Chamber and committees

Thank you very much for those opening remarks. I will kick things off by picking up on your comments about management structures and wanting to see a different approach across not just Police Scotland but the whole justice system. I will reference some of the key findings in your report under the heading of leadership and vision.

For the benefit of members, I will tease out some of your points in the key findings. You say that there is

“a perception among officers that senior leaders focus”,

as you have outlined,

“on safe outcomes, seeking to minimise every possible threat, risk and harm. This is normally achieved by police officers remaining with the person in crisis until they are either accepted into the care of the NHS or a family member. This approach to organisational and reputational risk results in a lack of focus on reflection and opportunities for improvement, often to the detriment of the individual concerned.”

You go on to say that

“Police Scotland cannot wait until a review of the whole system is undertaken before developing and implementing its own mental health strategy. We believe the current situation is unsustainable.”

In the following paragraph, you say that

“Police Scotland must now develop and implement a mental health strategy and seek to understand its legal and moral position and role within the whole system”.

I think that we all understand and relate to those remarks. Will you expand on the last point about understanding the legal and moral position and help us understand what you were thinking about in those comments?

Before I bring in Katy Clark, I will pick up on the comments that you have made. I am really glad that Pauline McNeill asked a question about psychiatric emergency plans. Having been part of the review of the Grampian plan many years ago, I know about the spirit of psychiatric emergency plans in underpinning that collaborative approach to poor mental health, whatever end of the spectrum that might be.

Should we be looking to develop the role of psychiatric emergency plans to underpin all the challenges that we have been discussing today? I am interested to hear your commentary on that. Am I right in thinking that psychiatric emergency plans sit within mental health legislation? Should we be using them much more robustly?

Thank you to all of our witnesses. The session has been really informative. I am sure that we could have continued to ask questions.

That concludes the public part of our meeting. Next week, we will review the evidence that has been taken so far on the Victims, Witnesses, and Justice Reform (Scotland) Bill, consider a draft report on our pre-budget scrutiny, and consider correspondence that has been received about deaths in custody and about the Domestic Abuse (Scotland) Act 2018.

Thank you—that is a really helpful update.

I have a couple of supplementary questions that I might come back to later if we have time, but first I will open up the session to members. I will bring in Rona Mackay and then Fulton MacGregor.

I will bring in Fulton MacGregor and then Sharon Dowey.

Thank you very much—that is a helpful open door. That response might help us to segue into considering part 2 of the bill, on embedding trauma-informed practice.

We heard some excellent evidence on trauma-informed practice a couple of weeks ago from Dr Caroline Bruce and from Professor Thanos Karatzias of Edinburgh Napier University. Professor Karatzias made a point in response to a question about the whole-system embedding of trauma-informed practice. He said that the principles of trauma-informed practice are quite general and involve

“safety, choice, collaboration, trustworthiness and empowerment.”—[Official Report, Criminal Justice Committee, 1 November 2023; c 2.]

However, different elements might apply in different parts of the justice sector. For instance, the principles of safety and choice are perhaps more relevant in a court setting, while principles of recovery might be more important and relevant in prisons.

Does the cabinet secretary consider that the provisions of the bill will support a whole-system application of trauma-informed practice—as set out, for example, by Professor Karatzias?

To follow up that point, if the bill is passed and we have a whole-system embedding of trauma-informed practice, will some provision be put in place to support and embed the implementation of a whole-system approach? What early work might be required around that?

Thank you. Sharon Dowey is next.

My final question before we move on to part 3 of the bill is on the role of the Scottish Prison Service with regard to trauma-informed practice. The committee has heard evidence relating to the treatment of prisoners in a trauma-informed way. However, I am interested in how the cabinet secretary envisages the provisions in part 2 of the bill further impacting the role of the Scottish Prison Service with particular reference to victims and witnesses—for example, in and around the victim notification scheme.

Do any other members want to come in on part 3? I will bring in Russell Findlay.