On behalf of the committee, I welcome three witnesses from Reliance Secure Task Management Ltd and Reliance Custodial Services in Scotland. They are Mr Tom Riall—we hope that that is not too literal—the managing director; Mr Geoff Cooper, the director of operations; and Mr Campbell O'Connell, who is the operations director in Scotland. We extend our thanks to the three witnesses for their attendance this afternoon. I understand that you would like to make a brief preliminary statement and I am happy for you to do so. Obviously, the purpose of the afternoon's session is to explore issues by means of committee members asking questions. If the statement could be as brief as is conveniently possible, that would be appreciated.
I will keep my opening statement brief. First, I would like to thank the committee for inviting me and my colleagues to give evidence today. Between the three of us, we have 70 years of service in the public sector. Campbell O'Connell, who is sitting to my left, was a senior police officer in Strathclyde police for more than 30 years. Geoff Cooper, who is sitting on my right, retired as a senior police officer with Gloucestershire constabulary after 35 years service. I joined Reliance after a career in the armed forces.
Thank you. I will start our questions with some broad exploration of the relationships among the parties involved. I will leave Mr Riall to determine which of his colleagues is the most appropriate to respond.
Campbell O'Connell led our implementation in Scotland, so it is best that he answers that question.
For about 15 months prior to the contract being rolled out on 5 April, I was deeply involved on a daily basis with the police, the SPS and our other colleagues, particularly as the D-day of 5 April approached. A lot of work was involved and we met on a daily basis to look forward, to make adjustments and to review our proposals. It was important that I was involved for a long period with all our partner agencies.
So, over those 15 months, part of your work would have been pre the signing of the contract.
Yes. I was also involved in the negotiations that led up to that.
You mentioned the police and the Prison Service, but what about the Scottish Court Service and the Scottish Executive?
We held regular meetings with the Scottish Court Service and the Scottish Executive as well. However, the two particular agencies with which we held meetings were the police and the Prison Service.
With all those groups, did the dialogue take the form of meetings as well as other forms of communication?
Meetings and visits to various locations such as courts and prisons.
Were your meetings with the Scottish Executive consultative, or were you there to report? What was the nature of those meetings?
They were not just for us to report to the Executive; they were for us to go through our dealings with the SPS. When I referred to the Scottish Executive a moment ago, I should have said that I did not meet members of the Scottish Executive directly. Things were always done through the authority of the SPS.
So, your connection with the Scottish Executive was at second hand, via the SPS.
It was.
I thank the witnesses for coming here today. Before I ask my main question, I wonder whether you would—just for the record, and because it might help with questions to follow—tell us how many prisoners have been released in error in phase 1. How many of those releases would you put down to errors on the part of your company?
I am sure that every member of the committee is aware of the speculation and the considerable number of allegations about the number of releases in error. Up to 28 May—which was the end of month 2 of the contract—a total of 17 alleged incidents took place. All of those have been investigated or are currently being investigated. Of those 17 alleged incidents—and I make the point that they are only alleged incidents at this stage—six could be attributable to an element of Reliance failure. The most prominent, of course, was the incident that we could classify as an escape—that of James McCormick. That was the only incident for which there was any concerted attempt to deceive or to collude in an escape.
Thank you—that is helpful information to have on the record.
We did not anticipate issues in three specific areas of the service. The first of those was the peak, or the surge in volume, on a Monday or on a Tuesday following a bank holiday. The only experience that we have been able to draw on has been that of our work in England and Wales, where, typically, on a Monday, we experience an upsurge in volume of about 30 per cent above the level for a normal weekday. What has surprised us in central Strathclyde—which is the only area that we can describe currently—is that the upsurge in volume is, in some cases, more than 100 per cent above the level for a normal weekday. Resourcing an operation that, on any one day, has a volume that is 100 per cent higher than any other day, represents a logistical challenge. We did not anticipate that sufficiently, but we have already gone a long way towards overcoming the problem.
Of course, James McCormick was released not from Glasgow sheriff court but from Hamilton sheriff court.
Our position is quite clear. As I have already said, the only experience that we have been able to draw on is our experience in England and Wales, where we experience an upsurge in volume of about 30 per cent at the start of the week. We therefore took the data that we were presented with and applied that experience. As it transpires, the surge in volume on a Monday or a Tuesday after a bank holiday Monday is considerably greater than anything that we have experienced in the past.
Did the SPS and the police not tell you what the volumes in Scotland were and when the increases and peaks were likely to be?
The police supplied us with monthly volumes, which meant that we did not have a picture of specific daily volumes. That was for us to interpret as part of the bidding process, along with the other bidders.
Given that Mr O'Connell said that the prisoner volumes that you had dealt with were higher than what the SPS originally indicated that they would be, is it your position that the SPS gave you figures that later turned out to be inaccurate?
The point that I am making is that the volumes experienced on a Monday or a Tuesday following a bank holiday Monday were higher than anticipated.
Was that a surprise to you? Would you not have expected that the SPS would have known what the volumes were on a Monday and a Tuesday following a bank holiday?
You would have to put that question to the SPS, but it was not providing the service prior to that.
You have made much of the fact that performance has improved and that you are now delivering 97 per cent of prisoners to court by 9.30 in the morning. However, the memorandum that the SPS prepared for us for today notes that the SPS continues to give transitional assistance to Reliance. Is the improved performance possible only because of that continued assistance? If so, when will you be able to deliver that level of performance on your own?
Campbell O'Connell can talk about the level of support that we are now receiving from the police but first I will give the committee today's figures. We moved 99.5 per cent of all prisoners to court on time today. Across central Strathclyde, two prisoners were late, being delivered at 9.40. All of that was done without any support from the police.
The assistance that we receive from the police has reduced dramatically over the past two or three weeks. The assistance was primarily being given at Glasgow sheriff court. Now, the police are there to support us if required. However, we are managing to cope without their hands-on assistance. In the other courts, we receive no assistance from the police. They are present for public order duties. The custodial business in the courts and the delivery of prisoners to courts are wholly the responsibility of Reliance. We are dealing with that effectively at the moment.
So the stabilisers are effectively off. You are getting no hands-on assistance from the police or the Prison Service.
At Glasgow sheriff court, there is a police officer who is taking a step back and overseeing our work in the reception area. In all the other courts, we are running—as you describe it—without stabilisers.
Are you 100 per cent confident—as you were on 27 May—that the roll-out to phase 2 will happen within weeks?
It is important that we meet the criteria that we have been set. We have to provide an efficient service and the progress that has been made is clearly recognised. We have to get approval from the contracting authority. I feel that we are making sufficient progress to allow us to move forward and we are preparing for that eventuality.
I have two small points for clarification. You mentioned the complexities of the Scottish justice system and warrants in particular. Outstanding warrants for a prisoner who is appearing in court are a material factor. The former regime had access to outstanding warrants through the police computers and, therefore, knew whether a prisoner who was appearing in court was the subject of other attention. Is that information accessible to Reliance? Are you able to access that information when you bring a prisoner to court?
We do not have access to the police national computer. Every day, we are supplied with a record form that is completed by the dispatching agency, which could be the Scottish Prison Service, the police or hospitals. The PNC is checked for outstanding warrants and that information is recorded on the record form.
Let us clarify your entitlement to access information, Mr O'Connell, as it is important. Under the previous regime, the police had access to outstanding warrants on any prisoner who appeared in court on a charge. They would regularly check the computer so that, if there were outstanding warrants, they could be dealt with contemporaneously in the court. I am slightly concerned that, from what you are saying, Reliance does not seem to have that facility.
We do not have access to the PNC. However, a question has been raised about the full accuracy of the information that is on the PNC.
Nevertheless, the fact that that information is not available to Reliance—for reasons that I appreciate have nothing to do with Reliance—is a fairly serious flaw in the system.
It is a flaw that can be overcome by everyone in the partner agencies working together. We have new skills and new information and we are working with other authorities to ensure that everything works well.
But it is an important aspect of dealing with prisoners who have been apprehended and are in custody.
Particularly in relation to warrants, yes. I agree with you. That is an important issue.
Yet Reliance does not have any right to get that information.
Not directly.
Thank you for that.
I refer again to our experience in England and Wales. Geoff Cooper, who has been running the service for the past seven years, will verify this. In England and Wales, we do not have access to the PNC, nor do we need it. What we need is to have that information supplied to us in a proper format. That format is the prisoner escort record form—the personal escort record form, as it is called in Scotland. The important thing is for the information to be supplied in a proper format, so that we can act on that information. We do not need access to the PNC; we need the supply of the relevant information.
As I understand Mr O'Connell's response, Mr Riall, that system is not currently in place.
It is in place if the information is transferred to the PER form, the record form to which we have just referred. Usually, the information from the PNC is transferred to the record form. However, there have been occasions on which the information in the PNC has not been there. We have found out later that warrants have appeared that have not been recorded on the initial record form.
Are you satisfied about the adequacy of the system to enable Reliance, which is in charge of a prisoner in custody, to identify whether there are any outstanding warrants relating to that prisoner?
We have acknowledged that the system is complex. It is currently being reviewed and we would like to contribute to that review. We are confident that more watertight arrangements will come from that.
