Item 2 is the first of the committee’s two evidence sessions as part of our scrutiny of the Scottish Government’s draft budget and spending review. I welcome our first panel: John Ewing is chief executive and Willie Pretswell is director of finance and business services at the Scottish Prison Service; Brigadier Hugh Monro is Her Majesty’s chief inspector of prisons in Scotland; Phil Fairlie is chair of the Prison Officers Association Scotland; and Tom Halpin is chief executive of Sacro. Thank you all for attending.
Mr Fairlie, thank you for your submission. You mentioned “ex-gratia payments” to staff in the context of the requirement to work long hours. Is the approach risk assessed? Are you content with the long hours, in respect of the security of not only your members but prisoners?
The approach is risk assessed in the sense that there is a limit to the amount that a member of staff is allowed to work in a calendar month. No more than a 40-hour working week can be worked by any individual, so to some extent the approach is controlled.
In relation to the development of the prison estate, what do you and your members think would give more flexibility? Is it the retention of the existing terms and conditions, or is it increased officer numbers? It is not an either/or—
If it has to be an either/or—
No, no.
The terms and conditions issue is separate. The improvement that has been made to the estate has made a significant difference to prison officers’ ability to do what prison officers want to do. The difficulty is the increase in prisoner numbers. We can modernise the estate as much as we want, but if we keep putting away the numbers that we are putting away, that gets in the way of prison officers’ ability to deliver the services that we need to deliver.
I ask panellists to indicate to me if they want to come in on any question. If you simply want to agree with a point that has been made, please just do so. We do not need a full statement.
The number of people in prison is about 8,000 and during the next 10 years it is likely to rise to 9,500. How many new prisons will need to be built to accommodate the extra capacity?
There has been a significant increase in the total prison population. The committee might be interested to know that we hit a record high last night, when we locked up 8,242 prisoners.
I take it that you are saying that you do not want us to build more prisons, but that we will have to replace the existing ones. You do not see building more prisons as the way forward.
There are alternatives. We do not see building new prisons as the way forward. We take the view that we should see a reduction in the total number of offenders in Scotland’s prisons but we recognise that the growth in numbers may continue, so we must have options available to us.
Is it an awful lot more costly to have alternatives to custody, when there must be some kind of monitoring of prisoners? Do we have an idea of per head costs for alternatives to custody? We get such figures for prisoners.
The general calculation is that alternatives to custody, such as the work that is done by a number of third sector organisations, are cheaper to operate than keeping somebody locked up in prison for an equivalent length of time. Tom Halpin might have views on the figures.
Mr Halpin, the figure that we are given for the cost per prisoner place in 2011-12 is an average of £36,200. What is the cost per head for alternatives to custody?
No figure is available that neatly compares the cost of an alternative to custody with the cost of someone being in custody, but a number of indicators support the view that it is much cheaper to deal with the offender effectively in the community.
I would like further clarity from Mr Ewing on his statement about replacement prisons. Are you saying that, when you build HMP Grampian, you will not close down Craiginches in Aberdeen but mothball it?
No. We will close Craiginches in Aberdeen and Peterhead prison, because neither of those prisons is now fit for purpose. The plan is to concentrate the resources on HMP Grampian.
As a follow-up question, which I should perhaps have asked already, who should we not be locking up? It would cost less to have them outwith custody and we might not have to build so many replacement prisons.
There is a range of views about who is best dealt with in the prison system. It usually comes down to the argument about whether prison works. I believe that prison works for certain categories of offenders far more effectively than it does for others.
For the record and for those who do not know what you mean by a short-term prisoner who is in and out of prison, could you define such a prisoner?
It is a crude estimate, but anybody who is given a sentence of about a year or less, which means that they would serve six months in prison, is probably in that category.
You have helpfully stolen all my questions, convener.
That is a minor revenge for your supplementaries at the previous meeting.
Following on from the convener’s earlier question, I was pleased—like, I think, most members—with the focus on preventative spend in the budget. Having said that, I think that even the Government recognises that it is an extremely challenging budget. Mr Halpin, how do you envisage the role of Sacro in the future? You must have been pleased with the preventative spend element but worried at the tightness of the budget.
As well as being the chief executive of Sacro, I chair the criminal justice voluntary sector forum, which represents a number of third sector criminal justice organisations. We welcome the shift to preventative spend, in particular the opportunity that the growth fund offers us. The important point is to ensure that the spend is targeted at the activities that we know work in community sentences and engaging with offenders in the wider community.
That is helpful. I want to follow on from a point that Mr Ewing made. This may not be the place for you to say, but should there be a presumption against one-year sentences?
I suggest that consideration should be given to the current limit on the presumption against short sentences.
You think that it should be extended.
We support that principle on the basis of addressing the offending behaviour of the categories of offenders who are subject to those sentences. We think that there are better solutions than putting them into prison.
Does anyone else on the panel have a view on that?
I support that view. In fact, we question the value of sentences of less than two years, but we are pragmatic and realistic about public reassurance on the alternatives to those sentences. If the alternatives are not credible, they are not appropriate. We still strongly hold to the initial intention and to the figure of six months being achievable.
I entirely agree and endorse the idea that prevention must be better than cure. At the moment, there is just not enough access to purposeful activity in prison. We are having a particularly bad moment in Barlinnie. We will publish my Barlinnie report next month, and it shows disturbing figures about the lack of access to activity for short-term prisoners. At any one time, some 70 per cent of prisoners are not getting access to purposeful activity. That cannot be right.
I want to follow up on that specific point with Mr Ewing. It obviously makes sense, and I think that there is broad agreement, that there should be proper rehabilitation programmes in the Prison Service to introduce an element of stability into a prisoner’s life in the run-up to release and post release, so that there is more stability in their lives, they do not recommit offences, and there is better safety and security in the community. What particular programmes or work streams do you have to provide rehabilitation and support prisoners in the run-up to release and post release, in order to limit reoffending?
We work closely with a number of partners in the prisons. All the prisons have what we call links centres, which are spots to which our different community partners can come to engage with the prisoners and help prepare the way for release. I happened to be in Glenochil yesterday, and I was talking to the Jobcentre Plus manager there, who provides a service to prisoners on a regular basis to enable them to sort out their benefits issues and, increasingly, is looking to how prisoners can access employability programmes once they are released.
I want to stop you there, because this could turn into an inquiry into how we stop people reoffending. I want to talk money; I must remind the committee that we are talking about money here. I realise that the stuff that you are talking about is important, but can you do it with the budget? Is there a budget for it? If you have all these extra prisoners, you have to pay for the staff. Is there money for that? If not, we are just talking about motherhood and apple pie.
There is money to run rehabilitation programmes in prison. The increase in the budget that has been provided for will enable us to do better, but we have to make sure that we get the best value from that money. The problem is that the overcrowding that we are experiencing means that it is difficult to deliver those services, which goes back to Brigadier Monro’s point. We could provide more opportunities for shorter-term prisoners if we had fewer of them. The constraint is not the budget but the number of prisoners that we are trying to deal with at the moment.
