Budget Process
I welcome the Lord Advocate and the Solicitor General for Scotland. I am sorry that we are a little late starting, but our witnesses will understand that this is not a normal morning for the committee.
I remind members that the principal purpose of this item is consideration of the Crown Office's work over the past year and its plans for next year; this is a taking-stock session. A secondary purpose is consideration of the Executive's spending plans for the Crown Office as part of stage 2 of the budget scrutiny process. I am aware that there might be some constraints on the precise comments that can be made, given the statement that is to be made this afternoon.
If any members think that they should declare a relevant interest in relation to budgets for the justice system, they should do so before they ask questions on the record.
I believe that the Lord Advocate wishes to make an opening statement.
The Lord Advocate (Colin Boyd):
Thank you, convener. I will begin on a personal note by congratulating you on your election as deputy leader of the SNP. It is fair to say that you and I have known each longer than either of us would care to remember. Having seen you in operation since the yes for Scotland campaign in 1979, I am not surprised that you now occupy your new position, and I wish you well in it.
On a more formal basis, I thank you for the work that you have done as convener of the Justice and Home Affairs Committee. Everyone who has dealt with the committee during the past year and a bit appreciates the fact that it has had the largest work load by far, certainly in legislative terms and probably on any other terms. We are aware that you have conducted the committee's work in such a way as to get through the business and we would like to thank you for that work.
I will move on to what I hope will be a brief opening statement, although I emphasise that I have not timed it.
Neil Davidson and I welcome the opportunity to attend the committee today, to explain to members our policies for the Crown Office and the procurator fiscal service in particular and to set out the priorities for the new budget settlement, which was announced by Jack McConnell last week.
The spending plans for the Crown Office provide us with £22.5 million of new money over the next three years. We have also secured retention of full end-year flexibility for the current year.
That increase in funding will allow us to make real progress in relation to the key priorities set out in the spending plans. Those priorities are: to ensure the effective and timely investigation and prosecution of serious crime, focusing especially on violent crime, sex offences, drug-related crime and racially motivated offences; to invest in new technology and improve efficiency; to respond effectively to the European convention on human rights; and to improve services to victims, witnesses and next of kin by setting up a dedicated service delivery structure in the department.
The additional funding will allow us to employ additional staff to help us tackle the anticipated increase in prosecution work in relation to serious crime and the impact of the ECHR. We have already made a significant increase in the work force and will be adding about 30 more legal staff over the next two years.
We were able to go ahead with our plans for improved information technology. In your report, as part of the budget process, you said that you believed that additional funding to allow the Crown Office to use new technology in the way outlined in the Crown Agent's evidence to you should be considered favourably by the Executive. The Crown Agent told you that investment was needed to put in place an appropriate IT infrastructure aimed at speeding up the processing of administration, improving quality control and releasing resources for other priorities. We intend to have a computer on the desk of every lawyer in the service. That will increase their efficiency and give them immediate access to a wider range of resources such as law reports and statutes and allow for greater flexibility in working practices. That will make a radical change in work-flow processes and communications and will improve the service that we give to the public.
The additional funding and improved IT will be of immense assistance in relation to the needs of victims, which is the other key priority of which I want to speak. In the past few years, the procurator fiscal service has laid considerable emphasis on the needs of victims, but there is much more that can be done. In particular, we need to pay attention to the amount and quality of the information that we are giving to victims.
I am therefore pleased to take this opportunity to announce that it is now our intention to establish a dedicated victims assistance service within the Crown Office and procurator fiscal service. The principal aims of the service will be: to provide information to victims and bereaved next of kin about the criminal justice process in general and about the progress of the case that affects them in particular; to provide support to victims and bereaved next of kin by integrating, co-ordinating and liaising with existing services; and to facilitate referral to other agencies for specialist support and counselling as required.
We gave you early sight of the Crown Office strategic plan before the Crown Agent gave evidence to you during the budget process. One of the commitments in that plan was to consider the outcome of a feasibility study on the creation of just such a dedicated witness service. The study was jointly commissioned with the justice department. We have received that report, which provides a thorough look at the present system. The Minister for Justice and I will publish that report by mid-October. It concludes that the service proposed is soundly based, practical and will complement existing and planned initiatives for victims and witnesses.
