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There is perhaps a perception that anonymous middle-class professionals such as you and I decide the fate of dangerous individuals and whether they are returned to the type of communities that we tend not to live in. If sentencing is, quite rightly, transparent, why is there no transparency on the time that is served? Has the Parole Board had any discussion with the Scottish Government about moving in that direction?

On that issue, it is worth pointing out that vulnerable prisoners are often targeted by the 600 prisoners who are marked as being members of organised crime groups.

Coming back to the security issues that you referred to in response to my colleague Jamie Greene, I spoke to Peter Smith about some of the stuff that was not broadcast. He told me that prisoners are now smuggling in seals that allow them to tamper with and reseal phones so that the staff who inspect them have no way of knowing what has happened. Is there any way in which you can get to the bottom of that? Can you quantify how many phones have been compromised?

I have a question for Teresa Medhurst. This week, ITV News has had a series of reports from Barlinnie prison. I will ask more about that later, but the Howard League Scotland’s submission to the committee says that the throughcare support officer initiative has not been reinstated and describes that as

“an abdication of responsibility on the part of the Scottish Government”.

One Barlinnie officer talked proudly and passionately about the work that he does to liaise with prisoners once they have left prison and how beneficial that can be. Why is there such a gap between the rhetoric from the Scottish Government and the reality? Do you know whether the scheme will be reinstated?

This is another question for Teresa Medhurst.

We all understand the reasons for introducing mobile phones and the incredible logistical challenge of doing so at pace. However, in the ITV news report, one prison officer said that those supposedly tamper-proof devices were hacked “within hours” of their arrival at Barlinnie.

Did you or any of your staff raise the issue with the Scottish Government? If so, what consideration was given to disclosing these serious problems to Parliament and/or the public?

As things stand, the public have no means of knowing when individuals are granted parole. Is there any move involving the Parole Board and the Scottish Government to change that and to bring in increased transparency?

My question is for Bruce Adamson, who has already touched on the issue of young people being remanded in prison and the initial cycle of violence defining them and setting off the whole chain of continual offending. When we visited the Lord President of the Court of Session a couple of weeks ago, he told us that we would look back and regard how we have treated young people as “barbaric”—that was the word he used.

I note that this morning brings news reports that the Scottish Sentencing Council is calling for the courts to make rehabilitation rather than punishment the primary consideration. The judiciary seems to be on the same page on the matter. Have we turned a corner, or is this just more of the same from a Scottish Government quango?

I declare an interest, in that I have recently submitted objections to a prisoner being released—the prisoner is in custody for attacking me. My question is for John Watt. In the first line of your submission, you describe the Parole Board as “Scotland’s parole court”. How can the public attend these courts?

I will quickly move on to Mr Lenehan, if he is there—I cannot quite make that out on the screen. In your submission, you talk about their being a suspicion that some witnesses and accused people are avoiding turning up to court, through the use of fake text messages—which, presumably, purport to be from medical or official sources. Will you expand on that, and tell us what, if anything, can be done about it?

That is very interesting. I am conscious of the time—I would like to ask questions of everybody, but I cannot do that. My final question is to Mr Dalling of the Law Society of Scotland. The thorny issue of legal services regulation has been with us for many years, and Covid appears to have put on ice Esther Roberton’s recommendations that a new single body should be established with the clear remit of dealing with such regulation. Most of you will not have read her review, but page 8 is worth a look, on which there is a diagram of the current regulatory framework, which serves no purpose for members of the public. From the Law Society’s perspective, given all the other massive challenges, will Covid get in the way of that long-overdue reform to the regulatory system?

Is there not a risk that, if you put a reliance on emergency calls being answered, as is right, people might give up on 101—that that becomes a bit of a pointless option—and turn to 999 calls?