As Tom Riall indicated, we have a system in England and Wales whereby there have been three releases in error in the past eight years. We have not had any releases in error in relation to warrants. In England and Wales, when police forces arrest somebody or execute a warrant on a prisoner, they check the PNC, which identifies whether the person who has been arrested has any outstanding warrants at any other court in England and Wales. Having identified that, the police can then charge the prisoner with all the warrants outstanding. The fact that the prisoner had been arrested with multiple warrants outstanding would then be notified to us at our control centre early in the morning, using a notification form. The PER form would be completed to endorse that fact.
There have been many references to Reliance's record in England and Wales. You say that you have not received any performance penalties in the past 14 months. I know that, over the first two years of the contract, you incurred £25,000 in performance penalties. Could you give us an idea of Reliance's total performance penalty in the course of its contract in England and Wales so far?
Off the top of my head, I cannot give you the exact figure for that, but I can tell you that, over the course of the contract, performance has improved to the extent that those performance penalties have diminished to zero in the past 14 months. In the year before we took over in our area, the south-west of England, there were 32 recorded escapes. In the first year of our operation, there were 16 escapes. In the past two years, there were only two recorded escapes out of a quarter of a million prisoner movements. That demonstrates a continual improvement over the life of the contract.
Let me follow that up and help you with some figures. In the first two years, between 1999 and 2001, the firms providing private prisoner escort services incurred a combined penalty of £620,000. There is clearly a gap between 2001 and the past 14 months. The penalty involved in that time is likely to be many hundreds of thousands of pounds.
On the first point, I am not privy to information about penalties that have been applied to private contractors.
Well, the information is in the public domain. I got my figures from the internet.
Instead, I have given the committee information about Reliance. Over the past 14 months, we have received no financial penalties in our English and Welsh contracts. As for your second question, about our role, I do not accept that our management have been inadequate. Campbell O'Connell and his team have worked tirelessly over the past eight weeks to bring the service to an acceptable standard. I commend him for his work and the delivery times that we are now achieving.
So with hindsight you do not accept that the transitional assistance and monthly performance summaries that you have been asked to supply have been necessary.
That is not what I said. We are talking to the SPS about supplying monthly reporting information. We are happy to do that—
I am sorry to interrupt you, but neither the monthly performance summary nor transitional assistance was stipulated in the initial contract. Is it fair to say that they were introduced because of Reliance's record in its first few months?
Again, I do not accept that. As matters have progressed, there has been a desire for more information. We have worked closely with the SPS to ensure that information about our performance has been made available.
I am aware that other members want to ask questions. I ask Mike Pringle to be brief.
When I was a justice of the peace, I found that prisoners frequently came before the district court and the sheriff court on the same day. Perhaps some problems have arisen because you have not been aware that someone who appears in the district court is then due to appear in the sheriff court. Is that correct? If so, how are you managing that situation?
There are difficulties in that area. With what we have learned over the past couple of months, we are addressing the matter. However, we could have as many as 20 prisoners a day transferring from Glasgow sheriff court to Glasgow district court or vice versa, which creates difficulties.
Could the problem be solved by ensuring that prisoners did not have to appear in the sheriff court and the district court on the same day? After all, this problem does not exist in England; it is unique to Scotland.
That would certainly be helpful. We could also ensure that all an individual's warrants or outstanding issues are held at one particular court, which would avoid the need to transfer to another court. Although such an approach might create some administrative difficulties, it would be advantageous to the system.
Have you made representations to the right people about that problem?
We are aware of the issue and have certainly brought it to people's attention and highlighted it in our meetings. We are still only two months into the contract and are addressing various issues. Although we have clearly made progress, that particular issue remains to be addressed.
You said earlier that you did not anticipate the situation in Scotland. I am surprised that you had no Scottish advisers when you considered bidding for the contract. Did the Scottish Prison Service not advise that there were differences between the Scottish and English systems? I find it difficult to believe that you simply walked into the situation.
I am sorry if that is the message that has come across. I worked for Strathclyde police for more than 30 years and a number of our senior managers are from Scotland. In the early days, we received assistance from experienced officers and managers from down south, but there is no doubt that we had Scottish input from the word go.
On your preparedness for the implementation of the contract, you said that you were in constant dialogue with the SPS. Prior to implementation, did you have to satisfy specific criteria to demonstrate to the SPS that you could fulfil the terms of the contract? If so, what were those criteria? Were criteria set by agencies other than the SPS, such as the Procurator Fiscal Service and the Scottish Court Service, which might have slightly different but equally valid requirements?
We had a detailed implementation programme, which covered the five months between the signing of the contract and its start on 5 April. That programme was properly project managed with clear milestones, all of which were met. The SPS regularly reviewed the implementation programme and our achievement of the milestones, so that process was very much in place and was adhered to throughout.
If the implementation programme was adhered to and properly managed, why were there so many problems with implementation? Was the volume of work in the courts simply underestimated? Surely with all that Scottish experience you should have known that sheriff and district courts tend to be busy on Mondays and on Tuesdays following a bank holiday.
First, the committee must recognise that that any first-generation contract that transfers a complex operation will inevitably involve a learning curve, which I alluded to in my opening remarks. Some difficulties in the early days were due to the learning curve for our new staff and our new control centre. Despite the best will in the world and the due diligence that we went through, there were also certain issues, which I have mentioned, that were not anticipated. The difficulties in the early days were caused by the combination of those two factors. However, a great deal of work has been done to put those right. We now have a much more transparent and accountable system that can provide accurate and up-to-date performance information on a daily basis. That has never been in place before.
Did you ever feel the need to ask the SPS to consider delaying implementation or were you always confident that you could implement the contract on time and successfully?
We jointly acknowledged that the five-month period was tight, but it is not unusual for us to operate to tight time constrictions. I believe that the majority of the issues that subsequently transpired were not time related but were connected with the other issues to which I have already alluded.
If the timescale was tight, did you ask for a delay in implementation?
The time delay was agreed with the SPS and we signed up to it.
My next question revolves around the differences and similarities between the experience in England and Wales and the situation in Scotland. You have told us repeatedly today that in the past 14 months you have not suffered any financial penalties, because you have successfully operated contracts, but you said in your opening comments that the contract in Scotland is different from the contract that is operated by the Home Office in England and Wales. What are those differences? Are the conditions in Scotland more stringent? If the same contract had been implemented in England and Wales, would you have suffered financial penalties in the past 14 months?
I am sure that you will be acutely aware of the importance to the company of keeping what we regard as commercially sensitive information private to the company. However, the point that I have made is that our contract in Scotland is more stringent than our contract in England and Wales. As to whether under the operation of a similar contract in England and Wales we would have incurred financial penalties, the answer is yes, we would have incurred a limited number of financial penalties.
So it is not correct to suggest to the committee that your record in England and Wales is perfect, that we can have real confidence that the future operation of the contract in Scotland will meet all the criteria that have been set by the SPS and that you will not incur financial penalties. You will incur financial penalties only when you do not successfully operate the contract to the criteria set down by the SPS. Is that correct?
I would love to be able to say that our performance in England and Wales was perfect but, alas, I am afraid that I cannot. The point that I was trying to make is that we are providing a good service down south and we have been re-awarded a larger contract as a result. The other point that I was trying to make is that the committee can be confident that the contract that we are operating to in Scotland is of a stringent nature and will ensure that we deliver to the highest standards.
Karen Whitefield touched on penalties. It has been reported that the penalty for an escape is £25,000. Can you confirm that?
I am not prepared to comment on allegations made in the press.
I am asking you to give it to us from the horse's mouth.
I am not prepared to give out information that we regard as commercially sensitive.
You are at the start of a seven-year contract. You are being paid pretty handsomely out of the public purse for doing a job. You are contracted to pay some money back to the public if your performance falls below acceptable standards. What is commercially sensitive about publishing the amount of the financial penalties that you have to pay?
There are a number of issues. One is that we regard that sort of information as having the potential to give an advantage to a competitor.
We are several years away from the contract being retendered.
But similar contracts are being tendered elsewhere and that information could give an advantage to a competitor. The other point is that the information could be used by those who are intent on damaging the company to cause us harm.
So your share price is more important than the public interest.
No, it is not. If we are damaged, we are not going to be in a position to be able to provide the service to you in Scotland.
You hesitated in response to Karen Whitefield's question, so let me repeat it. Did Reliance at any time prior to the implementation of phase 1 of the contract ask for it to be delayed?
There were on-going discussions with the SPS as to what was an acceptable period for the implementation. In the end, we agreed that the period of five months between contract signature and implementation, which was on 5 April, was acceptable. That was clearly a matter of considerable thought and discussion.
Let me put the question differently. Would it be fair to say that the SPS was keen to have the contract implemented fairly quickly, but that you naturally might have wanted more time? Does that characterise the discussions that took place or did the SPS suggest that there should be a delay until you got things right?
I accept neither of those propositions. I return to what I said originally: the matter was the subject of sensible discussion between both parties and we arrived at an implementation period that we felt was achievable.
You mentioned that the SPS conducted reviews of the implementation timetable. Were those reviews conducted by the SPS or by the joint project board that was established and is chaired by the SPS?
Our contracting authority is the SPS.
So the dialogue about implementation was directly with the SPS.
It was, although project team members from other agencies were involved.
Were they involved directly in your discussions about implementation or at one stage removed from them?
Those discussions were predominantly with the SPS.
