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Your comments are on the record, and we can ask those questions of the Government when it appears before us.

Let us imagine that it was, though. You have to scenario plan because, presumably, there would be a knock-on effect on you, your resource and your ability to deal with any increase. If there were an increase, would that require additional resource or funding? I know that the police already have a heavy workload as it is, given that you deal with a wide range of emergency situations that, perhaps, other agencies ought to be dealing with. We have taken evidence to that effect, and it is already a matter of public record. Would it put increased pressure on the police to deal with that 17 to 19 per cent rate of reoffending by individuals on bail if the numbers increased? What would you say to alleviate the concerns of your front-line officers, who may have expressed concern through the federation rather than directly to the committee about potential increases in workload due to changes in bail conditions or the rules around granting bail?

That is interesting. I am keen to let others come in if they want, convener. I have only one question to ask at the end, if we have time, about serious organised crime.

Okay—no problem.

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.

Thank you very much for that.

Joanne, I get the impression from what has been said that it is not necessarily that the wrong people are being held on remand for the wrong reasons; it is simply that there are too many people on remand because the trials are taking too long to come to fruition, which has the knock-on effect of more people being on remand. Dealing with the backlog and getting those—[Inaudible]—to pass more quickly would, by default, bring down those numbers quite quickly. We should maybe consider that. Have you any views on what has already been said?

One of the problems with legislating to change the parameters of the grounds on which bail can be permitted or refused is that it is quite an all-encompassing approach. I do not know that it necessarily accounts for the nuances of courts. It applies to summary and solemn cases. It does not differentiate between domestic and non-domestic cases, nor does it take into account the nuances of specialist courts that deal with sexual abuse or drugs, or youth or female courts, for example. It is a one-size-fits-all approach to the changes.

My worry about that is whether it is the right approach. I wonder whether you might comment on that. Should a more nuanced approach be taken to legislating when we make changes to refusing grounds for bail, as the bill proposes to do? That is quite an open question, after which I might zoom in on some specific scenarios.

Thank you for allowing me to ask those questions, convener. I appreciate that, as I am conscious of time.

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.