There would be horror among many communities at the prospect that someone who displayed chaotic behaviour would not be put in prison unless it was for a two-year sentence or more. There are other issues involved. Investing in initiatives that work, particularly in dealing with reoffending, is really the nub of what we are talking about. Brigadier, from your experience in inspecting prisons and seeing the work that is on-going, what do we need to invest in and is there money available in the budget to do that kind of work?
I cannot comment on the money; the one thing that I do not inspect is the money. I certainly endorse what the chief executive said: there is a disparity between the numbers and the available places. Every prisoner should have an opportunity to work or improve themselves—to be educated and to understand and address their underlying behaviour, which will probably involve drugs or alcohol. The issue that concerns me is in many ways—although not entirely—related to overcrowding. I would like to see much more determination to deal with prisoners’ underlying issues and to ensure that when they leave prison they are in a better state than when they arrived. We must have better through-prison care and we must make sure that we have understood precisely what the prisoner needs and that they have proper access to education, vocational training and work. Otherwise, by the time they get to the links centre it is too late; if they have not been dealt with they will still have a problem, so when they walk out the door they will still get drunk or have a drugs problem and they will not be better qualified or prepared for work or life in the community. At the moment, that issue is very much related to overcrowding, but the point is that we have to make sure that we are investing in trying to improve people when they are in prison.
I want to correct a misperception. We are not arguing that you should do nothing with people with chaotic lifestyles that cause them to offend in their community—far from it. What we are suggesting is that there are better alternatives for dealing with some of those individuals. When somebody comes into prison, we can do a certain amount to stabilise them and help them start to address their drug and alcohol problems, or whatever has been the cause of their offending behaviour. However, to be effective that needs to be carried through into the community. There are services that can be offered in the community rather than delivered in the prison context. It is not about saying, “There is nothing to be done with those offenders”. They need to be dealt with, but the issue is whether prison is a more cost-effective way of doing that than alternatives in the community.
When I ask a prison governor how well they are doing, they do not know, precisely because, as Mr Ewing said, no one knows whether the programme that the prisoner has been following works in the community—that information is not fed back to the prison. Integration and co-ordination of effort need to be better.
I agree with what has been said, so I will not go back over it. With regard to the committee’s purpose of examining the budget, it is absolutely clear that sufficient funding is not available for throughcare services in the community, particularly for those who are released from sentences of less than four years and who are in what we term voluntary throughcare.
Are there any time bombs—such as slopping out—ticking away in the system that would be affected by the budget proposals for the next few years?
We will address the issue of slopping out through the construction of the new HMP Grampian, and the sanitation facilities that we have in place at HMP Peterhead have proven to be acceptable to the courts, so I am not conscious of any time bombs of that nature.
I remain very much concerned about the time bomb that is Cornton Vale. Great efforts have been made since I published my follow-up report to deal with issues in the short term, but I am concerned about how female prisoners are treated and the conditions in which they are kept.
As my committee colleagues will know, I share Brigadier Monro’s real concern and anxiety about the conditions at Cornton Vale.
It has changed. I disagree with the brigadier on the priority that the board attaches to the issues at Cornton Vale, as we have taken significant action to address the situation. We have converted Ratho hall at HMP Edinburgh so that it can house women offenders, and we have transferred more than 100 prisoners there. That was done deliberately to reduce some of the pressure on Cornton Vale to enable us to improve the level of services for the women there.
To my mind, that pushes it very far away again. You say that you have made progress, but it is clear that the progress that has been made has been piecemeal and that it has involved the easy things that you can fix. The major underlying structural problems with Cornton Vale have never been addressed and have been pushed to the side because of cost, although there is still investment in other prisons around the estate.
I would like to know the cost of remedying the issues that were raised in the chief inspector’s report and his follow-up report. What would be the cost of remedying those issues just now without a new build for women or some alternative system for the very damaged women who are in the prison?
The brigadier has identified a number of specific interventions at Cornton Vale. As a rough calculation, we estimated that it would cost in the order of £10 million to £12 million to address some of those issues.
I understand that. You have identified one thing that could be remedied. Can you give examples of some of the other issues that could be addressed for the time being—before we are in a situation whereby we would perhaps hope to keep in different circumstances women who are very damaged, need help and are victims themselves—for a cost of £10 million to £12 million? The committee appreciates that many of the women are themselves victims. You have named one thing. What other things would that £10 million to £12 million do for Cornton Vale?
It would allow us to improve the conditions in some of the housing blocks for female prisoners and potentially expand some of the facilities that are available for delivering services to women.
Do you want to continue on this matter, Alison?
No, that is fine.
We might return to the issue another time, but we will not press it any further now.
My question to the panel is about the imminent transfer of responsibility for prisoners’ healthcare to the national health service. Clearly, everything is about more collaborative working across the public sector. Mr Ewing mentioned full-year costs of about £20 million. Are there wider implications? What budgetary implications, if any, are there for the Scottish Prison Service in connection with that transfer of responsibility?
The budgetary implications are that the Scottish Prison Service budget has been reduced, because the costs are now being met by the NHS and NHS boards have been funded to take on the responsibility from 1 November and to continue with it in future years.
Does that imply any sort of internal charging regime between the Scottish police service and the NHS?
The Scottish police service?
Sorry, the Scottish Prison Service. I beg your pardon.
No. There are no plans for any internal charging mechanism. We might jointly operate a couple of minor technical contracts, which might involve small amounts of recharging. One example of such a contract is for the collection of clinical waste. However, there are no recharging arrangements within the transfer. The responsibility becomes one for the NHS and it has responsibility for funding prisoner healthcare in the future.
Does that have implications for your staff, Mr Fairlie?
Not that we are aware of. The staff who work within the prison service transfer to NHS employment, so we are likely to have very much the same staff group that is currently in SPS employment. The skills, experience and knowledge that are required when healthcare is being delivered in the prison environment will still be there. I do not anticipate issues developing, but time will tell, given that people will have a different employer.
Perhaps Mr Ewing or Mr Fairlie can enlighten me on this. Sex offenders are a particular challenge to the Prison Service and no doubt there are costs involved in their management. Is there a change in the profile of prisoners in the system and, if so, does that bring challenges in the coming budgetary period, given the kind of work that you need to do with sex offenders?
You are right that the treatment of sex offenders is a challenge in any system. There has probably been a gradual increase in the number of sex offenders—but not a dramatic increase.
What does the increase look like?
I do not have the figures with me and I would not want to make something up. We can get the figures for you.
Does that have an impact on the budget?
No, because we will give priority to addressing how programmes operate and how we make available opportunities to engage with them.
Do you want to add anything, Mr Fairlie?
I will add one thing. The prisoner population from Peterhead will be dispersed around the estate when Grampian prison opens, so the sex offender population will be on various sites. A long-standing issue for us is that, although we have staff who deliver programmes throughout the estate, the role of delivering sex offender programmes is much more intense and difficult, and we are concerned that a number of staff have been delivering such programmes for a long time without having an opportunity to step back from doing them.
