Good afternoon and welcome to the Finance Committee's ninth meeting in 2009 in the third session of the Scottish Parliament. I ask everyone—members and public alike—to turn off their mobile phones and pagers.
The vineyards in Provence and the château in Tuscany are, I think, the only things that I wish to declare at this time. Sorry, I have no declarations whatsoever to make in relation to the work of the committee.
I am tempted to ask more, but I shall resist that temptation.
I thank the committee for the opportunity to submit evidence on this important bill, which we believe will reshape the nature of criminal justice social work in Scotland. I express my support and my council's support for the key intention of developing a standard community payback order with variable component parts to reflect both the desire for public restitution and the complex nature of offenders' needs. I further support the desire to reduce the number of offenders in prison, particularly of those who are imprisoned for periods that are so short as to prohibit the undertaking of realistic rehabilitative work.
Do our other witnesses want to make a short opening statement?
I have no statement to make. We made a written submission on which I am happy to take questions.
I do not have a long statement to make. I am head of legal services for North Lanarkshire Council and I appear before the committee in my capacity as clerk to the licensing board. I welcome the opportunity to be here. North Lanarkshire Council will limit its evidence to the licensing provisions of the bill, from which section 129 is, of course, being removed.
Thank you for your presence. We look forward to hearing your responses.
We had three weeks in which to consider the financial assumptions. That did not give us a great deal of time in which to consult our board members or local authority partners.
How much is the shortfall that you are concerned about? What would be the consequences if the shortfall materialised?
In 2006-07, about 18,000 prison sentences were imposed in Scottish courts. About 14,000 of them were for less than six months. I am not sure how many were first sentences or repeat sentences, but a reasonable guess is that at least half were repeat sentences. That means that 7,000 or more additional reports could be requested if the scenario that I relayed came into effect.
The convener asked whether we can quantify the current situation. I can say with some accuracy that our local budget is between £70,000 and £100,000 short. We have an integrated service in which criminal justice services are delivered alongside substance misuse and youth justice services. Between us, we can achieve synergies. However, the criminal justice budget just to deliver existing services has a shortfall. That is the platform from which we seek to build.
You mention a shortfall, but are the costings in the financial memorandum accurate?
My sense is that the costings are not inaccurate, on the basis of the additional demand that might be expected. I am not sure whether they take into account the additional infrastructure costs that are involved in accommodation, management, clerical support and transport, but the costs for the additional staff who will be required are probably fairly accurate.
I agree with Mr Gilruth. The costs that are outlined in the memorandum look fair.
I will press you on that, particularly in relation to scale. It is evident that the policy intention is that anybody who would have served a sentence of less than six months will have a community payback order. The prison population figures that I have found for 2006-07 suggest that 14,686 people are serving sentences of less than six months. Would dealing with such numbers not require a quadrupling of what you provide for people who have community service orders, for example?
I can respond only by talking about the local situation, where we have checked the position. Usually, the Scottish Prison Service provides figures in the form of a snapshot, but we asked our colleagues to look into the situation further. As we have a prison on our doorstep, that was not quite as difficult as it might have been. We came up with the figure of 170 people receiving sentences of up to six months. That is slightly less than the number of people whom I have on probation and slightly more than the number whom I have on community service. That would be a significant addition, but we take it into account that we have a building and managers in place. However, additional management and accommodation costs would be incurred. On that basis, we believed that the core figure was not unrealistic for staff but that the support systems had not been fully budgeted for.
But a local figure of 170 would be more than the envisaged take-up of between 0 and 20 per cent. Would that be a fair comment?
That would be a fair comment.
So the overall scale is in question.
If the figure is purely for the first stage, it is likely to be adequate. However, the next question would concern the pace at which one might wish to develop things.
The population is about 14,000—or, in your local case, 170. Are those people more likely to be subject to a community service order than, for example, a supervised attendance order? Obviously, one is more expensive than the other.
I am sorry, can I just check what you mean? Are you asking about the situation at present or after the bill comes into force?
After. I have made the simplistic assumption that, if a person merits a custodial sentence, it is more likely that any measure as part of a community payback order will be more robust than a simple supervised attendance order.
That is our sense as well. We suspect that many people will be working in the community, and that many will be under community supervision requirements. However, we also have the sense that the total number asked to do unpaid work may rise. That seems to be an increasingly popular means of payback.
That is interesting.
It is difficult to say whether the number will rise. At the moment, the breach rate for probation orders and community service orders—the two main orders—probably ranges between 20 and 30 per cent. The breach rate is a bit higher for supervised attendance orders.
Mr Gilruth has touched on some issues that I wanted to ask about. Perth and Kinross Council's submission is interesting. I note your concern that, of the £10 million that will be allocated nationally, Perth and Kinross will get about £190,000 but the actual costs will be between £250,000 and £280,000. You have already said that your budget is short by about £70,000. What budget does your department have at the moment?
The budget for community-based social work is around £1.3 million.
So the additional cost may be 10 per cent.
No, you are not, but I would need to switch on my phone to give you the precise answer. I checked the figures a little while ago and stored the answers in my phone memory. However, if memory serves, the cost per social inquiry report is about £300 in a given year. The allocated sum is something like that. The figure for supervising a probation order is about £1,350, and more than £2,000 is allowed for a community service order. However, the biggest costs are incurred around probation and, I suggest, people who are on licence afterwards; £1,350 comes nowhere near the cost of supervising a sex offender or other high-risk offender who is subject to a probation order for three years.
I understand that. Rurality is also an issue. How concerned are you about rural local authorities—or mixed rural-urban local authorities such as Perth and Kinross Council—getting a fair share of the allocated resources?
It is a continuing bleat from rural local authorities. However, Perth and Kinross Council covers 2,000 square miles and half our population resides outwith a radius of 5 miles from Perth or Kinross. We cannot write large tracts off as sheep, as we used to do 25 years ago, and think that we will get only a small number of people on community service, because people sometimes deliberately migrate to rural communities seeking anonymity. Throughout Perth and Kinross and other rural local authority areas, there are numbers of people who require to be supervised at high level, and the unit costs in such areas are considerably higher.
You pointed out that the training requirements will have to be enhanced considerably. Regardless of the costs and assuming that the financial resources could be found, would you have the staff available and how long would it take to ensure that they were properly and effectively trained to deliver an effective service in your local authority?
In the current environment, I am reasonably confident that we could get the people in place. Most of them would already have the training that we are talking about because they would be social workers or would have a background as social care officers or in working with offenders and supervising in a prison context. If they were going to work in community service, I guess that we could have a staff group in place within six months.
Would there be a need to enhance secure accommodation in your local authority?
No.
Mr Hunter, do you have any comments to add on that?
None just now, thank you.
