Seòmar agus comataidhean

I have a few different items to discuss, but I do not want to impinge on other members’ opportunities to speak. Perhaps I can kick off the conversation on some of them, at least. The first one is the cabinet secretary’s response in relation to the budget for the Scottish Police Authority and police budgets. I want to probe a little bit into that.

There is quite an important clarification from the cabinet secretary about the part of our report on police budgets. When we took pre-budget scrutiny evidence, it was made quite clear to us that there would be a direct knock-on effect on police numbers in proportion to a flat cash settlement or a real-terms cut in the budget, depending on how you phrase it. It is an area I probed into quite vociferously. In the cabinet secretary’s response, he writes that, in the committee’s report,

“you stated that I said that I have no intention of cutting police officer/staff numbers.”

We put that in the report in the context of the evidence that we took that there would be a reduction in front-line officers or back-office staff. The cabinet secretary has replied that he thinks that that is an “inaccurate reflection” of what he said.

I need to look at our report to check what we wrote, but that was certainly the essence of what he said in committee. We might have misquoted him, or he might think that we did, but that was very much what I thought he said. I believe that other members thought that as well, which is why we put it in our report. The cabinet secretary has come back and said that, actually, what he said was that he had

“no intention of overseeing a budget for the police force that results in 4,000 officers leaving.”—[Official Report, Criminal Justice Committee, 23 November 2022; c 12.]

That is welcome, as that is not a position that any cabinet secretary would want to be in, but that seems to fall quite short of a commitment that there will not be a reduction in police officer numbers. It is unclear whether that leads us to surmise that there is a potential reduction in officer or staff numbers and whether, if that were to be the case, the cabinet secretary would be content with that, given that he has watered down his position.

I appreciate that the next part of the cabinet secretary’s response says that an additional £80 million of resource has been allocated to policing. I presume—and this can be clarified—that that is resource budget and not capital budget. It is unclear whether that is intended to meet any percentage pay rises that are asked for or settled on, given that we do not know the final outcome of negotiations on that.

My fear is that, even with the £80 million, we do not have evidence of what it will translate to. If the £80 million just gets swallowed up in an inflationary pay rise, we will be left with a static number of police officers. If that amount is not enough to cover any pay rise, there will still be a reduction in the number of police officers; we could still lose front-line police officers. That situation needs to be looked at percentage by percentage, by which I mean what would pay rises of 4 per cent, 5 per cent, 6 per cent and 10 per cent look like?

It is a matter of concern, and it is not clarified by just chucking a number into the response and diverting away from it by saying that those are operational matters for the chief constable. Although they are, we should be evidence led when we scrutinise budgets, and I do not see how we can marry up that statement. There might not be 4,000 officers leaving, but a substantial number of officers still might leave. I do not know what effect the money will have, where it will go in the service or how it will be spent. It is a bit late, now, of course, but the letter has provided more questions than answers.

I have other comments on other parts of the response—specifically around the Scottish Prison Service and legal aid—but I will stop there in case other members want to talk about the police budget.

I want to pick up on some of my other points, some of which have been touched on by other members.

I hope that Fulton MacGregor is wearing a seat belt—otherwise, he will end up with a blue plaque on the tree next to his car.

I am glad that Fulton MacGregor is positive about the cabinet secretary’s reply, but there is nothing positive about uncertainty about police numbers. They are not around the edges of the budget; they are absolutely core to delivering good public safety.

I echo the comments about body-worn cameras. That is about the minutiae of operational matters, but that is a big detail. It is inconceivable that officers should have to wait years for fairly simple equipment that is standard in other forces. That is not going to go down well at all with officers on the front line.

On the fire budget, my colleague Russell Findlay pointed out the massive capital backlog. The response says:

“We have maintained the £32.5m capital budget”.

I assume that “maintained” means that the budget is still what it was. In other words, there has been no increase at all, which means a real-terms cut in the capital budget for the fire service.

I do not know how on earth that will go any way towards solving some of the problems that Katy Clark identified, which we have already debated in the Parliament. Those are quite serious and urgent matters. I know that we cannot magic up new fire stations overnight and that they take time to properly procure and build. That needs to be a longer-term project. However, I am pretty sure that many existing fire stations could do with an injection of cash to make them at least semi-fit for purpose. It is absolutely deplorable that we send our firefighters into the situations that we send them into and expect them to work in those conditions. I am willing to be corrected—the cabinet secretary is happy to correct me on other matters—but if it is a flat cash settlement for the fire service, it will come as a disappointment to it.