Are there measures to judge the effectiveness of programmes in preventing reoffending?
The short answer is that it is not easy to do that. The programmes are based on accredited work that has been done elsewhere, but dealing with that group of offenders is a challenge.
I want to talk about efficiencies, which need not always mean cuts. We have a high reoffending rate. Leaving aside alternatives to custody, are you able to tell how much is being put into throughcare and how much the budget ought to be to assist the very high percentage—I cannot recall the exact figure; I think that it is 80-something per cent—of those in the current system who reoffend within a couple of years?
Over 60 per cent of offenders reoffend within two years.
I beg your pardon.
We do not identify a separate budget in those terms. The budget covers a number of different strands and it is difficult to disentangle activities that might take place in a prison from what is done to prepare prisoners for release. Phil Fairlie has already referred to developing the prison officer’s role and the prison officer’s engagement with the prisoner is quite often critical to their preparedness for getting out. Although we can give you a breakdown of our expenditure on education contracts, criminal justice social work support in prisons and so on, I do not think that that would fully answer your question.
I will let Mr Halpin respond in a moment, but I simply have to wonder whether there is any way we can join these things up. I have been an MSP for 12 years—and have convened various justice committees in that time—and I am still hearing the same stuff. Nothing has changed. Hugh Monro will understand why I feel this way; your report says the same things that your predecessors were saying way back. Surely we must be able to put a figure on this. If the thrust of the budget is to make efficiencies by spending to save, we should be spending more money on alternatives to custody, as has been suggested, rather than on throughcare. However, we do not have even ballpark figures for any of this. Can you help me, Mr Halpin?
The Audit Scotland report itself refers to inconsistency. No figure is available. The funding for statutory throughcare provision is in the core criminal justice social work grant that is allocated through community justice authorities and voluntary throughcare services. Nothing is determined in the budget; the decision whether such provision is implemented is a local one. The Prison Service does not commission throughcare. From our perspective of picking up those who leave prison and come back into communities, we feel that the voluntary element in throughcare is haphazard.
But can you help me with this? What should be happening? How can we find out where the money is and what funding you require? If we had that information, we could track throughcare outcomes—that lovely word—and see whether the money is being spent properly to ensure that we do not have 60 per cent reoffending within two years and costing us all this money per prisoner. If we could make that work, would that not be a good efficiency?
Community reintegration is a distinct workstream in the reducing reoffending programme. That on-going work has been encouraging and we are also about to design and embark on the successor to that programme for the next phase.
In its report, Audit Scotland has made a number of recommendations to the Scottish Government on addressing that information gap. The Public Audit Committee is taking evidence as a follow-up and I imagine that some proposals will come forward as a result.
After all this time, we still need to move things on; turning this system round is like trying to turn round a tanker. What about funding? How much more money is needed? If I were to say to Sacro, for example, “How much money do you need to make more of a success of your activities?” how would you respond? After you put your bid in, we will deal with the issue of joining things up and the costs to the SPS.
Any approach to reducing or breaking the cycle of reoffending has to be needs led, which means carrying out a proper assessment of the whole person’s needs. Once that is understood, we need to work out where those services are best delivered.
Does that not happen already? When someone is about to be released from prison, do they not get a care package that sets out what they need and which is costed?
It is probably best to approach this through the case study model. In a survey that was carried out at Cornton Vale, almost a third of the women leaving the prison did not know where they were going to stay. Accommodation is a very big issue. How can people who fall between stools in that way access mainstream housing? With an awful lot of people entering the criminal justice system, particularly women offenders, the primary issue is mental health. It is not that there is no psychological services pilot for women offenders; the point is that that is what those services should be doing in the first place. The question is whether we have the clinical assessment tools to ensure that we understand the extent of mental health issues in the prison population.
Or indeed to find out whether those individuals are illiterate or innumerate.
Absolutely.
Let me take as an example a vulnerable woman in prison. What ought to be taking place is an assessment of their housing requirements, their social work support requirements, their children’s requirements and all the other stuff that they will need when they come out. They should also have received assistance from the Prison Service to deal with the underlying causes of why they are in prison. Therefore, in one column, you would set out the things that this person needs; in the other, you would set out the costs. We need to find out how much it takes to fund all that—or am I being too simplistic here? It seems to me that if you can stop one or two people reoffending, it would be a help.
We do assess individual prisoners’ needs; indeed, that assessment shapes the responses that we try to give them in prison. However, picking up those needs after the individual leaves prison is a matter for CJAs and local authorities.
I hear that. That is the process. What I am asking is whether, when Ms So-and-so leaves prison, she has some checklist of the services that she requires and the funding or personnel that will be needed to ensure that she is not back in prison after a few months because of soliciting or some other aspect of a miserable existence.
That is the inconsistency in the current picture. For someone who leaves Edinburgh prison to go back to Edinburgh, voluntary throughcare will start before they are released and their needs will be picked up when they come back into their area. We cannot say the same of every area in Scotland.
I have another question but, on this specific issue, the convener makes a very good point. Although there are pockets of activity in certain areas, although sums of money are being spent all over the place and although people such as Mr Halpin and his organisation are doing a lot of good work, no one is measuring the effectiveness of any of that. Humza Yousaf made a good point about preventative spend. It is all very well for the Government to make that a priority—indeed, it is correct to do so—but we have to be able to understand the outcomes. The recent Audit Scotland report was the first attempt by anyone to pull everything together and see how the system worked. Should the Government or Audit Scotland be doing that job? Who should pull together all the information on spend to let us find out how the money is being spent and what the outcomes are? No one seems to be taking responsibility for any of that at the moment. Everyone takes responsibility for their own bit of the budget or justice system, but who should be taking overall responsibility for measuring spend and examining the outcomes?
I acknowledge what you are saying. Everyone involved should have a very clear understanding of the effectiveness of the outcomes of the bit for which they are responsible and the system itself should understand as much. I am drawn to the whole-systems approach to youth justice that is being taken in Aberdeen, which looks at the young person as a whole and designs services around their needs. Some services that my organisation delivered were not considered to be the right ones, so they were reshaped. We had to develop them and design other services, and we worked to co-produce those solutions. Outcomes are being measured in that area. The numbers of young people who appear in court and who offend are reducing significantly.
That is fine and I welcome such work, but who should look at the system Scotland-wide? Should a particular organisation take that up?
Community justice authorities are well placed to consider community activity.
Does James Kelly want to continue questioning?
I do not—I have a separate point.
Just go for it—I do not really have supplementaries running now.
I have a question on the point that we are discussing.
Go for it.
Forgive the daft laddie question, Mr Ewing. I am familiar with the arrangements that apply at Inverness prison, where the links centre involves the NHS, Highland Council, Citizens Advice Scotland, the Highland Homeless Trust and all the rest. Who co-ordinates their presence there? Is that co-ordination part of the focus on the individual prisoner’s needs assessment?
Provision is driven by an assessment of prisoners’ individual needs but more by prisoners’ collective needs. The question is what services can be provided that we know from experience are valuable to prisoners. Over the years, we have developed partnerships with several agencies and facilitated them to come into prisons.
