Justice Committee

Meeting date: Tuesday, April 16, 2013

Official Report 533KB pdf

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Budget Strategy Phase

Agenda item 5 is on the budget strategy phase. The Finance Committee has written to all subject committees to invite them to identify spending priorities from the spending review 2011 on which they would like to receive an update from the Scottish Government. The Finance Committee will collate responses from subject committees and ask the Government to provide an evaluation of performance on the identified priorities, which we can consider as part of our budget scrutiny later in the year.

A number of issues that we might like to receive progress updates on are listed in paragraph 8 of paper J/S4/13/11/3 and relate to the committee’s previous recommendations arising from budget scrutiny. Members can of course come up with their own suggestions, and no doubt will.

Do members have any comments on any particular areas in which they would like to receive progress updates?

I am particularly interested in the third bullet point in the list about community penalties. There is a lot that we could glean if we got some information on that.

12:15

Paragraphs 11 and 12, on page 10 of the paper, mention churn of cases and urgency in relation to the use of video conferencing and so forth. It would be useful to get an update on the work that has been done on reducing churn and its success or otherwise and on what resulted from the urgency 18 months ago and where we are now.

Those are two good points. Is there anything else?

I thought that paragraph 8 captured all of the things that we should be pursuing and I was content with that.

Okay, we are happy. The committee will now go into private session.

12:15 Meeting continued in private until 12:29.