Seòmar agus comataidhean

I would want to see the evidence for that. I am not trying to be facetious or pernickety, but if people communicate concerns of that nature to the committee, to other stakeholders or, indeed, to me, I would want to see the evidence. That speaks to the broader need for better data that tells us what we need to know about demand and impact.

That is a very live issue that features in many of my discussions with the SPF and ASPS. It has always been very clear to me that, in the day-to-day work, cases that have a strong mental health feature and less of an offending behaviour feature place an additional obligation and demand on individual police officers, and that will have an impact on their wellbeing. There will also be a huge impact when there are emotionally charged, disruptive or difficult circumstances when things perhaps do not go well. There are instances that are particularly traumatic in their own right.

Police Scotland has an obligation as an employer, and the oversight of that principally comes through the Scottish Police Authority, although we all have an interest in the wellbeing of our police officers. You might have heard that Police Scotland has an employee assistance programme, in which £17 million has been invested. The programme has a focus on mental health and enhanced occupational health services. With that programme, Police Scotland is trying to take a preventative approach, by looking at assessments of resilience and stress risk, and recognising the day-to-day attrition and demands on police officers. There is also specific work through the trauma risk management programme for officers who have been exposed to particularly traumatic events.

Police Scotland is one of the first services in the United Kingdom to implement mandatory mental health and suicide intervention training for all officers. That is particularly important. It also offers a range of services to care for psychological, physical, social and financial wellbeing through the your wellbeing matters programme.

Following the HMICS review, the mental health unscheduled care network took forward a lot of the work. It was led and supported by the Scottish Government, although I think that the original recommendation suggested that Police Scotland lead it—however, Police Scotland is a member of the mental health unscheduled care network.

The national review was completed in December last year. In a minute, I will ask Dr Cook to talk about the work on developing the national guidance and the template. The core purpose of that work was to ensure consistency across 14 health boards and to remove barriers to multi-agency working. Some of that is about training. The Police Scotland mental health task force has undertaken a full training needs analysis of the police workforce. One of the recommendations was to have more joint training for leaders across different sectors and about good communication and relationships on the ground.

The other purpose of the work on psychiatric emergency plans was to be crystal clear about roles and responsibilities when responding to issues. I ask Dr Cook to add a bit more flesh to that.

The purpose of the order is to make it clear that Police Scotland can access information on spent convictions for lower-tariff offences.

It is not as direct as that, because the courts—

The purpose of the order is to enable Police Scotland to be able to lodge extract conviction information on spent convictions at the same time as making an application for sexual harm prevention orders and sexual risk orders. Those new orders, which were introduced in March last year, replaced sexual offences prevention orders and risk of sexual harm orders.

The Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 provides that, once an individual’s conviction has become spent, they are treated for all purposes in law as a person who has not been convicted of—or sentenced for—that particular offence. There are exceptions to that rule, which include applications for sexual offences prevention orders and risk of sexual harm orders. That means that Police Scotland can request relevant extract spent conviction information from the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service in support of an application for those behavioural orders.

At the time of the enactment of the Abusive Behaviour and Sexual Harm (Scotland) Act 2016, a consequential amendment could have been made to amend the 1974 act or to make provision under it to ensure that the new behavioural orders were treated in the same way as the previous sexual behaviour orders, and could also be exempt from section 4(1) of the 1974 act. Following a period of operational running, it has become apparent that making such a change would indeed be helpful as it would allow Police Scotland to lodge relevant extracts of spent convictions alongside applications for sexual harm prevention orders and sexual risk orders.

Under general disclosure, any conviction that leads to a sentence of greater than 48 months is never spent and can always be disclosed. As such, it will have been possible to use the higher-tariff sexual offences to inform applications for the new behavioural orders, where that is relevant. The new order allows for the consideration of lower-tariff offences that have become spent to be included in an application for a new behavioural order, where appropriate.

Although those court extracts are not a prerequisite for lodging an application for a behavioural order, and we understand that the court might more often be concerned with individuals’ recent behaviour than with what they did years ago, the SSI will help to ensure that court extracts of relevant convictions can be lodged at the same time as an application in order to provide potentially useful background information about the individual. That is a change to facilitate the current operation process, and it is supported by Police Scotland.

That is a brief overview of the draft order and its context. I am happy to answer any questions.

As I said in the statement, relevant convictions of 48 months and beyond are never spent. The issue is around ensuring that the relevant provisions are in place so that we can extract information on those lower-tariff offences, which are currently not accessible at the point of application.

That is an important distinction, because courts can and do release extract information on convictions to the police. However, that involves a dialogue and a process. In terms of efficiency, we want that information to be made available at the time of the application.

As I said, that is not a prerequisite for making an application. Very often, courts will have that information on a historical basis, because people are known to them. However, the order is about having the fullest possible information made available at the time of the application, as opposed to having a process in place thereafter.

It is more an issue of process. It would be for the court to put a value on current behaviour and past behaviour. I could not possibly say whether having access to that information will increase the police’s prospects of success in achieving those orders. Obviously, it is about common sense. We want the fullest range of relevant information to be presented, to which the court will then attach a value.

We do not want a post-application to and fro between the courts and Police Scotland. As I said, there is, potentially, a gap in the legislation. The new orders replaced the previous orders from March last year, and Police Scotland raised the issue with us in August.

That information was not utilised at the time of the application, but the courts can and do share information on unspent convictions with Police Scotland. The flow of information can happen but not at the time of the application. That would involve a process—

Yes—so that the information is all there at once when it is presented to the court by the police.