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In essence, what we are doing is ditching the item from today’s agenda, because we are out of time, but that does not mean that it should go completely offline. The action plan is one of the few documents that we share quite widely with the public and stakeholders on the progress that we are making as a committee, so we should revisit it—probably in great detail—but we need to afford it proper time. I would rather do that than it simply become a paper trail of correspondence between members and the clerks. For the purpose of updating people, we should have an open public session on it so that people can follow what we are saying.

Before I bring Emma Bryson in, reading between the lines, I think that you are saying that it is not simply the case that too many people are being chucked into prison on remand; rather, it is the case that the profile of those who are being remanded has changed drastically—in part due to the presumption against short sentences and also due to the nature of the crimes and certain types of crimes increasing—that those people really should be on remand, and that those decisions are best made by judges under the current system. Of course, part 1 of the bill goes to great lengths to narrow the parameters within which judges can make those decisions, so I might ask you both about your concerns about that.

Equally, part 1, as far as I can see, does not do the second part of what you are asking for, which is that, if more people are let out, that must be countered by strengthening bail conditions, enforcing them and communicating with victims about them. The element of public safety is so wide in scope that it does not necessarily take into account some of the secondary types of crime and abusive behaviour that might result from someone being bailed.

I cannot see anything in the bill that addresses any of that or strengthens any victims’ rights. Have you spotted anything? For all intents and purposes, we have to amend the bill where possible, so what should be going into it? I will throw that question out there and bring Emma in, but feel free to come back in, Kate.

Perhaps there is a view that the judiciary are already quite well placed to make those sorts of decisions, based on the information that is available to them—the view that, “Why on earth are politicians tinkering with that independence?” Is that the case?

I will come back to you now, Kate, because I asked quite a lot of questions.

I am interested in what you have said and the way that you have said it. You said that, overall, crime has reduced but the prison population has gone up. However, I want to look at what has happened when policy decisions have led to legislative change, for example with the presumption against short sentences, which you mentioned in a previous answer. In the year when that presumption was passed, there were 68,000 violent crimes. I know that that is a wide category but, under the same definition, that figure rose to 69,000 last year. Over the same period, the prison population fell from 8,200 to 7,400. Despite a rise in certain types of what are perceived to be more serious crimes, our prison population has actually been reducing.

I know that we can divvy up statistics in a number of ways in order to get what we want out of them, but that leads me to the importance of proper statistical and data analysis. I think that that has been severely lacking, and it probably still is. There are some massive gaps. Such analysis might help to inform some of the decisions that we make in future. Does anyone have anything to add on that issue or have I covered it? I do not think that anyone wants to comment.

I turn to the other issue that I want to raise. I appreciate that you have made your views clear. You think that it is completely appropriate for legislation to be used as a mechanism to narrow the grounds on which bail can be refused, but it is interesting that you state that that cannot be done in isolation. Views have been expressed on bail conditions, and we have heard that services around bail could be improved. Equally, however, alongside that, access to public services must be provided for those who are released on bail.

Perhaps Hannah Graham could explore that. It is easy to focus only on the bail aspect, which, in fact, is all that the bill does. It does not meaningfully address any of the other perceived failings in the system, but some of you, perhaps including the victims organisations, might feel that that is necessary alongside the proposed intervention.

Thank you. I will leave it there.

That is fascinating. I appreciate that time is tight, convener, but there is so much to cover and I have not even started on part 2 of the bill. Thank you for your time. The problem is that section 1 only suggests that input from criminal justice social work will inform decisions on bail. We have not even delved into the implications on resource and time and what effect those will have.

There is nothing that I can see in section 1 that says that victims have to be consulted or that their voices or views will be heard. Are the witnesses aware of Kay’s law, which has been introduced in other jurisdictions? It flicks the emphasis on to consultation with the victims of the crime of which the person is accused as a primary factor in consideration of whether bail is granted and then the perpetrator’s circumstances and needs are taken into account. Is that a better balance?

I will keep my substantive questions until later, convener.

Good morning to the panel—I am checking; it is still morning. I am intrigued by something that you said, and I also want to pick your brains on another point.

It is widely expected that if bail is unopposed it will be granted, and that if bail is opposed and the prosecution seeks to maintain such opposition, the judge has a protocol and a process to follow. Is it your understanding or belief that opposition to bail is being overused? By that I mean the following. Clearly, bail is being opposed for good reason, based on the information that is available to the Crown and the prosecution. Why are we seeking to resolve the problem by limiting the judge’s discretion in the scenario where bail is opposed, rather than by educating the Crown on the parameters that it should use to oppose bail? There are two sides to the coin, but which is the better way to address the issue?

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

The question is, though, how do you resolve those issues? The question that faces us all is whether there should be a centralised approach of removing power, authority and, probably, funding from the current structure in which services are delivered locally by local authorities through ring-fenced grant budgets from the Scottish Government and giving it to some form of nationalised service. We need to consider the implications of that.

It is still very unclear where the money will flow from, where it will be diverted to and which cohort of people will deliver the service. You talk a lot about lived experience, but I get the impression that we are not listening to the lived experience of front-line social workers, who are telling us, and have given us evidence that, to quote one Aberdeen city health and social care partnership,

“it is leadership not structure that is the most important.”

COSLA is concerned that removing justice social work from local authority responsibility will impede multi-agency working with other local authorities. A local approach is the best one, because those services are best managed and delivered locally.

There is a concern that nationalisation will result in, effectively, a privatisation of the service, whereby work that is currently being done by people who are paid and employed by the public sector will be outsourced through a national procurement process to a third party—perhaps a commercial or private one. Is that a genuine risk?