Seòmar agus comataidhean

Thank you very much. We will now go back to the agenda.

I thank Stephen Boyle for joining us once again, and we are pleased to welcome by videolink Antony Clark, who is interim director of performance audit and best value at Audit Scotland, and Nichola Williams, who is a senior auditor at Audit Scotland. Once again, Willie Coffey, who is of our own, is joining us by videolink.

I ask the Auditor General to give us a brief introductory statement. We would then like to ask questions about the community justice report.

The extent of the current pressure on the capacity of Scotland’s prisons is a matter of public policy concern. Based on your analysis, do you have any sense of the reduction or change in the balance of those figures that would address that concern? You have reported on the state of the Scottish Prison Service before. Do you have a view about the extent to which the balance needs to be tilted from custodial to community sentences to relieve the pressure in the prison service?

At the start, you mentioned the high incarceration rates in Scotland compared with those in other parts of western Europe. In your report, you say that around 5 per cent of the overall justice budget is spent on community-based sentences. What is the international picture, and what does the situation in Scotland look like in comparison with other countries that have much lower rates of imprisonment of people who have committed crimes?

Thank you. If, at any point, you want to bring in Graeme Logan or Gayle Gorman, please feel free to do so.

You mentioned the OECD—we will come on to ask some questions about its report shortly. You also spoke about the extent of data collection. One of the other rather pointed conclusions in Audit Scotland’s report is in paragraph 25, which bluntly says:

“The Scottish Government’s national aim is to improve outcomes for all, but it has not set out by how much or by when.”

As well as collecting more data, do you plan to address that charge in the report?

But the Government has targets on, for example, child poverty and fuel poverty. Therefore, has any consideration been given to setting targets on reducing the attainment gap and putting a timescale next to it?

Thank you. Colin Beattie has a series of questions.

Okay.

We might come back to funding and the extent to which it is additional. You mentioned the OECD report. Sharon Dowey has some questions about that.

I now turn to Willie Coffey, who, as I mentioned, is joining us remotely. Willie, the floor is yours.

We have a further series of questions covering the poverty gap and some of the funding aspects of that. Craig Hoy will begin on that.