Finance Committee, 20 Jan 2004

Meeting date: Tuesday, January 20, 2004

Official Report 281KB pdf

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Antisocial Behaviour etc (Scotland) Bill: Financial Memorandum

Good morning. I welcome members, the press, the public and our witnesses to the second Finance Committee meeting of 2004 in session 2 of the Parliament. I remind everybody that pagers and mobile phones should be switched off. We have received apologies from Wendy Alexander, who has an engagement in her constituency.

The first item on the agenda is further consideration of the Antisocial Behaviour etc (Scotland) Bill. We have with us officials from the Scottish Executive. Alisdair McIntosh is head of the antisocial behaviour division, Michael Kellet is the bill team leader, Rachel Gwyon is head of the youth justice and children's hearings division and Bill Barron is the head of the police, regulation and resources branch. I welcome them to the meeting, especially Michael Kellet, who has been here before, for the Water Environment and Water Services (Scotland) Bill.

Members have a copy of a submission from the Scottish Executive officials. We also have submissions from various other organisations, including the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities and the Scottish Children's Reporter Administration, which follow up on oral evidence that those organisations gave before Christmas. I ask the Executive officials to make an opening statement if they wish, after which we will move to questions from members.

I will make a few short points about the financial memorandum to the bill and the wider issue of resources to support the Executive's strategy for tackling antisocial behaviour.

First, it is important to say at the outset that the figures that are detailed in the financial memorandum represent our estimates of only the new expenditure that will arise directly from the bill. They do not cover action or commitments for which no legislative change is needed, such as the doubling of restorative justice places in the children's hearings system and the wider youth justice programme, the £30 million funding for community wardens and other local initiatives to tackle antisocial behaviour, and the further £30 million that was announced in September but that has not yet been allocated. Nor do the figures include funding for wider community regeneration and youth work.

Secondly, the figures in the memorandum are all new funds that are in addition to those that were previously included in the Scottish budget. Figures are given only for the two years to 2005-06, because funds for future years will depend on the outcome of this year's spending review.

Thirdly, the bill will introduce a number of new tools to improve the range of interventions that are available to agencies to tackle antisocial behaviour. For the most part, those are new powers for agencies to consider in the light of local strategies, local circumstances and the available alternatives, rather than new duties imposed on the agencies. We have made assumptions about uptake based on the available research and evidence. The information that we have used is drawn from data that are in the public domain and has largely been sourced from local authorities and other public bodies.

Finally, although the focus of today's discussion will of course be on the costs of implementing the bill and, to a lesser extent, the costs of the Executive's wider strategy, it is worth commenting that failure to tackle antisocial behaviour effectively also has substantial financial, economic and social costs that affect public agencies, local and central Government and society as a whole. Of course, it is difficult to quantify those costs, but the Executive believes firmly that they far outweigh the substantial additional investment that we are discussing today.

The Finance Committee's role is to probe the estimates that have been produced, not the policy issues.

The Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland's submission suggests that the additional cost for the police might be £2.2 million and perhaps £1 million in the first year. As the witnesses have had an opportunity to read ACPOS's views, I ask them to respond specifically to them.

The vast majority of ACPOS's estimate of the cost—about £2 million—is the cost of seconding police officers to antisocial behaviour units in local authorities. However, as ACPOS points out, ministers have not yet decided on the detail of the additional £30 million to which I referred that is aimed at tackling antisocial behaviour. We expect that an element of the £30 million will be available to local authorities and their community planning partners to develop and implement antisocial behaviour strategies. Local authorities and their partners will have to decide whether to use some of those funds to second a police officer to the antisocial behaviour team. Some local authorities already do that and some have applied for funding from the first round of £30 million for that purpose, but other authorities may want to use their allocation in other ways. At best, ACPOS's figures give a misleading picture of the funding position.

An issue of interpretation is probably involved, but we are charged with considering the financial implications of the bill as written. Clearly, that should include consideration of an estimate of the range of implications of the bill. It is not entirely reasonable for you to say that that point should be set on one side. Given our role, it would be consistent for us to expect you to give an estimate of the costs of the bill's implementation, taking out policy decisions but recognising that they might be made. An estimate that took account of that point would be helpful to us.

The cost that ACPOS gives of seconding police officers to local authorities does not arise from the bill—the bill does not require that to happen. I ask my colleague Bill Barron to address the other elements of the police costings.

ACPOS's estimate of the additional administrative costs that will arise from the bill's measures on fixed-penalty notices is provisional and tentative. ACPOS's submission does not mention the savings that will result downstream because of the reduction in the police work load that will result from the fact that officers will not have to give evidence in court in cases that are dealt with through fixed-penalty notices. The whole submission is a bit of a first shot and it misses some fundamental points.

One fundamental point is that the Executive's financial memorandum suggests that the operation of the fixed-penalty notices will result in defined net savings, whereas ACPOS states clearly that additional costs will fall on the police. Far from there being savings associated with the measure, net costs will be associated with it.

I do not think that that is right. ACPOS states that there will be costs and savings; the submission suggests, if one reads between the lines, that the fixed-penalty notices will result in savings. ACPOS has not said which will outweigh the other, but I do not think that it would argue with the view that it is too early to say and that the balance could well be that the savings outweigh the costs.

You say that it is too early to say whether the savings will outweigh the costs, but our concern is that your financial memorandum is clear that you expect net savings.

I have a number of points to make on that. The evidence on savings that we have gathered and, I think, included in the financial memorandum stems from published evidence on pilots of fixed-penalty notices south of the border, in England and Wales, which have been going for some time. The evidence from the pilot in the west midlands shows that, on average, when police officers use a fixed-penalty notice rather than a full report to the Crown Prosecution Service—the equivalent of procurators fiscal—that saves them somewhere in the region of two hours and frees them up for business that is more important than filling out forms. That evidence allows us to say that we expect a net benefit. We fully understand that we need to ensure that the system in Scotland is designed to realise those benefits and we have said that we will pilot fixed-penalty notices. We will work with the police and the Crown Office to ensure that the system is so designed.

In giving evidence to the Justice 2 Committee, Chief Constable David Strang said in response to a question from Nicola Sturgeon:

"The fixed-penalty notice is an alternative to full reporting to the procurator fiscal. If it stays at that high level, that should save time and bureaucracy."—[Official Report, Justice 2 Committee, 6 January 2004; c 432.]

That backs up what we are saying. Even a senior police officer who gave evidence—I think that he is the same police officer who signed the ACPOS submission—accepts that, if we design the system properly, there should be net savings to the police.

Yes, but the ACPOS submission says:

"when Conditional Offers and the Vehicle Defect Rectification Scheme were introduced to deal with road safety and traffic offences, the workload of officers actually increased, the additional spare time being put to good use to self generate additional work."

Exactly. That backs up what we are saying, because ACPOS is suggesting with that comment that the time saved by using a fixed-penalty notice system will free up the police to do better and more effective work and to improve productivity. That is exactly what we seek to achieve through the fixed-penalty notice system. The evidence that you quoted backs up what we are saying about a net saving. We would not accept that it is a criticism, because ACPOS is saying that conditional offers and the vehicle defect rectification scheme freed up time for police officers.

I follow the logic of what you are saying, but I am not sure that freeing up time necessarily equates to a cost saving, because the additional costs are associated with the mechanism through which the penalties are to be introduced. I am not sure whether fixed-penalty notices will result in a net saving to the police in terms of time. They might lead to increased efficiency, but they will not necessarily produce a saving as such.

