Seòmar agus comataidhean

I would love to be in the position of directing what the chamber does, but that is a matter for it to decide. For my part, I am more than willing to discuss not only the point that the member has rightly made about whether the budgetary situation has been properly and satisfactorily dealt with—I would say that at this stage we have a high level of confidence that that is the case—but the wider issues that I tried to address in the topical question that was asked yesterday.

There have been two cases of what the police would call moving containment, the purpose of which is not to keep people in a fixed place for a period of time but to move them somewhere else. I have discussed the issue with the police on a number of occasions, and I have been advised that that action was taken because, had they left behind the people who wanted to lock themselves on to things or to sit down, the entire demonstration would have ground to a halt behind them, with consequences for public safety. For that reason, the people in question were asked to move to one side. I am also told that, during that period, liaison officers were talking to the people in the containment area.

My latest update, which I received this morning, is that there have been more than 400 events at which people have made their feelings known, and there have been only one or two at which there have been one or two issues. There were no incidents at all at last Friday’s very big rally involving young people, and, as far as I am aware, no one has been seriously hurt during the entire conference, which is something that I am not sure can be said of previous COPs.

What I think has been masked a little bit is the extremely positive relationship that has developed between the police and many of the protest groups. Nevertheless, these are legitimate areas for consideration. The independent advisory group headed by John Scott, which includes Friends of the Earth Scotland, Aamer Anwar and a number other people, met on 5 November to discuss, I think, a complaint from Friends of the Earth Scotland among others. Because the group is independent, I am not on it, but I am told that the discussion was very constructive. The group met again yesterday, but I am still to get a read-out from that.

By and large, the event has been extremely well policed. Police Scotland has taken a very proactive approach to engaging with groups that it knew were coming to COP, and it has tried to keep that going. The arrest of Nessie aside, the Rainbow Warrior was allowed to advance much closer to the event than it had been permitted to do at previous COPs. The police did not intervene when people took part in the lock-on on George V bridge, and, to their credit, the protesters allowed one lane to be kept open for emergency vehicles. There has been a lot of accommodation. I do not think that we could have asked for much more in that regard.

It is right that any actions of the police should be scrutinised. That has happened through the independent advisory group. Another route that can be taken is that of police complaints. So far, the policing of COP has been extremely successful, but such matters should be discussed, and I would be happy to make a statement to the chamber on the subject at a future point.

The Californian authorities were told to do that by the Supreme Court. We would want to avoid that. We want to try to remain in control of the situation rather than be told to do that. I cannot imagine the UK Supreme Court telling us to do that, but we do not want to be in that position. It is therefore important that we anticipate the situation as best we can. You are right that the backlog of cases and the nature of those cases—in particular, those involving sex crimes—will result in more people being in prison.

Despite some of the political banter that we have about the presumption against short sentences, people in the current prison population are serving longer in prison than was the case previously, partly because of the nature of their crimes. We have also had a big increase in historical sex offences, and we are accommodating a lot of people in relation to that.

We do not want to be forced by anybody to release prisoners; we want to try to manage the situation as best we can.

The first thing to say, as I mentioned in relation to another question, is that we are not through Covid. It is a very fluid situation right now. Some prisons are going back to a two-shift system, which has allowed them to increase the amount of purposeful activity that is taking place. It would be interesting to hear more from Neil Rennick on that.

Irrespective of whether we are talking about carrying out a review to the terms that Wendy Sinclair-Gieben, the chief inspector, has called for, or whether we are talking about the prison service looking at the situation holistically and at what it is able to do—part of the approach is driven by whether there is an outbreak of Covid and what the public health regulations are in a particular prison, given its facilities—the situation is very fluid. However, we are very much seizing on the need to increase purposeful activity to at least its previous level.