I digress briefly to say that it is not our intention to supplant institutions or charities such as Victim Support Scotland. We want to work with them. The report argues that the proposal will bring significant improvements in services to victims and witnesses in terms of information provision, support co-ordination and addressing needs. It recommends pilot schemes that would be properly monitored and evaluated so we can use the experience to design an effective victims service.
We have stated our intention to establish a pilot operating from the procurator fiscal's office in Aberdeen to provide support and assistance to victims of crime and bereaved next of kin in serious cases. We are going ahead with that and it will commence this autumn. The necessary arrangements have been made and the staff have been appointed. The Aberdeen pilot will concentrate on those affected by serious cases, proceeding on indictment, and on the next of kin in cases involving deaths that are being considered for criminal proceedings or in relation to which a fatal accident inquiry is held.
Of course, we want to be sure that our conclusions are of general application and are not applicable to one area only or dependent on the particular personalities involved in the single scheme. We therefore intend to establish a second pilot scheme in a more urban area in the west of Scotland. We will announce the details of that pilot shortly.
I appreciate that you will have many questions, but I am sure that you will welcome the fact that we are moving towards an approach that takes better account of the needs of those who have suffered as a result of crime. It is the aim of the Crown Office and procurator fiscal service to play a pivotal role in the achievement of the purposes of the criminal justice system of maintaining the security and confidence of the people of Scotland.
I am confident that the funds that, with your support, I have secured will enable us to make improvements in the service.
I welcome the Lord Advocate's comments. Everyone will appreciate what he said about victims of crime.
I hope that the Lord Advocate will not mind if, rather than looking forward, I look back for a moment. He might recall that, last year, he, his predecessor and I exchanged correspondence on the Shirley McKie trial. My concerns were to do with stains on the character of the Scottish Criminal Record Office with respect to the confidence that people had in its fingerprint service. Given more recent findings in the fingerprint service report, does the Lord Advocate have any regrets that the Crown Office did not act more quickly? Does he feel that there could be a number of cases in which appeals will be based on the validity of the fingerprint evidence?
Members will recall that I took the tail-end, as it were, of Jim Wallace's statement on the fingerprints issue. I announced that all fingerprint impressions that had been compared by SCRO officers would be subject to an external check in cases that were being considered for court purposes. Since that time, more than 3,100 impressions have been checked by external experts. Of those, only one was questioned. I do not want to say much about that, as it concerns a current case but, in that case, other evidence played a part in the identification of the person who had given the impression. That check does not demonstrate that there is a wholesale problem with SCRO fingerprints.
With regard to the McKie case, I have asked the procurator fiscal in Paisley to investigate allegations of criminal conduct by officers in the McKie case and the Asbury case. Given that that investigation is under way, I would not want to say too much about it. The investigation is being assisted by the deputy chief constable of Tayside police, who is Jim Mackay, and also by Central Scotland police and Fife constabulary.
I welcome the recent actions. We cannot go back in time, I know, but if those actions had been taken earlier, a lot of anxiety could have been avoided.
I want to move on to a different issue, that of death by dangerous driving. As the Lord Advocate will be aware, in most cases in which a death occurs as a result of an accident, the police seem to apply the charge of death by dangerous driving. Time and again, that charge is reduced by the procurator fiscal. That might be done for a good reason, but it leaves anxieties in the minds of victims, their families and their friends. Given that his annual report highlights the fact that it is his responsibility to investigate all deaths, does the Lord Advocate accept that, when a death occurs as a consequence of a driving accident, it should be covered by the investigatory process in any court proceedings?
I assure you that that is what happens. Every sudden and unexpected death—whether it occurs as a result of a road traffic accident or otherwise—is thoroughly investigated by the police. If the death occurs at work, it is investigated by the Health and Safety Executive. The investigation is then passed on to the procurator fiscal, and when there is an allegation of death by dangerous driving that case will be precognosced—investigated by the fiscals—and a decision will be made by the Crown counsel.
I fully appreciate the anxieties over deaths resulting from road traffic accidents; however, we work within the existing law, which is reserved to Westminster. We must live with that. The problem is not unique to Scotland; other jurisdictions have to deal with the issue of selecting the right charge when deaths occur as a result of a road traffic accident. For example, some Australians recently told me that similar problems are experienced in Australia. As you may know, the new quality and practice review unit is conducting a thematic review, which will report by the end of next month. I am anxious to ensure consistency across the board in our approach to the charging for death by dangerous driving.