I do not know whether you are familiar with getting it right for every child, which focuses on the individual and involves different lead authorities. If the prisoner is the Prison Service’s responsibility, the co-ordination role should fall to the relevant establishment.
The establishment has a role to play, but some statutory responsibilities fall outside our scope. I cannot tell a local authority how to organise the services that it delivers to ex-offenders. In discussing how to move forward, somebody has asked whether we should have a programme such as getting it right for every offender. Giving effect to that is a challenge.
If we are talking about preventative spend and about every section of the public sector contributing to that through not just its own budget but other organisations’ budgets—housing is a key issue—the arrangements should not be like a shop. Porterfield has a series of portakabins. People should be tasked with going there to have their needs assessed and met. Surely the obligation falls on the prison authorities.
We will try to take such an approach to ensure that a prisoner makes those connections, but we are dealing with adults who must make decisions about their lives. I will describe a difficulty. We can create the opportunity for appointments in a prison with a housing provider, a drug addiction support unit or whatever. As Tom Halpin said, we are increasingly making that work such that services come into the prison before a prisoner is released. Previously, more engagement used to take place after release.
I am sorry to flog this but, if there are case notes on a prisoner, with whom are they shared after the prisoner’s release? Are they shared with the statutory authorities—perhaps the community justice authority?
Yes, they are. In particular, the offenders on sentences of four years or more have care plans that are dealt with by the statutory authorities. For those on sentences of less than four years, it is more of a challenge because, as Tom Halpin said, those arrangements are voluntary and there is no obligation on local authorities to provide the services unless the prisoner asks for them.
Will you run that past me again? What is the distinction with the care plan for those on four-year sentences?
The local authorities have a statutory duty to follow up and deal with longer-term offenders. They do not have the same statutory obligation in relation to those on sentences of less than four years. Local authorities will provide services, but the individual is not obliged to take them up.
Mr Halpin, should such services be statutory?
I am of the clear view that we should compel services to be offered to shorter-term prisoners. A significant number of people do not take up the services on release because they think that they know better. They then come up against the realities of life back outside and, maybe a month later, walk back through the door to seek help to overcome some of the difficulties that they face. It is not just about what happens on the day they walk out the gate; it is about their life after that.
I hear that. I appreciate that there is a statutory duty towards prisoners on sentences of four years or more because their needs may be greater—or they may not—but those on two-year sentences become those on four-year sentences. If we are spending to save, why not put statutory duties in place for those on lesser sentences to prevent them from reoffending and climbing up the criminal tree? Is that a silly thing to say?
That is the nub of the point that we make regarding the inconsistent availability of throughcare.
I entirely endorse that point. Often, the issue is what happens at the door. A lot of effort is put into integrated case management in prison, but it can often go wrong at the door because delivery into the community has not been thought through holistically. Too often, I see prisoners coming back and wasting more public money in the wrong place when the spend-to-save priority should be careful delivery from the prison into the community. If we approach that much more carefully and in a statutory way, we will have a much higher success rate.
You take the view that, I think, I now have: that the statutory duty should apply to those on sentences of less than four years as well. Is that correct?
I entirely agree with you.
I have found out something that is good and interesting. I hope that we will pursue that.
Mr Ewing, I was not entirely clear from your submission whether you think that there are sufficient funds to provide for meaningful activities for prisoners. I would also be grateful to hear from the brigadier on that. Do we think that there is enough in the budget?
The problem is not so much the budget as it is capacity. Because of overcrowding, we do not have the capacity to provide the meaningful activity that we would like for the prison population.
We inspected Addiewell and will go back there for a follow-up inspection. One of the things that I will examine there is the use of technology to organise the regime of the jail. That is mentioned in my annual report, which I hope you have seen.
We have had an interesting discussion this morning. We have heard about alternatives to custody and reducing reoffending, but we have not yet touched on earlier intervention. I may come to that in a moment. However, it is no clearer to me whether the budget is divvied up in the right way, whether it is providing the holistic services that we have been talking about or whether it is flexible enough. Are we using the money to the best ends? We have a finite pot of money, but it is not clear to me whether it is being shared in the most appropriate way. I would like the panel to comment on how we can hasten the kind of change that we have been talking about and what flexibility is needed within the different budget heads to allow that to happen.
The additional resources that have been made available to the Prison Service will allow us to bring on stream the new facilities at Low Moss, which will enable us to develop and offer an alternative model to the one that we have traditionally used in the prison. From the outset, we are planning to operate Low Moss with a greater degree of integration with our community partners in offering the services that the prisoners need.
The budget offers an opportunity to do some things differently, particularly with the growth fund and the shift to rehabilitative activities, which I welcome. Given the constraints that are on us in Scotland at this time, we look forward to making the most of that opportunity. I invite the committee to look back, in due course, to make sure that the diverse solutions include the third sector as well, as it is the softer issues, such as the relationship with an offender, that the third sector can address. I also believe that there are efficiencies that it would be a mistake to miss.
What are those efficiencies? Where are we going to take the money from?
Efficiencies can come through non-cash savings, by getting more throughput for the same money. I have explained the use of volunteers working with our staff in mentoring women offenders in the community, getting a bigger bang for our buck. Also, the third sector achieves higher levels of attendance for community payback orders than the statutory sector. There are a number of efficiencies that could be made, which are not necessarily about getting cash back but are about getting more throughput.
Is there an inconsistency in the budget? We heard a lot about the use of proper and effective community sentences, but the budget line that supports such sentences flatlines. The budget is set up to support an increase in prisoner numbers. Have community sentences been given appropriate priority?
That is a question that you must put to the Scottish Government.
Do you have a view?
No, I think that we sought to strike a balance in how we deploy our resources between the known pressures that come from the growth in the prisoner population and the other pressures. We have not talked about the capital budget line, which is heavily committed to the delivery of HMP Grampian. Another issue over the three-year resource period is whether we can deploy some of the resource budget to invest in the prison estate. At the end of the day, ministers have to strike a balance between the cost of delivery in the community and the cost of dealing with the offenders who are and will continue to be in the system over the spending review period.
Does Brigadier Monro have a view?
I very much inspect the prisons and not the money, so I will not get involved. Certainly, efficiencies have to be looked at and I entirely agree that we must get people into community sentences rather than short-term prison sentences. That must be the way ahead. How such an approach is delivered in an effective and joined-up way is a holy grail, and I have not yet seen the path to it.
Does the Prison Officers Association think that efficiencies can be made in the practical running of prisons? We heard about the use of technology, which also benefits prisoners. Could other savings be made? I am not talking about your members—you are all right; I know that you are not going to talk about pay.
You are already getting huge savings in that area.
The committee appreciates that when conditions are bad in prisons, they are bad for your members.
Yes, we work in exactly the same conditions—
That must be disheartening.
Yes.
