Finance Committee, 08 Jun 2001

Meeting date: Friday, June 8, 2001

Official Report 220KB pdf

---

Protection from Abuse (Scotland) Bill

Item 3 on the agenda is consideration of the financial memorandum for the Protection from Abuse (Scotland) Bill. Members will be aware that the bill is the first to be introduced by one of the Parliament's committees. That is why the committee is considering the financial memorandum, despite the changes to standing orders on consideration of the financial memorandums of Executive bills. We have considered a few financial memorandums over the years, but I do not remember one that ran to 12 pages. It is pretty comprehensive and much of it is also pretty subjective.

We must particularly examine the tables on pages 20 and 21. It strikes me that the grand total in table 1, which shows the annual cost to the Executive of implementing the bill, varies by my calculation between £780 million and £1.95 billion—[Interruption.]. Sorry, I mean £782,000 and £1.95 million, which is a fair amount. The total additional one-off cost, which is shown in table 2, is £372,000.

Those are the sorts of figures that we are dealing with. Members who have read the sections that deal with when interdicts might be sought will agree that the amount does not appear to be unreasonable. However, there is quite a gap between £782,000 and £1.95 million. We must decide whether we want to ask any questions or whether we are prepared to accept the financial memorandum as it stands.

We can operate only on a worst-case scenario basis. We cannot limit the amount of money. Given the potential for complaint and so on, the amount is almost uncappable. The Executive has not accounted for the potential cost of additional police time in court. Many police forces have raised that problem with me. Officers who are sitting in court are not out doing their jobs. Often, at great expense, a police officer must write off a day to attend court—which is not paid for by the hour, because somebody else might have had to be called in to cover that officer's duties. I cannot tell members what the costs of that would be, but we need to have firmer evidence on it. I am not convinced that we have enough evidence to accept that £372,000 will be simply a one-off cost.

I am not sure that the point about the police that Mr Davidson made is relevant. It is true that a certain amount of police time will be taken up by officers' appearances in court. However, the police do not normally get additional resources to compensate for the time that officers spend in court.

That is a problem for the police, which they raise regularly with me.

It is a general problem; it is not one that is specific to the bill. No additional costs would be incurred as a result of the Protection from Abuse (Scotland) Bill. The police would not be expected to seek compensation for the time that their officers spend in court because officers already spend a lot of time in court.

Yes, but we are talking about additional time.

I accept that, but I do not think that it is likely that they would be compensated in the way that you suggest.

Paragraph 92 quite correctly talks about potential cost savings from the bill. The bill will be of massive benefit to many women. As David Davidson points out, it is probably difficult to determine at the moment how the costs will work out because there is a significant degree of underreporting of the crimes with which the bill is concerned. The use of the power of arrest should provide considerable savings and might assist with the court costs.

I accept that—because we have no idea of the degree to which the powers will be used—the cost is unquantifiable at the moment. I do not argue with the fact that the bill will provide good protection, but today we are concerned with the cash aspects of the bill. I do not think that many of the figures—particularly those that relate to the police—are firm enough for us to allow them to go through and remain in that form for ever and a day, allowing for inflation.

We are able to ask questions if we want to do so. I understand that the appropriate person to invite would be Alasdair Morgan, who is convener of the Justice 1 Committee. We could do that at our meeting next Tuesday if members want, but we shall decide that after one or two other points have been raised.

I have two points, the first of which follows from what David Davidson said. The question of police time is important, because its costs are additional. It should be possible to quantify it, at least to some degree, on the basis of the amount of police time that is currently spent on enforcing the Matrimonial Homes (Family Protection) (Scotland) Act 1981, which already affords minimum protection to some people. We should be able to quantify the amount of time that is spent on that and we should at least be able to hazard a guess at it. It is a serious omission from the figures, because it is an important area of additional time.

The detention element is quite interesting. It is estimated that fewer than two people will be detained in at any time. The cost of detention is £28,000 per prisoner per annum for a male and £36,000 per prisoner per annum for a female, and the bottom level of the table suggests that there would be fewer than two detentions at any time and the top level suggests that there would be five. I am not quite clear about the basis for that, or about whether there is evidence from elsewhere that those are the sort of detention figures that could be expected.

If my notes are right, the breach of interdict is mentioned in paragraph 81 of the explanatory notes. My notes say that there were 54 applications for legal aid between April and December 2000, grossing up to an annual figure of 70, but that the figure for

"court actions … could be as low as 30."

However, only two detentions are expected as a result of that. That could be right; it may be that introducing a law will have a significant preventive or deterrent effect. That would be extremely welcome, but we must improve matters by introducing a caveat about the basis on which that figure is determined.

I take on board what Richard Simpson says. It seems to me that the Executive has tried extremely hard in the financial memorandum to give us the most accurate figures possible. I welcome that; the memorandum is a considerable improvement on some of those that we have had for previous bills. I notice that Enough is Enough and Aberdeen sheriff court have been used as the basis for some of the national figures. There might be some uncertainty in some areas, but a reasonable stab has been made at quantifying matters. My main problem is with the horrifying number of incidents that are referred to, with nearly 35,000 incidences of domestic abuse coming to the attention of the police in a year. It is appalling.

Indeed it is.

It is not our job to say that it will all cost too dear and should not be done. We should merely say to the Justice 1 Committee, "It is your policy and, if you do it, it will cost X."

There is a need for a financial resolution. However, as we have done frequently in the past, we can invite ministers, officials and other appropriate witnesses to clarify certain aspects.

As has been said, some matters are unquantifiable and if the bill represents the desired policy, we shall just have to live with that.

Do members feel that there are sufficient questions on which we require clarification to invite Alasdair Morgan to give evidence?

I can see some heads shaking and some heads nodding.

I would hate to see the process being held up, because the bill is very important. If we can ensure that we can fit in an evidence session and get the answers rapidly, we should do that. However, I do not want the operation to be underfunded and I do not want people to be able to say, "You didn't allow enough for legal aid, so there will be a hold-up on legal aid for this sort of thing." That would be totally unacceptable.

Those are sentiments that every member of the committee would agree with whole-heartedly, and there is no question that evidence sessions will slow up the process. I understand that the stage 1 debate on the bill is set to take place before the summer recess. The clerks have already been in contact with Alasdair Morgan and I understand that he will be available to give evidence at our meeting next Tuesday should members want that. Is it the view of the committee that Mr Morgan should attend?

Members indicated agreement.

Meeting continued in private until 16:55.