Seòmar agus comataidhean

I would like to ask Mr Blunden or Mr Haggart a question. You are dealing with a huge volume of fires—it is almost a return to normal—but, in recent weeks, there has also been some high-profile wilful fire raising that we believe is linked to organised crime. Can you quantify that in any way? Have you had any specific discussions on that issue, either internally or with the police and other agencies?

Thank you. My next questions, which are for Police Scotland, are on unanswered 101 calls. I do not whether I should address them to ACC MacDonald or Chief Superintendent Blair.

We know from what was said at a Scottish Police Authority meeting that, in June, 71,000 calls—or around 40 per cent of all 101 calls that month—were abandoned. Given yesterday’s historic admissions with regard to the M9 tragedy, it seems that the problem of unanswered calls or calls not being acted on has not been addressed. In fact, the situation might even have worsened during the Covid pandemic. Is that the case? Why have we still not got a grip of the problem? What needs to happen to fix it and give the public confidence that calls will be answered?

My question is not necessarily on that area. It is on a more general point, so perhaps Pauline McNeill should come in before me.

But individual victims do not know. Given that we are talking about extraordinary powers under the coronavirus legislation, is it not important that those powers are no longer in the hands of politicians and are given back to the courts, so that, when people see a sentence being given, they can have confidence that that is what will happen?

I know that we are slightly short for time, but in relation to drugs in prisons, I heard a candid account last week from a prison officer at Saughton prison. He said that most of the drugs come into the prison smuggled in paper letters or items of clothing that are then dissolved into a solution and turned into dangerous psychoactive substances. During the Covid lockdown, letters were being stopped and photocopied to prevent the spread of Covid and the prison had a dramatic reduction in the number of cases of prisoners under the influence of drugs. As soon as those restrictions ended and the letters continued on their merry way into the prison, there was a huge and immediate increase in drug use. On one day, seven ambulances were called to Saughton prison.

Keith Brown talked about radical ideas. This might sound simplistic, but if that is the case in prisons, could it not be looked at as a matter of urgency to reinstate as a matter of routine letters—other than legally privileged letters—being photocopied, rather than handing over the originals?

I am not entirely sure if I need to declare an interest, but I will do so to err on the side caution: I am married to a serving police officer.

There are so many questions but not nearly enough time, so I will try to focus my questions. The first issue is the effects of Covid on the courts and justice system. Some very creative work is being done to ease the backlog, which we saw first hand last week. What has perhaps been overlooked is the decision to write off large numbers of hours of community service that had been imposed by the courts. Last week, 262,000 hours was discovered to have been in effect written off. To put that in context, if my calculations are correct, that is more hours than 129 MSPs working full-time for a year would work. It should be noted that those are often serious violent offenders and that such sentences are being used increasingly due to the presumption against shorter sentences of 12 months or less. Is there not a risk that politicians taking such big decisions on sentencing risks undermining the independence of the judicial process and sentencing?

Right—okay.

My second question is about the victims who saw perpetrators—their attackers or whatever it may be—sentenced to community service and who, I presume, felt some sense of relief and justice about that. Was notification given to any victims about the decision in respect of their cases?

In response to Pauline McNeill, you talked about organised crime and the problems that it presents for the Scottish Prison Service. When we visited Saughton, we heard some first-hand accounts of that. It was explained to me that, such is the extent of the organised crime population in prisons—it numbers around 600 people—the risk of extreme violence, which is often gratuitous, is significantly higher than it used to be, and the Prison Service has extreme difficulty in managing that. One senior officer told me that two prisons have in effect become home to groups of prisoners associated with two sides of a fairly prominent and long-running dispute. One of those prisons, Addiewell, has been subject to significant media interest in the past week or two in relation to the power that prisoners appear to have in their relationships with prison staff, and issues of contraband goods in the prison. From a whistleblower talking to the media, there is a sense that Addiewell has serious problems because of the control of organised crime within the prison. Do you recognise that picture of the prison? What, if anything, have you done in response to those media reports?

I will touch quickly on one more subject. Statistics show that take-up of the voluntary victim notification scheme has gone down year on year. Why is that the case? I declare an interest in that I have joined up to the scheme, so I am familiar with its work.

So violent offences were not excluded but domestic violence was excluded.