I will ask June Murray some questions on licensing. Orkney Islands Council's submission states that the costs that relate to the bill's licensing aspects
North Lanarkshire Council's greatest concern was the prospect of increased costs arising from section 129. Obviously, that might be subject to discussion elsewhere.
What is North Lanarkshire Council's view of that?
Our view is that, because it is a new arrangement, which will involve additional work and, therefore, an additional staffing resource, there will be a cost.
Are we talking about hundreds of pounds or thousands of pounds? North Lanarkshire Council is one of Scotland's largest authorities—it has a population of a third of a million or so—and its view of that might indicate the costs for other local authorities.
We will probably require an additional clerical officer to handle the additional administration. That will require around £15,000 per annum.
If we extrapolate from that figure, we might be talking about expenditure throughout Scotland of £200,000 to £250,000 for all the licensing aspects of the bill. That is a ballpark figure, but is it a fair assumption?
I think that it is a fair assessment. Perhaps we should try to mitigate the cost by dealing with the matter through the trade consultation process; there could be intimation to the trade rather than to individual operators.
Do Mr Hunter or Mr Gilruth want to comment on licensing or costings?
No.
No.
Mr Gilruth, you talked about the possible increased cost of supervising the new community payback orders. In your submission you said:
To date, we have succeeded in recruiting the staff that we require.
Are people in place in all the posts that you mentioned in your submission?
I have not had difficulty in recruiting for vacancies that we experienced during the past year.
You represent just one local authority; every authority will have to recruit staff to implement the new legislation. Are there enough staff around?
I suspect that it will be possible to find social care officers, who are usually employed to oversee fairly large numbers of people, and community service officers and supervisors. If there is a shortfall I suspect that it will relate to social workers.
Can you quantify that?
I cannot, because that has not been our experience locally.
If the other panellists have no further comments on that, we will move on.
I want to ask more about the cost of community payback orders. Excuse my ignorance, but is there currently a requirement to carry out a social inquiry report before providing a disposal for probation or a community sentence?
Yes. That is routine.
It is routine, but is it a statutory requirement?
Yes.
The bill will not change the law in that regard, so the assumption about the increase in the volume of community disposals is therefore the critical aspect. Mr Gilruth, you said that there is roughly an even balance between people who are on probation, people who are on a community sentence and people who are serving prison sentences of less than six months. Is it reasonable to assume that there will be a 20 per cent increase in the workload? If the bill's policy aim is met, I presume that there will be a 30 per cent increase in the use of community payback orders, because 30 per cent is broadly equivalent to the proportion of people who are serving sentences of less than six months.
We would probably be leaping into the dark if we tried to come up with an estimate. Currently, justice of the peace courts cannot sentence a person to community service. JPs to whom I have spoken over the years have been keen to get their hands on the disposal, which they regard as valuable for them. The 20 per cent figure might therefore represent an underestimation of how JPs will use the order. However, the new order will be used only as an alternative to custody, and district or JP courts do not sentence many people to custody. The danger would arise if the net were to widen and JPs used the order in cases in which in the past they would not have sentenced the person to custody. We need to keep an eye on that. A 20 per cent increase in the sheriff courts' workload is probably a reasonable starting point. As I say, it is a bit of a leap in the dark and it is difficult to come up with a figure, but 20 per cent would not be an unreasonable figure for the sheriff courts.
We are looking at the recurring costs. The Government has said what the initial costs will be and has set out the recurring costs based on assumptions of an increase in workload of either 10 per cent or 20 per cent. The cost estimates indicate how much the CJAs will be provided in resource if only two thirds of the intentions of the bill are implemented.
In my written submission, I talk not only about the introduction of community payback orders but about the attempt to prevent people from going to prison. In some respects, I am more concerned about the figure of 14,000 prisoners that was cited earlier and the local figure of 176 prisoners. Although the situation can be addressed incrementally, there are a lot of people in that group, many of whom have complex needs. Some of them have been on probation or have been given community service a number of times before, and sentencers are saying that there is no point in using those sentences again. However, some of those people might be considered for the new community payback orders. To help those people, there will not be a standard approach; there will be a very structured approach right down to the level of the working day. As I said before I came in here, that is not dissimilar to the approach that we take at present with some high-risk offenders, and that is expensive.
We are also looking at the requirements that are to be attached to the community payback orders. The Government cites the example of the single community order in England, which has a menu of requirements attached to it that could well be added to the community payback order. However, the Government proposes no increase in the resource that is currently provided to ensure that those requirements are met. That does not match with what you have said about the resource that local authorities expect to receive to enable the new system to work.
We are talking about a challenging new group of people with highly complex needs, and I suspect that it will test the system all round.
I hate to say it, but that is a politician's answer. It is a very good one. I think that we would all be very proud of that kind of answer.
The national standards that apply to probation will simply not be adequate for some of those people. We cannot simply have somebody reporting in once a week or have somebody visiting them at their house once a week. The approach that will need to be taken is the approach that we currently take with some high-risk offenders. In effect, we have to enable them to put a structure round their day. We have something called accommodation support that is much more than that—it is life support. Those people need to be supported in attending appointments and we ensure that the appointments are followed up in order that they keep their employability. We need to bring in drug and alcohol services, not simply make contact with those services a condition of probation, and ensure that the people turn up. We need to construct probation as a supportive exercise—as opposed to simply a sentence—for people with multiple needs, and there will be complex multiple inputs.
The Government believes that there need be no change to the average number of conditions that are currently attached to a probation order, which is estimated to be 1.2 conditions per probation order. I do not want to put words into your mouth, but is it your view that that number will have to be increased if the orders are to be fully effective in meeting the bill's intentions?
Yes. For some of the people, it will need to be increased.
The bill introduces a quite complex set of inter-effects. Justices of the peace will get orders that they have never had before; a supervision requirement will have to be attached to orders for 16 and 17-year-olds in addition to any other requirements; and there will be a presumption against short-term sentences. What the Government has done in the memorandum is probably the best that it could do. It has made some reasonable assumptions. However, if the bill is passed, it will be necessary to monitor closely the first year or 18 months of implementation, because I am not sure that anyone really understands yet how some of the measures will affect others. At this stage, it is difficult to predict that.
We are hearing the voice of experience.
Mr Hunter, I have a small question for you. You said that justices of the peace do not often deal with custodial sentencing but they might use the orders to displace non-custodial sentencing, which could increase costs. You mentioned the need for monitoring. Is the use of non-custodial sentencing already monitored through the justice system? How will we know whether that is happening? How can we prevent orders from being used inappropriately, which would obviously have a bearing on cost?
District courts publish annual statistical information, just as other courts do, so the Government knows how many prison sentences, fines and probation orders district courts impose year on year. At the moment, the number of probation orders that they impose is small—well over 90 per cent of district court sentences involve fines. In the first year or two after the bill is passed, it will become apparent whether there has been displacement from prison sentences or fines to the new community order. Orders will cost the Government much more than fines, so there will be concern if they displace fines. We will look for orders to displace prison sentences, as they are cheaper than such sentences.
