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I will come in with a supplementary on that area, and in particular on the idea of a shift towards a prevention approach.

I take the point that you are describing PBMA for individual programmes, or how health boards or other parts of the NHS make their decisions about their budgets. However, it seems to me that that is not the bit that is missing in making a shift towards prevention. What is missing is a health impact analysis of the policy and spending on housing, education, criminal justice and all the other areas that are completely outside the processes that health boards or other parts of the NHS go through. Why are we thinking about it as a process that is internal to the NHS, when really the health determinants are everywhere else?

Thanks very much. One of the features of the way that budget scrutiny impacts on local government in particular arises from the fact that the United Kingdom Government sets its budget and the Scottish Government then sets its budget or publishes a draft, and, only after that budget has been passed does it confirm to local authorities what their individual block grants will be. However, before that happens, local authorities have to start coming up with their plans, particularly for a worst-case scenario. What generally happens is that most of those worst-case scenario plans make their way into the press and become hugely problematic, which means that politicians have to start saying, “No, we will not do that; it was only a suggestion.”

It seems to me that, however logical the approach that you are suggesting might be, whether in good times or bad times financially, the reality is that, as soon as a health board or any other body starts coming up with all the various potential options for disinvestment, the political and media scrutiny will make those options impossible. Is our political landscape capable of doing what you are suggesting?

Is any part of the Scottish Government’s guidance that tries to encourage that approach actually taking the process outside the NHS and trying to join the dots? Is that happening?

Convener, can I ask one final supplementary question?

The use of health impact assessments across government is pretty patchy, though, is it not?

Good morning to the witnesses. I will touch briefly on the sentencing issue that others have mentioned, but most of my questions will be about the scope of the bill.

I welcome the fact that, in your answers so far, you have placed some emphasis on lower-level penalties, such as community payback orders, which might often be appropriate. However, I am concerned about the upper limit of 10 years’ imprisonment that you have suggested. There are people who have been convicted of multiple offences of trafficking class A drugs and who have received shorter sentences than that. You might generally have a view that sentences should be longer—I do not know, but maybe you do. Is that a fair comparison? Is there not some concern that your upper limit is too high?

Thank you.

Thank you for that answer, which perhaps relies on the idea that high sentences are an effective deterrent to crime in general. I would question whether there is robust evidence to support that across the criminal justice system, but that is perhaps something that we can explore as the bill proceeds.

I will ask about scope and what the offences in the bill would apply to. First, you have very clearly articulated—you used the word “trauma”—the emotional impact and the social, cultural and emotional significance of the memorials that you are talking about. I hope that it goes without saying that the whole committee and, I suspect, the whole Parliament, take that very seriously and very much respect that.

It seems to me that the same argument applies to a wider range of memorials, structures or entities—call them what you will—than the ones that you have covered in the bill. The bill says:

“something has a commemorative purpose in respect of armed conflict if at least one of its purposes is to commemorate one or more individuals or animals, or a particular description or category of individuals or animals, who died in armed conflict”.

The second world war was clearly an armed conflict. The Holocaust, specifically, was one of the greatest atrocities in modern human history—it was an act of genocide—but, in isolation, would it be seen as an armed conflict? Would a Holocaust memorial be covered in the legislation or not?

Is it your view that a memorial to the battle of George Square, which was surely an armed conflict between striking workers and the British state, would be covered?

I am sorry, but I have to challenge that. You have mentioned the Spanish civil war memorial in Motherwell, which has been desecrated with fascist graffiti, and I think that the Glasgow one has also been attacked in the past. Those were not people who fought for our country or for any country; they were recruited by the Communist International to fight fascism. It was not about one country or another. Your definition is about those who died in armed conflict.