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It is not as direct as that, because the courts—

The purpose of the order is to enable Police Scotland to be able to lodge extract conviction information on spent convictions at the same time as making an application for sexual harm prevention orders and sexual risk orders. Those new orders, which were introduced in March last year, replaced sexual offences prevention orders and risk of sexual harm orders.

The Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 provides that, once an individual’s conviction has become spent, they are treated for all purposes in law as a person who has not been convicted of—or sentenced for—that particular offence. There are exceptions to that rule, which include applications for sexual offences prevention orders and risk of sexual harm orders. That means that Police Scotland can request relevant extract spent conviction information from the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service in support of an application for those behavioural orders.

At the time of the enactment of the Abusive Behaviour and Sexual Harm (Scotland) Act 2016, a consequential amendment could have been made to amend the 1974 act or to make provision under it to ensure that the new behavioural orders were treated in the same way as the previous sexual behaviour orders, and could also be exempt from section 4(1) of the 1974 act. Following a period of operational running, it has become apparent that making such a change would indeed be helpful as it would allow Police Scotland to lodge relevant extracts of spent convictions alongside applications for sexual harm prevention orders and sexual risk orders.

Under general disclosure, any conviction that leads to a sentence of greater than 48 months is never spent and can always be disclosed. As such, it will have been possible to use the higher-tariff sexual offences to inform applications for the new behavioural orders, where that is relevant. The new order allows for the consideration of lower-tariff offences that have become spent to be included in an application for a new behavioural order, where appropriate.

Although those court extracts are not a prerequisite for lodging an application for a behavioural order, and we understand that the court might more often be concerned with individuals’ recent behaviour than with what they did years ago, the SSI will help to ensure that court extracts of relevant convictions can be lodged at the same time as an application in order to provide potentially useful background information about the individual. That is a change to facilitate the current operation process, and it is supported by Police Scotland.

That is a brief overview of the draft order and its context. I am happy to answer any questions.

As I said in the statement, relevant convictions of 48 months and beyond are never spent. The issue is around ensuring that the relevant provisions are in place so that we can extract information on those lower-tariff offences, which are currently not accessible at the point of application.

That is an important distinction, because courts can and do release extract information on convictions to the police. However, that involves a dialogue and a process. In terms of efficiency, we want that information to be made available at the time of the application.

As I said, that is not a prerequisite for making an application. Very often, courts will have that information on a historical basis, because people are known to them. However, the order is about having the fullest possible information made available at the time of the application, as opposed to having a process in place thereafter.

It is more an issue of process. It would be for the court to put a value on current behaviour and past behaviour. I could not possibly say whether having access to that information will increase the police’s prospects of success in achieving those orders. Obviously, it is about common sense. We want the fullest range of relevant information to be presented, to which the court will then attach a value.

We do not want a post-application to and fro between the courts and Police Scotland. As I said, there is, potentially, a gap in the legislation. The new orders replaced the previous orders from March last year, and Police Scotland raised the issue with us in August.

That information was not utilised at the time of the application, but the courts can and do share information on unspent convictions with Police Scotland. The flow of information can happen but not at the time of the application. That would involve a process—

Yes—so that the information is all there at once when it is presented to the court by the police.

We have always found that our partners are keen to expand on electronic monitoring, so I do not have any concerns in that respect.

Let me run through the costs. The GPS service will cost £210,000 per annum. There is the one-off installation cost of £139.58, which covers both the fitting and the removal of a tag, and there is a monitoring cost, which is slightly more expensive per day for GPS monitoring in comparison to radio frequency monitoring, at around £7.20 compared to £5.99.

The Government is increasing investment in electronic monitoring, and the budget has had a 10 per cent uplift, meaning that an additional £500,000 has been put into the budget. Graham Robertson may have more to say on the details of the contract.

I would not describe it as a delay. However, I welcome your support for GPS technology, which adds to the tools that we have. It represents a step in the right direction in realising our ambitions to expand the use and widen the scope of electronic monitoring.

Members are probably aware that the new contract with G4S came into force in 2020. Thereafter, we wanted to ensure, as a priority, that our plans for electronic monitoring aligned with the community justice strategy. That is why, in the first instance, there was a big focus on electronic monitoring of bail and on the use of electronic monitoring in community payback orders when they are applied at first instance.

We are now moving to the introduction of GPS monitoring and the initial phase of that is focused on home detention curfew, for which the numbers are quite small. We have done that in order to test the processes, because this tool is shared between our justice agencies and our justice partners and it is important that, in engaging and operating with each other, those agencies and partners have the opportunity to learn from the initial phase before it is scaled up.

However, I appreciate that, across the political spectrum, there is an interest in different forms of electronic monitoring.

It is not a substantial change—

The matter was brought to my officials’ attention in August, and we want to rectify it. I described it as a potential gap, but—if I can put it this way—it is a matter of fact that there was not the same issue for the previous orders as for the new orders.

Based on the assurances that I sought from officials and the information that my officials have received from the courts and Police Scotland, there has not been any negative impact. That goes back to the fact that courts tend to be more interested in current behaviour—I appreciate that that is a generalisation—and that they can, and do, share information with the police on previous convictions and extract information. Court is in public, so that information is available, and we want it to be included as part of the original application—hence my comment about process, although, as Louise Miller emphasised, the issue is not just a two-dimensional matter of process.

It is a matter of completeness. We want the orders to work on a par with previous orders. However, to the best of our knowledge, there has been no negative impact, and any impact has been minimal. It has just required a bit more work between the police and the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service.