The procurement process specifies the outputs, against which you tendered. You were required to specify inputs such as the numbers of staff and vehicles. At any stage, did the SPS ask you to change anything from your original proposals? If so, what did it ask you to change?
As part of the discussions and the negotiations, validation took place of the resource levels that we intended to deploy on the contract.
So the SPS did not ask you for any changes to increase or decrease numbers. That is a material point. It would be useful to know what you were asked to do.
It is clear that the contract is output based, so it is our responsibility to deploy the staff and resource levels that are necessary to provide the right level of service on the contract.
Two members want to cover training and employment practice and issues for the future. I ask Colin Fox to be as brief as he reasonably can be.
I will be as brief as I can. I understand the witnesses' reluctance to discuss matters that they might consider to be commercially confidential, but they will appreciate that the public wish to understand the great mystery over why Reliance obtained the contract and the employment and staffing issues that are involved.
Could you be specific with your question? I am sorry—I did not catch it.
I am saying specifically that, as an employer in England and Wales, Reliance has paid its staff lower rates of pay than the staff who did the job before received and has adopted management practice that curtails rights that staff who did the job previously had. Those are the reasons for the difficulties that we have had.
What is your question? We need to keep the session pointed.
I have described my question. Do those factors relate to the difficulties that Reliance has had in Scotland in the first few months of the contract?
I do not think that the difficulties that we have had in the early days of the contract can be inferred from the rates of pay that we give staff.
You do not think that the way in which you have managed staff, what you pay staff and the way in which staff work for the company relate to the errors that have been made.
I do not. If you could illustrate that, I would be interested.
I have given illustrations. If that is your point of view, that is your point of view.
I have one brief question to clear up a point. It has been suggested that, initially, some Reliance drivers did not have heavy goods vehicle licences, although they were driving HGVs. Is there any truth in that?
There is absolutely no truth in that.
Fine—that has been cleared up. My next question is about where we go now. What are your hopes and aspirations for the next six months? I assume that you hope that the contract will be rolled out throughout Scotland eventually. How can we be confident that your company will perform the contract more efficiently than in the past? I accept that there are problems when any new business is started up, but I would be interested to know where you think you will be going in the future.
On the issue of where we go from here, I would point to the service standards and delivery times that we are now achieving. Our aspirations are to continue to build on and improve the service levels that we have already achieved and to demonstrate to the SPS that we are ready for subsequent phases and, subject to the approval of the SPS, to roll the contract out across Scotland.
I want to follow on from Colin Fox's question but will take a slightly different tack. In her statement to Parliament, the minister said that 150 additional staff had been deployed and that another 50 were in training. Did those people have a relevant background of experience and skill or were they raw recruits who could be trained in the work that Reliance had in mind?
As we roll out the contract, there will be employment opportunities for 600 staff across Scotland. Currently, we have about 200 certificated staff. My estimate is that around 15 to 20 per cent have a background in the criminal justice system, which is to say that they are former police officers and prison officers. The others come from a variety of backgrounds. They all realise that it is a stiff task but believe that it is an opportunity for them to work and have a proper career with Reliance.
How successful are the raw recruits—I note that you said that a significant percentage do not come from a justice-related background—in securing certification and proving themselves to be capable of doing the job?
The detail that Campbell O'Connell has just outlined is in line with the picture that we have had in England and Wales for the past seven years or so. People who come from other walks of life have fitted into the contract extremely well. The attrition rate for the type of work that those people undertake is extremely low.
For the record, the SPS memo says:
We have already agreed that with the SPS.
The SPS says that the summary will itemise the payment that is made to you for the period in question. Will it also show any deductions that are made for performance breaches?
It will show the total amount that is paid to us each month.
Will it make clear how much would have been paid but for your performance breaches, or will there simply be a net figure?
There will be a net figure.
So the public will still have no way of knowing how much it is being paid back for your performance breaches.
The public will see our performance in terms of delivery times to court, escape record and so on. Those data will be published in the summary.
However, the monetary amount that you must pay back to the SPS for breaches will be secret.
There is certain information that we consider could be damaging to the company and which we are not prepared to release. That is a matter of importance to us.
So much for the public interest.
As members have no further questions, I thank Mr Riall, Mr O'Connell and Mr Cooper for attending this afternoon's committee meeting. We appreciate your presence here, which has provided members with a valuable opportunity to explore issues further, which we could not otherwise have done.
Thank you very much, convener.
A fan has been procured in response to the somewhat melting conditions, but we cannot find a socket to plug it into. However, that technological problem will be surmounted and the temperature will become a little more bearable.
We are grateful to be given the opportunity to discuss these issues. To avoid having to make a short, or lengthy, opening statement, we thought that it would be helpful to the committee for us to set out on a piece of paper, which we circulated to all members last week, the SPS's perspective on the project on which we started out and the position that we have reached. Having read the Official Report of the meeting at which the committee decided to take evidence on this matter, we sought to provide further information and background that we thought would be relevant to the committee's concerns. The memorandum that we have circulated obviates the need for us to make a formal opening statement.
Thank you for that, Mr Cameron. As with the previous witnesses, I shall start by exploring the relationships among the parties that are involved in and affected by the contract. In paragraphs 15, 16, 17 and 18 of your written submission, you explain that
To some extent it was. Prior to the contract coming into force in the west—and this is still the case elsewhere—prisoners were taken to court either from police custody or from prison. There were variations to that, but the broadly accurate position is that prisoners who were already in prison for a sentence—that is, who had been convicted—tended to be taken to court by the SPS and were held there and produced. People who had been kept in police custody overnight, having been arrested, were taken to court by the police. Remand prisoners who had not been convicted of any crime at that stage, or perhaps at all, were also transported by the police. There were exceptions to that position, depending on local circumstances. Therefore, both the police forces and ourselves had some experience of transporting and holding prisoners. Of course, the contract is not just about taking prisoners to court from prisons or police stations; it is also about taking prisoners from prison to prison, from prison to hospital or back to a police station. We tended to focus on the court, but there are a lot of other journeys to be undertaken.
Quite so. The memorandum identifies the fact that one area in which it was thought appropriate for the SPS to involve ministers was the proposed inclusion of court custody services. I assume that, if the duties had been simply escort duty or transport between prisons or between prison and hospital, they would have been solely within the province of the Scottish Prison Service. There was clearly an element of the work that was not the normal province of the Scottish Prison Service. The Scottish Prison Service was not in the habit of walking into courts, attending to prisoners and ensuring that they went into the correct courts.
It was in some circumstances, but not in others. Let me go back to the beginning. We have eight police forces, each of which transported prisoners and helped them. The Prison Service also did that for various reasons. We were the only national body to do so. However, we took the view that that was not our core business and that if we could contract it out, we would do so.
That is helpful, Mr Cameron, and it leads me to the next question. I assume that extensive discussions had to take place between the Scottish Prison Service, the police and the Scottish Court Service before the contract was signed. Elements of the work involved in the contract had not been the primary activity of the Scottish Prison Service. Before the contract was signed, what form did such discussions take? Were they meetings? Were they briefing sessions?
They were meetings. At the earliest stage, we held some meetings with our partner agencies, in particular with the police—who were doing the job alongside us, as it were—the Scottish Court Service, the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service and the district courts. We discussed how best we should go about the task. We had a project system, which evolved procedurally into something called projects in controlled environments—PRINCE—methodology, which is used for complex projects. At each stage, there was a debate to be had among the various partner agencies about what was wanted, about the outputs that we would wish to see from a contract and about what each part of the system needed to do in order to bring that about. It was an iterative process that took up quite a long period of time prior to the letting of the contract.
In its evidence, Reliance indicated that its staff were busy attending meetings and that, when it came to liaison with the client end of the contract—that is, the Scottish ministers—everything was done exclusively through the Scottish Prison Service. Is that correct?
Yes. As far as I know, at no point were parts of what you would understand as the Scottish Executive—from which we are at arm's length—involved in that liaison. We were handling the contractual negotiations. We also chaired meetings and discussions with our partner agencies in order to move things forward. It was necessary for somebody to do that, and we agreed to take on that role.
The contract is in the name of the Scottish ministers, albeit represented by the Scottish Prison Service.
Yes.
Does that mean that there was some form of reporting to the Executive by the Scottish Prison Service to let the Executive know how things were getting along or what issues were arising?
No. As I think our memorandum states, we involved our partner agencies, including the police forces and the Court Service, in the process. We did not have discussions such as you describe, apart from on the one issue that we mention in the memorandum, which is—
The financial issue?
As the operation was to be much bigger than the SPS part of it had been, we had to know, not unreasonably, that, if we successfully concluded a contractual negotiation with a company, we would have the wherewithal to pay that company. That required discussion with ministers about the overall financial position. I think that our memorandum shows what happened. That was at a stage at which we thought that it was worth while going ahead and at which the amounts of money that were likely to be required became clear.
So the only time the Scottish Executive came to prominence in relation to the contract was when things began to go very publicly wrong.
Post the contractual negotiations and post implementation, yes.
We know that Reliance underestimated the scale of the challenge that it would face when it took over. Today, its representatives have given us some insight into the factors that it underestimated, including the surge in volume on Mondays and on Tuesdays following bank holiday Mondays, the complexities of the Scottish system and the unique nature of Glasgow sheriff court. Some people might find it hard to believe that a company with all that Scottish experience on its payroll would not know that the courts are busier on a Monday. That aside, surely it was your job, as the lead contracting agency on behalf of the police service and the Scottish Court Service, to make sure that Reliance was given an accurate picture of the scale of the task that it was facing so that it could be adequately prepared.
