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Will the cabinet secretary take an intervention?

It dumbfounds me at times. I have been taking part in debates on this issue for two decades now—indeed I have—and we know that the answers lie in throughcare and supporting prisoners. However, we are nowhere near doing that. A budget line that demonstrated the Government’s commitment to throughcare would definitely be appropriate.

I want to set out why we are not convinced by the policy review.

Our prisons are bursting at the seams and we are being forced to release prisoners early, causing deep public concern. We have some of the highest levels of incarceration in Europe, so it is clear that one of the answers to this situation is to focus on sentencing.

It is also obvious that, to do so, we have to give the courts serious alternatives to imprisonment. I do not know how many times that that has been said in the chamber, but it is a failure of SNP justice management that we have not made progress in that area. For example, the number of community payback orders has slumped over the past decade. In 2014-15, there were more than 19,000 orders, but nearly 10 years later, that figure is just over 15,000. To me, it seems extraordinary that we are going backwards.

If we want to send fewer people to prison, where that is appropriate, and relieve our bulging prison estate, it is important that we run our prisons better from within. The point about the importance of being able to work with offenders has been rehearsed many times. It is all about the work that we do with them, about their conditions in prison and about staff being given an opportunity to do the job that they were employed to do inside the prison.

Research suggests that community sentencing can have a positive effect on both the chances of the perpetrator reoffending and the public purse. What is crucial in those cases is that it makes sense to use it and that it has the confidence of the public and the judiciary—we all know that. It is not an easy fix, and it requires a serious focus to make it work. To that extent, I agree with the cabinet secretary and assure her that Scottish Labour thinks that this is a matter on which there should be cross-party working.

I have heard this many times, but one reason for community payback orders not being used as much as they should be is that judges do not seem to have the confidence in some of the programmes or in the ability of the convicted person to complete them. We need to improve the suitability of community payback orders, particularly for those with addictions and those who lead chaotic lives. The Criminal Justice Committee heard as much fairly recently, when Karyn McCluskey, the chief executive of Community Justice Scotland, pointed out that

“We must imprison those whom we are afraid of, and not those we are mad at. People enter our justice system with mental health issues, addiction problems, homeless, from the care system and many who’ve been victimised as children.”

However, for those who receive a jail term, we need to improve access to throughcare services. Such services involve trying to get people who are coming out of prison back into their homes and communities, something that many third sector organisations such as the Wise Group are, as we all know, brilliant at.

The throughcare budget is around £5 million, but it has been estimated that providing throughcare for everyone who comes out of prison will cost nearly £19 million. Given that the majority of sentences are short term, and that many people with addiction issues cycle through the system time and again, it is a false economy not to invest more in those systems.

I have had many letters from constituents who have written to me from prison, frustrated that they cannot get on to the courses that they are willing to go on to demonstrate that they have been rehabilitated. I confess that I do not have the data, so this is somewhat anecdotal, but the suggestion is that there are long waiting lists in prison for people who want to go on rehabilitation courses, and it has also been suggested that someone could be waiting on the list, but someone else could go above them. It seems a bit unfortunate that there are issues inside prisons with trying to do that kind of work, and it would be helpful to get more data on that.

At the moment, the Scottish Labour position is that we are not in favour of a sentencing policy review. I have to say that this is the first time that I have heard the cabinet secretary’s intentions. I will reconsider, but that is our position at the moment.

I absolutely do welcome it, but the two points are not mutually exclusive. I would like it to be visible, but of course I welcome the commitment. What I have been demonstrating is that a lot of the answers to the problems are already known.

There was confusion over the sentencing policy for under-25s, partly because the Scottish Sentencing Council did not seem to take any soundings from the Parliament before it arrived at it. However, there has not been a lot of discussion in the Parliament about that. There is lengthy guidance, as Liam Kerr has already said, which has been quite controversial, and there is a case to be made for the Criminal Justice Committee to look at sentencing, too.

