Seòmar agus comataidhean

I will try to be quick.

DCC Speirs, you said that you are looking at ways of freeing up officers earlier in the process but, in many instances, the police should never have got the call in the first place. I do not know whether you saw the evidence that we took a couple of weeks ago from the NHS. The witnesses spoke about frameworks for collaboration, community triage guides and so on. Do you have any comments on what the NHS is doing to try to prevent calls from going to the police in the first place? Is the NHS moving at enough pace or putting in enough help so that you do not get the calls?

Chief constable, in your opening statement, you mentioned the cost of public inquiries and legislation. We were having a review of grooming gangs and you were allocated money for that. That has now been changed into an inquiry. Will that mean additional cost for Police Scotland? If so, has the Scottish Government given you the extra money that will be required for it?

You did not get what you asked for in your budget. You said that what you are getting would just keep you standing still. With the lesser amount of money that you are getting, how can we ensure that your police officers are able to investigate fully any concerns that are brought to them about grooming gangs?

I have a last question—I am sorry that it is my third one. A lot of Scottish statutory instruments come to the committee. One on trafficking is coming to us today. It will not come into force until February next year, but costs will be associated with that, even if just for training. Because the commencement date is February, it will still be within the new year’s budget. Do you have conversations with the Scottish Government in advance of it bringing SSIs to the committee? Has it committed more money so that that SSI can be implemented properly?

Going back to the issue of capacity, I think that everybody agrees that diversion from prosecution is a good thing, and it is something that we want to look at, where we can do it and where it is working. However, the figures that we have been sent show that more than 1,000 more short-term sentences were given out in 2023-24 than in 2022-23, so something must be going wrong, or must not be working, with diversion from prosecution.

In your answer to Jamie Hepburn, you said that there will be another 460 spaces in the new prisons that we are building, and the early release scheme for short-term prisoners will, I think, give us up to 312 more spaces in the prisons.

However, many of the longer-term prisoners who are taking up capacity are in prison for historical sexual offences; they have been charged and convicted and are now, quite rightly, in prison. Given that we have just upgraded a grooming gangs review to an inquiry, it is probably safe to say that we will start to see a lot more prosecutions of serious sexual offences, as a result of which we will need more spaces in prisons. Is any planning being done at the moment to ensure that we have space for those offenders in prison and that we do not find ourselves back here again, with the Government saying, “We need to release other offenders early”?

So has any work been done on increasing capacity in prisons?

If any other work is being done to increase capacity, it would be good if the committee could be informed of that in writing. We do not have enough capacity at the moment, which is why the Government is proceeding with early release.

I agree with Pauline McNeill. I want to see a wee bit more detail before we pass the instrument. I do not disagree with the chief constable having powers if they are required, but I want to know what is included under vetting clearance. Why are the powers not currently included in Police Scotland’s disciplinary policies and procedures, so that they have another way to deal with such an issue?

The regulations would help the chief constable to

“identify those who pose a potential risk to others, or who are otherwise unsuitable to work within the police service.”

Why can Police Scotland not get rid of such a person through its current disciplinary procedures? Paragraph 8 says:

“During the withdrawal assessment or appeal process a constable may be suspended, provided the suspension conditions are satisfied, and any suspension must be re-considered on a regular basis.”

How long would they be suspended for, and what does “regular basis” mean?

Perhaps we could get some information on how many police officers have been dismissed in the past year, how many have appealed, how many dismissals have been overturned and how many have been upheld. That would give us information on what is currently happening in the police force so that we can see why the power is needed.

I do not disagree with Jamie Hepburn. Once we get more information, we might be happy to pass the instrument. However, I just point out that, two weeks ago, a minister was here to speak about an SSI. We asked questions about it and, two weeks later, we received a letter that said that the SSI had been withdrawn because the Government had found issues with it after doing more investigation. Therefore, it is not unreasonable to get a bit more information before we pass the instrument.

You said earlier that you have some additional funding for next year. Does the 2026-27 allocation allow the PIRC to meet its statutory obligations?

Coming back to availability of services, have you done any assessment of the availability of 24/7 care? You have said that 24/7 care is provided, but there is still the issue with handovers, especially at evenings and weekends, and it seems as though there is a postcode lottery. Has the NHS done an assessment of the facilities that are available 24/7 to enable a handover?

I also come back to something you said earlier, which was that you need to change the nature of the services that are provided and the way that mental health services are looked at. Everybody talks about the holistic approach but, in a round table that I attended more than two years ago, there was a forensic psychologist who said that some people with mental health problems only feel safe in a secure environment and that we probably closed a lot of the 24/7 mental health care facilities because of a knee-jerk reaction. Do you have an opinion on that?

I suppose that that is what I am asking about. Getting a mental health assessment via video screen does not help somebody who may cause harm to themselves or others. Given that we are saying that it is a health issue, what is the NHS doing so that that is a clinician’s responsibility and the police can do a handover straight away, 24/7?