We gave Reliance the information that was available to us and to the other agencies. As you heard earlier, Reliance did not say that it had not anticipated properly the peaks on a Monday or a Tuesday after a bank holiday, but those peaks were larger than it had anticipated; that is pretty much common knowledge.
What is common knowledge?
That the peaks on a Monday or a Tuesday after a bank holiday are higher than volume on the other days of the week.
Can I say—
Just wait a moment; the committee has to be clear. I do not think that that was common knowledge to some of the members of the committee. It might have been common knowledge to me because I happen to have represented clients in a criminal court. However, it is a little unfair to impute to Reliance, which was being asked to take on a contract, that something is common knowledge, so I ask you to focus on Nicola Sturgeon's question, which needs a precise answer.
I will focus on the answer that I am looking for. Let us be charitable; I can accept that Reliance did not know the size of the surge in volume on a Monday or a Tuesday after a bank holiday, but I cannot accept that you, the police, or the Scottish Court Service did not have that information. Did you not find out how many people go through the courts on a Monday so that you could tell Reliance and allow it to prepare for that?
In general terms, that information was not available to us in that form.
Is it not your job to get that information in that form?
Let me draw attention to one of the difficulties that we had prior to this contract. The information base in that area was generally not good, and one of the benefits of contracting was that it would give clarity. We made available the information that we had readily to hand, and Tom Riall indicated that we gave monthly and annual figures of the historical patterns of distribution. His colleague also said that Reliance had detailed discussions with the police and others about the particular pinch points. As someone said earlier, the contract for which we invited tenders asked for a certain range of outputs and the company accepted that it had to do what Tom Riall called "due diligence" in order to assess whether it could do the work. The company did that, as Tom Riall indicated, and, with hindsight, there was an underspecification of the degree of the peak on a Monday or on a Tuesday after a holiday. My reference to common knowledge was a reference to it being common knowledge that there was such a peak, but the precise nature of that peak has emerged only since the contract became live.
Reliance has made it clear today, and Mr O'Connell made it clear previously, that the volumes were higher than you had indicated they would be. You appear to be saying that that is because you did not have accurate information. I am concerned about that because your memo says that your role in the negotiations was to concentrate on outputs and what had to be done, and that it was up to Reliance to say how that would be done. However, if you did not know how many prisoners were going through the courts on a Monday, how could you possibly tell Reliance what had to be done so that it could make sure that it was prepared to do the job properly? Is it not your failure properly to brief Reliance that has led to this fiasco?
I do not think so. We did not give Reliance daily information.
Do you not know how many people are in prison or on remand on any given day?
We know how many are in prison and on remand; we do not know how many will be.
Was it not rash, to say the least, to privatise the contract before you had accurate information at your disposal to make sure that the private company was up to the job? Would it not have been better to delay until you had the information that would enable Reliance to be properly prepared?
In our view, we gave Reliance sufficient information.
But Reliance says that the information was wrong.
Reliance said that it underestimated the size of the peaks.
Yes, but Reliance's ability properly to estimate the peaks relied on the accuracy of the information that you were giving it, so it was your failure to give it that information that meant that it could not be prepared for the job. Is that not correct?
I am not sure where the inaccuracy that you are referring to comes from.
Let me quote Campbell O'Connell:
That is a question of volume and there is no doubt that the volumes have increased since the initial invitation to tender was issued.
So you contracted to allow a private company to escort prisoners around the west of Scotland before you could say with any accuracy that you knew how many prisoners you were expecting it to transport. Is that a fair assessment?
No; we gave figures for Scotland, not just for the west of Scotland. The figures that we gave to Reliance were the historical figures for those prisoners who had been moved, not figures for those who would be moved, because the contract is also for volume.
So they were historical figures. Did you not have any concerns that you were asking the company to prepare to do a sensitive job on the basis of historical information?
No, and Reliance did not either. The question as to whether the information was precisely accurate is, I agree, a separate one, but the information that we gave to Reliance was the best that was available at the time.
But it was not good enough, because this situation has arisen.
We have indicated performance from our own information, which we gained from Reliance, about the course of the past two months. What that does not give us is an accurate annual position. We will get that only when we have gone through the year.
Do you regret going ahead before you had—
I am sorry, Nicola, but I really have to ask you to draw your questions to a close.
No, I do not regret it at all. One of the things that we have indicated through the contract is that the prior arrangements were by no means perfect and that the baseline information that we were dealing with was far from perfect. That is one of the things that the contract has dealt with. I would like to ask Bill McKinlay to say more about that.
I would like to seek clarification on one important point, Mr Cameron. If I understood Reliance's submission correctly, it said that, of the three unanticipated—that was the word that it used—areas that it encountered, the first one that Mr Riall mentioned was the peak on Mondays and on Tuesdays following bank holiday Mondays. I have to say that the fact that there were any unanticipated areas rings its own alarm bells, but that is another matter. I think that Mr Riall cited a 100 per cent increase in the normal volume of prisoners being processed after bank holidays. I understand that you do not dispute that peak, because you explained that it was common knowledge. I infer from that that you assumed that what you knew automatically translated into the knowledge that Reliance had.
It is common knowledge that there is such an increase, and I think that Tom Riall spoke about Reliance's experience of a 30 per cent increase on a Monday elsewhere. What is common knowledge is the fact that there is a higher number on one day than on another day; the precise difference is not something that is common knowledge. Knowing that depends in part on knowing how many arrests have been made over a weekend.
So Reliance could not reasonably have been expected to know something that may have been common knowledge within the Scottish Prison Service. Given that the information that you were presenting showed, I presume, a flat-line monthly figure without peaks, it must be the case, if I understand your evidence correctly, that Reliance was not specifically made aware that, on a Monday or a Tuesday following a holiday in Scotland, there will be a sharp increase in the normal volume of business.
I would like to say something about holidays from a practitioner's point of view. That there will be increases in the region that we are talking about is not predictable or certain because we will not know the number of arrests or the number of prisoners who are held in the police divisions who must go to court. I can say that I know the number of prisoners who are going to court from a prison, but I will not know how many will return from court or how many will be released—I will not receive such information until around 5 o'clock on a Monday evening. I cannot predict that every Monday I will require a certain number of cells to cope with 100 per cent more people, so we must try to average things out.
So are you saying that such increases are not common knowledge?
I am saying that it is known that there is a general increase, but that increase is determined by the courts and how many arrests there have been in a particular weekend. Sometimes, we have predicted large numbers that have not materialised.
Perhaps Willie Pretswell, who was involved in negotiations, can say something about this important matter.
I think that all parties are saying that there is considerable uncertainty about the volume of prisoner movements in respect of prisoners who must be transported at any point in time. The contract provides for that uncertainty by having different volumes of prisoner movements over the period. If the volumes increase over what we call the baseline and happen to be sustained over a full year, the Scottish Prison Service will pay more money for that. The SPS has therefore contracted out the risk of the uncertainty in prisoner volumes to Reliance, which is best placed to manage that risk and to cope with the peaks. Over the year, things might balance themselves out. There is no cap on the prisoner volumes that Reliance is contracted to deliver—it must manage those volumes and make appropriate resourcing decisions in order to manage them in any particular area.
Three members—Mike Pringle, Jackie Baillie and Colin Fox—want to ask questions. Are those questions related to the issue that we are discussing?
You have asked my question, convener.
In that case, Mike Pringle will be followed by Colin Fox.
I am sorry to pursue this matter, but I am confused, and if I am confused, perhaps other people are confused, too. We were given evidence by Reliance that it was given monthly figures that were not broken down. You have said that the figures that you gave Reliance were not just for the west of Scotland, but for throughout Scotland. Is that correct?
We have a total annual estimate of volumes, which was the best guesstimate of the historical position. I understand that that estimate was broken down into monthly volumes.
Were you aware, as I was aware as a result of my court experience, that there was normally a substantial increase in the number of prisoners going to the court in Glasgow on a Monday or on a Tuesday following a bank holiday? Were you aware of substantial increases in numbers on those days?
We were aware in general that there could be, on a Monday or a Tuesday in Glasgow—
But not always.
As Bill McKinlay said, sometimes there are very steep numbers on a Monday in comparison with the rest of the week, but not always. However, as our chart shows, over the past two months, on average, a Monday or a Tuesday following a bank holiday tend to be busier days than other days of the week, although that will not always be the case, and it is not always the case everywhere.
So during the negotiations, you never thought of passing on such information to somebody in Reliance, which was taking on a new contract and which had no experience of the Scottish system.
I cannot speak personally because I did not—
I do not care. The Scottish Prison Service carried out the negotiations. Did nobody involved in carrying out the negotiations ever think of passing on such information?
I cannot say whether we did or did not—I do not have that information.
We heard from Reliance that you did not pass on the information. We heard that you gave Reliance monthly figures.
We gave Reliance monthly figures. You asked me a different question, which was whether the company could reasonably have known that there were Monday or Tuesday peaks.
Why would Reliance have reasonably known that? It had no experience in Scotland.
