Seòmar agus comataidhean

You asked a question about the UK Government. I am saying that, given the incompetence over which the UK Government has presided, whether it is in tax, inflation or public debt, the opportunity to do things in a different and much more sensible and mature way than, for example, the Kwasi Kwarteng budget is a very valuable option for the people of Scotland. We also want to fulfil our manifesto promise, which was to offer that referendum.

If it is possible to answer without being interrupted, I will try to answer your question. The idea is not honest that anyone can talk sensibly about public services while excluding from consideration the financing for which, currently, we have to rely on the UK Government. We have to acknowledge the main driver. Most other people in the country realise that we have had 12 years of austerity-suppressed budgets for public services, and I do not deny that that has had an impact.

I have mentioned the fact that we are looking at the issue, so that we can alleviate the pressure on the police, through calls going to the right place in the first place. That would reduce the number and volume of calls.

However, despite that, and notwithstanding those pressures, which apply across the UK, Police Scotland is above average.

I acknowledge that, if somebody’s call goes unanswered, that is a failure of service. I am not wishing that away.

My point is that, according to the Home Office, Police Scotland was well above average in July. It answered 79.9 per cent of calls in less than 10 seconds. I do not use the word “swimmingly”, but that is an example, notwithstanding the pressures, of Police Scotland performing better than average.

In addition, to get under some of the issues in your point, Police Scotland, as I have said before, has been the first point of call for many things that are not its responsibility. That is reflected in those calls. We have looked at the nature of the calls. Some should be directed towards other services, and we are trying to ensure that that can be done. That goes back to my previous point about an increase in the necessary reform in call handling and better liaison between the police, the other blue-light services and other services. If they can alleviate call pressure by ensuring that calls are directed correctly in the first place, that will help to improve a performance that is already above average, such that we can drive out any failure to answer calls.

It is better than average, just now. It has to be better, and work to make it better is continuing.

Discussions with Cabinet colleagues about public services often centre on the fact that, after 12 years of austerity, more money should be invested in public services. I acknowledge that. We should invest more money in public services. However, almost uniquely, the UK Government has decided on a programme of austerity, which has lasted for 12 years.

—and I am answering—

First, of course, the fire service has to comply with the stringency of the requirements on it, and there is no suggestion from the SFRS that the equipment is unsafe. I hate to correct the member, but I think that the backlog that he talked about was £492 million, rather than £482 million, according to the SFRS. However, we acknowledge the challenges.

The desperate attempt to pretend that this has nothing to do with settlements from the UK Government does not register with people out there. They know what the situation is, and what austerity has meant over the past 12 years—both in resource and in capital backlog. There is a backlog not in maintenance but in investment in the estate structure. That has been reviewed previously, and it is being reviewed again.

It is also true to say that many of the fire stations were built in a previous era, to provide fire cover for industries and housing that, in some cases, are no longer there. That is an opportunity to review the estate and to make savings through its rationalisation. In turn, that should allow additional investment in the remaining fire stations.

As you might have heard in evidence from the SFRS, it has developed a detailed community risk index model, which identifies the risks in individual communities across Scotland. That enables it to base on evidence its decisions on resources. We will continue to work through those issues with the SFRS, not least through the budgetary process that I mentioned previously.

I do not want to go back to the previous back-and-forward about budgets, but we need to acknowledge that we are in a different budget environment from last year.

Last year, in that different context, we awarded an additional £15 million for the reasons that you mentioned. We are aware that courts across the country do not all have the same level of confidence in community disposals. That additional £15 million, which was in addition to, I think, £119 million of continuing funding, was intended to effect change so that the courts would have confidence, wherever they were in Scotland, that a community disposal would be effective and properly monitored.

That gives our intention—our direction of travel—but you are right to say that we are now looking at a different budget environment and we have to consider it against other options. The Bail and Release from Custody (Scotland) Bill is a fundamental part of our approach. It will not work if we do not have proper community justice disposals.

That is our intention. We have budget pressures to consider as we go forward, and we hear what the sector said. We have had discussions with it. A new national plan for community justice, which seeks to do what we intend, has just come out as well.

The additional moneys that we provided in the current year were provided sensitively such that the local authorities that had been well served by their community justice infrastructure were not punished by money just going to authorities that had not, because that would be like punishing success. We managed to provide money to authorities that really need to invest more and to produce more money for other authorities.

That is the intention, but the matter will have to be decided as a priority in the budget process.

I will not go into the detail of the discussions that I have had with the DFM up to this week and in the period before the budget, but those points are being made.

I very much agree with Pauline McNeill. The way in which Police Scotland dealt with Covid, COP26 and operation unicorn is an extraordinary record of achievement. Not many other police forces could have achieved that. That has registered with other police forces around the world. Policing by consent and the model that we have compared with other models, such as those in some parts of the United States, have registered. There is a lot of interest in how Police Scotland conducted itself during those very pressured times.

Covid is the key example in relation to the point that you have raised, because the police moved into a space that is often to do with health. That the police were seen as the first point of contact is a symbol of the trust that people in Scotland have in the police. I think that you are right. That has meant that they now have an expanded role, which the chief constable has always wanted, in relation to wellbeing and safety for the environment rather than only law enforcement for the population.

Crucially, when there is a health-related issue, we have to get better at the hand-off to health authorities. I mentioned some of the further iterations of reform that might come about in call handling and more liaison between the blue-light services.

You are right that the police have absorbed an additional pressure. I am involved in discussions about how we can better manage that. The classic example involves a person who is in severe mental heath distress. The police will often have to attend. It is fair enough that they attend, but they should ensure that a professional is put in place as quickly as possible rather than a police officer being there for an extended period of time. I concede that that is a challenge that we have to meet, and it features in the discussions within the Cabinet. It will do in the run-up to the budget, as well.

That will depend on future capital allocations. There are issues with the age of the institution at Greenock, so in the meantime we have carried out works to ensure that it is in a proper habitable condition. The possibility of replacements will depend on future capital allocations, which, as I have said, are currently as constrained as I can ever remember them being.

That relates more to Addiewell prison than to Kilmarnock prison, because the Addiewell contract has an indexation feature. To be perfectly blunt, I would not have signed that contract. In a different context, the local authority in my area, which is small, is now buckling under the pressure of its private finance initiative contracts for schools. As you said, when inflation is at a 41-year high, the impact that that can have is very serious—it is potentially about £4 million per year in this case. We are involved in discussions, but room for manoeuvre is extremely limited.

To go back to my point about schools, my local authority has tried very hard during the past number of years to renegotiate some of those contracts, but that has proven to be extremely difficult. Get-outs from such contracts can be very expensive in their own right.

To be fair to the people who signed the contract, they did it with indexing in mind, and perhaps they would argue that they did not expect to have a long period of low inflation. They managed the process during that time, and they would expect the cost of inflation to be covered in the payments that are made to them, because their overheads will also be rising.

There is limited scope, but the SPS has been looking at it.