Our next item of business is the consideration of two affirmative instruments: the Sexual Offences Act 2003 (Notification Requirements) (Scotland) Amendment Regulations 2025; and the Management of Offenders (Scotland) Act 2019 and the Prisoners (Early Release) (Scotland) Act 2025 (Consequential Modifications) Regulations 2026.

We are joined again by the Cabinet Secretary for Justice and Home Affairs, and I welcome to the meeting Suzanne Lyle from the family law unit, Graham Robertson from the public protection unit and Louise Miller from the legal directorate, all at the Scottish Government. I refer members to paper 5 of the meeting papers and thank those bodies that provided additional submissions to us in relation to this Scottish statutory instrument and the next one.

I intend to allow up to 20 minutes for our consideration of the SSIs. I invite the cabinet secretary to make opening remarks on the Sexual Offences Act 2003 (Notification Requirements) (Scotland) Amendment Regulations 2025.

Sure.

I am sure that what you have been outlining will come up in further questioning, so I will move to my second question, which relates specifically to section 1, on the purchase of a sexual act. In his evidence, Detective Superintendent Bertram emphasised the key point on

“understanding when the crime would be complete”,

noting that

“Whatever legislation comes in needs to be effective for policing.”—[Official Report, Criminal Justice Committee, 5 November 2025; c 3.]

Putting my former—police—hat on, I completely agree with that. I am looking at this from the perspective of whether section 1 sets out an offence that police officers can use effectively, and I have some concerns about that.

Will you talk us through how you envisage section 1 being complete, so to speak, when it comes to the range of scenarios that are covered by the section 1 offence? I suppose that I am asking what threshold of evidence police officers would be expected to obtain to prove that an offence was complete.

As there are no further questions, our next item of business is the consideration of a motion to approve the affirmative SSI on which we have just taken oral evidence.

Motion moved,

That the Criminal Justice Committee recommends that the Sexual Offences Act 2003 (Notification Requirements) (Scotland) Amendment Regulations 2025 [draft] be approved.—[Angela Constance]

Motion agreed to.

Thank you—that is a helpful clarification.

My final question relates to climate change. All committees have been exploring that in scrutinising efforts and arrangements to reduce carbon emissions across their portfolios. In the justice sector, the issue is highly relevant to prisons, policing and the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service.

Will you outline the work that the Government is undertaking to model and deliver the resource that is needed to allow justice stakeholders to deliver on climate targets for the rest of the decade? What sort of achievable targets does the Government want to set specifically for the justice sector in the first carbon budget, which will cover the 2026-30 period? That is in the context of achieving our stated aim of a 57 per cent reduction in emissions from 1990 levels. There is a wee bit in that question, and it might be something that you can outline in a written follow-up response.

We move to questions from Pauline McNeill.

Rona Mackay will then come in with a supplementary.

Ensuring that we retain the workers and the skills for the green energy transition is integral to the success of new projects. However, only this week, the chief executive of Flotation Energy warned that the UK Government’s energy profits levy was

“wiping out 1,000 oil and gas jobs a month—losing many of the workers whose skills”

are

“needed for renewable projects”.

Does the cabinet secretary share my concerns that Labour’s energy policies are continuing to jeopardise Scotland’s just transition?

Thank you, minister. As a north-east MSP, I am familiar with the brilliant work that has been going on in the city of Aberdeen for quite some time within operation begonia; it involves some fantastic multi-agency partnerships and work.

Some of your correspondence to the committee referred to the potential development of operation begonia; I might be wrong on this, but I think that I read that there was potential for the operation to be further developed. I would be interested in hearing what other plans, if any, the Government has, separately from the bill that we are scrutinising, with regard to reforming the approach to prostitution.

I asked a question earlier regarding the provision in the bill to repeal section 46 of the Civic Government (Scotland) Act 1982, which relates to the offence of street prostitution. You gave a helpful response and indicated that you could perhaps offer more detail on that. We have a little bit of time in hand, so I would like to come back to that point. Could you expand on your previous response?