One of the three people from Reliance who just appeared before the committee has 30 years' experience and was in charge of the courts system in Glasgow prior to the invitation to tender and the awarding of the contract. In a room full of people, Campbell O'Connell from Reliance would know more than most about how the Glasgow courts system worked. He has huge knowledge of the system in the west of Scotland.
I ask Mike Pringle to draw his questions to a close to allow others to put theirs.
Are you saying that the problems were not the SPS's fault? Are you shifting the blame to Reliance?
No—I am not blaming anybody.
Somebody is at fault. Is the Scottish Prison Service prepared to admit that, with hindsight, it would have been better for you to have given Reliance more accurate information than you gave it? In retrospect, would that have been a sensible thing to do?
It might have been, had we had access to that option, but I cannot say that we would have acted in that way.
I want to follow up the answer that you gave to Nicola Sturgeon. How has Reliance's poor performance affected your decision to go private?
Are you asking whether we would contractorise the service if we had our time over again?
No, I am asking you to reflect on the time that you have had.
We still think that awarding the contract to a private company was an excellent thing to do.
In answer to an earlier question, you mentioned the information base to which Reliance did not have access. Surely that information base has been used for decades by the police and the Scottish Prison Service and is well established. Is it fair to say that the information was already held by those agencies when the problems with Reliance were uncovered?
No, unfortunately it is not fair to say that, as the Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland has said publicly. The service was far from perfect previously. Bill McKinlay can speak far more eloquently about that than I can.
We did not in the past record well enough the numbers of court appearances relative to the number of cells that we had in the Prison Service. The number of court appearances related to how many courts would sit. It was never felt—wrongly or otherwise—that we needed to record those figures. I am sure that there is a general figure, as was said earlier, but there will not necessarily be the detailed figures that are being sought today.
I am delighted that somebody has taken some responsibility for the mistakes that have been made.
Did I say that?
That brings me to the nub of the whole issue. In the past, when the public sector made a mistake, it picked up the pieces. Now we have a private company that makes mistakes and the public sector picks up the pieces. Is not it the case that, when prisoners are released in error, it is the public sector—the police and others—that must respond to the private sector's mistake? Is not that why such high penalties are applied?
Releases in error are not a new phenomenon. When such an error takes place, if the judgment is that the person who has been released in error must be recovered quickly, that is done by police forces. That is still done as it was before. However, one of the difficulties in the debate—to which we draw attention in our memorandum—is that it is difficult to compare the performance of the Reliance contract with what went before because, as Bill McKinlay said, what went before was not well documented. There were not, as there are now, robust systems that provide transparency and which have introduced the project and contract disciplines that we now have in place.
We are still dealing with supplementary questions, so please keep questions brief.
I just want to be clear—Tony Cameron said that nothing had changed. With respect, is not the complete opposite true? The situation is not the same. Nowadays, when the private sector makes a mistake, the public sector picks up the pieces. You said that the police used to do that—which is true—but they are now doing it as a consequence of mistakes by a private escort company. With respect, the situation is not entirely the same; it is entirely different from what happened in the past.
I would like to say something about the past. When I started in Barlinnie about three years ago, user groups were set up at the Glasgow sheriff court and at the Glasgow High Court. The two groups considered various issues in respect of difficulties or problems that arose in the criminal justice system, one of which was late delivery of people to court and another of which was late delivery of people to prison. Those problems existed in the past. Part of the process involved resolving issues in different ways; those are the steps that we are now taking. The problem is not new. No one would condone what has happened, but it is wrong to think that it did not happen before and that, in the past, no one was trying to resolve the problems that arose.
I will mention two brief points. If I am to believe what you are saying, the police and the Prison Service just show up on a Monday or a Tuesday following a bank holiday and guess at the volume of prisoners.
Quite often, the information about who needs to be transported is available only fairly shortly before people need to be transported; the system has always worked in that way. Nowadays, although better procedures are in place to document the process, the fact is that, given that people need to appear in court on a next day basis, the amount of time that is available for the process will always be relatively short.
You said that you were not the person in the SPS who was directly responsible for giving information on the subject. Is not it the case, however, that you are ultimately responsible?
Absolutely—that is why I am before the committee today.
I want to return to information. You said that you were not in possession of all the information about the prisoners who required moving around the system. What did the SPS do to ensure that it had from all the other services the information that needed to be passed on to Reliance?
We had a multi-agency project board, which operated under the PRINCE methodology, through which the various teams and agencies were represented. The SPS compiled the volume data from its own resources, having contacted each prison in order that we could compile the most accurate information.
Each of the services would have had expectations on what the contract should deliver. Who was responsible for drawing up the criteria that would be required for each of the services if the aims and objectives of the contract were to be delivered?
Basically the same process was used. The SPS had overall responsibility for taking the matter forward from the beginning of the process to the awarding of the contract. Each agency was given the opportunity to specify its requirements. Again, the information was consolidated into an overall service specification, which went out to tender, and to which Reliance responded. The specification is embodied in the contract. Every agency had an opportunity to specify their own requirements. The process was validated through the multi-disciplinary project board.
Once the contract was awarded, who was responsible for monitoring the state of preparedness for implementation of the contract? As part of that process, were the members of the joint management board, who represented all the services, able to assess whether Reliance, as the successful contractor, was able to meet the criteria that they had asked be included in the contract?
The requirements that were placed on Reliance were obviously covered in the contract. Once the contract was awarded, the SPS took responsibility for setting up a project board to oversee implementation. That board included representatives from the various agencies and interested partner organisations. Service level agreements were set up between the SPS and the various partners, which outlined the responsibilities of each organisation in supporting the introduction of the contract. In due course, Reliance provided the various assurances that were required before the contract could be implemented in April.
Did the police service, the Procurator Fiscal Service and the Scottish Court Service all agree, in preparing for implementation, that they were satisfied that Reliance was in a position to guarantee delivery of all its service requirements? Did those services have the information that would have allowed them to make a fair assessment?
The decision was made through the escort implementation board, where there was representation. The implementation board was satisfied that the process had been carried out to meet the requirements of the contract, and it was satisfied that Reliance was able to deliver. That is why the contract went ahead in April, as scheduled.
Were the individual board members who represented the other agencies provided with the necessary information to allow them to make that judgment?
They were provided with the information that was deemed necessary by the project board, in accordance with the PRINCE methodology that was used to manage the whole process. No representation asked for further information before agreeing that Reliance be allowed to proceed. A positive recommendation was given.
Earlier, I asked Reliance whether the five months that was agreed between Reliance and SPS had at any point been discussed. I asked whether Reliance had asked for a time delay. Mr Riall was very reluctant to say that he had not asked for a delay. He said that the matter had been discussed. Did Reliance ask for a delay during the negotiations? Was that request rejected?
I have no knowledge of such a request or such a rejection. Willie Pretswell may be able to add to that answer.
The implementation plan was agreed with Reliance through the negotiation phase and was included in the contract that both parties signed. That was the plan that was subsequently implemented on schedule.
I am not asking what was agreed at the end of the process; I am asking whether or not the company asked for a delay and whether or not discussions followed that request, after which the implementation board refused to accede to the request. Did Reliance ask for a delay? Was a request refused by the implementation board?
I am not aware of any request from Reliance to delay the contractual implementation programme.
Did you sit on the board, Mr Pretswell?
I did not.
So you are not in a position to answer the question. Who is in a position to answer the question?
Nobody here today was on that board.
Do you think that it is acceptable that you have come before a committee of the Scottish Parliament to be asked very detailed questions about this contract but have no one with you who sat on the implementation board?
It is not possible to know in advance which detailed questions might be asked, so—
I think we all knew that implementation of the contract was probably going to be high on the agenda. I think the committee gave you considerable notice that we wanted you to come and answer questions. You may have overall responsibility but if you did not chair the meetings that took decisions on implementation, I think it would have been wise of you to ask officials to come along to assist you. Do you agree?
Well, I said what I said: it is not possible to know the degree of detail of questions. As it happens, we cannot answer your particular question from our own direct knowledge. However, Willie Pretswell gave an answer. It is my understanding, too, that we know of no such request having been made or refused.
In that case, will you put in writing to the committee whether a request was made and whether it was agreed to or refused, rather than mention what happened at the end of the deliberations?
I would be delighted to do that.
Finally, who took the decision on the contract? Who signed it off? Was it the board, was it part of the board or was it you as chief executive of the Scottish Prison Service?
The joint project board made a positive recommendation that the contract be awarded to Reliance. The SPS, as the contracting authority, then duly completed that contract, which was signed on behalf of Scottish ministers by me as I have delegated authority from the chief executive of the SPS to do so.
Are you telling me that a board that was responsible for the contracting out of a sizeable part of the work of the Scottish Prison Service and other public services did not have on it, nor was it chaired by, the chief executive of the SPS? If so, what responsibility did the chief executive of the SPS have for overseeing and checking that the recommendations that were made by the board were the right ones?
Under the PRINCE methodology, the chief executive is designated as project sponsor. I referred to the project board, the role of which was to carry out the work on behalf of the project sponsor. The project board made the recommendation to the project sponsor, that is, the chief executive. On that basis, the recommendation was accepted and the contract was awarded to Reliance.
If the chief executive of the SPS had no input, would not it have made more sense for somebody from the board to have been in front of the committee today to answer some of the questions? Given the serious interest in the subject now and prior to the implementation of the contract, would not it have been wise for there to be some input from the chief executive of the SPS?