You will have seen the written evidence that East Ayrshire Council has submitted on the financial implications of the provisions relating to remand and committal of children and young people. The council says that those provisions will place an additional burden on local authorities, through increased demand for alternative remand accommodation. Would you like to comment on that issue? I ask the question because the number of places and, consequently, the number of staff in the secure unit in my constituency are being halved. That prompts the question of where people will go if they are referred to secure accommodation.
I am currently employed in criminal justice services, so I will pass on the question. Provision of secure accommodation is an issue for all local authorities and is a major problem for the larger conurbations. We make minimal use of secure accommodation. The alternative is to provide young people with a complex, structured whole day. That is demanding, but it can be done in most cases. I will not comment beyond that.
We did not cover the provisions to which you refer in our written evidence. We have not considered the issue.
Am I right in saying that there are not many secure units? I cannot remember the exact number—there are either six or eight. If it is thought necessary that a young offender should go to a secure unit, but they cannot do so, surely the burden of finding another way of supervising them will fall on you.
Yes.
Linda Fabiani asked about the use of orders by JP courts. Am I right in thinking that a high proportion of short-term prison sentences continue to be imposed for fine default and that community payback orders—along with unpaid work and other requirements—will become mandatory in that area? A direct read-across is easier to get by looking at the estimates of how many orders are going to be provided in certain areas. The order will not really be a choice of disposal under the bill.
I think that you are right. District courts have been able to impose supervised attendance orders on fine defaulters for a number of years. The new community payback order will be available to the courts for that purpose. You are right that there is a straight read-across.
You do not think that that changes sufficiently the assumption of a 10 per cent or 20 per cent increase in workload.
It would depend on the individual area and the individual court. After supervised attendance orders were introduced, certain local authorities, such as Angus Council and Perth and Kinross Council, had a massive take-up, which was not linked entirely to population or the number of known offenders in the area; it was just that some courts chose to use the orders. That has changed significantly over the past two to three years. As Jim Hunter said, the risk might be that the community payback order, which is a new sentence, appears to offer something new, proves very popular in some areas and will be much more expensive to deliver.
I want to close this evidence session. Mr Gilruth gave us figures from memory. If he wishes to correct them, he should write to us, which would be appreciated. Do the witnesses wish to make any final remarks?
I just want to thank you for the opportunity to give evidence.
I thank you all for being here and sharing your expertise.
Meeting suspended.
On resuming—
I welcome our second panel of witnesses: Chris MacIntosh is from the policy division of the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service; Alastair Merrill is director of corporate services at the Scottish Prison Service; Tom Nelson is director of forensic services at the Scottish Police Services Authority; and Alastair Sim is director of policy and strategy at the Scottish Court Service. I believe that none of the witnesses wishes to make an opening statement.
I will start with a general question, which is addressed to everyone on the panel. I think that you all indicated in written evidence that you were broadly content with the assumptions about costs that were made in the financial memorandum. I ask each of you to highlight the provisions in the bill that you expect to have the most significant impact on your organisation and to say whether you will have sufficient flexibility in your on-going budgets and structures to address that.
It appears that the cost of the provisions on disclosure will be the major cost for the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service. We have experience in disclosure because disclosure obligations have been with us for a number of years, and they will now be codified. We based our cost estimates on that experience and we feel that that empirical evidence makes them the best available estimates.
As Mike Ewart said in his letter to the committee of 10 April, the bill's provisions will have no significant financial impact one way or another on the Scottish Prison Service. The financial memorandum contains a number of illustrative costings that are based on applying the full economic cost of a prisoner place to the Government's assumptions about prisoner numbers, which we believe are a fair reflection of the costs.
The bill's provisions on disclosure will affect the Scottish Police Services Authority's forensic services. We provided indicative costs for that in the paper that we submitted to the committee.
There are two big issues for us. First, the move towards the increased use of community sentences and a reduction in short prison sentences will bring costs for administration and judicial salaries. Provision will need to be made for an expanded range of review hearings when people are sentenced to community payback orders. Secondly, where sheriffs still choose to give someone a sentence of six months or less, they will have to spend time in court explaining the reasons for that. That will have a marginal cost, because it will increase the amount of time taken by the court to get through its business, which will have a marginal impact on our need to pay for additional part-time shrieval resource. Such costs are reflected fairly in a range of assumptions in the financial memorandum.
Whenever I hear about an IT system being built, I hear alarm bells. Are you sure that that can be done at a reasonable cost?
It is the sort of thing that we do a lot. As soon as new provisions are introduced into law, we work either to adjust our existing criminal cases computer system or to build add-ons. When we looked at the bill, we thought that we were talking about a non-trivial investment of probably £50,000 to £100,000 in bolt-ons to our existing IT system. It is non-trivial, but not shuddering.
So existing technology would cover it—nothing experimental is involved.
That is right—it will not be fancy and high-falutin'.
That is reassuring.
My colleagues will ask about the issues that the panel has highlighted, but I have a second general question on the areas in which the financial memorandum estimates that there will be savings. What are your views on that? The Government has indicated, for example, that there will be savings to the SPS in relation to the early removal from the United Kingdom of short-term prisoners and savings to the SCS in relation to jury service and bail review appeals. Given that there will no doubt be cuts in your respective budgets, are you content that the savings that are estimated in the financial memorandum have been properly assessed?
As you are aware, the Scottish Prison Service already operates significantly above the design capacity for which we are funded, so, at the margins, regardless of whether additional or fewer prisoners enter the system, there will be no impact in terms of increasing costs or releasing savings. Although we accept that the calculations to which you refer are illustrative of the savings that could be achieved, hard cash savings will not materialise until such time as the prison population has gone down to design capacity level or below.
How do you manage to operate above the design capacity?
We have been squeezing in additional prisoners for a number of years. The design capacity of our prisons will rise to just under 7,600 places by the end of the current financial year. That is the level for which we are funded. As of today, the prison population is a little over 8,100.
Do you wish to follow up on that, Jeremy?
No. Other colleagues will follow up on that specific point. However, I would like to find out whether the Scottish Court Service agrees with the proposed savings.
What the financial memorandum says about savings is entirely fair, but I draw your attention to paragraph 895, which deals with the savings on jurors' expenses. The clear implication is that if savings are made on jurors' expenses, they will be recycled and used to improve the system for the reimbursement of jurors, which has been the subject of complaint and controversy for some time. As that is a matter of policy for the Scottish Government, the next panel might want to comment on it. The financial memorandum is saying that the relevant proposal will not produce savings for the Scottish Court Service. Any savings will be recycled to enable the jury system to work better.
Were you involved in making those savings estimates?
Yes.
