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That is entirely the answer that I expected from you. It is entirely appropriate that, if your workload is increased, the Government must rise to the occasion.

I have another question around monitoring. Let us say that there is a political decision to hold fewer people on remand, and so, subsequently, more people may be given bail—that is, after all, the premise of the bill. There may be additional conditions or increased monitoring, whether electronic monitoring or other forms of restriction of liberty. What role will the police play in that regard? Will the police have no role at all, with it being purely down to criminal justice social workers or other agencies to fill that role, or will the police have quite an active role with regard to those who are out on bail, who may be among that cohort of up to 20 per cent who reoffend while on bail? What duty do you have in relation to ensuring that public protection is paramount?

A few other things popped into my mind. How will we quantify that rebalancing, which I think is the word that you used, if we are shifting the balance of risk from one element of the criminal justice system to another—in this case, to the police? The financial memorandum is suitably vague in its analysis of that, beyond the fact that there may be a shift in the volume of people from those remanded to those who are released on bail. What work needs to be done ahead of the bill continuing its progress through the committee and Parliament to give you the satisfaction that the policy shift and rebalance will be matched by financial rebalancing?

Thank you very much for that.

Joanne, I get the impression from what has been said that it is not necessarily that the wrong people are being held on remand for the wrong reasons; it is simply that there are too many people on remand because the trials are taking too long to come to fruition, which has the knock-on effect of more people being on remand. Dealing with the backlog and getting those—[Inaudible]—to pass more quickly would, by default, bring down those numbers quite quickly. We should maybe consider that. Have you any views on what has already been said?

One of the problems with legislating to change the parameters of the grounds on which bail can be permitted or refused is that it is quite an all-encompassing approach. I do not know that it necessarily accounts for the nuances of courts. It applies to summary and solemn cases. It does not differentiate between domestic and non-domestic cases, nor does it take into account the nuances of specialist courts that deal with sexual abuse or drugs, or youth or female courts, for example. It is a one-size-fits-all approach to the changes.

My worry about that is whether it is the right approach. I wonder whether you might comment on that. Should a more nuanced approach be taken to legislating when we make changes to refusing grounds for bail, as the bill proposes to do? That is quite an open question, after which I might zoom in on some specific scenarios.

Thank you for allowing me to ask those questions, convener. I appreciate that, as I am conscious of time.

You sit in court day in, day out and see dozens or hundreds, if not thousands, of such cases. It seems to me that remand is used quite sparingly—only in the most extreme circumstances in which the judge feels that it is appropriate. Just because the Crown opposes bail does not necessarily mean that remand will be the outcome. Do you feel that it is necessary for legislation to intervene and alter the outcomes of what is already happening? That is no disservice to the sheriffs or the decision making, but is it appropriate to narrow those parameters?

Only if you think that you would be involved.

That is really interesting. When things were more people-based or manual, there was a sort of mystery shopping element: you turned up at the address, and if the individual was not where they should have been, you took appropriate action. Now you know in real time about every breach that occurs and have a duty to respond to that. Are you able to respond? Is it physically possible for you to turn up to the address of every person who is tagged and deal with the situation if they are somewhere that they should not be, or do you just have to compile reports and let them accumulate?

There is a parallel question about those changes. At the moment, one of the serious considerations for sheriffs in granting bail is the risk of interference with witnesses or victims. There are mixed opinions on what would happen if there were to be any changes to that. Some think that that ground for refusal is being diminished; others believe that it will still exist and will be protected under the new legislation. I am not sure that I know the answer. If there is a risk of that ground for refusal being taken away or diminished, what concerns might the police have about those accused of quite serious crimes who do not necessarily pose any immediate public safety risk but present quite a significant risk of interference or of prejudice to justice?

Unfortunately, we can deal only with what the bill does. We cannot fix the other issues.