That is a false distinction to draw, because police time accounts for the vast proportion of the costs to the police force in Scotland, so a saving of time is a saving of cost, which can be redeployed into whatever the chief constable deems his highest priority.

The ACPOS submission says:

"Figure used is salary costs per … Constable. This takes no account of involvement of higher ranks and the associated support costs."

There is therefore a huge element missing from your estimates.

As I understand that part of the ACPOS submission, the figures relate to the assessment of the resources that Lothian and Borders police already put into dealing with antisocial behaviour. Although we would not dispute any of that, the ministers' position would be that, if the bill is successful in cutting antisocial behaviour, Lothian and Borders police and other police forces should realise some savings, because they will be spending less time dealing with antisocial behaviour. The figure of £3,047,148 is an estimate of the cost of what Lothian and Borders police currently do on antisocial behaviour and not a reflection of any extra work that they would need to do under the bill.

I am having difficulty understanding the curious line of argument that we are hearing for the first time from civil servants. Our job is to examine figures in the financial memorandum and the civil servants' job is to provide those figures, but we are hearing today that some of the costs that the police and other bodies say will flow directly from the bill are allocated by the Executive in another pot of money, about which we have heard only this morning. That seems completely the wrong approach to providing the Parliament with an estimate of how much a bill will cost.

On what the witnesses have said is the main cost element in the ACPOS submission, ACPOS states:

"It is believed that some Local Authorities had budgeted for"

the secondment of a police officer to an antisocial behaviour unit

"and as such the costs were included in earlier bids to the ‘Building Strong Safe Communities' fund. However this is not the case for all and whilst unable at this time to be more specific, some officer secondments will be covered by mainstream budgets. Based on one officer per Local Authority the total estimated cost would be £960,000".

It seems odd to me that Western Isles Council and Clackmannanshire Council should second the same number of police officers—one—as the City of Edinburgh Council or Dundee City Council, which might require more than one police officer to be seconded, particularly if antisocial behaviour orders are to be used a great deal, as I presume the Executive anticipates. I would have thought that £960,000 could be a serious underestimate, but the point is that some local authorities have budgeted for secondment and some have not. The antisocial behaviour units in North Lanarkshire Council, Renfrewshire Council and Fife Council have particularly good records, but other councils' units do not. Surely you accept that the involvement of the police is imperative to make ASBOs work—to be frank, if there is not a policeman in every antisocial behaviour unit, the proposals will not work. The conclusion is therefore that you should have put that cost, or some provision for it, in the financial memorandum. Why have you failed to do so?

On the additional funds that do not flow directly from the bill, as the financial memorandum makes clear, the £65 million total, including the money for youth justice, will be used to take forward initiatives under the bill and those that do not require new legislation. In the letter that we sent to the committee on 7 January, we explain the relationship between the moneys in the financial memorandum that flow directly from the bill and those funds that support wider action to tackle antisocial behaviour.

On police secondments to local authorities, the £30 million for 2004-05 and 2005-06 from the building strong, safe and attractive communities fund allows local authorities that wish to do so to bid for money to support inward secondments from the police at neighbourhood level for antisocial behaviour teams. Some local authorities have indicated that they wish to follow that route and final decisions on funding from that first £30 million will be announced shortly. The second round of £30 million of funding will also be used to support action at a local level to support antisocial behaviour strategies. If local authorities and the police conclude that they wish to spend part of that money on secondments of police officers to local authorities, they will be able to do so.

On police involvement in local authority activities, it is worth saying that the police are already full participants in community planning structures. For example, they are already full participants in community safety partnerships, which will be the main mechanism for preparing antisocial behaviour strategies.

One of the problems for us is that, in policy terms, the Executive is emphasising the importance of the bill and the associated delivery, whereas you are saying that the cost of the bill's implementation will be limited but that other moneys that will follow from the bill and other legislation will deliver the desired effect. There is not a contradiction but a disjuncture between those two approaches, which gives us a bit of difficulty.

The Executive sees the bill as part of the wider strategy to tackle antisocial behaviour. The bill is, as I said at the outset, primarily about providing the agencies with additional tools to tackle antisocial behaviour in certain sets of circumstances, but it needs to be seen in its wider context. It is against that background that we wanted to explain how the financial memorandum and the figures in it sat within the overall amount of money that is available for antisocial behaviour. I apologise if, in so doing, we have caused confusion rather than enlightened you.

With great respect, I must say that the answer that I received was about as clear as mud, except that it indicated that the Executive has not directed that police officers should be seconded to every antisocial behaviour unit, which seems to me extraordinary.

I will move on to another aspect of fixed-penalty notices. There are references to fixed penalties on pages 29 and 54 of the explanatory notes. However, there seems to be rather more information—not for the first time—from those who have submitted evidence to us. I refer again to ACPOS, which said:

"During the first six months of the project, officers in the West Midlands issued 1,854 Penalty Notices for Disorder for crimes such as threatening behaviour, drinking in a designated public place, being drunk in a highway and throwing fireworks."

You have said that you have extensive information about that project. Indeed, it is on the basis of that information that you have concluded that there will be a net saving. I think that it was Mr Barron who painted that resounding prediction in a particularly roseate hue.

Given that you are armed with all the facts and that we do not have them here—unless I have failed to pick them up from my papers—could you tell me the answers to the following questions? First, what has the income been from the 1,854 penalty notices? Secondly, what is the cost in police time of dealing with them? Thirdly, will you specify any other factors that are of particular relevance to the detailed work that you say you have carried out?

I shall try to answer as many of those questions as I can. If there are others that we can follow up in writing, we shall endeavour to do that as quickly as possible.

I do not have the information on the total income from the fixed penalties. The fixed penalties in the pilot south of the border are priced at two levels, depending on the seriousness of the offence—some at £40 and some at £80. I am not sure about the balance between the two, but we can seek that information from colleagues down south. However, I can refer the committee to a Home Office publication produced in July 2003, which states:

"Research in the West Midlands has shown that a penalty notice saves at least two hours in preparation of case papers—resulting in a likely cost saving to the force of more than £170,000 a year."

That evidence is based on the pilot in the west midlands.

With respect, I specifically mentioned the fact that we had heard—from Mr Barron, I think—that you are relying on evidence on the west midlands pilot scheme in concluding that there will be savings. However, you are unable to tell us even the most basic components of that computation, so how can I have any faith in your evidence? Will you now take steps to provide a detailed computation of that work? Might we also have comments on it from ACPOS's counterpart body in England, just in case it, like the Scottish body, has reservations about whether the scheme is effective?

It seems to me that you have not answered the point raised by the convener—and put to us by ACPOS—that it is not always the case that dealing with fixed-penalty notices frees up time. Anyone who is acquainted with dealing with those rather bureaucratic procedures knows fine well that they can take a huge amount of time for the police, particularly when something goes wrong, something is out of the ordinary, people cannot be traced or forms have been completed incorrectly, or because of myriad other bureaucratic matters.

On the radio this morning, I heard the bill described as the Executive's flagship policy. This must be the first case in recorded history in which the flagship has hit the rocks before it has left the harbour.

As I have said, there is research evidence that shows a saving for the West Midlands police of £170,000 a year. That evidence is in the public domain and it is evidence that we have relied on. I shall certainly endeavour to get the information that Mr Ewing seeks. However, it might be useful to say that it is precisely in order to quantify and ensure that we can realise net savings in Scotland that ministers have decided that we should pilot fixed-penalty notices in parts of Scotland before attempting to roll them out nationally. ACPOS supports that position.