I think that the chief inspector said in the report on Cornton Vale that training of officers on dealing with people with mental health problems would help to prevent reoffending. Do you subscribe to that view? I am thinking again about spending to save. Prison officers are not just turnkeys; you interact with prisoners and live in the same place day in and day out. A good relationship with prison officers can have an impact.
The relationships that a prisoner has had with staff are crucial to the person who comes out at the end of the sentence.
Am I correct in saying that that is a common view among all the panelists?
Yes, I agree with what Phil Fairlie said. We have already started to develop further the training packages for staff at Cornton Vale, who are dealing with a very challenging population group. There is a thread of issues to do with the extent to which some of the prisoners there should be in a prison setting.
We will conclude on that point, unless anyone on the panel wants to raise something else that we ought to have asked about.
I have one observation on the capital programme. The pressures on the overall Scottish Government capital budget will be known to the committee. At the end of the day, ministers have had to take some pragmatic decisions about where the priorities should lie. That has meant that we have been given sufficient funds to enable us to take forward and deliver on Grampian as the top-priority project. The resources available in the latter year of the spending review period are less than we would ideally have liked, but that is the reality of the settlement that the Government is having to deal with, which is a limiting factor in our investment capability as we go forward.
It is fair to say that the project that you are talking about is a replacement prison. From the evidence that you have given, should the committee take the message that we should not build more prisons but should look at alternatives to custody and better throughcare for those who have been in prison and that we should not lock up as many people, given that you have all said that quite often we are locking up the wrong people?
Yes, but we still have apace the modernisation of the estate. In an ideal world I would be looking for a budget of £50 million to £60 million a year running forward, but that is just not available. That is why we have to look to see how we can supplement the resources available in the capital budget from the resource budget in order to make it go further.
Is it fair to summarise your view as being that there are many people in prisons—not just in Cornton Vale but across the prison population—whom we should not be locking up because they are not a danger to the public? Are you saying that we should be doing something else with them—I am not talking about giving them free rein and not punishing them but about dealing with them in a different way because it costs less—and that we should not just be looking at continually refurbishing and building more prisons?
Yes, that reflects our view. We are trying to produce a programme for a modern estate of about 7,500 to 8,000 prisoners; we should not be building an estate for 9,500.
Can I take it that all the panelists agree with that summary? I do not want to put words in your mouths.
Yes.
Thank you for your evidence, which has been very useful. I will suspend the meeting for five minutes.
I welcome the second panel of witnesses. Richard Keen QC is dean of the Faculty of Advocates; Lindsay Montgomery is chief executive of the Scottish Legal Aid Board; Oliver Adair is a member of the criminal legal aid negotiating team at the Law Society of Scotland; Graham Harding is a member of the civil legal aid negotiating team at the Law Society of Scotland; Keith Dryburgh is a social policy officer at Citizens Advice Scotland; and Professor Alan Paterson is professor of law and director of the centre of professional legal studies at the University of Strathclyde. I welcome you all.
I will focus on the legal aid budget. Obviously the implications of the budget as proposed are that there will be cuts in the legal aid budget line. That is an extremely challenging situation to have to deal with because there are increasing demands on legal aid as a result of a number of factors such as Cadder that mean that more people are applying for legal aid. The demand for that service brings real financial pressures. The budget is being decided against that backdrop of financial pressures, and we have been asked to make savings in the legal aid budget line. What are the panel’s views on that scenario? How can SLAB continue to deliver an appropriate service that ensures access to justice while making the savings that it has been asked to make by what the cabinet secretary has proposed?
You said it yourself: it is going to be extremely challenging. However, there are some things that help us. We are beginning to see a downturn in the number of applications for civil legal aid, which reached an all-time high during the past two or three years.
We have touched on the Welfare Reform Bill and other factors that will probably increase demand for legal advice and legal aid in the next few years. The Fraser of Allander institute estimates that £2 billion could be taken out of the Scottish economy by 2014-15 on top of the other reductions in budgets, including those of local authorities. Many people will lose services and income and will get into housing arrears and debt, which will inevitably increase the demand for advice. We are facing a big demand for advice alongside a cut in budget.
Do you think there should be more direct co-operation between CABx and solicitors who do legal aid work? They could even co-locate, if it is proper, to stop small matters becoming volcanoes, with everybody taking sides and the people involved being determined to go to court come hell or high water. Do you think there is room for that?
That is already happening, to a large extent. Lawyers volunteer in CABx and SLAB funds the in-court advice services. There is a lot of joint working going on and we would like to see more of that. The Scottish civil justice advisory group recommended that in-court advice be extended across a larger number of courts and we support that. The Scottish Government is looking at the budget it gives to in-court advice services and other projects and we would like to see it extended so that we can do more co-operation of the sort I have talked about.
There is a lot of good work going on. In the Highlands and Islands, successful work has been done between SLAB-employed civil solicitors, the advice sector and the legal profession. That model offers people a much better referral service. We still have a problem in Scotland with people not knowing who the best person to go to is. After someone has made two or three attempts to find out who they should talk to, they might get fed up and not find a solution. There is much more that we can do to get further joint working in that area. The other issue is that there is a need to get greater co-ordination between the various funders of legal services, including local authorities, the Government, SLAB and others. That will be extremely important in the next couple of years.
I take it that you are talking about debt counselling by local authorities, welfare benefits officers and so on.
Yes.
Does Mr Adair wish to say something?
From the Law Society’s perspective, it is always concerning when further cuts are sought to the legal aid budget. We appreciate that, given the downturn in public spending, we cannot expect the legal aid budget to be immune from the financial pressure that everyone else faces. I support what Lindsay Montgomery said. As the Law Society’s legal aid convener, I have always championed the tripartite approach. It has been successful in other areas, such as summary justice reform. I am sure that, if we work together, we will find a way of achieving the Government’s objectives.
Citizens Advice Scotland sees the Scottish Government’s policy of moving in a strategic direction in which all the stakeholders are working together as the only effective way forward. We heartily endorse what Lindsay Montgomery and Ollie Adair have just said.
Does Richard Keen want to say something about pro bono work and the role of the Faculty of Advocates?
First of all, I do not subscribe to the Orwellian notion that less is more. Less is never more. Consequently, I think that we have to begin by appreciating that the very real cuts in the legal aid budget and the justice budget as a whole are going to impact on access to justice. We cannot hope to maintain access to justice in its present form in the face of these cuts.
If I could be difficult for a moment, I put it to you that advocates make quite a bit of money out of the legal aid system. What proportion or percentage of the collective income of the Faculty of Advocates comes from legal aid?
Criminal legal aid represents rather less than 12 per cent of the Faculty of Advocate’s total income. Of the £100 million that is paid out in legal aid by SLAB each year, less than 10 per cent goes to the Faculty of Advocates.
What about civil legal aid?
A much, much smaller proportion—it is tiny. Overall, legal aid represents far less than 15 per cent of the Faculty of Advocate’s total income. I also point out that those who are carrying out work that is legally aided are carrying out some of the most important legal work, whether it be family related, immigration related or crime related, and are working on behalf of some of the most vulnerable people in our society. I can say that those who are carrying out that work in the Faculty of Advocates are, essentially, the lowest-paid advocates in the country.
