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Mr Kerr is quite correct to point to the impact of significant overcrowding on prisoners, staff and access to drug treatment, as well as to other forms of rehabilitation. Overcrowding puts the system under immense stress.

I would be the last person in the room—and, I suspect, the last person in the Parliament—to ever demur from the serious and significant challenge that we face with a prison population that, as I have said on a number of occasions, is too high. Our prison population needs to be sustainable, because ultimately that is what keeps our communities safe; our prisons need to be able to accommodate those who pose the greatest risk.

I respectfully remind the member that every time that I have taken action I have reminded Parliament that there is no one solution. Early emergency release provides temporary relief. The Prisoners (Early Release) (Scotland) Act 2025—and the programme known as STP40 that it brought in—reduces the prison population in a sustained way by 5 per cent from what it would otherwise have been.

I, too, would quote Teresa Medhurst, who also said in The Scotsman:

“I am grateful for the leadership and support we have received from the Cabinet Secretary ... and colleagues in the Scottish Government. Were it not for the emergency early release programme last year, and the Prisoners (Early Release) Scotland Act, which came into effect this year, our situation would be far worse.”

I accept that that in itself is not good enough, though, so I reassure the committee that I am intensively engaged with the Scottish Prison Service. I have always proactively kept Parliament up to date with the situation, and that will not change. Should new measures be required, I will announce them in Parliament, as I have always done.

I am perhaps going to be a little bit cheeky now, Mr Kerr. I have not walked away from my obligations to take action, but other members in the Parliament have often balked at such actions. I suggest that doing so is perhaps for political expediency instead of prioritising the safety and security of prison staff and managing a very high and complex prison population.

There is a lot in that question, Mr Kerr, so I hope that the convener will bear with me.

The latest figures show that in excess of 15,000 community payback orders have been issued across Scotland. Let me stress that I am very supportive of drug testing and treatment orders when they are appropriate for an individual. The latest figures show that, in 2023-24, there were 280 such orders; they are, by their very nature, a much more discrete intervention, and they obviously involve the courts. Their implementation also varies across the country, which has presented challenges in getting a firm view of their effectiveness.

I have visited drug courts that monitor drug testing and treatment orders, and I know that they have been very successful in helping many people turn their lives around. They are, like all community interventions, delivered locally, so I am very aware of the decision that Edinburgh services took and the impact that that had on East Lothian and Midlothian. I should stress again that these are local decisions.

The orders are effective for many people. The completion rate for a DTTO is around 51 per cent, with 75 per cent of those finishing without any breach. As I have said, the evidence on them is a bit complex.

The great strength of a community payback order is that it can be tailored to the individual. One thing that the sentencing and penal policy commission is looking at is how not just custody but community disposals are used. Why a comparatively low proportion of additional conditions that are specific to drug and alcohol treatment and mental health are put on community payback orders is an interesting question. I am not necessarily saying that that is right or wrong, because sometimes we forget to look at treatment and support in a much broader context. Treating someone’s addiction could be better than treating their trauma. We also need to consider employability, support with life skills and daily living, addressing the specifics around offending behaviour and any underlying attitudes as well as treatment of mental health and addiction issues.

As I have said, it is difficult to say at this point whether that is a good or a bad thing. We need to understand it more, but I can say that the strength of a community payback order is that it can be tailored to the needs of an individual.

That is a fair point, and it is why I took the opportunity to write to the new Secretary of State for Justice for England and Wales. My officials may have some insight as a result of their engagement.

The starting point is continuity of care and grasping the golden opportunities when individuals reach the point—which is often their lowest point—of recognising the changes on which they must embark. When people have those moments, we have to be ready to grasp them and we have to keep a hold of people in those times. Continuity of care is of fundamental importance, and it is a key part of the Scottish Prison Service’s drug and alcohol strategy.

There can be challenges for remand prisoners. Individuals on remand have access to addictions healthcare in prisons, which is different from recovery cafes and engagement with the recovery movement. One of the remarkable changes in prisons that I have seen over the past 25 years is the on-site presence of the voluntary sector and the recovery community—not just people with lived experience of addictions but those who have previously been in the criminal justice system and who have experienced imprisonment. They have been able to access prisons to be peer mentors and to engage with people, and that is a remarkable turnaround from a number of years ago.

There are some good examples of establishments that have been able to support remand prisoners in accessing recovery: Stirling and Kilmarnock, and also Greenock, if my memory serves me correctly. The Prison Service continues to scope new ways of working so that people on remand can access opportunities. That is challenging, given the number of prisoners on remand and the increase in the number of long-term prisoners, where a range of statutory obligations apply. The prison rules for remand prisoners are different, because they are untried. It is all caveated around the ability of people on remand to participate in education or work, while the situation is different for sentenced prisoners.

It is hard to isolate that, apart from the obvious factors of the increasingly innovative methods of illicit supply in our prisons and the strength of those somewhat novel substances. In the work that the Prison Service has done, engaging with the Leverhulme research centre for forensic science in Dundee, sometimes it cannot be established what the substance actually is.