Before we leave the subject, I have a question on strategies. In the past, the committee has looked at some of the structural flaws in the financial memoranda that we receive. However, when a bill is coming to the Parliament at the same time as other strategies are being developed or guidance is being prepared that may incur costs or involve deciding how costs are to be divided up, we have difficulty in scrutinising those costs. In this case, some local authorities are ahead of others in putting together antisocial behaviour strategies. In the context of the bill, do you expect those local authorities that are behind to shape their strategies differently from those that have already put their strategies together? If so, the bill will inevitably have an impact on the cost of their strategies, because the authorities will shape them differently.

It is worth pointing out that all local authorities already have community safety strategies and action plans and a framework for tackling antisocial behaviour, albeit in a specific format. Although the strategies as defined in the bill represent a new duty, local authorities, in approaching that duty, will be building on existing mechanisms that have been developed to take forward their statutory community planning duties, so they will not be starting from scratch.

It is also important to emphasise that we will be producing guidance for local authorities on strategies, as we will on various other aspects of the bill. In both the first and second rounds of funding to which I referred—the initial £30 million and the further £30 million—some support will be available to local authorities to help them when they approach their strategies.

You will be aware that the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities strongly disputed the Executive's calculations on antisocial behaviour orders. COSLA has subsequently given us evidence based on the City of Edinburgh Council's experience of ASBOs, which indicated that one of the ASBOs cost almost £8,000. The majority of that cost was for solicitors' time. It is interesting to compare that with the ACPOS figures that show a police constable's time coming in at £17 an hour, whereas a solicitor's time comes in at £110 an hour.

Shocking!

Do you have any comments on that? In particular, I would be interested in hearing where you obtained your figures, because they seem to be distinctly different from the figures that COSLA has provided.

As we said in the financial memorandum, the figures that we have cited and used in estimating the cost of an ASBO come from research. That research, which is referred to in the financial memorandum, was on the role of mediation in tackling neighbour disputes and antisocial behaviour. It was published in March 2003 and produced by researchers at the University of Stirling. We relied on that evidence in the financial memorandum and we stand by it.

Costs in Edinburgh are estimated, as Elaine Murray says, at around £10,000 for an undefended case. We have to say that the main reason for the discrepancy is the cost per hour that the City of Edinburgh Council attributes for its solicitors. Since we saw the COSLA figures, we have done some work and spoken to other local authorities. It is plain that Edinburgh's assumption of the cost for a local authority solicitor of £110 per hour is on the high side. Dumfries and Galloway Council's figures are somewhere in the region of £35.20 or £44 per hour, depending on the seniority of the solicitor involved. That explains the discrepancy between the costings that we have used, based on the research done by the University of Stirling, and the figures that COSLA put to you in respect of two cases in Edinburgh.

The comparison is interesting. The figure of £110 an hour seemed rather high for a local authority.

Even for Edinburgh.

There has been some reluctance to take out ASBOs in the past; councils have argued that the procedure was difficult and costly. Do you feel that some of the issues that surrounded the early use of ASBOs have now been resolved and that councils will be more comfortable with the procedures? Is there evidence to prove that?

There is evidence for that. The committee will be aware that interim ASBOs were introduced under the Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act 2003 and have been effective since 27 June last year, if I remember accurately. There is evidence that interim ASBOs have helped local authorities to expedite the granting of an ASBO to control a person's behaviour. It is early days, as the measures have been in place only since June 2003. Obviously, we will further update the work that is being done by the Chartered Institute of Housing on the use of ASBOs, but ministers hope that the use of interim ASBOs will help to solve some of the problems that local authorities have experienced in relation to the time delay that is involved in securing a full ASBO.

COSLA also raised concerns about the difficulty of estimating the cost of intensive support programmes. Again, COSLA based its information on evidence from the City of Edinburgh Council, which estimated that there could be 60 to 70 applications for such programmes each year. Will you clarify how the Executive calculated its figures?

Members will be aware that there is a wider youth justice programme. Since 1992-93, we have put money specifically into youth justice teams to plan a range of interventions for people under 16 in their areas. We are enhancing that support; for example, funding for programme development has increased from about £5 million in 2002-03 to around £15 million in 2005-06. We expect each youth justice team to develop its own hierarchy of interventions and to strike the correct balance between mediation, reparation and intensive programmes, which will depend on the audits of the crime in the area for which it receives funding.

The estimate in the financial memorandum of around 600 to 700 programmes per year nationally refers to the totality of intensive support programmes for all those who are caught up in offending. The small subset of those who might require an ASBO that would also come with intensive support represents a potential additional requirement that might arise from the bill, which would be funded separately. We do not intend to fund all youth justice activity through the bill.

Virtually all those who submitted evidence to the Finance Committee appear to take the view that the Executive has considerably underestimated the costs that will be involved. As I understand the argument that has been put forward this morning, there will somehow be money in the kitty to cover additional costs that might arise. That seems to be a fairly novel way in which to do an overall costing for a bill.

The Scottish Legal Aid Board claims that ASBOs might lead to a need for legal aid grants for appeals to the sheriff

"regarding any supervision requirement imposed by the children's hearing."

SLAB estimates that 50 to 100 such cases per year could cost the legal aid fund between £80,000 and £160,000. Have such costs been taken into account?

I understand that the paper from SLAB refers to the potential costs of cases that are referred onwards from children's hearings to the sheriff. That option is, of course, available to those whose cases are going through the children's hearings system, regardless of the bill. However, we have estimated that up to £200,000 might be required from the legal aid budget to deal with ASBO cases that involve under-16s.

The SLAB submission also raised a point in relation to the Vulnerable Witnesses (Scotland) Bill. It is worth pointing out that our advice on the estimate of the legal aid costs that might arise from that bill has erred on the side of caution. The costings assumed a high level of uptake of special measures.

Against that background, and bearing it in mind that the legal aid fund currently stands at about £150 million per year and that ministers are committed to funding any expenditure that arises from grants of legal aid, we are reasonably comfortable with our estimates of the legal aid costs.

SLAB claims, however, that those 50 to 100 cases, which arise from "onward referral" by the children's hearings, could cost between £80,000 and £160,000, and that those costs

"have not been included in the financial memorandum."

The costs in the SLAB paper refer to onward referral from the children's hearings system to the sheriff court. As I said, the proposals in the bill do not add anything new to the children's hearings system in that respect. ASBOs will be granted by the courts, not by children's panels.

What about the legal aid costs of, for example, restriction of liberty orders? According to the SLAB paper:

"The Financial Memorandum estimates there will be 80 RLOs granted in any year. If all 80 resulted in breach proceedings, this could cost the Fund a further £21,000."

Has that been taken into account?

Were all RLOs to result in breach proceedings, there would clearly be a cost. However, the Executive does not believe that the breach rate will be anything that remotely approaches 100 per cent. As I said, given the provision for the legal aid fund as a whole and the rather cautious estimates that have been attached to the legal aid implications of the Vulnerable Witnesses (Scotland) Bill, we are comfortable that, overall, the estimates that we have made are reasonable.

On electronic tagging, the financial memorandum does not provide any legal aid costings, but it estimates that representation by legally qualified people will cost up to £100,000 per year. I presume that there would be some appeals to the sheriff against RLOs, for which children's legal aid would be available, but the financial memorandum gives no estimate of the number of such cases.

I am afraid that I must refer you to the answer that I gave about the state of provision of the legal aid fund and the cautious estimates that were made in respect of the Vulnerable Witnesses (Scotland) Bill, and also to the additional funds that have been identified in respect of ASBOs.