On prisons, notwithstanding the convener’s comments, I question the

“£97m in capital funding to continue the modernisation of the prison estate.”

The response goes on to say:

“This will include … the completion of the new female national prison at HMP Stirling.”

I am afraid that I do not think that that is new money. Again, I am willing to be corrected if that is the case, but surely that will just be the next tranche of the procurement and building costs of the prison, and it would already have been known to us prior to the revised budget. I do not think that it is new magic cash. It is probably going some way towards resolving payments to those who are building HMP Stirling, as the response seems to imply.

There are major issues around HMP Greenock. I know that we have asked about it many times and that we have been given the honest answer that there simply is not enough money in the pot to do anything there, but it will close if things go on as they are. If it does not receive cash in any shape or form, it will inevitably close. That is not scaremongering, as was reported in local media; it is a real possibility.

We have not discussed legal aid. I was quite intrigued by the cabinet secretary’s response. I am not sure that it was meant to be read in this light, but he said:

“In addition, following positive engagement with the legal profession, we will bring forward regulations in the New Year to further increase and reform Legal Aid fees.”

Nobody in the legal aid profession whom I spoke to thought that the engagement was positive or was happy with the outcome of that engagement. In fact, the Scottish Solicitors Bar Association is on the record as saying that it is better than nothing, but it does not really go far enough. That has been echoed by many others in the sector.

There is a little bit of head-in-the-sand syndrome in the cabinet secretary’s response. It is unclear what the additional budget will look like in fees versus what the solicitors think is required to continue to provide services. We are now starting to see the very real effects of the financial problems in the legal aid sector. Members are probably aware that people in Orkney, for example, have little to no access to practitioners and that that is repeated throughout the country. Again, we have been raising that issue for many years, and I do not take much that is positive away from the cabinet secretary’s statement.

The last point, which is an important one, is on victims. There is a welcome announcement on multiyear funding for some of the third sector organisations. A committee on which I sat in the previous session of the Parliament did a huge piece of work on that. That certainty of funding is welcome.

On the bairns’ hoose model, my understanding—I am happy for the clerk to correct me if I am wrong—is that a report was due to the Parliament to outline the plans for future bairns’ hooses. I think that the Government was doing a piece of work to identify how many would be needed and how much budget would be required to roll that out. That piece of work is overdue, but I could be corrected on that. That report would be helpful. I do not think that the roll-out will happen in the next financial year anyway, even if the report had been released, but it would give us an idea of what is happening down the line with that. I appreciate that getting the first bairns’ hoose off the ground is the priority, and I support that.

I understand what the cabinet secretary has said. I know what we said and what he said, and I know what he is now saying. I do not think that he has changed his position, and I am not accusing him of doing so.

I am less interested in that and more interested in the context and the content of what he says. It is welcome that the cabinet secretary will not preside over a budget that will result in 4,000 officers leaving. Nobody wants to lose 4,000 officers. The inference from our exchange was that there would not be a cut of that nature. Whether the cabinet secretary or the chief constable makes that decision is irrelevant. He goes on to say that he has found some cash in the pot, which, again, is welcome. No one has a problem with that. The cabinet secretary might not be content with presiding over a budget that results in 4,000 officers lost, but I do not know whether he would be content with losing 3,000, 2,000 or 1,000 officers. We do not know that, so there are unanswered questions.

If it is correct that those are operational matters for the police and not the cabinet secretary, we should be asking Police Scotland what the £80 million will be spent on, and whether, in that context, it is still considering a reduction in officer numbers. I say that because officer numbers are at their lowest levels since 2008, so any suggestion that they will drop any further should be a matter of concern for the committee.

Can I clarify something, convener?

This is not the first time that we have been put in the position of being asked to review legislation days before it comes into force. Especially ahead of a recess, there is no opportunity to discuss the matter until after the SSI has come into force.

It would be a different matter if there were clear policy differences or matters of opinion in the SSI that would be suitable to oppose, but there is little to oppose. There is nothing in the SSI that I disagree with, and it seems to make some sensible changes, but there are things that could have been done differently or better, and things that should have been added to the SSI. That is where the matter is unclear. If our only option is to lodge a motion to annul, we would lose the 70 per cent of the SSI that is comprised of good bits if we have a problem with the other 30 per cent. That is the unfortunate position that we are in.

In this scenario, there is no point in stopping the SSI going ahead, but I wonder how we can raise those issues. They could perhaps be dealt with in a further SSI, which I am sure that the Government could find an appropriate way to get to us in good time. We should stress to the cabinet secretary that we should have had a paper on the SSI weeks ago.