The danger to individuals associated with such substances, which are not only in our communities but in our prisons, requires strong public health messaging. The level of danger and distress that those drugs cause to individuals is alarming. I visit prisons all the time and—I will put it this way—I had both the challenge and the privilege of seeing some footage of an individual who had consumed a substance. The degree of personal distress to that individual was a sight to behold, but their behaviour would change very quickly from being distressed, to agitated, to angry. It requires several staff at any one time to care for such an individual.

There is an element of the unknown in those substances, which is why the testing that is done at Dundee university is important. I am sure that Ms Todd will have something to say on this as well—those man-made, synthetic substances are potent and dangerous, and they have upped the ante on the challenge that we face. The situation is very different from what it was 15 or 20 years ago with cannabis, heroin or opioids. The substances that are having a catastrophic impact on individuals in our care are the synthetic opioids, benzodiazepines and drugs that we do not know what they are.

I hope that the new national social work agency, and other measures, will help in that regard. In response to your earlier question, I failed to mention the importance of the work that Ms Somerville is taking forward on the fairer funding pilot, which is around multiyear funding for the voluntary sector. My personal view is that accountability should be seen as a positive and not something to fight against or be defensive about.

You raised the point about many services potentially being involved with an individual. That is very positive, but we always have to guard against people being passed from pillar to post. We need clear lines of accountability and responsibility. Ms Todd and I can see that work taking place through the strategic justice and healthcare work that we are involved in, which is being pursued in detail by the national leadership group, where senior officials from justice and health are getting on with the nitty-gritty. Oversight of that work sits with ministers. That is quite a general response to quite a general question—I hope that I have not missed a specific point that you wanted to raise about accountability.

In the illicit supply of substances, it is quite correct that it is less about hooch, as Mr MacGregor said, and much more about the very dangerous synthetic opioids that are making their way into our prisons and having an impact on the prison population, similar to what is happening in the community.

Nonetheless, alcohol remains a feature in offending behaviour. There are people who are poorly on admission to prison because they are not getting access to alcohol, and there might also be issues to do with withdrawal and people who will need care and treatment as a result. If alcohol is a factor in someone’s offending behaviour, they will benefit from access to the recovery community or other rehabilitative-type opportunities related to their offending behaviour.

It is not that alcohol is not an issue, because if it was an issue for an individual in the community, it is an issue in prison. There is then a risk that needs to be addressed while in custody and that needs to feature in any release planning for that individual. That might be in the conditions that the Parole Board sets or in the more detailed throughcare planning that takes place for individuals.

In general terms, the health and welfare of prison staff is a matter that I discuss with the chief executive of the Prison Service. It is a matter that she raises with me. It is a factor in the issues around overcrowding and staff resilience, for example. The specific issue that you raise is, of course, a purely operational matter, but I know that there are very specific procedures and guidance for staff when they have to have contact with a prisoner when fumes or illicit drugs are involved, because one of the issues with those novel substances is that they can be absorbed by the skin. There are procedures around when to engage in those circumstances, and there are procedures around how that should be approached and the equipment that is required. I can ask the Prison Service to supply me and the committee with a more detailed account of the specific procedures that are in place.

It is an important point that speaks to the change and increasing challenge associated with drugs. It is not just about people ingesting something into their body that has an impact on their behaviour. It is about the ingestion of substances that have a direct bearing on the health and wellbeing of prison officers. I have certainly had constituency cases raised with me about the impact on prison staff and on their health of being in close proximity to fumes and so on.

That is an operational matter, and I am not sure that you necessarily want a politician or former social worker to talk in detail about the exact training that should be given to prison officers. That said, I have visited the SPS college and had the pleasure of meeting new recruits on more than one occasion. What I have observed is that the Prison Service is certainly recruiting a greater diversity of people, by which I mean people from different backgrounds. As you would anticipate, the Prison Service often attracts people who have worked in the military, but I have observed that there is a growing number of people who have worked in the care sector or with children, and I think that that blend is quite important.

The old terminology—this is very outdated language, so I apologise—was that, for criminal justice social work and the Prison Service, it was about care and control. These are controlling institutions, but it is also about the care that is provided, so people need to be safe and secure. Prison officers need to be able to prevent violence, but they also need to be able to respond to violence.

I have also seen mock operations to train prison officers to deal with disruption. The SPS has a facility, which, by chance, is in my constituency, in Fauldhouse, where more operational and tactical training is provided. That is part of the on-going training and development of officers who are given specialist training, because some officers will carry out specialist roles, should that be required, in the prison that they work in or in another prison.

The training is always evolving. For example, the SPS has developed pain-free control and restraint, which came about through its work with and concern about young people. That training has attracted a lot of attention internationally, and that matter is kept under review.

I am very cognisant of the demands on Prison Service staff and of the strains and stresses that they experience, which is probably putting it mildly. We must have acuity with regard to ensuring that we retain experienced staff, because the mix of old and new is really important. I do not imagine that this will surprise colleagues, but the number of prison officers has increased. There is often much talk about the public sector workforce, and rightly so—this is a workforce that has increased from 3,462 prison officers in 2023-24 to 3,797 today.

Of course. Anyone with an interest is welcome to respond to the consultation. It launched on 28 August, the same day that the draft SSI was published. On the Scottish Government citizen space website, there is the draft SSI and text to explain the small number of policy choices that have been made. My officials proactively sent that information to bodies on the hate crime strategic partnership group and those who had responded to the consultation on the proposed misogyny bill.