I do not think that I should have taken him on, do you?
I declare an interest as a member of the Faculty of Advocates. I want to pick up on what Lindsay Montgomery was saying on the difficulties in predicting the impact of the Welfare Reform Bill. It seems valid to point out that the bill is likely to increase demand slightly, but should the Scottish Legal Aid Board not be considering the issue seriously and quantifying the impact?
Each of the local legal aid authorities in the UK jurisdictions is doing exactly the same thing—trying to work out what the impact will be. We will be engaging with colleagues down south as we try to do that. As things stand, it is still not wholly clear exactly how the bill will operate and what its impact will be on all of us. Consideration of that is a high priority for each of us.
I take Mr Keen’s point about fat cats and thin cats. Are the fat cats taking too much of the budget? Everybody agrees that the budget is challenging for everybody, but perhaps it is more challenging for some than for others. I am looking at the list of the top 20 advocates receiving legal assistance fees. The total for the top 20 is more than £4.5 million. The total for the top five QCs is about £1.5 million—an average of £300,000 each. Is there a great disparity between those in the top 20 and those lower down—the thinner cats?
The people at the very top of their profession do indeed earn the sort of figures that you mention. There are also people setting out who are earning near to zero. You do not receive a salary when you are a member of faculty, and you will find people on the legal aid list who are earning less than they would receive on state benefits. They struggle on doing that, and they take on other employment such as teaching at university.
Relative to whom?
Relative to very senior lawyers in other areas of practice, they are not well paid. Relative to very senior accountants, they are not well paid. Relative to very senior bankers, they are not well paid. Relative to many people, they are not well paid. The public perception may be that these are high incomes, but the public perception may be that MSPs receive a very high salary, pension arrangements and expenses. These are all matters of perception. It is very easy to isolate one or two people and say that X earns £300,000 a year. If—and I hope that this never happens—you find yourself on trial for murder, you will want one of the top five QCs and not one of the bottom five advocates. That is common. People demand their services, and they are incredibly busy and incredibly hard working.
You are a top QC.
He is not one of the top-earning ones though. I have to make that clarification.
Not directly, perhaps, but I rather think that most bankers’ bonuses come from the public purse indirectly at the present time.
Game, set and match, I fear.
My question was for Mr Montgomery, too—I would like to hear from him. I also had another point, following on from that.
I was planning to stay out of it.
Let us move off the faculty—if Humza will let us.
I have a final question on the faculty. I understand Richard Keen’s point about counsel being those at the top of the profession—I do not doubt that they are—but is there anything that the faculty can do to promote those who are not quite at the top of the profession but who are still pretty well respected and do the job well? Should those—probably like Mr Keen—who are not the top earners be getting a little bit more of that work, or is it open to market forces?
The faculty is a basic marketplace in which everyone is self-employed. If someone is seen to do well, they will get more work; if they are not seen to do well, they will not get more work. There is a terrible attrition rate. Many people spend years qualifying only to leave because they cannot make a living. If you believe in market forces at all, you will see that they work most obviously within the faculty. That is perhaps the best driver of both quality and fee rates.
I am done.
If you had wanted to go on, you could have done. I have on my list Colin Kerr, John Finnie, Graeme Pearson and Alison McInnes. [Interruption.] Sorry, it is John Lamont, not John Finnie. You cannot get the staff these days. It is Colin Kerr, John Lamont, Graeme Pearson and Alison McInnes. I reassure those members that I have noticed their winks, nods and signals.
I would have thought that, after all these years, you would not have got Keir and Kerr mixed up.
Yes—Keir is correct. Did I call you Colin Kerr?
Yes, you did.
Did I really?
Absolutely.
You are a neighbour, too.
I know. It is quite shameful.
Do you mean law accountants?
Well, I gave you a heads-up.
It is perfectly clear that the profession has been very supportive of the system—I think that Oliver Adair will share that view. It has made transactions between the profession and the board much more simple in relation to applications and accounts. From April, all applications have been online—we will not accept paper—and we did not have any difficulty in getting the profession to sign up to that.
Can you put a figure on the savings that the board has made by changing from paper to the online system?
We have saved about 20 to 30 posts, which turns into quite a significant amount of money. I do not have the figure to hand, but over the piece it has allowed us to make savings. Our running costs were cut by £1.1 million this year, having been flatlining for three years. That is where we have been able to make serious savings.
Colin Keir has a question.
It is something that I tried to ask while Humza Yousaf was in full flow. Mr Keen made a strong defence of his profession. Given the cutbacks in public moneys, where does he suggest that any savings can be found?
It is difficult, because legal aid rates have been pegged over the past two or three years. I know that there was a reference to criminal appeal work rates having changed in 2010, but that was after about 12 or 15 years, to put it in context. The problem is that, if we begin to erode further the rates that are available to skilled people, fewer of them will want to do the work. Legal aid embraces some of the most vulnerable people in our society. It is often the people who cannot afford to go to law who need to do so.
I will pick up Mr Keen’s point about a possible increase in party litigants. The CAB service is fully conscious that that might well mean more pressure on CAB advisers and particularly on the nine in-court advice projects, on which we have submitted evidence and which appear in the Government’s paper “A Sustainable Future for Legal Aid”. That part of the programme is vital; several surveys and reports have recommended expanding, not contracting, that service. If the court service was cut back, that would put more pressure on the in-court advice service, which is a vital part of what CAS and SLAB do.
I agree with what Mr Keen said about the role of solicitors who sit behind counsel. We do an important job. Other cuts could be made while core fees are maintained. Core fees have not really moved in the past 10 years—in real terms, the rate is probably 10 per cent below inflation. If cuts are to be made, they should come from areas other than core fees.
I should declare an interest—I am not in practice now, but I was a civil legal aid lawyer and I frequently sat behind counsel. I therefore share some of the views of Mr Keen and the Law Society. I also declare an interest as I was an in-house pro bono lawyer for the CAB.
I will make a quick point about wider citizens advice bureaux funding issues. I talked about the importance of bureaux in the legal process in preventing matters from becoming justice issues. We project that core and project funding for citizens advice bureaux in Scotland in 2011-12 will decrease by 9 per cent, or more than £1 million. That almost inevitably means that we will see fewer people. Funding was cut by 10 per cent last year in England and Wales, and 7 per cent fewer people were seen there. We work on the basis that, if we see fewer people, the justice system will probably see more people. We want to see more people, to keep people out of the justice system.
Will you run that past me again? Have you had a cut?
We receive funding from a variety of sources. Advice is devolved to local authorities and funding for it is not ring fenced, so 32 different decisions are made on advice funding across Scotland. We also receive project funding, which forms about 50 per cent of our total funding. Both forms of funding are reducing. Our initial estimate is that our total funding will reduce by 9 per cent in the next year, which will probably mean that we will see fewer people. That could put pressure on the justice system and the legal aid budget.
That is helpful.
