Chamber and committees

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)

During a recent visit to a geodata specialist company in the north-east, I heard about how remote technologies are offering opportunities for workforces to be located elsewhere, in some cases outwith Scotland. Can the minister outline how the Scottish Government is supporting businesses to utilise their extensive knowledge base in subsea marine engineering, including by developing remote technologies, while at the same time attracting and securing the future workforce in the north-east and across Scotland?

Thank you, Mark.

Jim Kerr, do you want to follow up on any points about the risk management and assessment procedures that are in place and any implications of the bill for those?

Thank you very much. Members will probably come back to you with more questions. Jamie Greene, would you like to come in?

Katy Clark and Fulton MacGregor want to come in on that, but I will first pick up on the issue of unexpected release from remand, which has been flagged up to me recently. In that situation, there is potentially little or no provision in place for the person when they walk out of the prison gate. That has implications for them, which we have highlighted this morning. With regard to the bill’s provisions, what needs to be put in place when release from remand is unexpected?

Sorry, I beg your pardon—I was distracted for a moment. I will bring in Fulton MacGregor and then Russell Findlay.

Finally, I will bring in Rona Mackay. I know that some other members want to ask more questions, but time is against us.