We move on to Derek Brownlee. Oh, sorry—Linda Fabiani has a point to make.
I would like to follow up on Jeremy Purvis's questions to Mr Merrill. I understand that the bill will not have an impact in the short term—I can see that—and that, as far as the prison infrastructure and everything else are concerned, the basics remain, because you have been operating over capacity, but surely there must be savings to be made in the medium and certainly the longer term as the bill's effects kick in.
Who wishes to rise to that?
There are two questions on two different issues. I was answering the specific question about the savings that the financial memorandum suggests could be made from the measures on the early removal from the UK of short-term prisoners and the remand and committal of children and young people. The savings that the financial memorandum calculates could be made as a result of those measures, which are in the range of tens of thousands of pounds, relate to proportions of prisoner places that one could assume will no longer be needed once the measures have come into place.
I am still not convinced—but thank you.
You spoke about the prisons becoming "slightly less overcrowded" than at present. You are therefore saying that overcrowding will continue. What does "slightly less overcrowded" mean in actual figures?
The assumption around the removal from the UK of short-term prisoners was that up to seven prisoners might be eligible for early removal. That would reduce the churn in the system by seven.
Overcrowding means stress in any system.
Yes. There is already significant overcrowding, and there is therefore significant stress in the prison system.
I ask this question as a very simple person. In 2006-07, there were 14,686 people serving sentences of less than six months. That accounted for 81 per cent of all custodial sentences. What is the saving that you are predicting on your £400 million budget? What saving are you required to find? You are estimating that only seven prisoners will be removed early, out of 14,686. I am confused.
I am sorry if I have confused you. The figure of seven was an illustration of the provisions in section 19, and it was the largest saving that was quoted in the financial memorandum with regard to the early removal from the UK of certain short-term prisoners. That was a Scottish Government assumption.
Would that have an impact on staffing? Will your paper tell us that?
We would still be operating above the design capacity, unless other factors come into play that reduce the overall population further.
I think that I would like to have a paper on that specific point, convener. I appreciate the offer of a paper, which I think would be very useful.
I call Derek Brownlee. Sorry—I beg your pardon—I meant David Whitton.
That is all right, convener.
Yes, we are still committed to building that prison, the working title of which is, I believe, still Bishopbriggs prison. However, no final decision on that has been taken.
That is very unfortunate. The name should be Low Moss, but I will let that go by.
On the first question, we think that the estimate is certainly in the right ball park.
That kind of begs the question why the Lord President, rather than an act of Parliament, should decide where administrative support for the Scottish sentencing council should come from.
The matter can certainly be prescribed in an act of Parliament or—I do not know exactly how it will be cast—in subordinate legislation under an act of Parliament. What I am saying is that the current Scottish Court Service cannot commit the new body to taking on a function or express a view on what the new body might think about taking on that function.
I have a couple of questions for the Scottish Court Service. On the disclosure provisions, paragraph 738 of the financial memorandum notes:
I have the relevant paragraph in front of me in my notes, but I would like to pursue the point in more detail in writing. We made certain assumptions—to be honest, we do not anticipate a huge volume of cases—but the sums that we have done would be better expressed in writing than orally. I think that our calculations are reflected fairly in the financial memorandum. We do not anticipate huge volumes of business as a result of the bill, but it would be helpful if I could write to the committee on that.
That would be acceptable.
Yes, it would be useful to have that in writing so that we can see what methodology was employed to ensure that the figures stack up.
We certainly want to introduce the changes as efficiently as we conceivably can. We have a relatively brand spanking new operating system for criminal cases and we will build changes into that. In general, the task should not be particularly difficult.
Will you use existing staff or bring in expertise to make the changes?
For most of the changes, existing staff will be used. The disclosure stuff looks a wee bit newer and we will have to think about how we resource that.
Will the likes of community payback orders and serious organised crime offences be dealt with in the same operating system?
Yes. They will be new parts of the nice, modern operating system that we have.
My next questions are for the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service. The financial memorandum uses court figures from 2007-08 as the basis for the cost estimates for the provisions on disclosure. What are the relevant figures likely to be for 2008-09? What fluctuation might be expected? Are you content that staff resources are sufficient to meet any increased demands?
We have figures that go back a number of years for cases in the various courts. On the basis of those figures, we are confident that the figure in the memorandum—although it is an estimate—is reasonably accurate about what to expect in the following year.
On the provisions on witness statements, the financial memorandum says that the costs of £216,000
It is too early to say. We do not know the final shape of the provisions, so we do not know what sort of animal we will be dealing with. We cannot set up an IT system until we have the final shape of the provisions, although background work is being and has been done to provide the estimated figures.
What timetable is involved? When will you know?
That is difficult to say. I can write to the committee with that information.
Thank you. I call Derek Brownlee—I believe that I missed him out earlier.
I will return briefly to prisons and cost. If I picked up correctly what Mr Merrill said, the SPS is funded for about 7,600 prisoners and is dealing with about 8,100. It is obvious that the system has a significant element of fixed costs. From an internal operating perspective, I presume that the SPS considers in its forward planning a range of assumptions about the prisoner population. What ranges of prisoner population does the SPS assume that it might have to provide for?
If I may make a minor pedantic correction, we are funded for prisoner places rather than prisoner numbers. We use a number of cost factors. The full economic cost per prisoner place is the average cost calculated on a resource accounting basis and takes account of running costs, prisoner-specific costs, overheads, depreciation, costs of capital and so on. That is the figure that is used in the financial memorandum—it is a shade over £40,000. The actual figure for 2007-08 was £41,470.
In simplistic terms, you generate a significant saving only when you get to the stage at which you can close a prison wing or an entire establishment, and you generate significant additional cost only when you are forced into creating an entirely new wing or establishment. Are those the sort of margins that we are talking about?
In essence, yes.
What sort of numbers would be involved in that? Obviously, a population of 8,100 must be close to your limit.
Assuming a design capacity by the end of this year of about 7,600, we would require a reduction of 500 in average prisoner numbers before the average population was down to the level of the design capacity. We would require a significant reduction on top of that before it would be possible to close an establishment. Closing a house block in a jail would realise some savings at the margins in staffing costs, but there would still be the wider costs of running the other house blocks in the jail.
You are almost saying that, until an establishment opens or closes, the changes in costs are the more marginal ones that you described earlier.
Yes.
I seem to recall in the dim and distant past in the previous session of the Parliament evidence from the SPS about the costs of a prisoner place. If I recall correctly, there was a significant disparity between the cost of a prisoner place in SPS prisons and the cost in privately operated prisons. Is that still valid, or have those figures been superseded by events?
We have a key performance indicator in our annual plan for the average cost per prisoner place, which covers the public and private sectors. That is the annual cost, rather than the full economic cost. I think that the figure last year was £36,500, although I would need to check that in my papers. I am not aware of a significant disparity between the sectors although, depending on accounting conventions, I am sure that one could create different figures.
