Seòmar agus comataidhean

My guess is that it probably will be after recess. I also thank Graeme Logan and Gayle Gorman for joining us online. I am sure that we will see you again at some point in the future.

Thank you very much. Without further ado, I invite Willie Coffey, who is joining us via videolink, to ask the first question.

It strikes me that the figures in the briefing are quite stark. In your introduction you mentioned that, for those who are imprisoned for a year or less, 49 per cent will be reconvicted within a year, whereas for those who are put on a community sentence, the reconviction rate is down to less than a third—30 per cent. We know that the balance between custodial sentences and community sentences has plateaued—that expression has been used already. A couple of years ago, the balance between community and custodial sentences was 59 per cent in favour of community sentences, which dropped to 55 per cent and then went back up to 59 per cent. Does the Scottish Government have a target that it wishes to reach in the balance between custodial sentences and community sentences?

I will now bring in Colin Beattie, who has a number of questions.

Thank you. If you come across any useful comparators where there is robust data, we would be interested to see that. I think that that might be a matter of public interest as well as being of interest to the Public Audit Committee.

Thank you very much indeed for your evidence this morning and for the report, which contains a clear analysis of where things are and what might need to change.

I thank Antony Clark and Nichola Williams, for joining us remotely, and the Auditor General, Stephen Boyle, for being here with us at the committee.

I close the public part of today’s proceedings.

Our second agenda item is to look at the “Improving outcomes for young people through school education” report, which was produced earlier this year. This is an opportunity for us to speak to the accountable officer in the Scottish Government, Joe Griffin, whom I welcome this morning. I think that this is your first appearance before the committee.

I reconvene the meeting.

We have an important item on our agenda about the Audit Scotland report entitled “Community justice: Sustainable alternatives to custody”. However, before we get to that, I want to refer to the briefing on the vaccination programme that has been published today, I think. It struck me that that is an important piece of work and pretty much a good-news story that reflects on the success of the vaccination programme. Exhibit 2 is a particularly striking demonstration of the extent to which the vaccination programme has reduced hospitalisations, case numbers and people dying from Covid-19.

It is also clear from the briefing that there are still some obstacles that are built on inequalities, and that the level of vaccine hesitancy in some groups—by age and ethnicity, for example—is greater than it is in others. I think that there will need to be further work that looks into the underlying reasons for that. I do not know whether Audit Scotland or others will carry out that work, but that is clearly a challenge that we as a society face. I am sure that we as a committee will consider the briefing in detail in the fullness of time.

Do you want to make any comments on the briefing, Auditor General?

Finally, if the reconviction rate is demonstrably so much better for community sentences as opposed to custodial sentences, the cost is considerably different and it is clear that the impact on the prison population and the overcrowding of prisons must be a consideration, why has so little progress been made?

Thank you. We may want to probe a little bit more into that.