Notwithstanding that—I think that the chief inspector recognises this—some of what has happened around access to telephones and mobile phones has been of huge benefit, although there has quite rightly been a lot of discussion about the tampering of devices. There has been a massive number of calls to the Samaritans from within prisons. The ability of families to talk to prisoners, especially at a time when prisoners cannot have the same amount of purposeful activity, has been really important as well.

We are cognisant that people being denied purposeful activity is a situation that cannot persist. Neil Rennick will have more to say on that.

Once again, the difficulty is that this evidence session is about a process in which we have not fixed the budget.

In general terms, as I have said before, when we allocate the budget, we have to prioritise, and the extent to which we are willing to listen to what the police say their needs are is evidenced by the fact that we have increased their capital budget, as has been mentioned, and met the specific request for £10 million for investment in greening the fleet. Additional moneys have been given for body-worn cameras and various other initiatives.

We are very receptive to what the police say, but the simple fact is that, when the overall grant funding from the Treasury is falling, we have to make difficult decisions. In relation to that, it will be really useful for me to see what the committee believes the priorities should be. If we increase the police budget, will the committee or the member say that we should reduce the fire service budget or the education budget? These are the difficult decisions that we have to make.

I think that the police understand that point. We expect them to put forward the things that they want to see, and, of course, they will want to do that. However, when we finally agree the budget, it will be based on, first, the amount of money that we have to spend and then on the fact that we expect that the police and the SPA will work out their priorities within that budget, because that is their statutory responsibility. As I said however, we are ahead of the budget just now.

I have very little involvement in that. The police have the autonomy that they asked for and that the Parliament granted them. Collectively, as a Parliament, we have agreed that the police should have independence from direct ministerial involvement in such matters. The police should not be subject to ministerial direction in relation to their operational actions. Such decisions are for the chief constable, although, of course, there is oversight through the Scottish Police Authority.

As far as the particular contract to which you referred is concerned, there is quite a role for the Foreign Office, which is involved in the process and under the aegis of which the relevant scheme is delivered.

Obviously, I have discussed the matter with the chief constable. For my part, I am totally behind the view that Police Scotland is a human rights-based organisation. It is probably a human rights-based organisation to a much greater extent—as, I am sure, it would concede—than it has been previously. It is very mindful of that fact.

Whatever people’s view on the activity in question—some people think that it represents an attempt to make sure that proper policing methods are used and that policing is done properly, with accountability, and that that is a good thing to spread around—it is Police Scotland that has taken the decision. The work has not been carried on for two reasons, the first of which is to do with Covid; the second is the suspension of the relevant UK programme. The activity has not been going on for some time. In fact—I stand to be corrected on this—it has not been going on for the entire time that I have been doing this job.

The accountability for the contract to which Katy Clark referred rests with Police Scotland and the Scottish Police Authority.

We have committed to investing more than half a billion pounds—£545.7 million—in improving the prison estate. The committee will know, from looking at our capital programme, exactly which prisons we are talking about replacing or upgrading. In the latter part of your question, you might have been referring to prisons such as Greenock and Dumfries that we have not been able to commit to replacing as we do not have the resources to do so. In those circumstances, however, we have been carrying out improvements across the piece. Indeed, even in prisons such as Barlinnie, which we are going to replace, we are making substantial improvements to the current facilities.

The fact is that much of the prison estate is pretty Victorian. In fact, I would compare the situation that it is in with that of the school estate back in 2007. Schools were in an appalling state, but things have been pretty much transformed since then. Moreover, we need only think of what has happened to our road network, with the Queensferry crossing, the Aberdeen western peripheral route or the dualling of the A9, which is progressing. There have been major changes to the infrastructure in Scotland, but, because of finance, we just cannot do everything all at once.

On whether funding can be brought forward, I remember that, five or six years ago, it was not unusual to have additional mid-year capital funding allocations, and we in the Government were often asked to quickly compile a list of shovel-ready projects—I was going to say “oven ready”, but that term has been kind of abused—that could be advanced quite quickly. We know what we would like to do with Dumfries, and we have an idea about what to do with Greenock. Greenock is an interesting case, given the other investments that could be made with regard to, for example, the police and the college there.