I have no interest whatsoever in selecting charges that do not reflect the gravity of the crime. I fully accept that prosecution has a role to play in road safety, and I would never knowingly select a charge that did not reflect the gravity of the crime. Often, when police officers charge individuals following a death, they do so within a few hours of the accident, from the information that they have at that stage. The charging takes place under the alternatives of section 1 or section 3 of the Road Traffic Act 1988. Once the matter has been investigated, when full reports and a precognition have been obtained, it is for the Crown to decide on the most appropriate charge.
Let us address a slightly different issue, which I would have liked to pursue if time had allowed. Your report seemed self-congratulatory about the incorporation of the ECHR. It says that you are well prepared and suggests that everything is bang in line with your expectations. However, we ended up with a shambles in our courts, as senior sheriffs have explained to this committee. Would the Lord Advocate care to read his report and consider an amendment?
I am sorry if you feel that the report does not truly reflect the situation. The report came from the Crown Office and the procurator fiscal service, and was well prepared to meet the challenges. In the past, I have set out what was done, and I do not want to take up the committee's time in repeating all that.
Having spoken to prosecutors from other countries where charters of rights have been incorporated into the domestic law, I would say that we have coped remarkably well with the change that has come. Of course, we have lost cases, some of which have had a high profile. I repeat what I said in the parliamentary debate on the ECHR: we will continue to lose cases, as the whole point of incorporating the European convention on human rights is to give rights to individuals. We can try to anticipate where those challenges might come from and move to meet them, but we cannot anticipate everything.
I welcome the intention to establish a dedicated victims assistance service, as victims and their families can be treated appallingly at times, albeit unintentionally. How will that service be delivered? Will it be delivered locally? Would it operate on self-referral, or would referrals come from the procurator fiscal or the police?
On page 3 of your statement, you state the intention to establish a pilot that will operate from the procurator fiscal's office in Aberdeen. Is that a pilot for the dedicated victims assistance service, or for something else? It sounds similar. If it is different, what is the difference?
The first bullet point on page 1 of your submission mentions racially motivated offences. I know that a steering committee that is chaired by Jim Wallace is considering the recommendations of the Macpherson report. What is happening internally in the Crown Office to address the problems that have been identified in the way in which the justice system deals with people from black and ethnic minority backgrounds?
I shall reply to the first question, on the victims and witnesses service, and will then ask Neil Davidson to reply to the second question, on race issues.
The victims and witnesses service does not have an official name yet. We have considered calling it a support service, but we do not want people to confuse it with Victim Support, which is an established and well-organised organisation. The pilot will form part of what will become the dedicated service. The report that we have received, which you will see in due course, suggests that we must run a pilot to determine how to deliver the service properly. The question is not whether we introduce the service—we will introduce it—but how we will run it. The answer to your question depends on the outcome of the pilot.
The service will be running in every region in Scotland within the next 18 months. We will have to address the issue of local delivery, especially in rural areas, carefully. We have not reached any conclusions concerning how best to ensure that delivery.
I hope that everybody who falls into the categories that I set out in the criminal justice system will be self-referred to the assistance service as a result of being a victim of a serious crime. They will be required to do certain things, and if specialist support is needed, the service will refer the victims on—whether to Victim Support or another agency or charity. That is the sort of thing that the service will do.
Neil Davidson (Solicitor General for Scotland):
I want to pick up the point about race and what is happening in the Crown Office. The Crown Office takes a vigorous anti-racist stance. We seek to combat racism wherever it occurs as a crime and we have taken a vigorous approach to prosecuting racially aggravated harassment cases and other cases.
Internally, the race strategy group has been formed to deal with race questions in the Crown Office and the procurator fiscal service. In May this year, the Lord Advocate appointed me to chair that group. It is a high-level group that involves the Crown Agents, the deputy Crown Agents, the head of policy, a senior regional procurator fiscal and a number of other people. It is a fairly substantial effort in the Crown Office—the group meets every two weeks to push forward various parts of the anti-racist agenda. It considers issues of training, recruitment and the availability of interpreters. It does not have a fixed agenda, but those are the three items on which it is focusing at the moment.
All members of staff are being exposed to anti-racist training. For the first time, advocates depute are being included in the anti-racist training element. That means that prosecutors throughout Scotland will have had anti-racist training. That is a major step forward. The training is being done in consultation with the Commission for Racial Equality and is being assisted by regional equality councils and external consultants who are specialists in race matters.