Is SLAB wrong to suggest that the Executive has not taken into account certain unforeseen costs?

I do not say that SLAB is wrong. However, there is no basis on which to anticipate that, for example, all 80 RLOs would be breached. Similarly, I have no information that supports the assumption that 50 to 100 cases would be referred onwards from children's hearings. There are uncertainties around the figures that can be expected and much will depend on the uptake of the new measures that the bill introduces, but we are comfortable, overall, with the estimates that we have produced in relation to legal aid.

On tagging, will you clarify a matter about which there has been a wee bit of confusion? Paragraph 155 of the policy memorandum says:

"As well as extending the provision of electronic monitoring to children's hearings, we also propose to extend the options available to the courts by providing RLOs (with electronic monitoring to monitor compliance) as an alternative disposal to detention for offenders"

under 16 years old

"in appropriate cases."

For the record, does that refer to measures that are alternatives to custody, rather than additional?

I am sorry; I did not follow your question. Additional to what?

Would those measures be used as an alternative to custody, rather than in addition to custody?

The bill makes it clear that there will be circumstances in which the electronic monitoring of a child will be used as an alternative to a secure placement. However, the bill does not provide that that would necessarily happen.

Strict criteria must be met before a children's hearing can order a child to be detained in secure accommodation. The bill does not require those criteria to be met before a hearing could consider electronic monitoring as a disposal. I hope that that clarifies the position.

Unfortunately it does not. The implications are twofold. One aspect is beyond the remit of this committee, which is that to use the measure as an alternative to custody is to take a liberal approach, whereas the alternative would be fundamentally illiberal. That is for a different committee to consider in more detail—

We are just here to count the money.

There is also an impact on the financial aspect of the bill. If electronic monitoring is used solely as an alternative to custody, the impact might be positive, but if it is used in addition to custody, the impact might be quite negative.

The principles behind the measure were discussed clearly and in an up-front manner when Hugh Henry appeared before the Justice 2 Committee last week, so I refer the committee to the minister's explanation. Rachel Gwyon might want to say something about the funding of the measure.

The issues relating to tagging and the children's hearings system were costed in the same way as additional intensive support for ASBOs because they are new provisions. To an extent, there may be an additional saving. If a young person can leave secure accommodation earlier than would otherwise have been the case, that will save the authority £3,000 a week. We have funded the programmes through the financial memorandum.

Having read paragraph 155 again, I see that there is something else that could perhaps help the committee and I apologise for not picking it up before. We are talking about electronic monitoring in two separate contexts. The explanation that I gave earlier applies and is correct in respect of a disposal by the children's hearing. However, Jeremy Purvis is right that the courts will also be able to give a restriction of liberty order as an alternative disposal to custody for an under-16-year-old in the same way as it can be given to an adult. I apologise if I confused the committee on that point.

That is a helpful clarification. I rushed away from local government issues, but Kate Maclean would like to return to that subject.

My question follows on from Elaine Murray's questions but it is more general.

When Michael Kellet was asked how the costs of antisocial behaviour orders were arrived at, he said that the figures were reached by commissioning research from the University of Stirling. Why did the Executive commission research when it could have got factual information from each local authority or from COSLA? From the written submission and oral evidence that we received from COSLA, the extent to which COSLA was consulted seemed unclear. How much was COSLA consulted on the cost implications for local authorities? To what extent were individual local authorities consulted?

I am concerned that, for a quite a few of the proposals, local authorities will be at the sharp end. The Executive might tell the public that local authorities now have powers to deal with things such as noise nuisance and littering but if local authorities do not have the resources or if they have to make cuts elsewhere, they will be unfairly subjected to criticism, which should be directed at the Executive if it has not funded the proposals adequately.

My question is about consultation and where the figures come from. Those issues have not always been entirely clear in other financial memorandums. That worries me. I do not have confidence in figures if it is unclear where they have come from. Why did the Executive not go to a more obvious source rather than commission research from the University of Stirling?

We did not formally consult COSLA on the financial memorandum beforehand. The Executive does not normally consult in advance on financial memoranda. However, we had a number of discussions with local authorities and with COSLA on our proposals before, during and after the consultation period. We also briefed COSLA officials on the financial memorandum before their appearance at the Finance Committee in order to explain our assumptions on the costings.

Moreover, most of the information underlying our estimates was based on returns from local authorities, the Scottish Children's Reporter Administration and so on. For the ASBO costs, we used the figure in the research report because it was an available published figure that had been produced reputably and with the involvement of local authorities. As such, we thought that it was a reasonably reliable estimate.

Following our sight of COSLA's written submission and oral evidence to the committee, we went back not just to Dumfries and Galloway Council but to a large number of local authorities to check whether the assumptions that arose from the published research were reasonable. As Michael Kellet said in response to an earlier question, although the figures varied among local authorities, the clear message was that our figures were reasonable estimates.

I want to pick up on your statement that the Executive does not consult local authorities. The previous financial memorandum that the committee considered was that produced for the Education (Additional Support for Learning) (Scotland) Bill. It was produced by a working group that the Executive set up with COSLA. Immediately after this session, we will take evidence on our next financial memorandum, on which I understand COSLA was consulted before that bill was introduced.

I am a bit surprised at the firmness of your statement that the Executive's practice was not to consult COSLA on financial memoranda before they are produced. I think that such consultation should take place, especially in areas in which local authorities are very much affected. The practice in other parts of the Executive for other bills seems to have encompassed prior consultation on financial memoranda with COSLA in particular.

I will make two points in response. First, when that point about prior consultation arose, we checked with our finance colleagues in the Executive. Their advice to us was that, according to the Executive's most recently published guidance on financial memoranda, there is no requirement on the Executive, and it is not the Executive's policy, systematically to consult on financial memoranda before they are published.

Leaving that to the one side, I think that a simple practical reason why we did not consult on a draft financial memorandum relates to the circumstances in which the bill was prepared, because we did not publish a draft bill for consultation beforehand. The measures in the bill were finalised only after the close of the summer consultation on the policy proposals. Therefore, we did not have, as it were, a set of published draft proposals for which it would be possible to publish an accompanying draft financial memorandum for consultation.

I understand the circumstances behind the bill, but if there is a defined approach that does not involve prior consultation, I would not want to let that rest. That would be unacceptable to the committee.

Let me clarify that I was not saying that the Executive should not or would not consult beforehand. I was simply answering the question about prior consultation by explaining what I understand to be the practice on financial memoranda more generally.

My question was not about consultation on the draft financial memorandum but about consultation prior to the drafting of the financial memorandum, so that the information that is used in it is based on facts that I would have thought are easily available.

My other question is about the Executive's recommended practice on consultation, but my question should probably be targeted at ministers rather than at officials.

We may have managed inadvertently to leave the committee with a slightly misleading impression. There is no suggestion that we were not talking to officials from COSLA. I have a list somewhere of the range of stakeholder groups—of which there were literally dozens—that we met even before the written consultation document was issued. COSLA was in on those meetings. That was certainly the case for the meetings that I held and I think that that was common across the Executive. In those meetings, we went through what the measures might be and tried to discuss what their implications would be. That partly informed our discussion before the financial memorandum was produced. Although we did not have a draft financial memorandum the exact wording of which we could share with COSLA, we discussed the policies with COSLA from straight after the election.