I am sorry, but I want to return to the same issue. Jackie Baillie asked about the savings if we had a 50 per cent reduction in the figure of 14,686 prisoners who serve short-term sentences. You said that the reduction would be the equivalent of about 300 prison places. If we reduced by 50 per cent the figure that Jackie Baillie gave, we would have 7,300 such prisoners. The fall in daily prisoner numbers surely assumes a sentence of less than two weeks per prisoner, so surely the reduction in prison places would be more substantial than 300.
As I said earlier, there are two ways of looking at it. One is reductions in the average number of prisoners, that is, the number of people who are locked up each night in our establishments, where the impact would be minimal—it would be up to 300 places if we had a 50 per cent reduction. The other way is to consider the reduction in churn, or the number of people going through reception. You are right that there would be a significant reduction but, as you say, the average time that short-term prisoners spend in prison is two or three weeks, which means that one prisoner place equates to 26 people spending two weeks in prison.
Indeed. We are talking about people who are in prison for a short time.
Yes.
You mentioned in written evidence that the snapshot figure for prisoners currently in the estate was 8,066. Do you have information on how many of those are serving a sentence of six months or less?
Yes. I do not have it to hand, but it is somewhere in my pile of papers.
It would be helpful to have that figure, because it is critical. If the Government assumption is that there will be a 20 per cent increase in the number of community sentences, that needs to be squared with the current snapshot prison population. The relevant aspect is not necessarily how many people receive the disposal over the course of the year; it is the impact on capacity. I do not know whether you have found the paper.
No. I am sorry, but I do not have the figure to hand. Rather than continuing to rummage through my papers for it, perhaps I could include it in the follow-up.
That figure is critical, so it would be helpful if you found it and gave it to the committee at the end of the meeting.
I will come back to you at the end of the meeting if I find the relevant statistic in my bunch of papers.
In your written submission, you refer to the financial impact on the SPS of amendments to section 18 of the Custodial Sentences and Weapons (Scotland) Act 2007. The financial memorandum states that those amendments will have no direct cost impact. Is that correct?
The memorandum acknowledges that implementation of the bill will not be possible until the prison population has been reduced to a point at which resources are available to support it. It is also worth noting in that context that, as I understand it, the amended 2007 act will have fewer financial consequences than the unamended act.
Will the amended 2007 act result in any net savings or net costs for the SPS?
That is impossible to answer at this stage. We accept that there will be additional costs, but our assumption is that the act will not be implemented until the prison population has reduced to the extent that the costs can be offset against the subsequent savings.
We have all homed in on poor Alastair Merrill and Alastair Sim. I would like to hear a general opinion from Mr Nelson about where his organisation is coming from on these matters.
As I said at the outset, SPSA forensic services will certainly be affected by having to put in place disclosure procedures. We cannot do that work within our current budget. We will be looking for support.
I want to bring this evidence session to a close. I offer our panellists the last word.
I return to a question that I could not answer, about the paragraph in the financial memorandum on what the Crown Office is doing to limit the additional costs in relation to witness statements. I am grateful to my colleague, who has more expertise in the area. The answer is that one matter that is being pursued is the centralised printing of statements, so that when somebody in the Wick office presses a button, the statements will be printed in a centralised printing unit in Glasgow and distributed from there. There will be a minimal saving.
Thank you. I draw the session to a close. I thank the witnesses for their expertise and information, which will be of great assistance to us. We will pause while we prepare for today's final panel.
Meeting suspended.
On resuming—
We move on to our third and final panel of witnesses. Given the wide-ranging nature of the bill, the panel is larger than normal—[Laughter.] I meant larger in number; I want to make that clear.
I am head of the criminal law and licensing division in the Scottish Government, which is responsible for co-ordinating the Scottish Government's effort on the bill.
The witnesses have been listening to the evidence that the committee has taken. Do you want to comment on the financial assumptions? No one seems to think that you have got them right.
Perhaps I should respond, given that community payback orders are of considerable interest to the committee. Mr Gilruth raised two separate issues. He was correct to say that we are not adding to the assumed core costs of the orders, other than adding assumptions for the extra bits that we are adding—if you see what I mean.
How did you come up with the figure of 10 to 20 per cent?
Behaviours do not change overnight. We believe—and I think that folk agree—that the range that we have chosen is reasonable for the likely costings projected over the next few years, as the shift occurs. I would be the first to admit that these are illustrative assumptions based on predictions of sentencer behaviour. Most folk agree that the shift will be gradual, although there might be disagreements about the speed of change. However, I take the point that people have made about the need to monitor delivery.
Yes, of course.
When my mouth dries up completely, I will stop.
I want to go back to the figure of 10 to 20 per cent. Mr Hunter said that, of the 18,000 sentences in 2006-07, 14,000 were for less than six months.
I have had more time to rake around in my folder than Alastair Merrill had, so would it be helpful if I went through the analytical services calculations on how we arrived at the assumptions?
Yes.
Please do—as long as you guarantee not to leave us behind after the first sentence.
I will do my best. I have written it all down, because I cannot remember anything for very long.
You estimate a reduction of 10 to 20 per cent in the number of short sentences. If 14,000 people were on sentences of less than six months and there was a reduction of 50 per cent, that would mean that 7,000 folk would be thrown on to community payback orders and the local authorities would have to deal with them. Are you confident that the funding would be in place to help local authorities to deal with them?
That is a fair point in that, if we displaced 250 prison places, we would need 4,000 additional non-custodial disposals, which is a high displacement rate the other way. I think that that is the point that you are making. We do not assume that all those people would be displaced; we assume that only 10 or 20 per cent of people on short sentences would be displaced. That would be the major factor in the number of community payback orders. With offenders no longer being sentenced to prison, the most likely outcome—but not the only possible one—would be a community payback order. It is technically possible, although quite unlikely, that offenders would be displaced to fines. It is most likely that they would get level 2 community payback orders, as the other witnesses confirmed.
Yes, but you assume—correct me if I misunderstand you—that sheriffs will be reluctant or slow to take up community payback orders and will still use their powers to sentence people because they do not like being told what to do by anybody else when it comes to sentencing. However, if it goes the other way, with sheriffs deciding that they quite like the new disposal and that it is a much better way of dealing with people, many of whom should not be in prison in the first place, to what extent will there be capacity to meet unexpected demand?
All I can say is that our costing already shows a need for substantial additional expenditure. In the financial memorandum, we have not costed a situation that we estimate to be some way down the track, and I accept that, if there was a complete flip in the next year or two, that would lead to costs that are higher than those for which the financial memorandum allows. That is a fair comment.
