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Sorry—I appreciate that there is a technical answer to a simple question, but the problem is that I have not heard the answer yet. I want this to be absolutely clear. There are 1,317 cases, of which 1,032 are closed and the rest are open. Is there the potential for other cases to be affected by the IT glitch?

My second question is linked to the first. If the issue goes back prior to the IT centralisation project—the cabinet secretary said in his statement that that might have brought the issue to light in the first place—surely that means that, for a number of years, the system was getting it wrong. What work is being done to identify how many other cases there might be in which risk was incorrectly identified? What do you think the scale of that might be? Are we talking about tens, hundreds or thousands of cases? How many prisoners have been released in the past 10 years? I suspect that that is a substantial number. Does the Government know how many people might have been wrongly risk assessed prior to release? I do not want to know just about current cases but about those going back 10 years.

I will maybe continue with Mr Purdie, as he has all the figures. My apologies to the cabinet secretary for not jotting down the figure earlier but I am glad to get an updated number.

How does that figure compare to the number of cases in wider society? Can you contain cases more easily in a prison environment or is it more difficult, due to the nature of the estate?

What effect has any relaxation of some of the restrictions that were needed during the temporary Covid measures—such as those around visitation or people being out on licence or temporary release—had on the relativity of the case rate versus the population? Are we seeing a marked proportionate increase in the positivity rate as a result of the relaxation of some of those restrictions?

Thank you, convener. I would be happy to come back in later with other questions.

Cabinet secretary, you mentioned that you had read or listened to a number of our evidence sessions. As other members have alluded to, there is a difference of opinion on the success or otherwise of virtual trials. I want to clarify the difference between the Government’s proposals on the on-going ability for people to give evidence virtually—which I think has been found to be helpful and beneficial for witnesses and specialists, as well as for the most vulnerable in specific cases—and trials being done completely virtually. We have heard that very few such trials have been done, so we do not really know what effect they have.

I will pose the same question that I posed to the previous panel. Would it not be more prudent to conduct a much wider pilot of virtual trials before we embed in legislation any permanency to such trials?

We understand the concept of increasing time limits so that cases do not time out. That is entirely appropriate and it would be difficult to argue against it. However, increasing time limits has a substantial impact on both parties—victims and accused, and, in particular, accused who are held on remand.

Other than not allowing cases to time out, what possible justification is there for extending case time limits? Is that the only suitable reason?

On a technical level, therefore, the provisions are an extension of temporary powers. Is that extension time limited or permanent?

Why do you need to have the power in future?

I thank the Government for its briefing, albeit it was not easy trying to digest 18 pages overnight, given the technicalities of the problem.

I want to get my head around the bigger picture. During last week’s statement, we did not have a lot of time to go into detail, due to pressures on chamber time. This is a great setting in which to do that. Is 1,317 the maximum number of cases that have had a wrong risk assessment as a result of information technology glitches, or could there be more cases and you need to do further work to find that out and how far back the problem goes?

The language that is being used is around live or known public protection issues, but is the cabinet secretary confident that no one has been released earlier than they should have been? If anyone has been released earlier than they would have been under normal circumstances—were it not for the IT glitch—did any of those people, at any point in the past, pose a public protection issue? Outwith normal reoffending rates, which we talked about earlier, did any of those people go on to reoffend or end up back in the system? I guess that we are looking for a little bit more comfort that those who were released inadvertently did not go on to reoffend.

If we work on the assumption that people are innocent until proven guilty, which is a cornerstone of the Scottish legal system, do they not deserve the right to a physical trial if they want one?

That implies that clearing the backlog is more important than the rights of an individual in Scottish law, and I would dispute that.