We are ready to go, but we can go only on the basis of the capital funding that we expect to receive. That is what the current capital programme is based on.

You make a very good point. On Monday, I was in Perth prison—to my surprise, I was released the same day. If you have been to that prison, you will know that it is a collection of buildings of different ages, and the size of a cell in one part can be different from the size of a cell in some of the older parts. That and other modern expectations of prisons need to be factored in to what we do.

For example, in other prisons, women’s cells have showers built in, but that is not the case for the other 96 per cent of the prison population, who are men. We therefore need to factor in those new expectations with regard to cell size and, indeed, security. Mr Findlay has repeatedly raised the serious issue of drugs in prisons, and the question is whether we can bake into the design of a prison something to address that. There is also the issue of district heating and other ways of making prisons as environmentally friendly as possible.

We are trying to do that sort of thing, with, for example, the issue of cell size being closely considered in relation to Barlinnie. Of course, such things are done at a certain point in time. It might well be that, in 10 or 15 years, we will have different expectations, but we need to ensure that we are up to the minute as far as possible with regard to people’s expectations and sensible thinking on such matters.

As Neil Rennick said and I have tried to say, the Crown Office will discuss that separately with the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and the Economy. It is a separate budget. The Lord Advocate has been before the committee in the past. She will discuss her budget.

I cannot speak for the Crown Office but, generally, we would like far greater apportionment of capital spending, even if it comes down to using the Scottish Government’s borrowing powers—there is a real case to be made for increased borrowing powers. There is much that we could do. We can spend to save. If we spend wisely on capital, we can make future reductions in our resource budget.

It is not unfair to say that we would all like more capital spending. The Crown Office would have to speak for itself in relation to that.

Mr Findlay’s question in the chamber yesterday provided me with an opportunity to say that the policing of COP26 has been superb. I know that we have to look at some particular actions but, overall, it has been superb. I say that because other justice and UK partners have been extremely impressed by the way in which Police Scotland went about the preparation, which was detailed and carried out over a long period. I thank the police for that.

We have made clear our expectation that the UK Government will bear all costs, including legacy costs, related to holding COP26 in Glasgow. That is the commitment that we were given originally. It was done through a memorandum of understanding that was agreed between the Governments and that records the participants’ agreements on financial and contractual liability for COP26. It includes funding for police, fire and ambulance services.

I am generally quite satisfied with the assurance framework that is in place, which is the means by which we negotiate about planned expenditure for COP26. We will hear from Donald McGillivray on that, but it has worked well.

One area where we did not reach full agreement was legal aid. That related to the weekend and out-of-hours work that has to be covered and, in that respect, the additional fees to be paid to solicitors acting on behalf of anyone who might be arrested. We have, I would say, reached a compromise position, given that we did not get everything that we wanted from the process.

All of the funding is for identified spending that is associated with hosting a safe and secure COP, and no funding will come from the arrangements beyond COP expenditure. For the committee’s information, Police Scotland secured around £60 million of funding up to the end of October to cover the known direct costs of policing COP26 as well as accommodation for the sizeable number of mutual aid officers coming from elsewhere in the United Kingdom. Because that is covered directly by the UK Government, none of that funding will come through us to be reclaimed.

The overall costs of policing the event will be known only post conference, when all relevant costs will be known and finalised. The assurance processes that I have witnessed seem fairly satisfactory to me but, as Donald McGillivray has been more intimately involved than me in this matter, it might be worth hearing from him.

Yes, and I think that that has been borne in mind even in prisons that are not scheduled for replacement but where new capital works are going on. Beyond that, in-cell telephony is being looked at for those prisons as well. As you have indicated, the hard-wired options are easier to manage and they make it easier to avoid some of the problems that we have had with the mobiles that were issued. That is being taken into account.