I back up what Rachel Gwyon has said. Many of the responses to the consultation paper mentioned the issue of resources and many of those were based on discussions that we had already had. In October, we published the University of Glasgow report that provides an analysis of the consultation responses. Included within the conclusions of that report is a paragraph that stresses the fact that several agencies highlighted the issue of resources in their consultation responses and in our meetings. Obviously, we took account of those points and discussions in preparing the financial memorandum.

It seemed strange that the figures for the costs of antisocial behaviour orders were obtained from research. If I was going to buy something, I would ask somebody who had already bought it how much it cost rather than commission research.

I understand that the research was done by asking a number of local authorities across Scotland for an estimate of their costs for obtaining ASBOs.

I have a slightly more general point. Comparisons have already been made with the Education (Additional Support for Learning) (Scotland) Bill, the financial memorandum to which considers ranges of costs. Ministers have given an assurance that, should the financial memorandum underestimate that bill's costs, there is sufficient unallocated resource in the budget to be able to cover that. Is the same true of the Antisocial Behaviour etc (Scotland) Bill—in other words, if it turns out to be more expensive than you have estimated, is there sufficient unallocated resource in the justice budget to be able to cover additional funding?

Some of the funding to support the bill and the wider strategy comes from within the justice budget and some of it comes from within the budget for the communities portfolio—notably the £30 million for community wardens and other local initiatives, which I mentioned, and the further £30 million, which is as yet unallocated. The precise allocation of that £30 million will build on the first round, but it will also be possible to reflect the assessment of the current position on resources for the bill's provisions and the strategy as a whole.

I should also say that future funding will be the subject of the discussions on the spending review that will get under way later this year, which will determine funding for the years beyond 2005-06. We will keep the overall position on the resource implications, not just of the bill but of the wider strategy, under review and will discuss it with COSLA and others over the coming months, as we proceed with the bill and the strategy.

I want to pursue the wider funding issues, but we will hear from Fergus Ewing first.

In my view, Dr Elaine Murray's question was apposite, so I will pursue it. What is your worst estimate of the highest amount of the unallocated £30 million that might be used up by what you call the bill's indirect consequences?

I do not think that I can give you an answer to that today, for the simple reason that the final decisions on the allocation of the first £30 million have not been taken—although they will be taken very soon. It will be important to ensure that the second £30 million goes towards addressing any gaps in core services in local authorities and other agencies and that it contributes to the whole range of activities—including prevention and early intervention, which are themes of the strategy—rather than to just the enforcement angles. I cannot give an answer in the terms in which you asked the question.

I hear what you say, but the reason that you gave for not being able to give me an answer was that ministers had not yet taken the relevant decisions. That is not really what I asked you; I asked what your worst-case-scenario estimate was on the basis of your computation as advisers rather than as ministers, but I do not think that I will get any more on that.

I want to raise a question that arises from today's revelation that on what is a major bill—some people would say that it is the Parliament's most important bill—you did not hold a consultation on how much it was going to cost; in other words, you told us that you did not have a formal consultation on the financial memorandum. You explained that by saying that you contacted your colleagues in finance, who advised that it was not mandatory to have a consultation on the financial memorandum. Did those colleagues express a view that to do so might be prudent or did they express any other view on that?

No, they did not express a view but, as I explained earlier, we had a number of discussions—before, during and after the consultation period—with COSLA, local authorities and other bodies that would be affected by the bill's provisions on the range of policy issues and the proposals' implications, including those that informed the estimates. We did not have a formal consultation on the financial memorandum as a document, but that does not mean that we did not consult those who would be affected by the policy proposals' implications.

I understand that as well but, with hindsight, given that the bill is such a major piece of legislation that is so controversial and has so many strands, surely it was essential that you had a proper consultation—not discussions and chats—on your estimate of how much it was going to cost. It is hardly surprising that the police, Shelter Scotland, the Scottish Legal Aid Board and housing people have criticised your figures, because they were not properly consulted in the first place. Will you spit it out and say that you were wrong and that you should have had a formal consultation on the financial memorandum? If you had done so, we might have been in a better position than we are in now; we certainly would not have had the total uncertainty that you have described this morning.

We would not accept that there is total uncertainty or that there have not been consultations on the costings. As Rachel Gwyon explained, we had a series of very detailed meetings with a range of stakeholders over the summer, during which the resources were discussed repeatedly.

It is my understanding that the guidance on the preparation of financial memorandums is prepared jointly by officials in the Executive and the Parliament. I have a copy of a letter of 4 December from Andy Kerr to the committee's convener, which included a copy of the up-to-date guidance on financial memorandums. That was the guidance that we tried to follow in preparing the bill's financial memorandum.

The guidance says:

"Financial Memoranda should also include relevant cross-references to any consultation exercise as summarised in the Policy Memoranda".

It does not say that there should not be consultation on financial memoranda in any shape or form.

We would accept that; it is fair to say that we are not saying that the guidance tells us not to consult on financial memoranda. The policy memorandum contained cross-references to the consultation.

I appreciate that not every bill will go down the same route. I do not necessarily agree with all that Fergus Ewing said, but the kernel of it was that, the more precise the consultation that one can do and the more detailed the figures, the better the responses that one will get.

I want to pursue the issue a bit further. One of the aspects of COSLA's evidence that the committee was disappointed about was its apparent lack of preparedness and focus on the bill's implications. Is that not evidence that you should be concerned about how well the consultation process has gone?

There are two points to make. First, it was precisely so that COSLA officials would be prepared for their appearance before the Finance Committee that we invited them to a briefing on the estimates and the assumptions that underlay them. It is also important to say that, as I understand it, there has recently been a considerable restructuring within that organisation, as a consequence of which a number of people are now in posts that they were not in previously—their responsibilities have changed. That might have been a factor, although I would not like to speculate.

We would certainly hope that local authorities are better prepared on the ground than COSLA appeared to be when it appeared before us.

On the basis of today's exchanges, I am wondering whether we have reached a point at which we should be moving on from the way in which financial memoranda are produced. We live in the era of spreadsheets in which it is simple to model costs over time, to show a decrease in costs as processes and policies bite in. The fact that both direct and intangible savings over time can be shown in a constructive way means that we can move on from having an exclusive focus on expenditure. Surely the current approach, which is purely about the allocation of cash in return for intangible and unquantifiable benefits, is unsatisfactory.

To tie in with that more modern, robust way of doing things, surely it would be much better to use the consultation to get a committed buy-in from the various stakeholders involved to agreed minimised costs and to get a similar commitment to agreed maximised savings.

I think that the officials can respond to that only in relation to the specifics of the bill; it is probably for other officials to deal with the generalities.

On the specifics of the bill's delivery and the wider strategy, we decided to set up an implementation advisory group—composed of officials from the Executive, COSLA, local authorities, the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations, the Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland and SCRA—as a forum for discussing issues in the context of the delivery plan that the Executive intends to draw up, which will be ready when the bill becomes law. The group's work will be overseen by a ministerial and COSLA steering group, including the minister, the COSLA president and his colleagues, to ensure that there is a venue for discussing implementation and wider delivery issues surrounding the bill and the whole strategy. That is not a complete answer to the question, but we are certainly considering the issue.

I trust that you appreciate the disquiet on the members' side of the table: we seem to sit here sanctioning additional costs with no real confidence that savings will be forthcoming, and we repeatedly hear stakeholders such as SCRA suggesting that the costs that are set out in the financial memorandum are lower than the costs that it feels that it will bear.