The financial memorandum states that the administrative functions of the Scottish sentencing council will
As Mr Sim said in the previous evidence session, the figure in the financial memorandum is based on the assumption that the administrative functions of the Scottish sentencing council will be grafted on to the new, reformed Scottish Court Service—although the bill does not provide for that explicitly—so that we do not have to bear all the costs that would be incurred by setting up an entirely new body. Paragraph 664 and subsequent paragraphs of the financial memorandum describe the different types of costs. In developing those paragraphs, we looked at the operation of the Sentencing Advisory Panel and the Sentencing Guidelines Council in England and Wales. Again, looking at examples from elsewhere, we made assumptions about the way in which the Scottish sentencing council will conduct its business. The figures that we have developed cover staff costs, displacement of judicial time and other on-costs.
We heard from Mr Sim about a new organisation, which the Lord President will chair, that may not be happy about the Scottish Court Service undertaking the work. If the Lord President says no, what will you do?
If the Lord President says no, we will have to consider whether the Scottish sentencing council should be set up as an entirely separate non-departmental public body or whether its administrative functions could sensibly be grafted on to another body. As Mr Sim said, the approach that we propose seems to make eminent administrative sense. There is a great deal of logic in the Scottish Court Service, headed by the Lord President, and the Scottish sentencing council, which will also have a judicial head, being closely associated. However, if the Lord President objects, we will have to find other ways of proceeding.
Your response has suitably stirred the committee.
I have two questions for Ms Dickson about community payback orders. I listened carefully to your explanation of displacement from prison places to community payback orders. The first question—which you may say is not relevant—is one that I put to Mr Merrill. What proportion of the 8,066 people who are in prison, according to the snapshot of 8 April from the Scottish Prison Service, are serving sentences of less than six months?
About 8 or 9 per cent of the total population.
So of the 8,000 who are currently—
I did not catch where the figure of 8,000 comes from.
It comes from the snapshot of the current prison population that the Scottish Prison Service provided to the committee. We were told that on 8 April the prison population stood at 8,066. What proportion of those prisoners are serving sentences of less than six months?
I do not have the exact figure to hand. It is between 8 and 9 per cent, which equates to 600 or 700 people.
Can you provide us with the exact figure?
Yes—that is no problem. The figure is well below 10 per cent.
You said that the estimate of a 10 to 20 per cent change was the best judgment at this stage with regard to sentencing practice.
And the speed of change.
And the speed of change. Section 17—"Presumption against short periods of imprisonment or detention"—puts a duty on those giving a short sentence to state why there is no better option for the person being sentenced.
Yes, that is correct.
Presumably, one explanation for giving a short sentence could be that there are no community services of a sufficient standard with regard to the seven potential requirements in a community payback order. The bill will therefore be skewed not by sentencing practice, given the statutory presumption against short sentences, but by the budget available in any given area. The financial memorandum states clearly that there will be no budget increases for the additional requirements in the community payback order. As far as the financial memorandum is concerned, the budget is frozen—it will be increased only on the volume of orders that are made.
And on the elements that we are adding—for example, the electronic monitoring on breach of an order and the review hearings.
A sheriff might want to put three requirements on a community payback order, but the financial memorandum states clearly that the Government believes that there will continue to be an average of 1.2 requirements per order. A sheriff could therefore state that he was sentencing a person to prison because the local authority had insufficient provision for the requirements on a community payback order.
Yes, that is a possibility. I cannot say that that was at the forefront of our minds when drafting the provision in section 17, which is like the existing presumption against jailing someone under 21. Ministers have always said that they wish to leave discretion with the judiciary, and the Cabinet Secretary for Justice acknowledged that there may be circumstances in which a judge wants the option of a short prison sentence for an individual, given an accumulation of past offences and the nature of their current offence. In such a case, the judge simply has to explain what the particular circumstances are.
Yes, I understand that, and I imagine that the Justice Committee will consider the policy aspect, but I am looking at the financial aspect—whether the financial memorandum matches the policy intention and what is in the bill.
Essentially, that is the same issue as the one that Mr Whitton raised.
There is an issue about the requirements, but it is probably right for the Justice Committee to consider that in more detail. That committee will need to consider whether the bill will satisfy the policy intentions.
I take the point, but I can only reiterate that the financial memorandum gives a best-guess assumption about the speed of change in sentencer behaviour in the few years after the legislation is brought into force. Essentially, those are the years that are covered in the financial memorandum. The committee might feel that our estimate is much too low. I understand that point.
An element will be recurring costs, on which we are supposed to form a judgment. Given an environment in which a statutory provision requires courts to decide that a sentence of less than six months can be imposed only when no other method for dealing with the person is appropriate, community payback orders will surely be used in more than a fifth of cases. We cannot judge what the on-going recurring costs will be if the Government has arbitrarily decided that the upper limit of its estimate is that such orders will be used in only a fifth of cases.
There is no intention to set an arbitrary limit in the financial memorandum, so I am sorry if the committee has received that impression. The intention is to provide the best possible prediction of likely change in the near future. I think that you are articulating a concern that the estimate should have been for 100 per cent.
I just think that the 20 per cent figure is remarkably low. I have not been able to find in the financial memorandum—forgive me if you can point this out to me—anything that suggests that that is the best estimate only for years 1 or 2. Once the statutory presumption is in place, surely the number of community payback orders will grow to more than one fifth of the number of people who currently receive a sentence of less than six months.
An esoteric but very important point has been raised. It might be useful if the officials could think the issue through again and come back to us, as we have taken the matter as far as we can for the moment. We would all like a response on what is a very specific point, so it might be useful for the officials to consider it before replying.
Can I clarify what the committee wants? Committee members tell me that they are not happy that we have used such a low range of assumptions in a context in which there is obviously a policy intention to achieve a more major shift away from short sentences and given the drafting of section 17.
Yes.
What we want is an accurate measurement whereby the financial memorandum reflects the actual costs and problems involved. Accuracy is what we are after. Would it be sensible for you to think more about that point and respond to us in writing rather than pursue it now?
I am very happy to respond in writing, but all I can say is that these are assumptions and predictions. I can do the very best I can, and I am happy to come back. I think that the point is about what is a fair assumption in the circumstances of the bill.
Let us move on to licensing.
You will see from the financial memorandum that the social responsibility levy provisions and the age 21 provisions were among those that were flagged at the beginning as—
Large numbers
Yes, having large numbers attached to them. The licensing provisions that remain in the bill are of a much smaller order in terms of finances.
Might there be some confusion about when the submission was made and to what sections it relates? As a committee, should we go back to the local authorities to clarify, given the removal of sections 129 and 140, whether they still have financial concerns and the extent of those concerns?
Some of the issues raised by others were about specific sections—
Yes, Dumfries and Galloway Council.