We are making efforts to improve the availability of interpreters. We have to dovetail with what the Scottish Executive equality unit is doing, but we are also taking initiatives of our own. A pilot project called language line allows interpreting to be done over the telephone. We hope to have that throughout our offices. We are also seeking to extend the role that interpreters play, so that they do not merely interpret what a witness says in court, but assist them in, for example, picking up their expenses. People who do not have a good command of English should not suddenly be left alone in court after giving evidence. Translation is connected to that—the leaflet "Being a Witness" is being translated into the six main ethnic minority languages and we hope to produce a translation of all Crown Office leaflets.
The other area that I mentioned is recruitment, on which we have some distance to go. We are making efforts to attract people from ethnic minorities into the service by visiting universities and so on. We want to get across the message that the Crown Office and the procurator fiscal service welcome candidates from ethnic minorities.
If the committee would like me to go into any of those issues in more detail, I will be happy to oblige.
We may want to invite some representatives of that group to appear before the Equal Opportunities Committee, so that they can provide us with more detail on the race issues, in which we take a particular interest.
I would like to ask some questions about the procurator fiscal service. The first is on resources. I have lodged some written questions on the issue, which may be familiar to you after today.
Representations have been made to me, particularly in Glasgow, that the procurator fiscal service is under-resourced in several ways. The service is characterised by inexperienced fiscals, short-term contracts and insufficient resources for the number of trials. Yesterday, I obtained some information from Glasgow sheriff court about two courts that were amalgamated and a sheriff who heard 21 trials. I will come back to sheriffs later, but do you believe that there is a resource problem in the procurator fiscal service? I know that Angus MacKay has announced that there will be an increase in the number of staff. What is your view of the situation?
The number of legal staff has increased by 40 since 1998, from about 280 to roughly 320. The resources that we have secured will facilitate another increase of 30. That means that the number of legal staff in the procurator fiscal service will have grown by one quarter between 1998 and the end of 2001-02—a very big increase.
In that context, the point that Pauline McNeill makes about inexperience is well made. The difficulty is that fiscals do not grow on trees; they have to be trained. We must recruit people and train them properly—we are doing that.
The announcement that I made about information technology, which relates to comments from committee members during the Crown Agents' evidence, will allow more flexible working practices, better use of law reports and so on. It will also allow us to concentrate on the employment of fiscals, because they will do some of the jobs that are done by support staff. We hope to free up resources by investing in information technology. That is an important part of ensuring that we have a properly funded and adequately resourced service.
I am encouraged by what you say about a future increase in the number of fiscals. Do you detect a feeling in the service that it is under-resourced? I have it from many sources that that is the case. Is that a result of the increase in serious crime? I would like to know where the problem lies.
I detect a feeling in the service that it is under-resourced. We have had a survey done that shows that morale in the service does not appear to be good. The reasons for that are also disclosed in the survey. Low morale appears to be the result of a high work load, which comes from two main sources. The first is the impact of the incorporation into Scots law of the European convention on human rights, and the second—which is perhaps more significant—is the upturn in serious crime that we have experienced recently.
Those are the work pressures. The other main reason for low morale is a perception that our pay scales are too flat. They are too long and they do not allow for sufficient upward progress. That is a matter for negotiation between management and the trade union, but I understand staff concern. The resources that we have secured will enable us to tackle that issue.
It is also fair to say that we are going through a period of profound change in the Crown Office and the fiscal service because of devolution, serious crime, the use of information technology and so on. It is bound to be an uncertain period for everyone. It is against that background that we have secured extra funding.
Most younger lawyers coming in to the service have a personal computer at home. Younger people in particular are used to dealing with matters on a computer—they write essays on them and so on. They come into the legal service and do not see what to many of them is a basic tool and they feel that that is something they should have. Again, that is one of the reasons why we are bringing in new working practices.
That is helpful.
I have had many representations made to me—especially by Glasgow solicitors—on fiscal fines, on which there seems to be a change of policy. I have no evidence of that, other than what people have said to me, but the matter is being discussed out there. Your report says that fiscal fines are for minor offences. The perception is that that is changing and that fiscal fines are being issued for more serious offences, for example police assault. Can you provide any evidence that the policy has changed?
