-circuit television and so on.

That is because it has technology such as CCTV in place. I understand your point.

You might know about the staff contracts for Kilmarnock, and perhaps about those for the other private prisons. We have been told—this has also been my own understanding—that guaranteed cost of living increases are built into such contracts. Given the challenges that we now face across the prison estate because of the size of the proposed budget cuts, will the private sector prisons have a level of protection from those while the mainstream estate will have to bear a greater share of them? Is that your understanding of how things are likely to operate?

Yes. Also, women tend to get longer sentences than men for similar offences. Do you have any thoughts on that? Prison is not necessarily the right solution, but it also has massive budgetary implications.

You have said very clearly that some people have to be in prison because the nature of their offence or their violent nature means that they must be incarcerated. We all accept that that is the case and that there is a need for prisons, but I think that we also believe that there are people in prison who should not be there. We have been trying to get data on that so that we can better understand who is in prison and what they are there for.

How good is our data? The committee is very interested in having the data so that we can take a view on what could be achieved by looking at other disposals, although it is clear that there are some people for whom the only possible disposal is incarceration.

When we spoke to judges, they said that women prisoners, and particularly women appearing from custody, are given custodial sentences for almost paternalistic reasons. The judges do not know what else to do. They are not convinced that prison is the right way to deal with a particular woman offender but—

That is helpful to know.