Seòmar agus comataidhean

In that case, I am happy to give way to other members. If possible, I would then like to come back with a summary of what I would like to say.

Thank you. I appreciate that other members want to ask questions, convener.

I am sure that you look forward to it. I commend to you watching the video of that evidence session. I went into the meeting with a very open mind, but, having sat through the evidence from Social Work Scotland, COSLA, Unison and members of health and social care partnerships, it was difficult to come away with any sense of positivity about the potential inclusion of community justice in the proposed national care service. A number of criticisms were made about consultation prior to the publication of the bill, which I do not think have been addressed, and a number of valid concerns were raised about the structure of what any such integration might look like, particularly around people, funding, structures, leadership and so on. I appreciate that you have not watched that evidence session, but, without having seen it, I am sure that you will understand what some of those criticisms might be. Will you respond to them?

That is not the Scottish Government.

I am all for ministerial accountability, but that does not address any of the practical questions that have been put to the committee to which we do not have answers. It seems that no one has answers to practical questions such as whether all the social workers who are currently employed by local authorities will be transferred, under the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations, to some form of other Government agency. All those things remain known unknowns.

Given that we have issues with retention and churn in the social work sector and massive problems with resource to deliver local services, it is unclear how any of what you describe will address the clear current shortfalls.

Before you come on to that point, I will respond to the financial issues regarding the bill. At the end of the day, in all this, money talks. You will be acutely aware of what I think was a highly critical, and unanimous, report from the Finance and Public Administration Committee on the weakness of the financial memorandum to the NCS bill.

Will the money follow from the current status quo of grant funding to local authorities and be redistributed to another agency or body, or will it continue to flow as is, with—as you said—only the lines of accountability changing?

And stress—there is a huge amount of stress.

The problem is that that could be anyone. Is that your point?

I do not disagree with that. The reality, though, is that, as we heard in the first answer, it is all very well saying that someone has a designated mentor, but if that is not backed up by core services—if there are no houses, no skills and training provision and no mental health services—the relationship is helpful, but it is not enough in itself.

It was about whether you think that there is a place for the use of alcohol tagging devices. We are already quite familiar with the concept of GPS monitoring as an electronic means of monitoring. Quite a large-scale trial of the approach I am talking about is being done south of the border, where, I think, nearly 7,000 devices have been rolled out, either as part of a community order or a condition of release or bail. In different scenarios, the device can be used in different ways. My understanding is that it seems to have a reasonably high compliance rate, at around 97 or 98 per cent. Do you think that that might be a helpful part of this conversation?

I will play devil’s advocate, just to probe and test the issues a little. I will start with Keith Gardner, because you are in the room.

If we are saying that legislation is required to reduce our remand population, is it not a valid observation that the remand population is so high because of the backlog of court cases and the number of people who are being held on remand for unlimited periods of time awaiting trial? There is an inevitability that, had those trials been dealt with far more quickly, some of those people would have been released or would have served enough of their sentence to be released. That is an observation. That number could come down quite quickly if we got through the backlog more quickly.

The second one is maybe more of a philosophical question. My understanding is that the Crown opposes bail only when it feels that there is good reason to, based on the information available, including information given by police and other protagonists. The judiciary will therefore remand someone only if they feel that there is good reason and they are satisfied that the argument has been made well by the Crown to do so. That is not something that we need legislation to fix, surely, because all legislation will do is tie the hands of the judiciary in the parameters that it uses to make those decisions. What do you say to that?