I am surprised by that summary of SCRA's evidence because we found that the cost for direct funding of that organisation—for which it asked—tallies almost exactly with the estimates that we included in the financial memorandum. SCRA did go on to say that the training costs for panel members in the financial memorandum might be too low. However, the Executive, rather than SCRA, pays those costs. Therefore, we used the evidence of what we actually pay and what we have paid in other pilots such as fast-track hearings. We are confident that we have estimated the costs accurately.

The only other point that SCRA raises is on information technology. We have invested about £11 million in the past few years in SCRA and we must have a wider discussion with it about the children's reporter administration as a whole. We will have a continuing discussion with SCRA on that.

When was SCRA consulted?

It was consulted even before a Government was formed. We started consultation with SCRA on the back of the manifestos. SCRA has been in on the discussions since the beginning.

I have sat and listened to the evidence, which has been interesting. However, we are not interested in the bill. We are interested only in the bill's financial aspects. Your presentation is as unclear as any I have heard. I am not a financial genius, but when we get the Executive providing estimated costs of between £500 and £6,500 for applying for an ASBO, and COSLA coming up with an estimate of between £5,000 and £20,000, the disparity in the figures is totally unacceptable. I do not see anything concrete on which we could base approval.

All I can do is point out that the difference relates to the charge per hour for solicitors' time. That explains the discrepancy. There is not much more that I can do than to reiterate that answer.

That bears out the point that I made. I am happy to leave it at that.

Did you want to ask a question about noise?

How was the financial assumption made of the £2.5 million budget for noise nuisance—which COSLA says will be insufficient—and the new power that local authorities will require?

I will deal with that. I think that we made it clear in the financial memorandum that we estimated that if all 32 local authorities decided to implement a noise service for 24 hours a day seven days a week, the additional annual cost would be a maximum of £3.84 million per annum. I understand that COSLA estimates that the figure would be £5 million. As we said in the financial memorandum, we estimated a local authority take-up rate of 60 per cent and costed that at £2.5 million.

That take-up rate was based on the experience of the Noise Act 1996 in England and Wales, which indicates that a night-time noise service is likely only in the main cities and conurbations. We spoke to environmental health officers who said informally that it is impractical to provide a night-time noise service in many parts of Scotland, particularly in the more rural areas. The new night-time noise service in Glasgow and the experience of Belfast, which also has a night-time noise service, indicate that even in concentrated urban communities a full 24-hour, seven days a week service might not be necessary.

Therefore, I think that we have been up front about our assumptions. COSLA thinks that there will be more uptake of the night-time noise service than is the case. I think that ministers are committed to providing a night-time noise service and will ensure that the funding is provided for the services that local authorities want to deliver.

So you are saying that only a 60 per cent service will be guaranteed in Scotland.

That was the assumption that we made in putting together the financial memorandum.

Sixty per cent is not a very high success rate.

COSLA reported in its submission that the Society of Chief Officers of Environmental Health in Scotland said that all its members envisaged take-up, though some of the more rural areas might do so in a limited way in partnership with other local authorities. If there is a higher take-up than 60 per cent, will funding be made available for that? If that is the case, there will be a £1 million difference between your estimate and COSLA's estimate.

I acknowledge that Kate Maclean's facts are correct. The answer is yes—the funding would be made available. The minister is committed to providing a night-time noise service. If there is more take-up, money will be provided to ensure that the service can be put in place.

I know that things such as noise and litter are not headline grabbers in terms of the bill. However, from my postbag for the past 15 years or so, it seems that those matters are huge issues in some areas in Scotland. Therefore, it would be unfortunate if funding was not made available for the less sexy parts of the Antisocial Behaviour etc (Scotland) Bill.

Among the organisations that submitted written evidence to us, the most critical of all was probably Shelter Scotland, which said that

"it is very concerned about the ‘guesstimation' in the Financial Memorandum."

Shelter also said that

"lack of clarity could impact on the finances required to implement the bill, and ultimately on the effectiveness of the bill."

Shelter believes that there is too much concentration on legal measures and that

"there is a potential for non-legal measures to lose out financially, despite their proven successes. If the bill turns out to be more expensive than originally planned because of a lack of transparency … non-legal measures will suffer."

How do you respond to that criticism?

First, as far as the estimate—or guesstimate—is concerned, we based our estimates, as we have tried to explain during the meeting, on available information and evidence. In some cases, such information is not great. However, we took the information that informs the estimates from the public domain. It is a question of judgment as to whether the estimates are highly accurate, but we have not seen or heard anything to suggest that alternative information is available or that there are more robust estimates than those that are in the financial memorandum.

As far as non-legal measures are concerned, it is important to emphasise again that the bill is just part of a wider strategy that includes financial and other support for non-legislative measures, particularly in diversion of young people away from offending behaviour, for support for parenting and for early interventions, which are not a direct consequence of the bill, but are an important part of the policy mix. Ministers are clear that a strategy to tackle antisocial behaviour cannot be about only enforcement: it must also be about prevention and early intervention. Ministers have ensured that plans, programmes and funding are in place to support all those elements.

As far as the argument that there is a trade-off between support for legal measures and support for non-legal measures is concerned, we reject it. There is no sense that there will be a diversion of funding away from one activity to support another, as the Shelter submission suggests there will.

I want to return to noise nuisance. Under what circumstances do you envisage the noise nuisance powers being used?

In some respects, the bill is an enabling bill and it will be for local authorities to determine how to structure a noise nuisance service in their areas. I apologise if that does not fully answer the question.

Do you envisage that, for example, if people were annoying their neighbours by having noisy parties, the local authority might be able to use its noise nuisance powers?

Potentially, yes. As I understand the system, the scenario will be that two environmental health officers, using a sophisticated machine that monitors precisely noise levels, will be able to go to premises and check whether the acceptable noise limit that has been set is being exceeded. They will be able to take appropriate action if that is the case.

Is it not strange to assume that no one in rural areas, small towns and villages has a noisy neighbour?

I agree that it is, but examination of the situation south of the border and in Belfast and Glasgow might lead one to the view that there will be a need for a greater service in more concentrated urban areas.

Colleagues from local authorities in COSLA have made us aware that one of the ways in which they might approach the matter is by providing a noise nuisance service on a partnership basis. For example, the Lothian authorities might come together to fund jointly a service that will be available to all the Lothian communities.

Like Kate Maclean, I hope that the service would be available in my local authority area, which is fairly rural. I get plenty of complaints about noise in my postbag.

There might be only four environmental health officers to cover Dumfries and Galloway and the Borders—the entire south of Scotland. We would need additional support to have the same kind of cover as urban areas. I would have expected the financial memorandum to acknowledge that rural areas need a degree of consideration that is different to urban areas.

I accept that the travel distance in rural areas will be a major factor for the teams and I accept your general point. I think that I have explained that we made an assumption in the financial memorandum that we thought was justifiable, based on precedent. We accept that, if there is greater uptake than we predicted, it will be funded by the Scottish Executive.

Over the summer, you engaged in discussions with COSLA and others. Did those discussions include the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations?

We have had a number of discussions with the SFHA over the course of the consultation period. However, I do not recall the assumptions about uptake being the subject of any specific discussion.

In its submission, the SFHA talks about the guidance that will allow sheriffs to consider whether it would be reasonable to issue repossession orders if landlords have not first applied for an ASBO. The submission says:

"rightly there will be an increasing expectation that social landlords should apply for an ASBO before seeking a repossession order."

Will the bill apply in that context to social landlords, or does the SFHA have the wrong end of the stick?

The bill applies to social landlords. We have kept the situation that was previously provided for by the Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act 2003, which was that responsible social landlords were given the power on 27 June 2003 to apply for ASBOs. The bill will not change that.

