Seòmar agus comataidhean

I want to flag some of the comments in the letter from the SCTS. The third paragraph of the letter, which is on the first page of paper 5, states:

“Despite the increasing numbers of domestic abuse cases across our courts (they currently make up 23% of all Aberdeen sheriff court’s summary complaints registered this financial year), there are currently no further virtual summary trials scheduled at this point.”

The letter then explains the reason for that, which seems to be a problem with solicitor participation, but that does not really explain what the challenge is. Is it that solicitors are not available, not willing to participate or expressing opposition to it? It is unclear.

I appreciate that, about halfway down the page, the letter also talks about the general point that we are moving to a more face-to-face world again and away from doing things virtually. It says:

“as people return to more day to day physical interaction as we recover from the pandemic, momentum is waning.”

That seems to me to say, “We gave it a try and it was okay, but the world is sort of back to normal, so no one really wants to continue with it.” To me that sounds like, whatever your view on virtual trials—I separate those from virtual evidence giving or virtual juries, which are a different application of technology—the SCTS is not 100 per cent behind doing much more on virtual trials.

There seems to be an unwillingness in the sector to see benefits in virtual trials. I think that the SCTS quoted 58 as the total number of motions for a fully virtual trial. Not many of them went on to be virtual. In fact, about half of them were converted to in-person trials, so the request was not granted or the decision was made not to proceed with a virtual one. As Katy Clark says, the information is limited. It was only a limited trial, but that does not reek to me of a positive outcome or positive feedback about the measure.

Can I clarify something? I know that we are skipping through these sections quickly. For the record, I agree with all the suggestions in the last column, which makes points about what the committee could ask the Scottish Government, the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities or the third sector to do. Because we are skipping past pages, it is important that we give the clerks our consent to carry on with that work.

I will shut up, then.

I am sorry—we are skipping ahead. On deaths in custody, on page 34, are we content as a committee that that issue has been followed up by analysis of where the Scottish Government agreed with our recommendations? The Government pushed back and said that it had

“no intention to create an online centralised system where delivery of the recommendations can be tracked.”

Are we content with that response, or do we want to push the Government further on that? It is still a very live issue, unfortunately and tragically.

I want to start with the section on Police Scotland. It is a great summary, and I thank the clerks for it.

Page 4 of paper 4 suggests actions, and they seem to be that we ask the SPA to do some work. We first need to take a step back and go straight back to Police Scotland. Paragraphs 5 to 8 of paper 4 show that the committee—I am now putting this on the public record—is unhappy with Police Scotland’s response and we have more than enough opportunity to go back to Police Scotland.

Paragraph 5 states:

“The response does not include an explanation as to why the officers who the Committee spoke to did not receive the expected standard of advice and support.”

In paragraph 6, we complain that Police Scotland’s response does not address key issues that the committee raised. In paragraph 7, we also say that the point about

“the inadequacy of the employee assistance line”

is not addressed. In paragraph 8, the committee requests details about when

“the court scheduling system redesign will be in place”

and say that that information has also not been provided.

Therefore, Police Scotland has not responded to some very specific things, and we should give it a second chance to do so before we escalate the questions. I am happy to include the SPA in our correspondence, but we should go straight to Police Scotland and explain that we are unhappy with its response. Let us be up-front about that, uncomfortable thought it might be.

We could also include the challenges that the SPF has raised. I know that Police Scotland will read the response from the SPF but, if Police Scotland is not asked to answer that, it does not have to and probably will not. I would like Police Scotland to respond directly to the concerns raised by the SPF, such as the one mentioned in paragraph16, which is that

“the SPA bases its oversight on evidence provided by Police Scotland”

but not necessarily by officers directly.

That is a key point. In other words, the SPA seems to be marking its own homework by responding to evidence given to it only by Police Scotland, which is, of course, accountable to it, but not necessarily by going directly to staff associations or organisations to get feedback. We need to sanity check whether what the SPA is hearing from Police Scotland marries up with the truth on the ground. That is perhaps a criticism of the SPA.

