Seòmar agus comataidhean

Should any further LCMs be lodged in relation to the Crime and Policing Bill as it makes its way through the UK Parliament, the committee will return to those later for a decision on whether to recommend consent.

Are members content to delegate responsibility to me and the clerks to approve a short factual report to the Parliament on the LCMs?

Members indicated agreement.

Good morning, and welcome to the 25th meeting in 2025 of the Criminal Justice Committee. We have received no apologies and Fulton MacGregor joins us online. Our first item of business is an oral evidence session on three legislative consent memoranda, LCM-S6-57, LCM-S6-57a and LCM-S6-57b that have been lodged by the Scottish Government in relation to the United Kingdom Crime and Policing Bill.

I welcome Angela Constance, the Cabinet Secretary for Justice and Home Affairs, and, from the Scottish Government, Alison Morris, Kristy Adams and Kathryn Lewis from the organised crime unit and Graham Robertson from the public protection unit. Thank you very much for joining us.

I refer members to paper 1 and to the letter from the Home Office that was circulated to members on Monday via an email from the clerks. I intend to allow up to 40 minutes for the evidence session. I invite the cabinet secretary to make some opening remarks on the LCMs.

Thank you, cabinet secretary. Those were helpful opening remarks to set the scene. I will invite members to come in with any questions that they have, but I will start with a question on the proposals on future international agreements. The committee has done a small piece of work on the landscape with regard to international co-operation in law enforcement. I was interested to read clauses 127 and 128, which set out proposals on future international agreements as they relate to information sharing for law enforcement purposes. I am interested in hearing a wee bit more detail on those particular clauses as they relate to Scotland.

I will open up a short discussion to allow members, if they wish, to indicate their views on the LCMs, before I move to the question of consent and any recommendation that we might wish to make to the Parliament.

As no member wishes to comment, is the committee content to recommend to the Parliament that consent should be given for the relevant provisions covered by LCM-S6-57, LCM-S6-57a and LCM-S6-57b?

Members indicated agreement.

Thank you. I will start off, and I will stick with the minister. It was helpful to hear your update on the specific matter of healthcare in prisons. As you will imagine, we have taken quite a bit of evidence on the healthcare support that is available in prisons.

Of course there are challenges with that at the moment, not least by virtue of the size of the prison population. NHS and health and care partnership representatives have told us that prison healthcare can often be limited by operational constraints. In his evidence, Dr Craig Sayers from NHS Forth Valley noted that, although he is present from 8 am to 5 pm on weekdays, he can see prisoners only during relatively short windows, because of officer availability and the natural constraints that can emerge in the prison estate. However, he also told us that, in some prisons, there seems to be more flexible access, which he believes we should look to make more standard. That would allow NHS staff to see more patients and to provide better care.

Would you care to respond to that? What commitment can the Scottish Government give to engaging with the SPS and NHS Scotland on how a more effective model that builds on the important service that is there already could be embedded in prisons?

By way of a follow-up, it is very helpful to understand a bit about the target operating model, because I do not think that that has been raised in evidence so far. It is good to understand that that approach is being used in order to promote service delivery. I do not want to complicate things, but how does that tie in with the MAT standards and how they are being rolled out across the prison estate?

Thank you for that offer. That would be really helpful, just so that we can get our heads around how everything intersects.

I will bring in Liam Kerr.

Is there any idea of a timescale for that? A timely resolution would be good.

There is an issue around transfer between prisons, which does not just apply to the remand population. The committee has heard about the impact of what are often last-minute transfers of individuals. That can happen for all sorts of different reasons, but what came across, in particular, was the disruptive impact that a transfer can have on somebody who uses substances but who is stable, for instance. They might have become quite stable and settled, but then, for no reason that they are aware of, they are transferred. I know that that is an operational requirement at the moment. Do you have any comment on any options to reduce or address that in the context of what we are discussing today?

The point that you made about clinical IT systems and clinical information has certainly come up with regard to having timely access to clinical information when a transfer is taking place. Thank you for that point.