The use of fiscal fines would appear to have decreased during the past year, but the policy remains the same—
I am not talking about the use of fiscal fines, but the categories of crime for which they are used.
We are at cross-purposes—I am talking about the same thing. There has been no change in the categories of crime for which fiscal fines are used.
As we are talking about the fiscal service, I return to the issue of pay. I have seen a copy of the staff survey that was carried out. I have also seen a copy of the letter dated 21 September from the Crown Agents, which was sent out to the staff and covered a number of matters. The letter refers to a current review of pay structures and reward arrangements following a three-year review of the 1997 pay and grading changes.
I am not sure whether you or the Crown Agents would be ultimately responsible for dealing with that, but I have been told quite explicitly that the fiscals are unaware that any three-year review of the 1997 pay and grading changes had taken place. Will you comment on that? Is it the case that all we have at the moment is a pay claim and that little in the way of negotiation has taken place? That would impact on potential budget issues—you indicated at stage 1 in the budget process that you would need further funding to meet expected extra staff costs, one of which will undoubtedly be pay. In the light of that, will the extra funding be sufficient to deal with what is clearly an open-ended negotiation that is in its earliest stages?
I do not know. The suggestion that the Crown Agents would be better placed to deal with that is a good one. What I can do, however, is write to the committee to clear that matter up.
I do not involve myself directly in the pay negotiations, but members will know that we are tapping into a civil service modernisation package. The money that we have is designed to allow us to negotiate with the unions on a revised pay structure.
But you do not yet know what stage the negotiations are at. Are they at a very early stage?
I do not know, but I can have that question cleared up.
Perhaps I will take the matter up directly with the Crown Agents.
Much of what I was going to raise has been addressed by Pauline McNeill. There is a perception—which I think is based on reality—that many procurators fiscal feel harassed in the sheriff court because of their large case loads. We know the image of the astute defence lawyer getting a bit of plea bargaining done with a harassed PF. You mentioned the addition of 40 extra legal staff since 1998. I take legal staff to mean procurators fiscal.
And their deputes.
How many extra staff did that mean for Glasgow?
I cannot tell you off the top of my head. To be honest, I am not sure whether any extra staff were placed in Glasgow.
Forty additional staff looks like a reasonable amount until we consider large and busy courts such as those in Glasgow, Edinburgh and other cities. Setting aside the European convention on human rights and other matters in relation to serious crime, I suspect that there are still resourcing problems. By resourcing I mean having enough procurators fiscal on the ground to handle the case load. Is that still the case?
That is why we have been given the settlement. We intend to use some of the money to recruit more staff.
Do you mean the £22.5 million of new money?
Yes.
I am informed that in August 1999, the number of new staff was 62.6, which I think involves part-timers and people who share work. In August 2000, the number was 68.
Do you mean in Glasgow?
Yes.
Of that £22.5 million, can you say how much has been directed towards recruitment to the procurator fiscal service?
No.
I take it that the reference to
"information to the victims and bereaved next of kin"
on the second page of your statement involves the bereaved next of kin and relatives of road traffic victims. There might be a minor charge of driving without due care and attention, but there has still been a fatality—
We are talking about any case in which there are criminal proceedings or the possibility of a fatal accident inquiry.
How detailed will the information that is given to the associates of the victim be?
Everybody who comes into the system must have a description of the process—not only a description of the court process, but of the process of investigation and decision making and the communication of that decision to the relatives of the victim. They must know when a case that arises out of the fatality is before the court. If the relatives do not wish to attend court, they must know the outcome and any disposal of the case. If there is an appeal, we should try to communicate to the relatives what happens at the appeal.
Will you explain to the relatives what happens at a pleading diet? People sometimes do not understand when a trial is about to take off, and they cannot even hear what is being said.
Yes, the entire process should be explained to them. When things happen, the relatives should be told what has happened and why it has happened—as far as that is possible. If they do not understand what has happened, it should be explained to them.
Would you also advise them of when an accused is out on bail, on parole or released? That is all basic information that people often do not know. Is any of that information being given?
The reason for the service is so that such information can be communicated to the relatives. It happens from time to time, but I cannot guarantee that it happens on every occasion.
We are now coming to the point when we should think about winding this agenda item up. Members still want to contribute, but the longer we go on, the more people suddenly have bright ideas and want to speak. I will confine questions to Michael Matheson and Maureen Macmillan, as they indicated their wish to contribute at the start of the item. I also have one or two questions about global budget issues, after which we will finish this item. Please try to keep questions and answers a wee bit more brief.
