Justice and Home Affairs Committee, 04 Apr 2000

Meeting date: Tuesday, April 4, 2000

Official Report 206KB pdf

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Budget Process 2001-02

Strictly speaking, we will not be considering the Executive's expenditure proposals at this stage of the proceedings. This item is on the agenda because, as members may be aware, we are required—as are all committees—to input to the whole budget process. Although we will have difficulty finding time to do that within the time scale, we must at least make some effort.

I have already notified the Executive that its finance officials are likely to be required to give evidence after the Easter recess. I did that before a formal decision of the committee today simply to put the Executive on notice. Once the committee has made up its mind which witnesses it might want to hear from about potential budget issues, we can go on from there.

Members may wish to think about whether they want to invite witnesses from other interested bodies, because we would need to issue the invitations in the second week of the recess. It would also be helpful if members could identify their general areas of interest at today's meeting—for example, legal aid or police funding. If that is not possible, members should notify their interest to the clerks during the second week of the recess so that witnesses who may be able to attend in May—time permitting—can be identified.

This process will continue over a period—it should end around the end of the first week in June, at which time we are meant to make our final report.

We need to consider this issue. There is a breakdown of the whole budget in the budget papers. The figures for justice are broken down into different spending areas. I have to confess to not fully understanding it—I cannot quite work out where all the figures come from. I can see the £571 million, but I do not understand where the other £300 million or so comes from.

If I am correct, we are entitled to consider the justice department's spending priorities and how it has broken down its budget between, say, the police, legal aid and so on. I would have thought that we would want the Minister for Justice to talk to us about how he has allocated his spending priorities—

Within the budget.

Within his own budget. I should, as always, declare an interest, in that a bit of the justice budget normally goes into my pocket.

Via legal aid, we hasten to add.

It is important that the minister comes to the committee to explain how his internal priorities are broken down. I would not feel able to query his overall figure, but I could argue about how he spends it.

At the moment, we have simply put the Executive's finance officials on standby. What you say is useful, Gordon; it is something with which we would probably all agree.

I would welcome an opportunity to have someone along from victim and witness services. In some parts of the country, there is concern about funding for those services. There seems to be inequality in the way in which money is distributed to organisations.

I note from page 64 of the document that between 1999-2000 and 2000-01, the budget estimate for victim and witness support is due to decrease, although I concede that that is an estimate at this stage. Given the concerns that have been highlighted to me, I would welcome an opportunity to hear from someone from Victim Support Scotland or another organisation on the implications of this issue for them and about the specific problems that they are encountering.

That is helpful at this stage.

At the risk of being highly unpopular, I want to raise a couple of issues relating to the profession itself—solicitors. There was a report in the paper about a criminal practitioner who packed it in because of the fixed fee payments. It would be interesting to hear from the profession about the impact of legal aid payments on access to justice.

Secondly, we should hear from someone representing the sheriffs—it would be interesting to find out how budgeting for the courts is affecting access to justice. I found that useful last time.

I would be grateful if someone from the Scottish Prison Service would come and explain the differences between the outturn figures, the estimates and the plans—they represent some of the most marked differences in the budget headings. It is important that we find out why there is such a difference between the outturn figures and the estimates.

We are compiling a long list of potential witnesses here. Does anyone have any bids at this stage?

The District Courts Association?

The District Courts Association.

The list is becoming huge now.

Yes it is. Given the time that we have available, we will have to rationalise this and decide how to allocate space for those witnesses.

I do not want to make the list too long, but if we are now inviting organisations along to see whether they think that they are underfunded—

They will all say that they are underfunded.

They will all say that. However, I would like to hear from the Crown Agent about the funding that is given to the whole fiscal Crown Office system, which has historically been badly underfunded. I do not know whether the Crown Agent will say that but, as we are carrying out such an exercise, he would be an obvious choice.

The papers that were sent out contain lists of questions to which we are supposed to supply answers. They include questions about whether the aims and objectives are clear and unambiguous and so on. There are more general issues that we require to deal with.