My question is to the Scottish Legal Aid Board’s representative. You touched on planned savings. Are you concerned that the savings that you have identified might be offset by extra costs, particularly from the Cadder judgment?
The savings that we are making exist. At this stage, neither we nor the Government know what the budget for dealing with Cadder will be—it will depend on Lord Carloway. We put figures for the costs in our submission and we are doing a major review of the estimates, following four months of our police-duty scheme. Our figures do not include the removal at the end of the month of subsuming advice and assistance in legal aid, so they will go up. It looks as though the range that we are considering could be accommodated in the budget—subject to the outcome of Lord Carloway’s report, which is an unknown. If that report raises the cost significantly, we and the Government will have to think seriously about where the money will come from.
Are you planning further cuts to address the potential hole in the budget that would arise in the worst-case scenario?
When Lord Carloway’s report is published in the not-too-distant future, we will know what is likely to happen to the numbers. When that is clear, we will work with the Government to find out the cost implications and decide, if a substantial amount is involved, how that can be funded. At the end of the day, that will be for the Government to decide.
Lord Gill’s proposed reforms involve what he called divisional sheriffs, or something. What might be the cost implications of those reforms?
In a number of ways, Lord Gill’s proposals and the Government’s response to them should lead to a more efficient civil justice system. To go back to a point that Richard Keen made, if we get to a position in which fewer people are able to access lawyers, we will jointly have failed. The key for us is to maintain the breadth of access to justice but to find cheaper ways of doing it. Reform of the justice system is probably more important than some of the changes to legal aid. Legal aid should not be considered in isolation, because it is a key part of the operation of the system. Some of the proposals in Lord Gill’s report about making the system more efficient should help to reduce the costs.
I do not think that there is a universal view that the implementation of Lord Gill’s reforms will necessarily lead to cost savings or to greater efficiencies in some areas. They would bear further examination. We have already responded to Lord Gill’s report. Of course, there is the issue of the capital cost of implementing such radical changes in the court system over the next four or five years.
Which changes do you mean?
If an entirely new tier of courts, for example, is to be introduced, where will they be? How will they be staffed? Who will be the judges? It is not simply a matter of musical chairs. It raises issues that have yet to be addressed.
Would not the courts be in the same buildings?
That is highly unlikely.
Why?
Take, for example, the structure of Parliament house, where there is an expensive capital refurbishment programme going on and there are 32 courts which accommodate, at the moment, the High Court and the Court of Session. To try to introduce a new personal injury court to that building would be highly problematic because you would be introducing an entirely new set of judges over and above the existing senators. As I said, it is not a straightforward matter, and there are still questions to be addressed in the context of implementation of the reforms. I merely make that observation.
Why would you need special personal injury senators when existing senators already deal with those matters?
I do not think that there will be special personal injury senators, but one of Lord Gill’s recommendations is that there should be a specialist personal injuries court. The question is, where are you going to put it?
I do not follow that. They would be sitting in the same court room, given that they already handle those cases. All that would happen is that the timetable would be rearranged, or something.
If that is what was proposed, it might work. However, that is not what is proposed, if you look at the terms of the Gill report.
I will chew on that one, I think.
I want to cover two areas. First, to give Richard Keen some comfort, I say that some members of the committee were concerned about the Government’s current proposals in terms of their budgetary implications.
I am not familiar with those figures. However, one problem with the justice budget is that we face what might be regarded as a demand-driven situation: we cannot decide to have, say, only 10,000 criminal trials in any one year. The same is true for civil cases. I am not sure that you can extrapolate from past figures the likely demand for services. In any case, with recession, higher unemployment and economic difficulty there will be exacerbated social problems, which will be reflected by demands on the justice system.
A number of factors have been working together to cause continuing reductions in the volume of criminal cases. As you will see from our forecasts, we think that expenditure will fall, particularly on the criminal side, because it appears that that trend will continue. Of course that will not continue for ever, but it provides some basis for thinking that expenditure will fall.
I note that the Scottish Court Service had hoped for full recovery of civil court fees and had a target of reducing public-purse subsidy from 47 per cent to 22 per cent. Was that achieved?
That is not our bailiwick or area of interest. Given that people who qualify for legal aid are exempt from court dues, the issue has no impact on the legal aid bill.
You have to be very careful: too great an increase in court dues will create a barrier to access. I can understand the Scottish Court Service’s desire to balance the books—if I can put it that way—but going too far down that road will simply erect another barrier for people who are seeking justice.
Again, we need to know about that, because it might well be a false avenue.
Indeed.
I call Alison McInnes.
My question has already been asked, convener.
Okay.
Audit Scotland’s report said that in 2009-10 court hearings being adjourned cost £10 million, late decisions not to proceed with cases cost £30 million and late guilty pleas—where the accused had pled not guilty at an initial hearing but changed the plea before or at the trial hearing—cost £47 million. Could you comment on the last two figures? Some people might view those categories as presenting us with an opportunity to save £77 million, but it is a fundamental principle of justice that an accused can change his or her plea in the light of additional information coming to light and, similarly, that proceedings can be dropped.
I cannot comment on the precise figures, but steps have been taken to try to encourage people who are contemplating a plea to make that plea early. That is reflected in sentencing policy and is a positive development. However, one has to bear it in mind that often, particularly in the context of criminal prosecution and the accused, you are dealing with the triumph of optimism over experience. Often, the criminal decides, when the witnesses decide to turn up, to plead contrary to his expectation in the run-up to a trial. I am not being facetious. We have to remember that, in many cases, we are dealing with a criminal element who have a determined view of how they will deal with the justice process. They do not want to co-operate, if I may put it that way.
The Audit Scotland report contains a line that is basically a variation of what Richard Keen just said. The report said that, at the end of the day, people who are charged with offences will have a view about how they want to operate relative to the justice system, and it is impossible to control everything in that regard. However, the report also brings out the fact that we have had a number of successes. The summary justice reform that changed how we pay solicitors has had a significant impact, alongside disclosure, in bringing pleas significantly earlier in a significant number of cases.
My second question relates to facilities, which you touched on earlier, convener, and which has been mentioned by the Law Society of Scotland and Consumer Focus Scotland. The Scottish Court Service has an on-going review of the matter. People talk about the barriers to access to justice and the financial issues around that. I am interested in, to take a parochial example, the suggestion of reducing the number of locations where the High Court sits and—instead of having sessions in Inverness—bussing dozens of witnesses to Glasgow, Edinburgh or wherever. Could the panel comment on that, with regard to the issue of the need for justice to be seen to be done?
I can understand why the Scottish Court Service might want to rationalise courts to make savings for itself, but you are quite right to point out that its doing so might lead to a danger of transferring costs from one part of the budget to another. In legal aid cases, you are dealing with people who do not have a great deal of money. If you ask an accused person to travel from their home to a court some distance away, you run the danger of the person not having the money to travel and not turning up, and there then being a warrant issued for their arrest, with all the concomitant costs of the trial not proceeding. Also, witnesses might have to be transferred from one court to another. I understand the superficial attraction of rationalising the court system, and I can see that it might be appropriate in some areas, but serious consideration would be required before large-scale changes were embarked on.
