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It is just about that correlation. There is clearly a disagreement and there are different schools of thought. We are remanding too many people while not necessarily analysing the data on who has been remanded and for what reason. That important piece of work, which would help to inform a view on whether too many people are being remanded, is yet to be done.

Thank you.

Mr Fraser, you talked earlier about data to which you have access. You have probably heard committee members complain a lot about the lack of available data on the issue.

There seems to be a pyramid. At the top, we have very few people in summary cases being remanded, with people not being remanded unless the offence was grave or the sheriff sees an immediate need to do so. Lower down, we have the serious cases at High Court or solemn level, in relation to which there has been a marked increase in the number of people who are remanded.

Is that due to the nature of the offences that come through the courts, or is the issue simply that, as some people think, too many people are being remanded for the wrong reasons? There is a philosophical debate to be had about that. It seems to me that the volume of remands comes from the serious cases, where remanding someone might be the right thing to do, not just on public safety grounds but for a wide range of reasons.

The financial memorandum associated with the bill includes commentary that the Government believes that what is proposed will not result in any up-front or one-off costs for the Crown or the SCTS. However, earlier, you stated that some procedural or technical changes would need to be made within the system to accommodate and implement any changes as a result of the bill.

Do you agree with the Government’s assertion that the bill will come at no cost to your organisations? If you disagree, will you go away and do any associated analysis or work on what changes would be required and the potential costs of making those changes?

Thank you.

Yes, but you will know the cost, for example, of non-attendance and repeat diets coming back to the same place or of additional deputes. I am sure that those things have costs.

Good morning to our guests. We have spent a bit of time talking about input from social work and other stakeholders to inform bail decisions by sheriffs. None of that is unwelcome, but other parts of the bill deserve further scrutiny. In particular, I want to focus on the parts that deal with grounds for refusing bail and the removal of bail restrictions.

From the discussion that we have had, it sounds to me as though many of the issues in the system are practical ones around the provision of information and the knock-on effect that that has on resources for criminal justice social work or local authorities. I want to ask about the legislation. It is not obvious that you need primary legislation to fix what are clearly practical issues in the system; they could be fixed as it is. Why do we need a bill in order to reduce the remand population? The Government clearly thinks that there are too many people on remand—that is the whole point of the bill. Is the remand population too high, and does the bill deal appropriately with any perception that there is a high remand population?

That is quite a general first question. I will come on to a specific question afterwards.

I will come back to Joanne McMillan in a second; I want to move to the Law Society first. In your written submission, your response to that question is rather brief and non-committal. I get the impression that the Law Society does not really have a view on changes to the grounds for refusing bail; you just state the obvious in the sense that judges give careful consideration to such matters and that they judge each case on a case-by-case basis. We all know that already. You have not made any commentary on the proposed changes, so I wonder whether you could share a view, if you have one, now.

They could be fixed externally.

Those are problems that the bill does not address or fix. We know that the backlog and the amount of time that people are being held on remand awaiting trial is an issue. Another problem is the suspicion that defence lawyers might be saying, “Just plead guilty, because the sentence will be less than the amount of time you spend on remand.” People are still in the same environment, but they have fewer rights and options open to them, which is worrying.

Mr Mackie, could you go back to the original question? You will know, because you sit in a court, that courts deal with different cohorts of people in different ways, but the bill does not do that.

I am sorry to interject, but we are tight on time. From what I saw at Glasgow sheriff court on Monday, sheriffs consider such factors. They will consider, for example, whether the accused is a young person, a female or someone who has been declared as having mental health or addiction complications. Having a full-time job is clearly a factor in some cases, as is the mention of children or the fact that the person is somebody’s carer. Those are already factors, so why do we need to bake that into the legislation?