The point that I want to make to the cabinet secretary is that there must be transparency around this important debate. One of my concerns about another review on sentencing is that it will put it behind closed doors, but the Parliament needs more transparency in the discussion. I do not fully understand what approach the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service is taking, for example, although it seems to be using its discretion more often not to take young offenders to court. I am not commenting on the rights and wrongs of that, but there should be more up-front openness about what is happening.

If the Government wants cross-party support on sentencing, it follows that we need to know exactly where the Government is heading on that, and we need to discuss what the alternatives will be. We believe that the job of the Government is to get on with it and not kick it into the long grass with a review.

In many debates, we have noted that 2,000 people are on remand in Scotland, which is a problem that needs to be discussed. We need answers on how to deal with remand prisoners in overcrowded jails, where, for obvious reasons, there are no programmes, and we need to think more about the conditions in which we hold remand prisoners.

People on remand suffer some of the same issues as convicted prisoners. I am sure that the cabinet secretary is aware of this, but the Wise Group has told me that one of the things that happens when someone goes to prison is that, along with losing their home and job, they are removed from the register of their general practitioner’s surgery—and that seems to be the case even when someone is in prison on remand. One small change that could be made would be not to do that. Indeed, the Criminal Justice Committee has successfully argued for prescriptions in the prison system to make that more joined up; small things can be done that will make a difference to prisoners, and that is one that the Government should look at.

I will listen carefully to what the Government has to say. However, at the moment, our position is this: let us get on with the job. We know where the answers lie. The Government will get our full co-operation. However, we do not want to see this happen behind closed doors.

I move amendment S6M-16532.2, to leave out from “recognises” to end and insert:

“acknowledges that prisons remain severely overcrowded, with prisons operating above capacity even after the Scottish National Party (SNP) administration’s emergency early release of prisoners, impacting on the ability to rehabilitate offenders; is concerned by the high numbers of women in prisons; condemns the SNP administration’s failure to tackle high reoffending rates, which result in offenders returning to custody due to the lack of robust alternatives; agrees that the third sector can play a significant role in the effective delivery of justice services that reduce reoffending, and support reintegration into society; calls on the Scottish Government to urgently increase the availability of robust community payback orders, and invest in safe and secure GPS electronic monitoring to drive down the remand population and give more public confidence to non-custodial sentencing; further calls on the Scottish Government to expand access to throughcare services, which are essential in assisting offenders to reintegrate into society and to stop offending; believes that a review of sentencing and penal policy will not address the urgent crisis in Scotland’s justice system, and resolves that the SNP administration should take immediate action based on parameters set by the Parliament to address these concerns, rather than focus on a review that will not take the prompt action needed to fix the justice system and keep Scotland’s communities safe.”

To ask the Scottish Government how it plans to encourage the prescription of medicinal cannabis on the national health service for the relief of chronic pain. (S6O-04323)

On a point of order, Presiding Officer. My device would not connect at all. I would have voted no.

Certain cannabis medicines have been legal since 2018, but Bedrolite is not yet licensed. Bedrolite has been a lifesaver, particularly for children with severe types of epilepsy, but if it is not licensed, the NHS will not fund it. A small number of exceptions have been made in England and Northern Ireland for children with conditions for which Bedrolite has been made available. In view of that, why is it impossible to organise cannabis medicine for complex epilepsy through the NHS in Scotland, when it is clear that that has happened in other parts of the UK?

Holocaust memorial day is without parallel in importance. I commend Jackson Carlaw for his leadership in that regard. Through his eloquent speeches—not only today, but every time I have heard him—he has been very important and influential. The work that he has done on Holocaust remembrance is to be commended.

The theme of Holocaust remembrance day is dignity, human rights and the importance of collective action to prevent the spread of hatred and of denial of the Holocaust. In his opening speech, Jackson Carlaw talked about other genocides, including in Bosnia. That gives me the opportunity, as others have done, to mention my visit to Srebrenica at the tail end of last year.

