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You asked a question about the UK Government. I am saying that, given the incompetence over which the UK Government has presided, whether it is in tax, inflation or public debt, the opportunity to do things in a different and much more sensible and mature way than, for example, the Kwasi Kwarteng budget is a very valuable option for the people of Scotland. We also want to fulfil our manifesto promise, which was to offer that referendum.

If it is possible to answer without being interrupted, I will try to answer your question. The idea is not honest that anyone can talk sensibly about public services while excluding from consideration the financing for which, currently, we have to rely on the UK Government. We have to acknowledge the main driver. Most other people in the country realise that we have had 12 years of austerity-suppressed budgets for public services, and I do not deny that that has had an impact.

I have mentioned the fact that we are looking at the issue, so that we can alleviate the pressure on the police, through calls going to the right place in the first place. That would reduce the number and volume of calls.

However, despite that, and notwithstanding those pressures, which apply across the UK, Police Scotland is above average.

I acknowledge that, if somebody’s call goes unanswered, that is a failure of service. I am not wishing that away.

My point is that, according to the Home Office, Police Scotland was well above average in July. It answered 79.9 per cent of calls in less than 10 seconds. I do not use the word “swimmingly”, but that is an example, notwithstanding the pressures, of Police Scotland performing better than average.

In addition, to get under some of the issues in your point, Police Scotland, as I have said before, has been the first point of call for many things that are not its responsibility. That is reflected in those calls. We have looked at the nature of the calls. Some should be directed towards other services, and we are trying to ensure that that can be done. That goes back to my previous point about an increase in the necessary reform in call handling and better liaison between the police, the other blue-light services and other services. If they can alleviate call pressure by ensuring that calls are directed correctly in the first place, that will help to improve a performance that is already above average, such that we can drive out any failure to answer calls.

It is better than average, just now. It has to be better, and work to make it better is continuing.

Discussions with Cabinet colleagues about public services often centre on the fact that, after 12 years of austerity, more money should be invested in public services. I acknowledge that. We should invest more money in public services. However, almost uniquely, the UK Government has decided on a programme of austerity, which has lasted for 12 years.

—and I am answering—

First, of course, the fire service has to comply with the stringency of the requirements on it, and there is no suggestion from the SFRS that the equipment is unsafe. I hate to correct the member, but I think that the backlog that he talked about was £492 million, rather than £482 million, according to the SFRS. However, we acknowledge the challenges.

The desperate attempt to pretend that this has nothing to do with settlements from the UK Government does not register with people out there. They know what the situation is, and what austerity has meant over the past 12 years—both in resource and in capital backlog. There is a backlog not in maintenance but in investment in the estate structure. That has been reviewed previously, and it is being reviewed again.

It is also true to say that many of the fire stations were built in a previous era, to provide fire cover for industries and housing that, in some cases, are no longer there. That is an opportunity to review the estate and to make savings through its rationalisation. In turn, that should allow additional investment in the remaining fire stations.

As you might have heard in evidence from the SFRS, it has developed a detailed community risk index model, which identifies the risks in individual communities across Scotland. That enables it to base on evidence its decisions on resources. We will continue to work through those issues with the SFRS, not least through the budgetary process that I mentioned previously.

I do not want to go back to the previous back-and-forward about budgets, but we need to acknowledge that we are in a different budget environment from last year.

Last year, in that different context, we awarded an additional £15 million for the reasons that you mentioned. We are aware that courts across the country do not all have the same level of confidence in community disposals. That additional £15 million, which was in addition to, I think, £119 million of continuing funding, was intended to effect change so that the courts would have confidence, wherever they were in Scotland, that a community disposal would be effective and properly monitored.

That gives our intention—our direction of travel—but you are right to say that we are now looking at a different budget environment and we have to consider it against other options. The Bail and Release from Custody (Scotland) Bill is a fundamental part of our approach. It will not work if we do not have proper community justice disposals.

That is our intention. We have budget pressures to consider as we go forward, and we hear what the sector said. We have had discussions with it. A new national plan for community justice, which seeks to do what we intend, has just come out as well.

The additional moneys that we provided in the current year were provided sensitively such that the local authorities that had been well served by their community justice infrastructure were not punished by money just going to authorities that had not, because that would be like punishing success. We managed to provide money to authorities that really need to invest more and to produce more money for other authorities.

That is the intention, but the matter will have to be decided as a priority in the budget process.

To respond to your first point, I did not actually say that we blamed the UK Government for all the problems in Scotland, but I will put the matter in context. It is not just Scotland or the Scottish Government that is saying this. The Welsh Government is also saying it, and UK Government departments are saying it. It is impossible to meet increasing demands and the huge rise in inflation due to the economic incompetence of the Government that you support. We cannot wish away those costs and try to pretend. You argued for honesty, so let us be honest about the source of the pressure. Everybody else knows where the main pressure comes from. Let us have that honesty, at least. Let us also have the honesty that says that, against that background, arguing for increases in budgets in virtually every activity of government is not honest. I think that we all know that.

Returning to the point about Kilmarnock, we stood on a manifesto in 2007 saying that we believed that it was fundamentally the case that prisons, given their nature and the service that they provide, should be within the public sector. Decisions on Kilmarnock and Addiewell were taken before this Government came into office. It is no surprise, and we have made it clear, that we intend to take Kilmarnock back into the public sector, which is where we believe it should be.

We have no intention of having a situation in which the SPS sees it as necessary to resort to such restrictions. I am delighted to put on record my thanks to prison staff who managed during the pandemic when those restrictions were in place. There was always the potential for substantial unrest because of those restrictions, and yet the requirements were met successfully by prison staff, who did a tremendous job. We have no intention of needing to apply such restrictions.

I imagine that we might get into the issue of mobile phones for prisoners, but that and a number of other innovations were designed to ensure that that pressure was not felt and that, where restrictions were put in place, prisoners could still communicate with their families. Our whole approach is to avoid that sort of restriction, which would unnecessarily exacerbate the situation in prisons.

I will give the committee one anecdote. Part of the prior experience of a colleague who has recently joined the Scottish Government was visiting prisons in the south-east of England and the midlands. He said that there is a marked contrast between those prisons and prisons here. He commented on the calmness that he observed when he visited Perth prison in particular. That is a testament to both the Scottish Prison Service and the way that we have tried to organise things.

We would not want to do what has been suggested, and I acknowledge that it is our responsibility to ensure that the SPS does not feel that it has to do that. However, we do not want to do that, because the consequences of substantial unrest in prisons would be, apart from anything else, substantially more expensive than some of the things that we are doing. I know that there is that pressure but, for that reason, we do not intend to see those restrictions being introduced.

You asked about whether there would be 4,000 fewer police officers. That is not what I intend to see. I also do not intend to see Prison Service restrictions of the nature that you have described resulting from financial pressures—although who knows what will happen in future pandemics?

I accept that I have to be accountable for the statements that I have made, but members will know that I cannot pre-empt the budget. There are two steps that are significant. The first step is what we can manage to get for the justice budget, which is partly my responsibility, as distinct from the indications of the resource spending review. The second stage is how that budget is used within the justice portfolio to make sure that those things do not happen. If they did happen, I would accept my part of the responsibility for that. However, my intention is to make sure that, with those two phases—the position of the justice budget when the DFM makes those decisions and how we manage that budget—we live within that budget, whatever else is said, to make sure that those things do not happen.