I will come back to that point, but I was asking about whether a sheriff would be able to order repossession of a property if the social landlord had not first gone through the ASBO process.

As I understand it, the bill does not make a provision for that because it involves a procedure that sheriffs would have to take in relation to repossession and evictions. Guidance will be issued, but it will be for the sheriff to make a decision as to whether a repossession order was justified in any particular case. The factor that Jeremy Purvis mentioned might be one that would be taken into account. I understand that there is no statutory requirement for an ASBO to have been sought before a repossession is carried out. I will check that and get back to the committee.

I would value clarification of that matter because it is a matter of some consequence. Furthermore, it would be important to know whether the position as regards ASBOs and repossession orders would apply to social landlords as well as to private landlords. I cannot tell what the answer is from the papers before me but, if that is the case, it would put a de facto obligation on social landlords to go down the ASBO route rather than the mediation route, which they might prefer, even though the ASBO route might be cheaper and less burdensome.

On cost, the Stirling University study to which I referred earlier examined the cost of mediation versus other legal measures. It came to the general conclusion that mediation is usually a more efficient and cheaper option than any legal remedy, whether it be an ASBO, an eviction or whatever. The obvious reason for that is that no lawyers are involved.

The ASBO guidance would apply in the context of your question to an RSL as well as to a local authority. However, it is only guidance and I think that any sheriff would make a decision on issuing a repossession order on the basis of information that was available to him.

You said that the situation that was established by the Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act 2003 in relation to ASBOs will not be changed, but am I right in thinking that housing associations would not receive some of the funding for the process that you said earlier would be available to local authorities? Is it true that they will not receive equivalent support?

Alisdair McIntosh might have more to say on how the money might be used with regard to the wider issue of funding. We see ASBOs as being another housing management tool that RSLs will have at their disposal. In the context of the Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act 2003, which introduced the provision, RSLs lobbied hard to have the power and Parliament decided to give it to them. They are a legal remedy like any other legal remedy, such as eviction. We do not fund RSLs specifically in relation to any other legal remedy, which is why we thought that it did not make sense to fund them separately for this new legal remedy.

The power will be extended to people aged under 16, which is what we have been talking about in the context of the financial memorandum. That will increase the number of ASBOs that might be applied for.

In my area, the housing stock has been transferred to the Scottish Borders Housing Association. If that association applies for an ASBO and does not receive the support that a local authority would receive, the tenants will in effect be paying twice. They will pay once through their taxes for a local authority ASBO and again through their rent for a housing association ASBO, as the housing association cannot access any other kind of funding.

The money that has been made available in the first round of funding does not include an element of funding for local authorities to pursue ASBOs any more than it includes an element of funding to pursue eviction or other tools of housing management. Among other things, it provides additional money for mediation services, which we hope will be available on a cross-tenure basis in local authority areas. In the context of their first-round bids for funding, 19 local authorities are using part of their allocation for mediation services.

It is important to remember that, for RSLs, ASBOs are one of a range of tools for dealing with antisocial behaviour. It is for the landlord, be it the local authority or an RSL, to decide whether an ASBO is the best way in which to bring about the kind of change that there needs to be in the properties that they own.

It is also important to remember that, during the passage of the Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act 2003, RSLs pushed very hard to be given the power to apply for ASBOs.

With respect, the table of estimated costs shows that a £9 million cost estimate is made for local authorities. It is obvious that costs are associated with the bill and that, although local authorities will be able to draw down funding for ASBOs, RSLs will have no equivalent funding. RSLs take part in putting together antisocial behaviour strategies—they have done so in my area. RSLs also take part in mediation services, but they cannot recoup any of the money that is involved in their staff attending meetings, which local authorities can recoup. If RSLs look at the financial memorandum, they can see clearly that £9 million is to be made available to local authorities, but diddly-squat will be available to housing associations.

We would answer that by saying that the £9 million, which is about the provision of the intensive support programmes that Rachel Gwyon talked about earlier, would apply to an under-16-year-old on an ASBO, irrespective of who made the application for the ASBO. The mechanism that we have provided for that in the bill is that, irrespective of who has made the application for an ASBO, in cases in which a sheriff has granted an ASBO, the sheriff has the power to refer the child to a children's hearing in order to ensure full consideration of all the circumstances of the child, and that wider support is put in place. The £9 million is designed to support those intensive support programmes. As I said, the programmes would be made available to a child who was on an ASBO irrespective of who applied for the ASBO.

So, you are quite comfortable that housing associations will be taking part and working with the local authorities in this process. If the person on the ASBO lives in a housing association property, the housing association is the landlord and will be involved in the duty of care and in all the other procedures that will flow from the bill, but cannot draw down any support for that work. It seems extraordinary that housing association tenants would have to pay for that work. Housing associations have no income other than the revenue that they raise from rents.

I want to make some wider points about people under 16 who might be behaving antisocially, who might be beyond control or who might be behaving illegally. It does not matter to us whether the behaviour is done on the street or in a housing scheme, because what happens next should be the same. It is open to any person at any point to make a referral to the children's hearings system. If a young person has got into trouble or is causing trouble in a home environment, the referral could be made directly to the reporter at a much earlier stage.

I would not want to give Mr Purvis the exact assurance that I think he seeks that all housing bodies are involved in planning and services. I am not convinced that everything on the ground is as joined-up as it might be, but that is partly what lies behind these policy developments. We have certainly encouraged NCH Scotland and others who have come to talk to us—because they are concerned about the link that has been made to housing—to make known to housing bodies the services that they are able to offer and the added support that is available through the children's hearings system.

From joint meetings that I have attended between Scottish Borders Housing Association and Scottish Borders Council, I understand that SBHA is doing very good work in co-operation with the council. I hope that you are not suggesting that SBHA will have to wait until all housing associations meet that standard before the issue is addressed. Why should housing association tenants have to wait until then?

You have not addressed my suggestion that housing association tenants will pay twice. Tenants will pay out of their rent for the dedicated work that their association undertakes throughout the process with the local authority, in terms of joint meetings and so forth. At the same time, those tenants will also pay out of their taxes for the local authority to undertake its part of the process. Why should the tenants of social landlords pay twice for an antisocial behaviour strategy?

One of the reasons why we provided in part 1 of the bill that housing associations will be involved at local level in drawing up strategies to tackle antisocial behaviour was that housing associations should have a voice in the process—

I am sorry to interrupt, but the point is that if a local authority undertakes the work, we can see that it will receive the money for doing so from the Executive. Housing associations, however, will not receive equivalent support: their tenants will pay for it.

We need to be clear that the Executive is not going to give local authorities money to apply for antisocial behaviour orders.

We understand that.

The Executive is providing funding to local authorities to support the strategies that will be drawn up by community planning partners, including housing associations and registered social landlords. There is no reason in principle why—in the discussions on the next round of funding—it should not be decided that the allocation for the local authority should be passed on or shared with other agencies in a particular area.

It is also important to emphasise that, in supporting mediation services, the Executive is determined to ensure that mediation will be available irrespective of tenure. That means that housing associations and their tenants will also benefit from the provision of mediation. The Executive's view is that RSLs will benefit from the package of proposals in the bill and from the financial support that it has provided for local strategies.

I am sorry, convener, but I am in the process of being frustrated. Of course, housing association tenants will benefit, but they will also benefit if the local authority takes part in the process. The point is that housing association tenants will pay twice. If I am not a tenant of a social landlord, I will pay for the measures once because the local authority will provide the services.