This could be a detailed piece of work. I am concerned that the committee's ability to input to it will be constrained by the amount of other work that we are doing. Whatever we manage to do on the budget scrutiny, I will be asking the committee whether it agrees that, owing to the rest our work load, we cannot do this the justice that it deserves. That is a concern. We could probably spend the whole of the next two months doing this—and quite rightly too, because it is extremely important—but we will not have the capacity to do that.

As I said, we will take away the list of potential witnesses. It may be that some of the individual organisations can submit in written form the information that we require. We will do our best to timetable as much as possible into the agenda. However, we are constrained by some of our other work, at least one aspect of which is coming up on the agenda later.

We are constrained because of the heavy legislative programme that we are trying to push through the Parliament. To some extent, we are trail-blazing. I recall that, last year, convener, you got a bit shirty with me because I suggested that we were overloading. The capacity of individuals to take on board all this information and to deal properly with bill after bill is limited. People cannot absorb all the information. If we take written information, we have to read through it and understand it.

There comes a point when we have to say to the Executive, "Sorry, but the legislative programme is too heavy for one committee to deal with." I do not know whether something can be done about that within the committee structure, but if the Parliament is to work and if we are to have good scrutiny and good legislation, proper time and effort has to be allowed for each task.

You will not find any disagreement from me or, I suspect, from anyone else on the committee. Each of us is aware of the impact of the work load on the committee. I regret that it will not get any less. With the introduction of a new bill that was not previously announced, it will get worse rather than better.

It is entirely appropriate that the committee should make its views known. There are already concerns in the conveners liaison group about timetabling and dealing with the work loads that some committees are developing. In the next week or so, the Rural Affairs Committee will be in much the same state as us.

My point is ancillary to Phil's. Obviously, we have to deal with the Executive's legislation—I have no problem with that. However, my concern is that the balance of the committee is tipping and we are now unable to take forward programmes that we took on. Very early on, the committee committed itself to initiating its own work. We have done a great deal of investigation into prisons and a lot of work on domestic violence—we are coming to that later. We have a duty to hold the Executive to account in other ways, for example, over the budget. Matters that we wish to consider on the justice budget go to the heart of justice in Scotland. If something is deserving of full scrutiny, I would like the committee to give it that scrutiny. I am unhappy about the way that we are unable to get on with other matters. I would give the convener my full support in making that plain to the conveners committee and to the Executive. Things are getting worse—we should do something.

My concerns are broadly similar to those of Phil and Christine. I am concerned that an issue such as the budget consideration is effectively having to be squeezed in when, as Christine rightly pointed out, it goes to the heart of the justice system in Scotland.

I recognise that this matter has been raised at the conveners liaison group. My concern is whether anything is actually happening. We have to be clear with the Executive—if the committee is to function properly, we cannot sustain the work load that it is passing on to us in the current legislative programme. Action should be taken on that if we are to function properly. I am concerned that, although we can continue to moan about this, nothing will actually happen in response—these things are continually put on to the back burner. Convener, I would like to record the fact that we have to say clearly to the Executive—through your own offices or through those of the conveners group—that we cannot continue as we are at present.

We have to remind the Executive that this Parliament, unlike Westminster, has a rolling programme. We are not tied into meeting deadlines by the summer recess or by an October adjournment of Parliament. The Executive must recognise that and the fact that we may be trying to squeeze too much into the pot.

As a result of this meeting, it may be worth while our drafting a letter to the relevant authority to state our concern about the fact that we are having to squeeze in the budget scrutiny because of the rest of our work load, which is not satisfactory. I will write, saying that the committee is seriously concerned about its ability to function as it is supposed to.

We have a helpful list to be going on with. That is useful to the clerks, because if we are to establish how to schedule things, we need a clear steer right from the start. It might be useful for the clerk to notify all the organisations that we have mentioned that they will receive a formal request at some point and that they might want to get themselves ready to give evidence. This formal scrutiny process will be new to all the organisations as well. We must remember that they will not necessarily be prepared for the process going through in the present time scale.