No. I am satisfied with the methodology that we used—I have no problems with it. I was at various meetings, received various reports and had discussions with Willie Pretswell and others during the course of the negotiations.
So, Mr Cameron—are you telling us that you are completely satisfied that at all points you were provided with all the necessary information, that you were aware of what was going on, and that ultimate responsibility lies with you as chief executive of the SPS?
The answer is yes to all three parts of the question.
Is the implementation board the same as the project board?
It used the same methodology. A separate project board was created to manage and oversee the procurement process up to the point of contract. At that point there was a transition to a separate implementation board, which was chaired by an operational director who was a board member of the SPS and who took over responsibility. Certain members of the project team moved over to the implementation team and are now actively involved in managing and overseeing the performance of the contract. We guaranteed continuity, which is important to a contract such as this. The representation on the boards was not identical, but the methodologies were.
It would be extremely helpful if, as requested by Karen Whitefield, the committee could be given information about whether either board ever received a request from Reliance to delay the implementation date of the contract.
We will do so.
Can we have the composition of the two different boards? It would be interesting to know that.
It would be helpful to know who was on the boards.
Yes.
Colleagues, I am conscious of time. The Minister for Justice has still to come before us, but I appreciate that there has been extensive interest in putting questions to the Scottish Prison Service. Four members—Colin Fox, Mike Pringle, Maureen Macmillan and Jackie Baillie—still have questions. Their areas of interest might have been dealt with already, but if that is not the case, they should keep their questions exceedingly brief.
This question is brief and simple. How many SPS staff have been redeployed and where have they been redeployed to since the contract with Reliance was signed?
I cannot give an exact figure because the contract has not yet been rolled out.
How many have been redeployed in the west of Scotland?
I cannot say for sure. For the whole contract, our broad expectation was that about 200 SPS staff would be redeployed. However, it is early days and the contract has been only partially rolled out.
To where will the staff be redeployed?
They will be redeployed within prisons.
I can give the figure for Barlinnie, to which 22 staff will be redeployed. However, the benefits go far beyond redistribution of staff, and include a lack of disruption to the regime, continuity and regularity in delivery of prisoners from court to prison, fewer late arrivals and greater care of prisoners, including women prisoners who are sent to Cornton Vale. As a practitioner, I believe that all those benefits have come as early results of the contract.
This question might be on a different tangent, but could the SPS have thought a bit more laterally about the contract? In this day and age, we should not need to have lots of prisoners dashing around in vans simply so that they can give their name in court and plead not guilty before being returned to prison. Could we not have used technology such as video links, rather than enter into a contract that simply replicates what was being done before? I know that video links between prisons and courts have been successfully piloted. Did that not occur to you?
Yes. We have such a system at Barlinnie, so perhaps Bill McKinlay will say something about that.
We set up a link jointly with the Scottish Court Service between Barlinnie prison and the sheriff court in Glasgow. Initially, we did that to test the extent to which we would use such a service, but we wanted equally to provide sheriffs and solicitors with the opportunity to use the link. In May, the system was used 37 times; those were 37 times when a prisoner did not have to appear in court—an average of 12 per week. Solicitors are beginning to use the video link both prior to and after their clients' appearances. They even use the link for interviews, rather than come to the prison. I will need to check this, but I think that the link was used on one occasion for communication between a father and a child over the child's problem.
How many journeys between prison and court would such a system save?
That is difficult to determine. The video link means that a prisoner who has to attend court for a one-minute hearing does not need to leave the prison at 7 o'clock in the morning and be held in a court cell until 5 o'clock at night. He does not have to vacate his prison cell and take his property with him. Those to whom I have spoken who have used the system think that that is an advantage. Perhaps the issue is that people need to get used to the technology.
The technology has been around for quite a long time, so I think that your progress has been a bit dilatory. It would be a lot easier on all concerned if such journeys did not have to be made.
My understanding is that legislation was required before the video links could be introduced, but we have used the technology since then. Video links are now being used for quite a high proportion of full committal hearings in Glasgow sheriff court.
We are considering whether to extend the service to other courts. Now that the six-month evaluation period has ended, we are waiting for the evaluation report to be completed and are already discussing how to expand and extend the service to outlying courts.
The committee would be interested to read your statistics on that.
I want to return to the critical question of decisions and relationships. Is the fact that Mr Pretswell signed the contract not an administrative matter? In civil service parlance, Mr Cameron is the accountable officer. Does not that make you ultimately responsible for the policy decision?
Yes.
Fine. It is helpful to have cleared that up.
If you are asking me whether the board formally decided to let this contract, my memory is that it did not. Individual board members and the board collectively were certainly informed about the progress of the case, but I do not think that a formal recommendation was made to the board as a board. I wonder whether Willie Pretswell, who is a fellow board member, can recall anything.
The project board included three representatives of the SPS board, which is half of its representation, and none of the non-executive directors. Under the PRINCE methodology, a project board that is constituted for a particular function makes a recommendation to the project sponsor—in this case, the chief executive. Although the board received regular progress updates, the recommendation was made to the chief executive and not to the full board.
In what circumstances would you involve the board? Would it be simply a token feature, or are board members involved in strategic decisions such as the one that we are discussing?
We have had a number of discussions about the SPS's future. It was very much a board decision to launch our vision of correctional excellence in which we seek to do for prisoners things other than just lock them up.
On the question of relationships, I know that I cannot ask you to tell us your advice to ministers. However, I can ask you to tell me who provided the advice and the stage at which it was provided. Was it provided directly to the minister or was it given to a civil servant? Was it written or verbal? Was no advice given at any stage, other than on the two points that you highlight in paragraphs 15 to 20 of your submission?
Without looking again at the paragraphs to which you referred, I can say that ministers were involved at the outset because the proposal needed their co-operation and it needed financial restructuring. At the end of the process, we informed the minister that we had let the contract and we asked her whether she would like to make an announcement to that effect, as the contract was to have very great benefits for public safety, the police and the Prison Service.
So you informed the minister. She did not decide to agree the contract or its terms apart from—right at the beginning—the policy position that the work could be considered for contracting out.
I want to be absolutely precise about this. The Prison Service would have decided by itself whether to contract out only its own prisoner escorting system. However, because the proposal involved eight police forces and the co-operation of a number of justice partners, it was necessary for us to inform the minister at the outset. That was the context in which arrangements started. As I said, however, at the end we took the decision. We did not ask the minister. We make it plain that at no point was the minister asked to approve the contract in any way.
So the decision was yours.
The decision was ours.
Who is in charge now? A decision must be made about rolling out the contract. Who will take that decision? Will it be the Scottish Prison Service, as the contracting party, or the minister?
As I think the minister has said—I do not have her exact words in front of me—the Scottish Prison Service will take that decision and be accountable to the minister for it.
You said that the SPS and Reliance agreed that roll-out of the contract would be rephased. In her statement, the minister said that she had made it clear that no further roll-out would take place. Will you or the minister take the decision?
I have described the position as I understand it. I do not have the precise wording, but I think that the minister said something slightly different from what you described—she said that we would be accountable to her for the decision.
The issue is important. My impression from the ministerial statement was that the minister was assuming responsibility for deciding whether further phases of the contract with Reliance would be rolled out. The committee wants to know who you think is in charge.
I have described the position as I understand it. I understand that the contract will roll out to other parts of Scotland when the SPS believes that Reliance is ready to extend the services that are set out in the contract. The SPS and Reliance are discussing a revised implementation programme.
Do you have to obtain the minister's agreement to that? I will read to you what the minister said in her press release:
I cannot tell you that. I do not want to add to or subtract from the words in that statement, which I thank you for finding.
We must know whose decision it will be to roll out the contract.
The SPS holds the contract—we are the contracting authority. In my view, it is our decision. The wording in the statement is entirely consistent with that position.
If you tell the minister that you think that the contract should be rolled out and she says no, will her word or your word carry the day?
As Jackie Baillie said, discussions between civil servants and ministers are privileged.
I am not asking you to tell me the content of any discussions; I am asking whose word will carry the day—will it be yours or hers?
The minister has said that it is a matter for us to provide the necessary assurances. That is the position.
I had thought that my questions were irrelevant, but perhaps they are now extremely relevant. What is the future of the contract? Will it be rolled out? If so, when will that happen?
I think that the contract will be rolled out. I would not like to give a prognostication about when or where the contract will be rolled out because we have not completed our discussions with Reliance, as the Reliance witnesses said.
Your view is that the decision is yours.
Contractually, the decision is the SPS's.
We are running very late and the minister has waited patiently for some time, so it would be discourteous to continue questioning the Scottish Prison Service witnesses. On behalf of the committee, I thank Mr Bill McKinlay, Mr Tony Cameron and Mr Willie Pretswell for attending. I know that the session has been longer than expected, but committee members' interest was extensive. It has been obvious from the questions that many points required clarification and explanation. That justification for the length of time the witnesses have spent here has been borne out to the last minute.
Meeting suspended.
On resuming—
I welcome the Minister for Justice, Cathy Jamieson. I apologise for the delay, minister. It is a measure of the interest in the earlier evidence sessions that committee members wanted to question witnesses extensively.