I concur with that observation. Furthermore, there would not just be the cost of moving parties and witnesses over considerable distances; there would also be considerable disruption to the administration of justice that arises when somebody does not turn up, or is delayed. It may be a witness or it may be an accused—we know that the High Court has always had a major problem in ensuring that witnesses are available in trials on particular dates.
I will shift away slightly from the suggestion about moving courts. On the civil side, in order to prevent difficulties there is scope for considering remote access. Examples of successful projects can be seen around the world. The English project on telephone advice lines is one of their big success stories. By linking to web-based technology, we could deliver more remote access. As technology develops, there will be videophone links, and it will be as though people were in the same room. Savings could be made in that area.
I have two questions. The first is on advice services and is for Mr Dryburgh. Does Citizens Advice Scotland worry that advice services may be gobbled up by solicitors, lawyers and law centres? In Glasgow City Council, advice services have gone out to tender. There is a worry that a bid from lawyers and law centres may well be successful. That might not be a bad thing, but would there be a cost implication? As we have heard, advice centres exist to keep people out of the court system. It might be suggested that law centres are not designed to do that.
On the whole, citizens advice bureaux work well with solicitors and law centres, across the advice sector. I am not aware of the bidding process in Glasgow, but there are probably 32 separate arrangements across 32 local authorities.
We do not know enough about what is happening in the Glasgow area, but it seems as though some of the law centres are tendering in a way that might not include the CABx service and other law centres. Obviously, it is a competitive market and such things can happen.
I was going to ask whether on one of your forms we should ask whether people have approached a citizens advice bureau, debt counselling service or welfare or housing benefits officers before granting them advice and assistance. When they come to us one of the first things we ask is whether they have a lawyer and whether they have been to a CAB. Sometimes, they are doing the whole lot and we are part of a multiple attack. Perhaps we could save some—
Some years ago, the Scottish Government, the board and the Law Society of Scotland looked at reforming advice and assistance. One of the changes that we brought in was to try to encourage people to go to the most appropriate adviser, whether that was a lawyer or someone in the advice sector. We changed the payment and authorised expenditure arrangements to encourage more of that, which has been quite successful.
Should that question be on the form so that the solicitor would check certain things before giving advice? The solicitor would have to make a judgment about whether a matter was so serious or immediate—the case might be in court tomorrow—that they had to get on with it.
I think we can make that more explicit. The forms do encourage solicitors to tell us what has happened and why they want to take the matter forward, particularly if they wish to spend higher amounts of money—we would normally know that someone had been to another adviser. We will look at that further.
Professor Paterson, did you want to come in?
Lindsay Montgomery has dealt with my point.
I would be a little cautious about including a question on the form about whether a member of the public has tried to access other sources of advice. How much do we want to restrict the individual’s choice about whom they go to for the advice that they seek? Some members of the public will have faith in the local solicitor, who might have been the family solicitor for years, and might wish them to be the person who advises them. I understand what you are saying and we value the role that CABx and other sources play in providing advice and assistance, but I would be cautious about restricting the public’s choice of where to seek the advice.
I was not suggesting that people should be prohibited from getting advice—the solicitor would have to make a judgment call. It might be appropriate for the solicitor to deal with the case for a range of reasons. I am just suggesting that somebody might come to them for initial legal advice and assistance about a broken washing machine, when they could go to the CAB about that.
Safeguards around that were introduced after previous discussions on this, to which Lindsay Montgomery referred. The issue has already been dealt with. I was talking about access to advice on something that is a matter of Scots law.
A broken washing machine can be a matter of Scots law.
The problem with a system that leads to more referrals—the solicitor could say, “You haven’t been to the CAB or one of the other advisers, so we’ll send you there”—is that we know from research that there is an attrition rate with every referral that is made. So, clients will be lost every time they are referred on somewhere else. Part of the reason for trying to produce joined-up legal services is that we want to get people to the right source of help first, rather than going on with referrals.
The person who needs to make the informed decision is the client. We need to get better at giving people information about who is the most appropriate adviser. We all agree about that. Sometimes it is not that easy to know who is the right person to go to. If we make that system better, we allow people to choose.
I will leave it there.
I had a second question—I will make it quick. It is for Lindsay Montgomery, but others might want to come in on it.
Ollie Adair is probably better placed to say what the profession thinks about it. On what we did and how the system works, it is eminently sensible for someone in Oban to get a local solicitor, instead of us being expected to pay for someone to traipse up and down the country, which just does not make sense.
It is necessary to realise that a solicitor’s client does not commit crime only in his local area—he travels around. In fact, he probably commits more crime in other areas, where he is not known to the police, so a solicitor may well have a client who is itinerant and who commits crime in other parts of the jurisdiction. Should that client be entitled to the solicitor of his choice, who has acted for him for years, even if he commits a crime in Oban rather than where the solicitor practises, which in my case is in Hamilton?
That takes us back to quality and competition.
My question has been answered.
Mine has been answered, too.
I just want to go back to the savings in the justice system that might result from the reform of the civil courts and the other reforms that are coming. To what extent will such reform help to deliver access to advice and assistance, legal aid and citizens advice? Is the hope that it will? We have heard that some measures that looked as if they might help, such as stopping the High Court moving around, will not do so and may very well cost more. Will the reforms help in any way?
Additional communication routes are always welcome. For the past five years, we have run the Citizens Advice Direct phone line, which has expanded the provision of advice to those who prefer to get advice by phone.
Research needs to be done on where face-to-face provision is needed and where the job can be done just as effectively through new telephone technology systems. In some cases, communicating remotely is perfectly effective. We have experience of that from America, Canada and Australia. However, as we have just heard, face-to-face communication is essential in some situations. Research needs to be done to work out when such communication is essential and where there can be efficiencies.
I think that the committee is running out of steam, although perhaps the panellists are not. Is there anything that we ought to have asked about? Is there something that we ought to know about the budget that we have not asked about? I am sure that we have missed things. Please say whether we have or forever hold your peace.
It is important to build on the response to the last question. The issue is touched on in the Government’s paper. An important project in the Government’s making justice work programme, which is crucial to improving how justice works in Scotland, is consideration of access to justice. It is important to consider and find better ways of delivering preventative services and to deal with rurality and distance issues, not just to ask how we can make cuts. I think that there will be a lot of focus on that project in the next year. We will consider how we can avoid difficulties with accessing justice.
Playing musical chairs with the court system will not save money or improve access to justice. Simply shifting a body of casework from one set of courts to another will do nothing to achieve either of those objectives. We should look at the procedures that we apply in the existing court structure to see whether they can be improved in order to effect savings and improve access to justice.
Are those procedures currently being dealt with in the various reviews that are taking place?
In a sense, they are, but we have taken a step too far. The Gill proposals would to some extent effect an element of musical chairs, although I do not suppose that Lord Gill would agree with me on that.
I will leave matters on that controversial comment. I hope that you have a nice lunch with Lord Gill next time.