I wish to return to fiscal fines. I have received representations on their collection and I understand that a large proportion of them are not collected in full, primarily because it would be too costly to pursue them, given the low level of the outstanding fine. Is there an issue surrounding the collection of fiscal fines? Approximately what percentage are collected in full?
To be fair, I do not think that I can comment on that. The collection of fines is the responsibility of the clerk of court, and the Crown Office and procurator fiscal service have no part to play in that. You would have to direct that question to the Minister for Justice—I am sorry that I do not know the answer to it.
I see from your annual report that you established this year a quality and practice review unit, for which I believe the Crown Agents will be responsible. I believe that the unit intends to set targets and performance indicators for the service. Will the report be available publicly every year, so that we can see whether the targets are being achieved? The table on page 34 of the annual report shows a number of targets for both solemn cases and summary cases, which you have clearly failed to meet by a significant amount. In one instance, the situation in relation to solemn cases has deteriorated since last year.
Will those indicators be available publicly, and why has there been such a failure in the Crown Office to achieve the targets that were set last year?
The performance indicators were published in the Crown Office annual report. I am willing to consider generally how the reports from the quality and practice review unit might be disseminated. There might be occasions when, rather than publishing data, I might want to share them with the committee and take things from there. On why we have failed to reach the targets; to be fair, we have missed a couple of them by about 2 per cent and—
There are cases of targets being missed by 14 per cent and 9 per cent. There was an example in which you reached 69 per cent in 1998-99, and in 1999-2000 you achieved only 66 per cent although your target was 80 per cent.
I accept that they were ambitious targets in the first place, particularly those on cases on indictment. The amount of work that must now be put into a precognition has increased because of the increase in the amount of serious crime and—one is tempted to say—the quality of crime, in the sense that serious crime is becoming harder to prosecute and harder to investigate.
Undoubtedly, resources have a part to play in our failure to meet the targets, but there are wider issues to do with how we manage resources—resource management and working practices are being examined. I come back to the point about investing in the future using information technology. I do not see IT as a panacea, but it does offer us considerable scope for improving quality and service.
Christine Grahame has asked the questions that I wanted to ask so I will not take up the committee's time.
I want to add my support to the Lord Advocate's comments about the victim and witness service. I do not care what it is called, as long as it continues.
I want to go back to careless driving, which a number of members have mentioned. I can see why there would be input from the victim and witness service. Do you envisage items such as the post mortem report, the toxicology report, police reports, the vehicle examiner's report and photographs of the vehicle and the place where the accident happened being included in the information that is given to families? I have seen cases of people who have gone to great lengths to try to prove that a dangerous driving charge ought to have been made, but who have failed miserably when they have tried to make that obvious to the court.
As far as post mortem and toxicology reports are concerned, relatives of the deceased will be shown them if they want. We try to do that as sensitively as possible. Members will understand that post mortem reports—
They are not light reading.
Indeed, they are not, and they require some explanation. We therefore try to sit the relative down with someone who can go through the report and explain it to them. Preferably, that would be the pathologist who carried out the post mortem. If relatives want to take the report away with them, they can. There is no bar to that and the same goes for toxicology reports. If people really want to see photographs of a road traffic accident involving their dead relative, they can. In many cases, however, that is not something that I would wish on anyone.
I am not suggesting that we go down a ghoulish route, but people might want to see the position of vehicles, so that they can understand what happened. Photographs make that much easier for some people.
We do not make police reports available routinely. They are and will remain confidential in all cases. We will not change that policy.
I am grateful for your comments on the victim and witness service, whatever name it is known by. However, how will you get past the data protection issue? You spoke about onward referrals. I am curious about that. Victim Support Scotland has always emphasised that part of its difficulty is that cases are not referred on. People have to self-present—for want of a better word—if they want to get help from the service.
The Data Protection Act 1998 is an issue here. I think that we can deal with that, but at the moment I am not in a position to tell you how. If you wait for the report, it might contain something, although I am not sure. One of the reasons why we have a pilot scheme is to enable us to address such issues.
I would like to explore one or two issues relating to the money. The overall figure that you announced at the start of your opening statement was £22.5 million of new money over the next three years. Is that correct?
Yes.