As you said, there is £60 million to support all antisocial behaviour strategy work, and I agree that housing associations will benefit from taking part in the process. However, when their staff take part in order for the association and its tenants to benefit from the process, who will pay for that input? The answer is that it will be the association's tenants who will do so—the association's staff costs will be paid for out of the revenue that accrues from tenants' rent. The double hit on social tenants seems to me to be fundamentally unfair.

I have asked the question in many different ways and I am not getting an answer that satisfies me. Perhaps special grants for housing associations will be accommodated in future. Perhaps, in the next funding round, the table that shows the breakdown of allocated moneys will include a Communities Scotland element. There was, perhaps, some encouragement for me to hope that that might be the case.

There is an issue about community planning and about how resources are routed into dealing with the issue. That is perhaps something that could be looked at in the context of the next funding round to which Alisdair McIntosh referred.

I have similar concerns to those that Jeremy Purvis raised; I, too, have no council tenants in my constituency. All of the council stock has been transferred to Dumfries and Galloway Housing Partnership. If a DGHP tenant behaves antisocially, whose responsibility will it be to pursue an ASBO? Will it be the responsibility of Dumfries and Galloway Housing Partnership or Dumfries and Galloway Council?

I think that the answer to the question is that that decision would be made at local level. That is precisely why we provided for the antisocial behaviour strategy: it is to bring together local partners including RSLs, the police, the local authority and others. A clear decision would be made about who would pick up the responsibility. We think that that is precisely the type of issue that should be decided at local level so that people do not fall between stools in the way that was described.

In circumstances in which an authority had not transferred its stock, the responsibility would be the council's. As was referred to earlier, we discussed with COSLA the costs of raising an ASBO. Are you now saying that none of the funding relates to the cost of raising an ASBO and that the council, housing association or housing partnership would be expected to raise such orders without additional funding?

It is important to remember that the position at the moment is that local authorities pick up the cost of ASBOs, as do the RSLs that use ASBOs. The bill does not change the position in that respect and neither does the funding package. The essential point is that, in extending ASBOs to under-16s, it is the intention to give both local authorities and RSLs an additional tool among the various housing management and other measures that are available to them, to deal with specific cases that affect their responsibilities and the properties for which they are responsible. That is why the position has not changed in respect of funding.

However, in the context of the delivery discussions that I mentioned briefly, I can say that we will involve the SFHA, local authorities and others in consideration of respective responsibilities and the practical burdens on those who are charged with taking forward such matters. That is certainly something that we will have to come back to.

If a housing association pursued an ASBO and used the solicitor from a council's antisocial behaviour unit, for which the council charged the social landlord £110 an hour, do you accept that considerable funding issues could be faced by the housing association and by tenants, who are the only people who can contribute to such an organisation's finances, as Jeremy Purvis said?

Instead of answering now, it would help if you sent us a letter on the issues that have arisen in the discussion. Perhaps you could clarify further how those matters might be dealt with in principle. Obviously, the precise details will be dealt with in discussions about delivery that have still to take place.

Could you also send us further information to address the discrepancy between the expected costs of ASBOs according to COSLA and the costs according to the Executive? John Swinburne mentioned that large discrepancy. To unpick that, surely we can be supplied with firmer evidence that is based on experience.

We are moving towards the conclusion, but I still have two or three questions to ask. One set of criteria against which the performance of local authorities and housing associations is judged is housing management criteria, such as the number of voids and other related statistics. Have you considered how the bill's implementation should impact on the key housing management statistics and perhaps other matters on which public authorities are judged? If people work with clear criteria that do not relate properly to the overall policy intentions, perverse outcomes could be produced. Has that been considered systematically throughout the Executive?

We have worked closely with our colleagues who are responsible for housing and housing management in the run-up to, during and since the consultation. They are policy leads in the Executive on the bill's housing elements.

Indicators, performance measures and targets are on the agenda for the implementation advisory group in the context of the delivery plan. The group will have its first meeting in about three hours. At the earliest opportunity, we intend to table for consideration what indicators are appropriate and necessary and what antisocial behaviour indicators, targets and performance measures exist across the waterfront, to ensure that the package is internally consistent and that when the delivery plan has been drawn up, we will have a basket of relevant performance data that will enable us to see one year, two years or three years hence what difference has been made and in what way.

I presume that the performance data will take account of the fact that some measures that the bill will introduce are relatively expensive to implement. If other measures are equally effective but less expensive, the indicators that are produced should promote the use of those approaches rather than the approaches in the bill. In the management of public finance, we want careful attention to be paid to that.

We certainly want to address that issue in the discussions about delivery.

Your submission says that £60 million has been allocated to tackling antisocial behaviour in 2004-06 and that the Minister for Justice announced a further £35 million on 8 January. How do those figures relate to the £65 million to which the financial memorandum refers?

The £30 million for community wardens and other local initiatives to tackle antisocial behaviour was announced last year and is in the final stages of allocation.

The £35 million from the justice portfolio for the two coming years was announced by the Minister for Justice in January. In addition, as I said at the outset, a further £30 million has been earmarked for the years 2004-06; that was mentioned in the budget statement that was made by the Minister for Finance and Public Services in September, but it has not yet been allocated. It is that £30 million that will build on the first £30 million to support local action.

I have a question on funding after 2006. You will respond by saying that there is a process of examining financial projections for the future, but can you give us any commitments in relation to funding after 2006, and how that will be handled within the Executive?

The commitment that I can give you is that ministers will be looking closely at the real resource needs to support action to tackle antisocial behaviour, both for the coming two years and for the longer term. That issue will be addressed head on in the spending review discussions that will take place later next year. I am afraid that I cannot give you a more precise commitment than that.

In terms of information about the actual costs, as opposed to the anticipated costs, there might be a gap between the implementation of the measures and the spending review process. Have you given that any consideration?

Ministers are absolutely committed to ensuring that the strategy and the bill are adequately resourced. They are also committed to ensuring that its implementation is monitored and evaluated in all respects, including the financial one, and they will take account of any discrepancies that might appear in the course of implementation of the bill, in the course of the current spending period, and in the course of the spending review discussions.

Bearing in mind the submissions that we have received, will you engage in further discussion with the various agencies that we have talked about today so that the figures can be bottomed out, not just in relation to this year and next year, but in relation to subsequent years?

Indeed. One of the key themes of the work of the delivery group—the implementation advisory group, if you will forgive the jargon—will be the resource implications and the service provision that exists at local authority level to support the strategy. That discussion will be on-going, certainly for a year and possibly beyond then.

Do you anticipate that spending will remain static year on year, or will it go up or go down? What is your estimate?

It is difficult to say, because while we are providing tools that should deliver benefits for dealing with existing cases, we cannot predict the amount of activity out there in the outside world. We hope that as prevention and early-intervention measures bear fruit, less will have to be spent on the enforcement aspects—that is certainly the policy intention. However, it is difficult, sitting here today, to give you a rock-solid prediction.

That is the first hopeful note that I have heard all morning. The continual escalation of costs would have been totally unacceptable. If your measures are effective, the costs should plummet rapidly in a few years, and antisocial behaviour should become just that—something that is totally unacceptable and antisocial—and its incidence should reduce. I am pleased that you made that last statement, because until now I had received no reassurances whatever.

On that positive note, I thank the witnesses for coming along this morning and giving us such comprehensive answers.

If members have issues that they wish to highlight from the evidence that we have received, I ask them to communicate with the clerk before the end of the week, because we will have to write a report on the matter in due course.

Meeting suspended.

On resuming—