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In your opening comments, you said that this year you are looking at a real-terms budget cut of 10 per cent due to inflation. I want to probe you on those numbers and on how you came to that figure. My understanding is that the 2021-22 core block grant budget was £36.7 billion and that the 2022-23 block grant is £40.6 billion. That is roughly a 10 per cent increase, so although I understand that the effect of that might feel negated, I do not understand the 10 per cent cut. Could you explain the numbers?

Perhaps we can ask our colleagues in SPICe to verify my figures versus the ones that you used, cabinet secretary. I am just trying to get to an understanding of how you came to the assumption that your budget is 10 per cent lower in value this year than it was last year, which is the opposite of the figures that I have and is notwithstanding the £16 billion-plus in Covid consequentials that was given to the Scottish Government, which has been spent on various issues.

The issue of pay rises is important. The financial problems that you face over the next few years are largely due to an expectation that the Government will have to increase pay across the public sector. We heard from Police Scotland witnesses, specifically, on the effect of that in numerical terms. They forecasted that even a 5 per cent pay rise per annum over the next four years would cost £220 million, and that paying for that would equate to the loss of around 4,500 officers. In other words, every 1 per cent that is awarded to the force equates to the loss of around 1,000 police officers to fund it. Is that of concern to you, and how will the Government approach the issue of pay rises, given that it is largely outside your control?

Cabinet secretary, it is interesting that you said that these are operational matters for the police. Deputy Chief Constable Will Kerr told the SPA in a meeting a couple of weeks ago that he was “professionally embarrassed” by the slow roll-out of cameras, which he described as a

“very basic bit of kit”.

It sounds as though those cameras are not nice add-ons but are must-haves, so I ask the cabinet secretary to reflect on his comments on the matter.

Speaking of incompetence, we have learned through freedom of information requests over the past couple of years that nearly 2 million calls to the 101 service have either gone unanswered by operators or the caller has hung up. We had a frank and robust discussion about the state of the 101 service in this committee, and evidence was given to us. Is the cabinet secretary content and happy that that service is working well, to its full extent? Can he commit to it remaining in operation for the foreseeable future?

This has nothing to do with austerity and the UK Government; I am asking about your operational decisions—

I have questions about an area that we have not touched on a lot but that deserves some of our time, which is the effect of the budget on community justice.

There were a large number of submissions on community justice, although it did not feature as highly in our oral evidence sessions, given the prominence that the police, the fire service, the courts and the prison service generally have. The committee does not, perhaps, spend enough time on community justice and social work delivery at a local authority level, so I will ask some questions about that.

Unsurprisingly, we received warnings in the evidence, particularly from the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, Community Justice Scotland and Social Work Scotland, about the real-terms budget forecast for those organisations and the effect that it would have on their ability to deliver adequate, robust and fair community justice services. To be frank, those services would be put at risk.

What could be done to ensure that local authorities and people in the voluntary or paid justice sector are able to carry out their functions, given the tight forecast?

I will continue on the issue of prisons. The committee had two evidence sessions on prisons—one with the Scottish Prison Service and one with HMIP. We heard evidence that, if the current forecast for the budget comes to fruition, it might result in a situation in which prisons have to revert to Covid-like lockdown scenarios. That was described as a situation in which prisoners would be held in their cells for much or all of the day and in which there would be a cancellation of purposeful activity and third sector organisations coming into prisons. There would also be a reduction in rehabilitation, mental health and addiction treatment services. HMIP described that as a scenario in which people would leave prison more angry than when they went in. Clearly, that would be in no one’s interests, least of all in relation to public safety. How do you respond to those warnings?

The restrictions would be introduced as a by-product of financial restrictions. The inspectorate stated quite clearly that the SPS cannot

“manage against a flat cash budget without significant adverse impact”.

I know that it is difficult to pre-empt what your final budgets will look like, but do you expect to move money from other areas of the justice directorate budget towards the Scottish Prison Service to avoid that scenario, or will you ask the finance secretary for money from other Government departments to fund it? If you are making that commitment today—that is one of a number of commitments that you have made on what you do not want to happen—it is clear that more money is needed.

This group of amendments is rightly about the impact of the bill on certain groups and in certain places, as has been discussed by Brian Whittle and Pam Gosal, who make some valid and interesting wider points about people’s choice and understanding. That is really what a lot of this comes down to.

I note that Fulton MacGregor has lodged amendment 111 on the issue of prisons. We both sit on another committee with a shared interest in that area, and I hope that many colleagues can work together on this issue. The reality is that it remains a fact that there are trans people in our prisons and in the custodial estate. It is hard to say, at any given time, how many there are or where they are, or indeed why they are in custody, because such incidents are often reported simply in media outlets or on social media. In fact, as MSPs, we are often asked to comment on individual cases, and it is difficult to pass judgment on the decisions that are made by the Scottish Prison Service without the full details of the individual concerned or the facts of the case. Nevertheless, it is a reality that in the LGBT community, as in any other minority community, there are people who commit crime.

The difficulty that we face concerns how and where individuals should be held in custody. I think that people are rightly concerned about the potential impact of the presence of such individuals in places and buildings that have traditionally been same-sex or binary spaces for hundreds of years, through no one’s fault at all. The task of performing that juggling act is both the grave responsibility of prison governors themselves and a duty on the Scottish Prison Service, which either operates such institutions itself or contracts out their operation. In my view, that does not, however, mean that there should be no transparency in the practice or the policy—or indeed the guidance, if there is any—around that. With my justice hat on, I seek to gain some clarity around those concerns.

My amendment 136 simply aims to gather information about the impact of the act on Scotland’s prison population by requiring the Scottish Government to publish a report on how, if at all, it has impacted on decisions on the placement of transgender people in the prison estate.

As committee members will be aware, the SPS has made it clear that decisions on the housing of transgender prisoners are made on a case-by-case basis and take into account the potential risk with regard to where prisoners should be held. That is, I think, self-explanatory. I cannot imagine that these are easy decisions for governors, but the core of my amendment is to ensure the safety of all prisoners and that they are housed appropriately and, as the SPS has said, according to the needs and security not just of themselves but of those around them.

That is quite a mash-up.

I thank members and colleagues for their input on the issue.

I will first address Maggie Chapman’s comments. I am clear that the purpose of the amendment is not to inhibit or deter any trans people from making good use of the new, simplified process, which she will understand I support, although I appreciate that others do not. In no way is the intention of the amendment to inhibit or deter. It is clear that an aggravator would be used only when an offender was rightly in court for having committed other offences. The concept of an aggravator is commonly used in law in Scotland as a deterrent; that is the point, and I want to be clear about that.

The cabinet secretary referred to the seriousness of committing such an act. If someone fraudulently obtains a GRC with the intention of accessing spaces or people that they should not, and goes on to commit further crime—I am interested in a number of crimes that may fit into the amendment—such acts would be viewed very seriously by judges and courts, and offenders will, in effect, be given a harsher punishment. That is the point of an aggravator.