Yes. It is all about officer numbers. What we want to know—or what we should want to know—is whether we are still looking down the barrel of a reduction in officer numbers, or will there be a flat settlement to maintain officer numbers? Indeed, is there sufficient budget to increase officer numbers? It would be welcome news if that were the case. However, we do not know.

My first point is maybe a wider point. This is quite a big SSI and we are looking at it in the context of the negative procedure, which, as members know, gives us limited options. For example, it is impossible for us to amend it; such matters are outside of our control because of the primary legislation that the rules are connected to. Had the instrument been subject to the affirmative procedure, we could have heard from the cabinet secretary and his advisers on it, taken evidence on it and done other things with it rather than being left with the only option of annulling it, which is unhelpful, because there is some good stuff in it.

However, there are things in the rules that are not so good, and that is what I wanted to point out. The point that my colleague Russell Findlay made about matters that the board may consider around release was absolutely correct. The issue is specifically about someone who has been convicted of murder or homicide and whether they have failed to reveal the location of a victim’s body. This is a real missed opportunity. The issue will feature in my member’s bill, which is yet to be drafted, unfortunately, and it featured heavily in my consultation. The overwhelming response to that was that there should be an overt rule on the matter with regard to the test for release. The policy objectives just say that the rule

“does not change the underlying test for release”

but revealing a location might be a factor that is taken into account. I presume that it already was a factor, so the rules do not seem to make any change there.

Had I been given the opportunity to amend the rules, I would have made them stronger. The Government has missed an opportunity to introduce Suzanne’s law through a simple procedural mechanism that would go a long way towards serving justice to the families of those victims.

The second point is about the final paragraph on page 5 of the policy note, which talks about changes to the rights and roles of victims in all of this. The provision simply allows for victims to observe parole hearings. Again, that is a missed opportunity. It still does not give victims the opportunity to make meaningful representation during those hearings, which is a long-standing issue. The rules could easily have been altered to allow victims to speak or have a voice during parole hearings, and I have felt strongly about that for some time.

Furthermore, that paragraph talks about those who are registered with part 1 of the VNS who do not want to be involved with the Parole Board process. I question the evidence on that. How many chose not to be involved in that process? How many victims or their families were subject to poor communication from the VNS and were notified so late or out of the blue that they were unable to participate in the process, or unwilling to because of retraumatisation? We know that uptake of the VNS is poor because of its opt-in nature. Again, there is a missed opportunity to look at opt-out versions of the scheme.

We also know that a number of people who asked to participate in—when I say “participate” I mean “observe”—parole hearings were rejected. I would have liked to have seen some numerical evidence about that. How many people asked to attend a parole hearing and were rejected? I have only anecdotal evidence but the figure is certainly in the dozens, and I have tried to get some more information about that in the past few months. A number of people were denied access to those hearings, especially when the process went online.

Should the Parole Board rules be explicit and make it clear to victims way in advance and up front that they have the absolute right to observe hearings unless there is good reason for them not to or a reasonable objection is raised? It should not be a matter of discretion for the person who is in charge of that Parole Board hearing. I have more questions about that.

I am disappointed that we are being asked to shoo through a negative instrument when it concerns important matters that could have empowered victims of crime and is failing to do so.

Yes—at summary level. However, that is not my interpretation of what I heard. Perhaps you can write to us. I am sure that we will talk about the issue again.

I am happy to put this to Mr Lamont and the cabinet secretary. We heard evidence last week from David Fraser from the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service. He said:

“I have managed to determine the number of people who are on remand and awaiting trial in our legal system … In summary cases, only 1 per cent of people are on remand. For sheriff and jury cases, it is 12 per cent, and for High Court cases it is 27 per cent.”—[Official Report, Criminal Justice Committee, 25 January 2023; c 33.]

That contradicts what I have just heard from Mr Lamont, who said that, by the very nature of those types of offences, those people will likely be held on remand anyway, even under the new rules. Surely that contradicts the purpose of the legislation, because you are trying to reduce the number of people held on remand who you consider do not need to be, but, at the same time, we are saying that people who commit serious offences and who should rightly be held on remand will still be held on remand. The two do not add up. Either those people will still be held on remand or we will be letting them out with bail conditions.

I am a bit confused about the purpose of the legislation. It is clear from the statistics that the lion’s share of people held on remand are there through High Court cases, which are normally quite serious cases that result in a custodial sentence.

In summary cases, it is only 1 per cent. Very few people in summary cases are held on remand, which is where you would think that the bulk of it would be. If that were the case, there absolutely would be a problem, but there does not seem to be a problem.