On taxi licensing, for instance. That is fine, and the point is still clear, but in relation to the Orkney Islands Council's submission it may simply be a matter of timing and that the comment relates to a section that is now for another day. By all means, if Orkney Islands Council has concerns about sections that will remain in the bill, we will be happy to look at them.
Regardless of its view, what is your view on the impact on local government of the licensing provisions that remain?
In the financial memorandum we cost the provisions that will remain in the bill. We think that quite a few will lead to a more efficient licensing system and potential savings for the licensing boards and police in operating it.
Effectively you are saying that the system should be met from existing budgets.
The Cabinet Secretary for Justice made it clear that he expects the liquor licensing regime under the Licensing (Scotland) Act 2005 to be self-financing out of fees. Over the years, the current regime under the Licensing (Scotland) Act 1976 has ceased to be self-financing, so there is a significant subsidy from the council tax payer to the cost of administering it. With regard to licensing, the Civic Government (Scotland) Act 1982 contains a statutory requirement to attempt to balance the costs and income from fees, so we expect the authorities to set their fees at a level that achieves cost recovery.
Linda Fabiani has a quick point on the issue that Jeremy Purvis raised.
I apologise to Wilma Dickson for returning to it; George Burgess is probably involved, too. Assumptions need to be made and it is fine to obtain clarification, but we should not assume that the figure could be 100 per cent, because a great deal hangs on the word "appropriate", which is in the bill. It might be a good idea to get our clerks to look out what the Justice Committee said about appropriateness for sheriffs, because we all know that one of the great things about our judicial system is the discretion that is available to the judiciary.
It is 14,686, to be precise.
Jackie Baillie wrote that down. It is the number of people who received sentences of less than six months. Do we have an idea of how many of those sentences related to repeat offences or how many of the people who received them ended up with sentences that ran concurrently?
A social inquiry report has a shelf life—I am trying desperately to remember whether it is three months or six months. There is a requirement to obtain a new social inquiry report after a short period of time and, if I write to the committee, I will confirm what that period is. I should remember off the top of my head; I know that it is three months or six months.
As it relates to the short sentences that are handed out.
I do not have the figures with me, but we can confidently say that there is a very high level of repeat offending.
I do not have the figures to hand, but the Scottish Prison Commission considered the issue. It recommended that there would have to be exceptions to any presumption against prison because there are sex offenders, violent offenders and people who have a long list of previous convictions. We asked our analytical service colleagues to examine the potential impact of excluding those people, and they calculated that in almost 50 per cent of cases there would be a presumption against sending someone to prison. We can get those figures broken down if that is helpful.
In other words, a substantial proportion of offenders would have a track record of one conviction or more. We can easily get you the exact figures.
Derek Brownlee has been extremely patient.
I have a relatively quick question on the assumptions about the sentencing council, which we touched on earlier. It strikes me that, for a body with a budget of just over £1 million and a staff of 11, a chief executive salary of almost £100,000 seems rather excessive in these straitened times.
I agree. A salary of £100,000 would be excessive, but the figure that is given in the financial memorandum is not a salary. It represents the complete cost to Government of the post, which is pitched at deputy director or division head level. I would love to receive a salary of £100,000.
It is mentioned that the costs of the sentencing council are based on
Broadly, yes. The post in the Sentencing Guidelines Council and Sentencing Advisory Panel for England and Wales is graded at the same level. Another post that I can think of that is graded at an equivalent level is the chief executive of the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission. I am sure that the committee has seen information on chief executives' pay regimes.
Similarly, the assumption that the accommodation will be in central Edinburgh is not prescriptive. If the assumption that the sentencing council will meet one day a month is correct, it is excessive to spend £165,000 annually on a conference room—a boardroom—in central Edinburgh when the support service could be based in many locations around the country that are significantly less expensive.
Indeed. The bulk of the staff could be located pretty much anywhere in Scotland—the research functions could be undertaken just about anywhere. As for meetings of the body, when the body is to be chaired by a top judge, I suspect that a strong preference will come from that quarter for it to be based in Edinburgh or Glasgow.
Particularly if the budget for the council comes from the Scottish Court Service.
Jackie Baillie is becoming impatient, which is dangerous. I want three quick questions. The first will be from James Kelly.
I have two quick questions. On costs that will be attributable to the Scottish Court Service, paragraph 738 of the financial memorandum says that
It would probably be more accurate for the financial memorandum to say that estimating the number of cases with any certainty is difficult. Broadly speaking, we can predict on the basis of figures from 2007-08 the overall number of cases that might be dealt with, but the bill will introduce new forms of hearings. Whenever we enter into such an arena, it is difficult to predict the numbers with accuracy.
How was the estimate of 4,200 arrived at?
The estimate of 4,200 cases at preliminary hearings or first diets was based on the figures that the Scottish Court Service provided for preliminary hearings at present.
I have another quick question, convener.
Okay.
Paragraph 746 says that police costs will be £5.3 million, but the table below the paragraph says that the costs will be only £3.5 million. Why does the table not include the £4 million for training costs in 2009-10?
The figures in the table are deliberate. The reason for that is linked with what Mr MacIntosh from the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service said about the disclosure provisions in general.
So the £4 million of costs for 2009-10 do not directly relate to the bill.
They do not.
I have a quick question for Mr Dickson, who has been sitting quietly waiting for his chance. On the involvement in serious and organised crime, paragraph 700 of the explanatory notes says:
Yes. That was based—
How do you get to that number?
That was based on information given to us by the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service.
So there will be two new cases, but we might get a bundle of other cases that we would normally get anyway.
Yes—there is a likelihood of a prosecution for different offences, but the information from the Crown Office indicated that there are likely to be only two prosecutions for the new offence that we are creating.
I am not sure who might answer this question about the Custodial Sentences and Weapons (Scotland) Act 2007. You will have seen the responses that we have received from the Scottish Prison Service and the Scottish Legal Aid Board on the matter. Why has the likely impact of that legislation not been included in the financial memorandum for the bill?
The impact of the changes to be implemented under the bill is included in the financial memorandum, at page 123. As it shows, the Government estimates that, once the 2007 act is modified, the consequent sentence management regime would cost less than the measures contained in the act as it stands.
So you think that you have answered the points that the SPS and the Scottish Legal Aid Board have made about that.
Yes.
Okay. I will let them be the judge of that—I am not sure that I am qualified to make that judgment.
That is dealt with in the financial memorandum at paragraphs 841 and 842. The normal place for those youngsters to be remanded would indeed be in secure accommodation. Only in relatively rare and—judging by the figures referred to in paragraph 842—a decreasing number of instances are they placed on judicial unruly certificates and put into the prison environment. That is a policy matter, but there seems to be general agreement that putting them in the prison environment is not the right thing to do. The financial memorandum reflects the fact that there is a transfer of the responsibility from the Prison Service across to the local authority sector to provide for that.
