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The restitution order gives courts an additional option. They are under an obligation to consider the impact on the offender and their ability to pay. We are not changing how any of that operates, and such orders already exist. Where the court imposes a combination of compensation orders, fines and restitution orders, a hierarchy of payments is applied. When offenders do not have the means to pay the total amount, priority is given to payment of compensation orders and, thereafter, restitution orders. I hope that that helps.

I have nothing further to add, convener.

Motion moved,

That the Criminal Justice Committee recommends that the Restitution Fund (Scotland) Order 2025 [draft] be approved.—[Angela Constance]

Motion agreed to.

To be honest, I think that we will be in a stronger position to encourage the use of restitution orders once the fund is up and running and there are people in place to administer it. I am keen to understand the data further, and I will certainly ask my officials in justice analytical services to liaise with the Crown Office, for example, on further data.

As I said earlier, I am keen for my officials to engage appropriately with the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service to raise awareness of restitution orders and remind people of their existence. Such orders have been around for some time, and they have been used. I want to encourage their continued and expanded use, given the benefits.

Until now, funds recouped through restitution orders have not been administered to any charities for the benefit of victims of assault. That has not happened. The purpose of the instrument that we are considering today is to get that fund established, get the guidance in place and get the fund operational by next year.

Good morning, colleagues. The order revokes and replaces the original Restitution Fund (Scotland) Order 2021. Its purpose is to remove the Scottish Police Benevolent Fund as the operator of the restitution fund and to make provision for Scottish ministers to operate the fund.

The order maintains provision for the administration of the fund, including making payments from the fund. The fund will be used to support services for police officers and police staff—or any person assisting them in the course of their duties—who have been victims of assault.

Restitution orders are imposed by the courts in a similar way to fines. The money that is received from the restitution orders is paid into the restitution fund, which is ring fenced for the purposes that are set out in the legislation. Police officers and police staff who are the victims of assault can currently access support services through police treatment centres or Police Scotland’s workplace provision of occupational health and employee assistance, for example, but the restitution fund makes available additional funds for valuable support services and it is also available to any person assisting the police in support of their duties who is the victim of assault. We anticipate that the most likely victims of assault—under section 90(1) of the Police and Fire Reform (Scotland) Act 2012—will be police officers and custody officers.

Support services can be any type of service or treatment that is intended to benefit the physical and mental health or wellbeing of the victim. There is no limit to the type of treatment or support that will be considered, and it could extend to the purchase of, for example, specialist equipment, to the funding of adjustments, where appropriate, or to the provision of support services in a different location or setting.

The main limitation of the fund is that it cannot be used to provide a direct payment to victims.

Having ministers operate the fund does not introduce any barriers to the way in which the restitution fund will be operated, and the revised equality impact assessment concludes that the provision of the order does not discriminate in any significant way and that access to support from the fund will not be impacted by any protected characteristic.

No one should face abuse or violence while at work, and the restitution order sends a clear message that, if you assault our police officers or police staff, you will pay for your actions.

Thank you, convener. I am happy to take any questions.

Convener, you are quite correct to say that there is a history to that. You correctly referred to the fact that my predecessor, the Cabinet Secretary for Justice and Veterans, wrote to the committee in August 2021 to confirm that the Scottish Police Benevolent Fund had withdrawn and no longer wanted to operate the fund. Thereafter, there were extensive discussions with the Scottish Police Federation, and they looked positive until about the start of last year.

I wanted to see the fund in operation, so I made the decision last year that, in the absence of either the Scottish Police Benevolent Fund or the Scottish Police Federation being prepared to operate the restitution fund, it should fall to Scottish ministers.

Restitution orders are currently available to the courts, but it is fair to say that, when the fund is operational, it will give us additional opportunities not only to appropriately raise awareness of the contribution that restitution orders can make to vital support, but to support their use by our independent courts.

It is a matter for the courts, as you would expect. My understanding is that the courts can make a restitution order separately or along with other orders—so, for example, they could impose both a fine and a restitution order.

The great benefit of restitution orders is that they support not only police officers and police staff who themselves have been assaulted in the course of their duties but other people, such as other emergency workers, or civilians, who have been assaulted when they have assisted them in the course of those duties. The restitution orders bring something additional to what is currently available to the courts.

The court can use a fine, a compensation order, a restitution order or a community or custodial sentence with respect to any case as it sees fit, whether that involves a member of the public, a police officer or an emergency services staff member.

We always think about those things. I can confidently say that that is not a concern, because the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service already has to administer financial penalties, such as fines imposed and compensation orders.

The end point that we are working towards is that it should be possible to make applications to the fund from next April. To be candid, convener, I appreciate your frustration in that regard. I should say that there was a working group that involved Police Scotland, police staff associations, trade unions and charities such as the police treatment centres. There was certainly broad consensus there, and consideration was given to the view that we would want any bureaucracy to be proportionate. We do not want to create too many hoops or hurdles, although, obviously, the financial governance aspect would need to be safeguarded.

Should the motion be agreed to, we would proceed with development of the guidance, on which we would need to consult, and we would also consider our work on the application process. To be clear, I have already seen an outline of the application process, which would take us from the court imposing a restitution order on an offender right through to the distribution of funds and the victim receiving the relevant support.

Under the legislation, the courts are under an obligation to consider an offender’s financial means and their ability to pay. As I understand your question—