With your permission, convener, I shall say a brief word on the matter to update members on the present circumstances. Members will be aware that inquiries are under way into the circumstances surrounding the failure to submit an appeal on time. However, I want to say at the outset that, as members would understand and expect, those inquiries will be undertaken in the light of proper procedures, particularly in relation to employees and the rights that they have in the process of inquiries. That set of inquiries is under way and, for the record, I should also say that it is a technicality, if you like, that the report that will arise as a result of those inquiries will go to the Lord Advocate, because of where the legal services section is located within the Executive.
On behalf of the committee, I express appreciation for that update. I have no desire to hijack the agenda for this meeting away from the important business that is scheduled. I found your comments helpful.
Thank you again for the opportunity to make some opening remarks. I am aware that people have had a long afternoon already, in fairly hot—at times heated—circumstances. You have heard a great deal of information from both Reliance and the Scottish Prison Service about the preparations, process, implementation and remedial action in relation to the prisoner escort contract. As members are aware, the Auditor General for Scotland will be scrutinising the contract to confirm that it has been properly entered into. I have asked the Auditor General to bring forward that report as quickly as possible. Given the undeniable problems that have arisen and the clear public interest in the matter, I felt that that was an action that I, as minister, should take.
Thank you, minister. I will carry on from where we left off with Mr Cameron—we asked him who is in charge. You alluded to your statement to the Parliament, when you said that the roll-out
As Tony Cameron, the chief executive of the SPS, told the committee, contractual responsibility for signing that off lies with him. However, I want to put on the record a number of issues that I would expect to have been addressed before he takes that decision. It might help the committee if I briefly set out some of those issues.
That is a reassuring list of what you might require. The contract is described as being between the Scottish ministers and Reliance Secure Task Management Ltd, but does your answer mean that you will remain detached from the process? There is now no dispute that there has been no ministerial attachment to the negotiation of the contract—the Scottish Prison Service has performed that entirely separately—but given what has unfolded and the fact that, technically, the contract is between the Scottish ministers and the security company, do you intend to involve yourself with the Scottish Prison Service to ensure that what you seek and desire to achieve is achieved?
There has been some discussion this afternoon on the exact nature of that relationship, but the framework document is clear that the Scottish Prison Service has delegated authority to undertake work as an executive agency. However, I had concerns about the impact that the problems with the contract were having on the wider criminal justice service and that is why, for a period of time, I felt that it was important to take an active interest in it. I continue to expect delivery on the ground and I expect improvements, including from the discussions and consultations that are going on with all the partner agencies.
Were you surprised that the contract was signed not by Mr Cameron but by the Scottish Prison Service's director of finance?
I understand that other Scottish Prison Service contracts have been dealt with similarly. The framework document allows for various delegated powers, so from that point of view, it does not come as a surprise. However, we must realise that a huge amount of public money is involved, as a number of members have mentioned. That is why the contract is important and why I asked the Auditor General, who, as part of his normal work, would scrutinise the contract and the contracting process, to bring forward that work so that the Parliament and the public could be reassured that everything had been done in accordance with the procedures. The committee has heard from the SPS this afternoon what some of those procedures are and how it has carried them out.
I do not know whether you heard the evidence from the Scottish Prison Service, but none of the SPS witnesses was able to answer Karen Whitefield's question about whether Reliance had ever intimated to the Scottish Prison Service a concern about being able to implement the contract properly in the timescale that was on offer. Apparently, such matters would have been the responsibility of either the project team or the implementation team, and none of our three SPS witnesses seemed to have direct personal knowledge of exactly what those groups had done with reference to whether there had been a request to delay the contract's start date.
I do not wish to correct you, but it is not a case of delegated authority being given to a quango. The SPS is an executive agency and, obviously, there is a difference. However, I am concerned to ensure that, when decisions are taken, they are the right decisions and that they are based on the fullest information possible.
Many people will think, when they listen to you talk about the criteria and the tests that Reliance will have to meet before roll-out is agreed to, that things might have turned out differently had the same rigour and attention to detail been applied by you before implementation. Let us reflect on the fact that the contract is not for the cleaning of the SPS offices; it is a £126 million contract to provide an essential public service. Do you understand the degree of public concern there will be when people hear that the Minister for Justice had nothing to do with the negotiation of the contract, and that the chief executive of the SPS seems to have had little to do with the negotiation of the contract? With hindsight, do you think that that is a matter of regret?
If you look at the framework document, as I am sure that you have done, you will see that the SPS has the delegated authority to undertake such work. Perhaps there is a wider issue across the Executive in relation to how contracts are managed.
But my point is that people will ask themselves, if a contract of this nature and value does not merit a hands-on approach by the minister or, at the very least, by the chief executive of the Scottish Prison Service, what on earth would be the contract that would merit that attention?
I am sure that you have heard this afternoon that the SPS has in excess of 300 contracts, a number of which are for service provision as well as for supplies and various other items. You have to ask yourself whether it is the role of the minister to negotiate and be involved in all those contracts; I argue that it is not. The SPS was set up as an executive agency exactly to carry out such work. It is the minister's responsibility to set the policy direction and to ensure that it is carried out; that is what ministers, including my predecessor, have done at various stages.
With respect, I am asking you why no distinction is made between a contract to clean the offices of Tony Cameron and a contract worth £126 million to escort dangerous prisoners around the country.
With respect, I am referring you to the setting up of the Scottish Prison Service as an executive agency and to the framework document, which delegates powers to that organisation to undertake the work that has been referred to.
I do not know how much of this afternoon's evidence you heard, so I apologise if you did not hear it all.
I heard the evidence that was given on that point. I understood people to say that Reliance understood that there would be peaks on Mondays and on Tuesdays following bank holidays, but that it had not fully appreciated the scale of the peaks. I understood the SPS to say that the information that was provided was aggregated on a monthly basis, and had not been broken down on a daily basis. I understand that that was because the information was not collected by the courts and the police according to a common framework, so producing the information would have been difficult.
Surely somebody who works in the courts day in, day out—either from the police or the Scottish Court Service, if not the SPS—would have known that, even if the specific figures were not available. Is it not a failure that that information was not passed on to the SPS so that it could give it to Reliance?
People may have known about that increase anecdotally, or experienced it, as have many who have worked in the court service.
It may have been better to have the information before privatisation.
I refer to my answer to a previous question. If a specific number of staff had been mentioned in the contract and the volume of work had increased, we could have found ourselves in difficulty. Nicola Sturgeon is shaking her head—
I cannot believe how little information you had.
If a number of staff had been specified in the contract and that number turned out to be not enough to provide the service, that would have led to difficulties.
So you are saying that you could not specify staff numbers because you did not have enough information about how many prisoners go through the courts daily.
No. I am saying that the contract specifies the outputs clearly and that Reliance is responsible for providing adequate staff numbers. Reliance has ensured that the additional staff that it has recruited have in the main been employed in and around Glasgow sheriff court to deal with some of the problems there. Reliance now has a much clearer indication of the required staffing numbers, bearing it in mind that Glasgow sheriff court is not typical by any manner of means.
Most of the releases have happened at Hamilton sheriff court.
Alleged incidents have happened elsewhere. In the early stages, the James McCormick saga took place in Hamilton. However, it is worth noting that not all the alleged releases in error have been Reliance's responsibility. The situation has highlighted problems that people who know the system and who have been in and around the courts—such as you and other members—recognise happened previously. The issue is how we ensure that the correct information is available. We heard from Reliance about difficulties in getting information on warrants. We need to tighten up the system, which is exactly what I expect the working group to do.
Should that not have happened before the contract was signed?
You could argue that people might have heard a lot anecdotally, but information on releases in error was previously not centrally collected.
Given that you knew that, should you not have ensured that you had an accurate picture of how many prisoners are escorted daily and what the job entails before you took the momentous step of handing the job to a private company?
With all due respect, that is a different question from that about releases in error.
That is the question that I am asking.
I have already given an answer about the information that was available and provided to Reliance. The agencies collect information differently and not all the agencies were able to provide a daily breakdown.
Could you not have asked them to standardise the system and get clear information so that before we asked a private company to set outputs and do the job, we knew the scale of the job that we were asking them to do and what the outputs would be? Instead, we got Reliance in to do the job and let its mistakes demonstrate the mess that the system was in before we tried to sort it out.
Reliance did not start without information; the police and the Scottish Prison Service provided information.
According to Reliance, the information was wrong.
In the light of experience, perhaps some of the information was not as accurate as the information that can now be gathered as a result of Reliance's experience of working in Glasgow sheriff court, which is where the majority of the problems have been and remain.
I assume that the minister saw most of the evidence that we took. If not, she will reflect on the Official Report of this meeting. Today we heard that, in effect, the policy decision on the contract was made by the accountable officer, in this case the chief executive. At no point was advice sought from ministers. Indeed, the Scottish Prison Service board was not collectively involved in making the final decision. Would you expect the board to be involved in making what some of us would regard as a key strategic decision?
I assume that the board was involved in discussions at various points in time. However, as Jackie Baillie rightly indicated, the chief executive, as the accountable officer, is responsible for the overall decision-making process.
I will be more specific. Would you have expected the chief executive to consult the board before arriving at a final decision?
I would have been surprised if the final decision had been taken without consultation of some sort with the various board members and the wider partner agencies. This afternoon we heard that that consultation happened.
We will reflect on the Official Report.