Is that £22.5 million expressed in current prices or in real terms?
It is expressed in current prices.
When we started the budget exercise, we were working from "Investing in You", in which chapter 5 deals with justice. The figure for the Crown Office contained in table 5.23 is expressed in current prices, whereas the line in table 5.24 is expressed in real terms. We have been given the revised tables setting out the global figure for the Crown Office in current prices and in real terms. Do you have a copy of those?
I am afraid that I do not.
I am looking at page 30 of the publication, "Making a Difference for Scotland: Spending Plans for Scotland 2000-01 to 2003-04".
I now have it.
Could you look at the line that is in current prices and the line that it is in real terms? Can you explain where the £22.5 million comes from? You have said that the figure of £22.5 million is expressed in current prices. However, the 2000-01 expenditure figure is £51 million and the £2003-04 figure would be £61.1 million. When I learned arithmetic, that added up to £10.1 million, rather than £22.5 million. I can get the figure up to £22.5 million with the help of our old friend triple counting. Is that what is going on here?
The figure is £22.5 million over three years and the baseline is £51 million.
The figure for 2000-01?
That is the baseline.
That rises to £55 million in £2001-02.
That is £4 million.
In 2002-03, the figure is £59.6 million.
That is £8.6 million.
That is triple counting. The figure in 2003-04 is £61 million. You are counting the original £4 million increase from 2001-02 three times.
The figure is £22.5 million over three years. I am right about that.
By triple counting, though.
No, it is £4 million in the first year—
Look at the real-terms line. In 2000-01, the figure is £49.9 million, rising in real terms in 2001-02 to £52.5 million and in 2002-03 and 2003-04 to £55.5 million. In real terms, expenditure in 2000-01 is £49.9 million, whereas in 2003-04 it will be £55.5 million. That means that in real terms, the difference between this year's expenditure and the expenditure for 2003-04 is only £5.6 million.
No, because the increase is calculated by comparison with previous spending plans. That is why I used the term new money. It is new money. It is what Jack McConnell thinks he has given me and what I think I have.
Did I detect a hint that we should take up this matter with Jack McConnell?
No. I spent time yesterday going through all this. It appears to me that one can count it in many ways. At current prices, the money that we are getting will be £55 million next year; £59.6 million the year after that; and £61.1 million the year after that. If we had not had the spending review and the settlement had not been there, we would have got £51 million this year; £51 million next year; and £51 million the year after that.
I appreciate that, but £61.1 million in 2003-04, in current prices, compared with £51 million this year, is a difference of £10.1 million, not £22.5 million. You are achieving the £22.5 million by looking at the difference between this year and next year, which is £4 million, then going to the year after that, when the difference is £4.5 million, and adding on the previous year's £4 million. You are totalling the figures and then adding on the increase again. Is that the same form of accounting as was used by the Chancellor of the Exchequer last year? It is triple counting. You are counting the initial year's increase on three separate occasions.
The spending plan, had we stayed still, was a flat baseline of £51 million. As I recall, convener, you publicly condemned the plans last time round, because of the flat baseline, which, as you pointed out, meant that spending would decrease in real terms. What I am saying to you is that the money that we are getting over three years is £22.5 million. The important point is that we plan on a three-year basis.
Lord Advocate, we all welcome the fact that we are considering three years rather than one year. What I am saying is that this year, in current prices, the global figure is £51 million. In 2003-04, it will be £61.1 million in current prices. The difference is £10.1 million. In real terms, the difference is £5.6 million.
The real-terms increase is given on the line below.
It is £5.6 million.
You are accumulating each year's add-on rather than looking at the straightforward figures.
I understand that that is the way in which those settlements are done, over a three-year period and ensuring that there is a proper spread of resources over the three years. The money which—as I say—Jack McConnell thinks that he has given me is £22.5 million over three years.
We appreciate that triple counting has now become the standard method of presenting the figures. I wanted to confirm that that was what was happening.
I thank the Lord Advocate and Solicitor General.
We have dealt with item 2. As I indicated, I will now hand over to the deputy convener to convene the rest of the meeting. Thank you to everybody; I will see you in the future in a different capacity.
We should record our thanks to you, convener. All the kind words that you have expressed, we could express back to you. Perhaps Christine Grahame would disagree with me, as she has had quite a hard time from you when you have convened the meetings. You have been very kind to the Tories, and we appreciate that.