Chamber and committees

A very good morning and welcome to the fourth meeting of the Criminal Justice Committee in 2023. We have apologies from Pauline McNeill and Katy Clark.

Before we begin, I pay tribute to firefighter Barry Martin, who has sadly died following the tragic fire at the Jenners store in Edinburgh. On behalf of all members of the Criminal Justice Committee, I extend our deepest condolences to Barry’s family, his friends and all his colleagues in the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service. We know that he will be greatly missed.

Our first item of business is an oral evidence session on the Bail and Release from Custody (Scotland) Bill. We are joined by the Cabinet Secretary for Justice and Veterans and his officials. I welcome the cabinet secretary. His officials are joining us online, and I welcome Jennifer Stoddart, community justice division; Philip Lamont, criminal justice division; Linsay Mackay, criminal justice division; Ruth Swanson, legal directorate; and Jamie MacQueen, legal directorate. They are all with the Scottish Government. I refer members to papers 1 and 2. I intend to allow up to 90 minutes for this session. I invite the cabinet secretary to make a short opening statement, and then we will move to questions.

We are just under 10 minutes away from the end of our scheduled time with you, cabinet secretary. I have a question on the release of long-term prisoners on a reintegration licence, which section 7 provides for. It provides for that in two situations: before and after the Parole Board has recommended release on parole. In relation to the second of those situations, we took evidence from John Watt, chair of the Parole Board for Scotland, who advised us that it would need a power to reverse its parole decision if an offender failed to comply with the conditions of release on a reintegration licence. Is there a plan to amend the bill to provide for that power?

I will move things on and then come back to you, Fulton.

Thank you. There will be more questions on that in due course. Collette, you would like to come in, followed by Fulton.

Absolutely. I agree with all that, and it brings me nicely to a follow-up question that has been raised in committee and was raised recently when I was on a visit to HMP Grampian. People there spoke about how planning for release should start on the day that somebody enters prison. One scenario that is difficult for prisons, families and stakeholders who support an individual is unplanned or unanticipated release from remand. We are grappling with how we can make the process less volatile and perhaps less unpredictable so that, in those circumstances, something is put in place that supports that individual when their leaving prison is not planned.

I am sorry that this is a slightly delayed intervention but, on the point about prisoners and voting rights, does the member acknowledge that a cohort of any prison population is not convicted?

Does the cabinet secretary agree with Phil Fairlie, assistant general secretary of the Prison Officers Association Scotland, who said this morning that

“the prison service is best-placed to make those decisions”?

I am pleased to speak in the debate as convener of the Criminal Justice Committee. I thank the committee clerks for their support during the budget scrutiny process and I thank all the members of the committee, who worked collegiately together during it. I would also like to thank the cabinet secretary for his attendance at committee on 23 December last year to give evidence as part of that process.

The justice spending portfolio covers the important work of our police and fire services, our prisons and courts, and many other key bodies which are critical to the safety of the public, such as third sector charities. It is for those reasons that the committee was concerned to read the resource spending review of May last year, which proposed flat-cash settlements for the years ahead. The Scottish Parliament information centre estimated that that would mean that resource spending in our remit could fall in real terms by £102 million, and that capital spending might also decrease in real terms by £5.2 million.

For individual bodies, such as Police Scotland, the Scottish Prison Service and the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service, we had been looking at real-terms reductions of nearly 8 per cent, according to SPICe. Clearly, that would have had a very significant implication for criminal justice bodies—indeed, much of the evidence that we heard from different organisations was stark and reflected their concerns about the potential impact on their function, staff and effective delivery.

I thank all of those who gave evidence to us and for the candid way in which they set out the challenges ahead, such as how they could fund decent pay increases for their staff if the resource spending review plans were to come to pass. For example, Police Scotland told us that every 1 per cent increase in police pay in the future would cost £11 million per year to fund, which equates to around 225 staff; hence, a 5 per cent pay increase would cost about £222 million per year and could equate to a reduction of just over 4,400 officers and staff if no extra money was forthcoming.

Similarly, the Scottish Prison Service’s chief executive said:

“there is no or at most, very limited, opportunity to the scaling back of”

its

“operations without significant risk to health and welfare support ... reputational damage, the loss of”

services

“and the risk to operational stability across the estate.”

We heard that, in our courts, the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service

“might have to reduce summary and civil business by up to 25 per cent, cut back on the £3 million that goes into the budget to pay for part-time judiciary and look at the unpalatable option of reducing staff numbers.”—[Official Report, Criminal Justice Committee, 2 November 2022; c 5.]

We also heard from senior staff in the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service that savings of between £29 million and £43 million would equate to a reduction of approximately 780 whole-time firefighter posts, or around 20 to 25 per cent of the whole-time firefighting workforce.

It is for those reasons and others that the Criminal Justice Committee said that the Scottish Government should find extra resources in its budget to provide a better settlement for organisations in the criminal justice sector than that proposed in the resource spending review.

I think that it is uppermost in everybody’s minds, not just those of committee members, that if we are to increase a budget somewhere, we need to look at where that will come from. We were certainly very conscious of that, but our priority in the budget scrutiny process was to look at the evidence that we were taking from the sector and reflect it in our report to the cabinet secretary.

We also said that any extra resources that could be provided needed to do more than just be used to support any pay increase awards in the sector.

In his response to our budget report, the cabinet secretary gave assurances that he had

“no intention of overseeing a budget for the police force that results in 4,000 officers leaving”,

and that he also wanted to protect the provision of high-quality services in our prisons and courts.

I welcome those assurances and I welcome the fact that the cabinet secretary has been able to negotiate an additional £165 million of investment to address the significant pressures on the justice system. I note also that the capital budget for the sector will increase by £37.4 million in 2023-24, which is very welcome.

We know that the cabinet secretary has had to make some hard choices here, and I trust that our pre-budget scrutiny and the evidence that we took have helped him in the process of decision making. However, I note that, despite the extra resource, some difficult choices will have to be made.

The committee will be happy to work in partnership with the Scottish Government and other criminal justice bodies in 2023-24 and beyond, to prioritise spending and to make best use of the money that is available.

To ask the Scottish Government what engagement it has had with stakeholders regarding retraining and upskilling the north-east energy sector workforce. (S6O-01830)