Yes, but that puts the onus back on the local authority to provide some kind of secure remand facility. At the moment, there is a secure unit in my constituency that has 31 places. It is going to be cut in half and, in the future, will have only 18 places. As a consequence, the staff number will also be halved. One of the reasons for that is the fact that people are not being put forward by local authorities for one of those places. If they are not in there, they must be somewhere else; therefore, the cost surely falls on the local authority.
The memorandum identifies the fact that there is a cost to the local authorities of doing that. However, if the measure is passed, it will increase the demand for local authority secure accommodation and might reduce the need for the sort of reductions to which you refer. At the same time, it would produce a saving to the Scottish Prison Service.
I was going to ask you all about community payback orders and I will not resist the temptation, despite the fact that much of the field has already been covered.
I can certainly undertake to go away and think about that, but I could not say any more about it now.
That is very useful and helpful. We will also get a paper about the assumptions regarding the scale of the likely take-up of community payback orders. Somebody from the community justice authorities described the cost estimate for the policy as a leap in the dark. I accept that assumptions have to be made, but it is our duty to test their robustness. For example, the consequence of the 14,686 prisoners who are currently serving short-term sentences all getting community payback orders would be an increase in the scale of the cost, which would be £32 million rather than what is in the financial memorandum. It is, therefore, quite urgent that we get some clarity on that.
I am happy to take away that request. I cannot respond to it immediately.
That is fine.
"Protecting Scotland's Communities" states that our immediate priority is to lay a foundation for the future and build a robust model of community sentences that commands public respect. In a sense, the first priority is to invest in getting the current sentences robust, with more effective ways of dealing with breach but also more supportive follow-up. That is the first stage, which is reflected in the first bit of the financial memorandum. The cabinet secretary has made it clear in recent public statements that investment in that area is a high priority for him—it is probably his top priority in the justice portfolio. To be fair, it is not all about investment; it is also about making more effective use of other resources. However, I accept that that argument will not get me very far this afternoon.
I do not have much to add. Overall, for simplicity rather than for any other reason, the figures in the financial memorandum have been based on the assumption that all the provisions in the bill will come into force in April 2010. Therefore, 2010-11 is the first year of costing. That is simply for illustrative purposes. At this stage, we have not set an implementation timetable for the whole bill, although individual policy areas might have timetables in mind for the implementation of particular measures. We have not set an implementation timetable for the whole bill—that might be counting our chickens.
It is fair to say that, given the current economic climate, there are uncertainties ahead. After the budget tomorrow, we will be a bit clearer about the overall financial situation for the Government. It is clear that we can expect public expenditure to be quite constrained.
I just want to be sure that I understand this. The first stage is to build confidence in the new system. Thereafter, the bill remains a high priority for the Cabinet Secretary for Justice. However, what I am not hearing is that the money is committed for a particular timescale and when all the costs will be met. You are introducing a bill, but some of it might not even be enacted.
I would not say that. You have to accept that there are quite severe constraints on public expenditure at the moment, which affect prioritisation across the Government. The Government, across the piece, has to look at the position post budget and going into the new spending review period and it has to identify where it is going. It is rather hard for me to answer your question at this point.
I suspect that the question is for ministers, rather than officials, but I always thought that legislation was an expression of the Government's priorities and that resources should follow. I am slightly disturbed by the disconnect, but that is an issue to raise with others.
We have to be clear whether we are talking about a cash saving or a staff-time saving. Any reduction in overcrowding relieves pressure on staff time. It frees up staff for more productive activity with people who really have to be in prison. It is fair to say that the Government's first priority is public protection, part of which has to be about delivering prisons that are fit for purpose and providing accommodation for individuals in conditions that promote their rehabilitation. That is the other side of this argument, if you like.
Yes.
That is the general approach. We identified in the work that we did with our analytical services folk that, because people spend such a short time in prison, you have to cut an awful lot of sentences before you make a serious impact on prison places. The figure that we were given was that if the number of short sentences was reduced by 50 per cent, that would save about 300 prison places—that is not a prison. I do not want to put statements in the mouth of the Scottish Prison Service—that would be a little unfair—but that gives you an idea of the scale of the issue.
To be fair, given that the Scottish Government funds the Scottish Prison Service, I would have looked for the Scottish Government to have a role in identifying the likely savings, whether they are cash or time-releasing savings. I hope that that can be given further consideration.
In a sense, justice of the peace courts already have the power to give probation orders, which are the largest single community disposal. Essentially, what is being added is the power to make unpaid work-related orders, which are the next biggest disposal. I fully accept that the use of such measures is likely to grow. I suspect that an element of the increase of between 10 and 20 per cent in community payback orders will be a relatively small initial increase in their use by the justice of the peace courts, but we have very little experience of how the courts will use the new disposal.
The community justice authorities stated in their written evidence that they had
Is that in relation to the—
To the financial memorandum.
Am I not right in thinking that the committee requested the CJAs to consider the financial memorandum?
We asked bodies whether they had sufficient time to contribute to the consultation exercise on the financial assumptions in the financial memorandum. You heard members of a previous panel say that the Government did not give them sufficient time to consider the financial implications of the bill. Why was that? Does the Government have a view on what the community justice authorities have told the committee?
There is some puzzlement.
I am not quite clear that I understand who was consulted and on what, and at what stage the community justice authorities thought that there was insufficient time. The Government set out the proposals that are contained in the bill last autumn.
I will help. In their submission, the community justice authorities said:
I will ask Wilma Dickson to respond in a moment on the involvement of the community justice authorities in the development of the costings. However, I am not clear why the community justice authorities should only have had the figures in the financial memorandum available to them a week after that memorandum was on the Parliament's website and in the public domain, or about what they thought they were not consulted on.
If you do not have a clear answer to my question this afternoon, perhaps you could come back to us on it. You will be able to refer to the written evidence that the community justice authorities provided and to read the Official Report of the meeting, which will contain what they said to us. There does not seem to be a clear explanation about why they were provided with or had access to information only on 13 March 2009. You could come back to the committee on that.
It would be a good idea to follow up that matter in writing, as I do not think that we will take it any further today. The committee could write to you and you could respond.
Yes.
Are you finished, Mr Purvis?
That was my question.
The committee has no further questions. Do the witnesses wish to make any final statements?
May I be permitted to ask a question? I return to Mr Whitton's first question, which was a general question about the bill and whether we had any comments to make on what might have been identified as disparities. I think that it was clear from the discussion that followed that the question was principally about community payback orders, but I want to check whether it was wider. Are there any other bits of the financial memorandum to the bill that the committee has concerns about and which have not come up in the discussion?
There do not seem to be. That being so, I thank George Burgess, George Dickson, Wilma Dickson, Annette Sharp and Rachael Weir for their presence at the meeting and their evidence. There will be a suspension for a few moments to allow them to leave.
Meeting suspended.
On resuming—