Paragraph 17 refers to specific complaints about

“the strategic commitment to wellbeing from Police Scotland”

and the mainstreaming of that policy. It notes that the SPF believes that there is

“either a failure to operationalise the programme or a failure to operationalise the right programme.”

Again, we could invite Police Scotland or the SPA to respond to that.

I do not disagree with what we are asking the SPA to do around data collection and how it could better engage with officers and their representatives from the union or otherwise on whether that could be beefed up, as those are valid points, but they are not necessarily the main criticisms that we want to pose.

Although the paper is quite short, the committee has clearly expressed our unhappiness at the response that we have had from Police Scotland. I think that we need to challenge that. That is my only plea.

The current position is that no transgender offender who has been convicted of a crime of violence or sexual violence against women or girls will be placed in a female prison. I presume that those who commit other types of violence and domestic abuse are not currently and will never be held in the female estate. Is that something on which you can give assurances, or is that a temporary measure?

At his directive, though.

Under ministerial directive.

When I briefly popped out, did you cover recovery cafes?

I have a few different items to discuss, but I do not want to impinge on other members’ opportunities to speak. Perhaps I can kick off the conversation on some of them, at least. The first one is the cabinet secretary’s response in relation to the budget for the Scottish Police Authority and police budgets. I want to probe a little bit into that.

There is quite an important clarification from the cabinet secretary about the part of our report on police budgets. When we took pre-budget scrutiny evidence, it was made quite clear to us that there would be a direct knock-on effect on police numbers in proportion to a flat cash settlement or a real-terms cut in the budget, depending on how you phrase it. It is an area I probed into quite vociferously. In the cabinet secretary’s response, he writes that, in the committee’s report,

“you stated that I said that I have no intention of cutting police officer/staff numbers.”

We put that in the report in the context of the evidence that we took that there would be a reduction in front-line officers or back-office staff. The cabinet secretary has replied that he thinks that that is an “inaccurate reflection” of what he said.

I need to look at our report to check what we wrote, but that was certainly the essence of what he said in committee. We might have misquoted him, or he might think that we did, but that was very much what I thought he said. I believe that other members thought that as well, which is why we put it in our report. The cabinet secretary has come back and said that, actually, what he said was that he had

“no intention of overseeing a budget for the police force that results in 4,000 officers leaving.”—[Official Report, Criminal Justice Committee, 23 November 2022; c 12.]

That is welcome, as that is not a position that any cabinet secretary would want to be in, but that seems to fall quite short of a commitment that there will not be a reduction in police officer numbers. It is unclear whether that leads us to surmise that there is a potential reduction in officer or staff numbers and whether, if that were to be the case, the cabinet secretary would be content with that, given that he has watered down his position.

I appreciate that the next part of the cabinet secretary’s response says that an additional £80 million of resource has been allocated to policing. I presume—and this can be clarified—that that is resource budget and not capital budget. It is unclear whether that is intended to meet any percentage pay rises that are asked for or settled on, given that we do not know the final outcome of negotiations on that.

My fear is that, even with the £80 million, we do not have evidence of what it will translate to. If the £80 million just gets swallowed up in an inflationary pay rise, we will be left with a static number of police officers. If that amount is not enough to cover any pay rise, there will still be a reduction in the number of police officers; we could still lose front-line police officers. That situation needs to be looked at percentage by percentage, by which I mean what would pay rises of 4 per cent, 5 per cent, 6 per cent and 10 per cent look like?

It is a matter of concern, and it is not clarified by just chucking a number into the response and diverting away from it by saying that those are operational matters for the chief constable. Although they are, we should be evidence led when we scrutinise budgets, and I do not see how we can marry up that statement. There might not be 4,000 officers leaving, but a substantial number of officers still might leave. I do not know what effect the money will have, where it will go in the service or how it will be spent. It is a bit late, now, of course, but the letter has provided more questions than answers.

I have other comments on other parts of the response—specifically around the Scottish Prison Service and legal aid—but I will stop there in case other members want to talk about the police budget.