It is worth referring to the framework document, which sets out the precise terms of the derogation to the Scottish Prison Service and the particular position of the chief executive.
Does the minister consider that it is time to review the framework document? Indeed, does she not think that it is time to review the form and governance arrangements that are in place for the SPS? I was disturbed to hear about the lack of accountability that was described to us today. Will you take steps to fix the system once and for all, so that the lack of accountability and the problems with governance that we have witnessed in this contract are not repeated?
The framework document is reviewed on a five-yearly cycle. I understand that it was last reviewed in 2000, so it is due for review five years from that date, at the latest. It is worth my mentioning the fact that all Executive ministers have been asked to examine both governance and working relationships with the agencies that are associated with their departments. As members are probably aware, those vary considerably from agency to agency and department to department.
I am absolutely aware of that. That is why I am so astonished by the governance arrangements that were put in place here. Do you intend to review those arrangements before the five years are up? That would be particularly welcome.
I do not wish to pre-empt other policy developments, but members will be aware that we are examining offender management. It is fair to say that in that context we will certainly examine the framework document.
I have a tiny final question. It may be slightly unfair but I will ask it anyway. After the debacle that has happened with this contract, do you have confidence in the advice that the SPS gives you?
It is fair to say that I am taking a very close interest in matters. I could be accused in recent times of taking too close an interest, because it is not for the minister to be an operational manager or the chief executive of the Scottish Prison Service. We have taken steps to ensure that the various parts of the criminal justice system have confidence that we are on the right track to improve. Elizabeth Carmichael, who is here from the community justice division of the Justice Department, is providing liaison in that process.
Bad as they are, the delays in delivering prisoners to court are probably not the public's main concern about the contract. The main concern is what you called the liberation in error of prisoners who have been released from the courts. Who will take responsibility, should Reliance's performance not improve?
Again, I make it clear that no release in error is acceptable, whether that happens because of an error by Reliance or because of an error by any other part of the system. This process has highlighted the fact that in many instances it is not entirely clear who, or which part of the system, has been at fault when information has failed to be conveyed at the appropriate time. I want the working group on warrants to address that serious issue.
If there were a repeat of the James McCormick experience, who would take responsibility—you or the Scottish Prison Service?
I make it clear that we do not expect there to be a repeat of the James McCormick experience. Every alleged incident of a suspected release in error is scrutinised, its background is examined and, where appropriate, lessons are learned. If Reliance has been at fault—it has accepted responsibility in a number of situations—it has accepted financial consequences.
I am sure that you did not expect the James McCormick situation to happen so it will be the unexpected that you will have to deal with. I take it for granted that Reliance is toast, but who will take the ultimate responsibility should the situation be repeated? That is the public's main concern.
We must ensure that there is no repetition of serious offenders walking the streets. We must also ensure that people who are brought to court at any point in the justice process are brought at the appropriate time and that we have no releases in error. That ought to be the focus of our attention; we ought not to be concerned only with what might happen, but with what has actually happened and take steps to close any gaps in the system. That is what we are trying to do at present.
You have explained the division of responsibility—Tony Cameron of the SPS is in charge of contracts and you are responsible for making policy. Are you saying that, if there is a repeat of the James McCormick experience, you will take ultimate responsibility?
I am not saying that. If there is any liberation in error, we must look at the circumstances of how it happened. That is exactly what we are doing with alleged liberations in error. We look to see where the fault lies and how we can deal with the problem in the particular circumstances.
I asked the Scottish Prison Service the following question and I am interested in your response. Has it struck you in any way, shape or form that one of the consequences of privatising court escort services is that, in instances of failure by private companies such as Reliance, the public sector is expected to pick up the bill and that that is a new phenomenon? Previous liberations in error were dealt with by the Scottish Prison Service or the police.
If one considers previous liberations in error, or liberations in error that could happen where Reliance is not involved, it is of course the public sector that deals with the situation.
So that is a new phenomenon—
It is not a new phenomenon that the police chase after people who have been liberated in error—it has happened before and it might well happen where Reliance is not involved. Such liberations in error tend to happen in circumstances where people have to be at a number of different courts and confusion has arisen where there are outstanding warrants or matters connected to fines, for example.
So it has not struck you that Reliance does not pick up the pieces when it makes mistakes?
If Reliance is responsible for an error, the contract has financial penalties, as people are aware, although they will not be aware of the detail. That system of penalties is right and proper.
You picked up my point about district and sheriff courts and going to different courts on the same day. Who will look at the system and decide whether it should change?
Again, I hesitate to get involved in another policy discussion at committee; I am sure that we will do that in due course. However, you will be aware that we have had a review of summary justice. Some of the recommendations that were made in that review concerned a unified court system and we discussed that in the debate in Parliament.
The Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 will come into effect next year. Will the act make any difference to what Reliance will have to reveal, or has it already revealed all that is necessary?
When I made my statement in the Parliament, I was keen to ensure that we were as open as we possibly could be in respect of the code of access. I am aware that Reliance feels strongly that particular pieces of information are commercially sensitive and, as I also outlined, I think that there is operational information that should not be in the public domain. We should not put anything in the public domain that prejudices public safety or causes public safety problems.
I think that that would be of more interest than the financial figures.
It might be of interest to a number of people who want to track progress. People will want to see that progress is being made from a not very good start, that performance is being improved and that improvements are measurable. Previously, one difficulty has been that many such things have simply not been quantified or measured. In the past, for example, we would not necessarily have been able to identify easily whether 95 per cent of people had been delivered to the courts in time by 9.30 on any one morning.
I have a final question about the roll-out. Earlier, you rightly said that before any further roll-out takes place, there would need to be a close and serious look at Reliance's performance. It is not your job to run the SPS, but should any advice that you receive from the SPS come about as a result of prior consultation with the SPS board and the chief executive? Would that help to reassure you that the SPS's senior management is fully aware of all the facts before you make any final decision?
The important issue is that the partner agencies are consulted. Obviously, there is a role for SPS board members, the majority of whom have operational responsibility for various matters in the SPS, and I would expect them to be appropriately consulted. However, I restate that the criteria and tests that I mentioned earlier are exactly the kind of matters that I would expect to be up for discussion with Reliance and the other partner agencies, and that people would agree that a point had been reached at which—day in, day out—delivery was such that people had confidence in the system. That is also important for Reliance, as it obviously wishes now to repair the damage to its reputation.
Nicola Sturgeon has a question. Is it brief?
It is very brief—it follows up on what Maureen Macmillan said. Being able to track the progress of performance will be useful, but do you accept that it is in the public interest to know how much of their money will be reimbursed by Reliance if it messes up? I still do not understand why that cannot be made public. If the only reason is that Reliance is worried that that might damage its commercial interests in some way, surely knowing that such information will be published would be a powerful incentive for Reliance to get its performance up to scratch to avoid incurring such financial penalties in the first place.
Earlier, the Reliance representatives talked about a commitment to a public service ethos. Whether or not financial information is published, I hope that they see that commitment as important and I believe that they do. It is also important that people are able to balance that public interest test with regard for commercial confidentiality. We and the SPS have tried to do that all along; indeed, the prison service has been as open as possible about the contract. The contract itself contains a lot of information and information on performance will also be published. That is what people want.
So you believe that in deciding whether to let people know how much Reliance gets stung for every time a James McCormick is freed, the company's commercial interests are more important than the public's right to know.
No. I have said that a test must be applied. In looking at and publishing the contract, the SPS has applied that test in line with the code of access to information. The service believes that it has done so correctly.
So in the case of James McCormick, you back up the SPS's view that commercial confidentiality—keeping Reliance's financial penalty a secret—outweighs the public interest in knowing what that penalty is.
The SPS took the decision after balancing commercial interests and the public information test.
Yes, but at the end of the day the information is either published or it is not. As a result, it comes down to one interest against another.
Frankly, I think that in the James McCormick saga most people were concerned, in the interest of public safety, that he was caught or gave himself up and was back where he belonged.
But catching him meant that the police—
I am sorry, Nicola Sturgeon, but you said that you would be brief.
Well, I am sorry, but it is an issue—
You have been allowed a concluding supplementary question.
All I am saying is that catching James McCormick took up police time and energy that would otherwise have been spent elsewhere. Surely it is in the public interest that Reliance reimburses the public purse for that. Surely the public right to know what that amount is outweighs commercial confidentiality.
The public interest test has been applied. I am aware that you do not agree with the result. Indeed, I have no doubt that whatever I say this afternoon will not change your mind and that you will take whatever action you believe to be appropriate on this matter. However, it is important to balance the public interest test with regard for commercial confidentiality. The SPS has tried to do that and of course has taken full account of the code of access to information.
If the freedom of information commissioner ultimately takes a different view, will you comply with his judgment?
That is speculation at this point. Obviously, I will take due account of anything that the commissioner says to the Executive.
I have a final question on governance. I recall, from the committee inquiry into the Scottish Qualifications Authority, that there was a statutory provision that permitted ministerial direction in exceptional circumstances. Is there a comparable provision for the SPS?
I sat on the inquiry into the SQA and when I was Minister for Education and Children I put through legislation to reform the SQA board. Although the two matters are not directly comparable, your point is interesting.
Minister, it has been a long afternoon and I apologise for the fact that you were kept waiting at the beginning. We thank you for your attendance this afternoon. It is appreciated.
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