In Bosnia, Serb nationalism of the past remains omnipresent. The genocide against the Muslim Bosniaks happened in the 1990s. I spoke to mothers whose sons and brothers had been murdered, and I was alarmed when they described how, today, the denial of that genocide still exists. The Sarajevo hills are, for those who are old enough to remember, better known for the winter Olympics and Torvill and Dean. Eyes were closed when Serbs put Bosniak neighbours into concentration camps—and that was not that long ago.

The motion notes the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. It will be appreciated that there were many other concentration camps, as members have mentioned, including Treblinka in Poland, where around 800,000 people died, and Belzec, where 600,000 died. While waiting to be sent to their death, many people starved, died of disease or were worked to death. It is unbelievable that those horrific events took place a relatively short time ago.

Across German-occupied Europe, 6 million Jews were murdered for being Jewish, by an ideology that was based on hatred and which began its journey in a democratic country. It is difficult to read and learn about humanity’s worst period in history and the evil that humankind is capable of, but it is important that we remember it.

I visited Auschwitz-Birkenau on the very last day of 2018. No amount of reading prepares a person for the sheer scale and horror of the camp, but it is something that I think everyone should do and face. When people arrive there they are asked by the guide not to take photographs in certain areas: one such area has people’s personal effects there, including shoes and suitcases. Visitors are asked not to photograph them because those are people’s personal belongings, with their personal stories of how they arrived in that dreadful place. That part of it all should remain personal.

Camp commandant Rudolf Höss expanded Auschwitz to construct a second camp at Birkenau for industrial murder. As others have said, if you have seen the memorial to those who died at Birkenau, you will notice that behind the camp there are houses, which were there at the time, in the 1940s. Unfortunately, people knew, and they looked on as the concentration camps murdered Jewish people and others.

The testimonies of survivors who escaped is vital, because without them we would not begin to get our heads around the horror of what happened. How could it happen at all? That is the vital question for any person who is interested in ensuring that it will never happen again. We must educate every child about the sad facts—no generation must be left out. They remind us that we must have robust policies for tackling hatred and prejudice against any group in society. Antisemitism, as the survivors have said, is far from having disappeared.

There are fewer Holocaust survivors each year when we mark this anniversary: soon, there will be none. The generations who live on and who know, and politicians like us, must ensure that it is never forgotten.

Andy Maciver was on the trip with me, and he wrote a great article headed “Moderates must rise to the challenges of populist nationalism”. It was something that only Andy Maciver could write, and it is a brilliant article.

We cannot be bystanders where we see the hatred of others. I will not stand by when I see what is happening to the Palestinians in Gaza. In my opinion there is a genocide taking place there, but let the courts and the law decide whether it is or is not. Whether it is about Gaza, Bosnia or Cambodia—it is really important that Jackson Carlaw mentioned it—as human beings and as politicians, we cannot be bystanders. We need to call out what we see, without prejudice.

I am proud to be part of the debate, and I again thank Jackson Carlaw for securing it.

We have heard that the Scottish Government is going to overhaul NHS waiting times and improve access to GPs, but it has already been criticised widely for recycling old pledges. That announcement is an admission that we cannot go on like this: it is the same old promises from a tired Government, with no detail. It is not a detailed plan for progress or reform.

We have heard other members talk about how, every day, patients are failed at every level of care, because the Government did not plan effectively for known challenges. In its 17 years in power, it has known about a lot of them. People now worry about the times when they might be ill and need acute care, an ambulance or a life-changing operation, because, all the time, in their own communities, they witness ambulances that cannot get patients into hospitals when they have rushed to get there.

Public confidence in our NHS is diminishing. It is not the fault of the dedicated workforce who have worked tirelessly in the hardest of circumstances.

Will the cabinet secretary clarify the capacity of the new HMP Glasgow? The Criminal Justice Committee was told that it is 1,344.

His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons for Scotland’s most recent annual report stated that, although the rising prison population remains a concern across the Scottish Prison Service estate, it has a particular impact on HMP Barlinnie, which has a capacity of 1,400. Is it planned that the new HMP Glasgow will have surge capacity built into its design? What will that look like?