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If it is all going so swimmingly, why are people hanging up? Are they waiting for too long? Are the calls not being answered? Is there a lack of resource in the call centre? Is it anything to do with the centralisation of the service? What is the Government doing to get underneath the root of the problem? So many calls are being lost.

People phone not for the sake of it but because there is an issue. Often, they are unsure as to whether they should call 101 or 999. We are trying to alleviate pressure on 999 calls; clearly, that is the point of the 101 service. People are not phoning for fun. If they are hanging up, or simply not getting through to someone, that is a matter of concern. We all know of the grave repercussions when call handling goes wrong. We have had that debate in the Parliament many times.

What exactly has the Government done to find out why so many 101 calls are not being answered, and what exactly is being done to improve on that? Just a broad commitment that it will get better is probably not good enough.

Cabinet secretary, it is interesting that you said that these are operational matters for the police. Deputy Chief Constable Will Kerr told the SPA in a meeting a couple of weeks ago that he was “professionally embarrassed” by the slow roll-out of cameras, which he described as a

“very basic bit of kit”.

It sounds as though those cameras are not nice add-ons but are must-haves, so I ask the cabinet secretary to reflect on his comments on the matter.

Speaking of incompetence, we have learned through freedom of information requests over the past couple of years that nearly 2 million calls to the 101 service have either gone unanswered by operators or the caller has hung up. We had a frank and robust discussion about the state of the 101 service in this committee, and evidence was given to us. Is the cabinet secretary content and happy that that service is working well, to its full extent? Can he commit to it remaining in operation for the foreseeable future?

This has nothing to do with austerity and the UK Government; I am asking about your operational decisions—

I have questions about an area that we have not touched on a lot but that deserves some of our time, which is the effect of the budget on community justice.

There were a large number of submissions on community justice, although it did not feature as highly in our oral evidence sessions, given the prominence that the police, the fire service, the courts and the prison service generally have. The committee does not, perhaps, spend enough time on community justice and social work delivery at a local authority level, so I will ask some questions about that.

Unsurprisingly, we received warnings in the evidence, particularly from the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, Community Justice Scotland and Social Work Scotland, about the real-terms budget forecast for those organisations and the effect that it would have on their ability to deliver adequate, robust and fair community justice services. To be frank, those services would be put at risk.

What could be done to ensure that local authorities and people in the voluntary or paid justice sector are able to carry out their functions, given the tight forecast?

—in how you manage Government and how you and your colleagues manage public services. I know that you are keen to divert attention to England and Wales, but I am not. This is the Scottish Parliament, it is a Scottish committee and you are the Cabinet Secretary for Justice and Veterans in Scotland. If we could keep our focus on the budget, that would be great.

People call the police because they are desperate. They phone for an ambulance and are told to wait for hours, so they phone for the police to take them to hospital. They phone the police because they have phoned local authority social work departments that are closed out of hours. They phone the police because other public services have let them down. That is why people call 101 when they should not do so—because they are desperate, and the police are the first and last point of contact.

We have heard evidence from numerous officers, and from the SPA and the Scottish Police Federation, that the police have become a catch-all service. That simply adds to the pressures, and it is directly down to a failure to deliver the other vital public services that people need in an emergency. What conversations have you had with your Cabinet colleagues about relieving those pressures on the police?

If the political direction of travel is to send fewer people to prison and offer alternatives, that policy will rely on the adequacy of those alternatives and on there being not just public faith but judicial faith and confidence in them. We have heard from sheriffs and judges who do not trust that those sentences will be carried out or delivered properly. Therefore, that leaves them with little alternative but to send people to prison. We cannot simply divert people from prison if there is nothing to divert them to; otherwise, we will absolutely lose public confidence in the service. Are you mindful of that as well?

Thank you. I just wanted to check.

It certainly does—it was a very honest answer. Anil, do you have any comments?

My direct question to you, though, is: does this feel like we are using a sledgehammer to crack a nut? You have talked about weaknesses and strengths in the system, but would it not be better to address those weaknesses directly and get to the roots of some of the problems that social work and criminal justice social work face before introducing into the process a new tier of management that will inevitably take work from local authorities and then just give it back to them? It just seems like an unnecessary and cumbersome step in the process.