Chamber and committees

In your written submission, you note that a range of

“work packages have been developed and are being progressed”

as part of your recovery programme. You set them out, and they include

“Operational Strategy ... Technology ... Communications and Engagement ... Prevention, Protection and Partnerships.”

Among those packages, are there areas of work that you consider to be priorities? I am thinking about the opportunity for reform and renewal in the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service and the actions that you might look to undertake in quicker time, while others may involve longer-term pieces of work.

That is an interesting overview.

My final question is a practical one about people’s behaviour, particularly that of vulnerable people, who the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service comes into contact with on probably a regular basis. You have some clear and productive partnership arrangements for how you respond to the vulnerable people your staff encounter.

Obviously, we were in deep lockdown and very much confined to our homes. Did any learning come from that period of lockdown, in particular about how it impacted on people confined in their homes? Are there learning opportunities for the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service, in particular to inform your prevention work?

My final question for you is also about training. Police Scotland will receive significant mutual aid. I am interested in how the training requirement will be managed, given that COP26 will require personnel from a number of organisations over whose training regime we, in theory, have no control. How can we be sure that the required training will be provided?

Thank you very much, Mr Greene.

We are having a very comprehensive session, but I am conscious of time. If members and witnesses agree, we will extend the session until about midday in order to let everybody speak. I hope that that will not be inconvenient for the witnesses, but I want to give everyone a reasonable time allocation. I remind members and witnesses to keep their questions and answers as succinct as possible.

Thank you very much, Ms Wallace. That was helpful.

Good morning and welcome to the third meeting in session 6 of the Criminal Justice Committee. No apologies have been received. Agenda item 1 is to agree to take in private items 3 and 4, which are consideration of our approach to pre-budget scrutiny and consideration of today’s evidence. Are we agreed?

Members indicated agreement.

That answer was helpful and reassuring.

My next question is also linked to recruitment, although it relates more to the issue of training. I know that some training in the police service is critical, particularly officer safety training recertification, while there are other parts of training that can be either adapted or deferred. I am just interested in hearing your comments about the impact of the pandemic on your training regime, timetable and requirement, particularly in relation to the 26th United Nations climate change conference of the parties—or COP26—which is coming up in the not-too-distant future. What, if any, challenges are you facing in ensuring that staff and officers are ready to go and that you have the requisite training in place ahead of that event?

Thank you, Mr MacDonald. That is all from me. I hand over to Mr Findlay, and then Ms Stephenson.

I thank Mr Maybee for those responses.

I thank all our witnesses. It has been a long but very productive session. If the witnesses feel that there are outstanding points that they wish to share with the committee, I invite them to submit those in writing to the committee. We will take that evidence into account. Similarly, I am aware that members would have liked to have raised some other points. We will certainly afford members the opportunity to make those points in due course.

That concludes the public part of the meeting. Our next meeting will be on Wednesday 15 September, when we will hold a further two round-table evidence sessions, on prisons and youth offending. We will move into private session for the final items on our agenda.

The next item is a round-table discussion about the impact of Covid on the justice sector and plans for recovery. We will take evidence from a round table of witnesses who will be joining us virtually. I say to them that I am sorry that they cannot join us in person; that is due to current rules on social distancing.

I welcome Tony Lenehan, president, Scottish criminal bar association, Faculty of Advocates; Ken Dalling, president, Law Society of Scotland; Assistant Chief Constable Kenny MacDonald, executive lead for criminal justice, and Chief Superintendent Barry Blair, criminal justice services division, Police Scotland; Eric McQueen, chief executive, Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service; Chief Officer Martin Blunden and Deputy Chief Officer Ross Haggart, Scottish Fire and Rescue Service; Teresa Medhurst, interim chief executive, and Tom Fox, head of corporate affairs, Scottish Prison Service; James Maybee, chair, justice standing committee, Social Work Scotland; and Kate Wallace, chief executive officer, Victim Support Scotland.

We very much appreciate your taking the time to join us. I thank those witnesses who have provided written submissions, which are now available online. I intend to allow around an hour and 30 minutes for questions and discussions, but we can go on for a little longer if need be, so that everyone can have their say.

I add that we have received an email from the criminal justice voluntary sector forum, saying that it wished that it had been invited today and providing us with some additional information on how Covid has affected its members. We will circulate that material to committee members. As we have further sessions coming up, we will see whether we can hear from that important body in the future.

I ask members to indicate which witness they are directing their remarks to, after which we can open the floor to other witnesses for comment. If witnesses wish to respond, I ask them to indicate that by typing R in the BlueJeans chat function, and I will bring them in if time permits. If they are merely agreeing with what another witness is saying, there is no need to intervene to say so. Other comments that witnesses make in the chat function will not be visible to committee members, nor recorded anywhere, so, if they want to make a comment, they should do so by requesting to speak. The BlueJeans platform shows only nine people at any given time, so witnesses may not be able to see themselves on screen; however, if anyone loses their connection, the clerks will advise us.

We move directly to questions. I ask members and invited guests to keep their questions and comments as succinct as possible. That said, I am keen to encourage a free-flowing discussion.

I will kick things off by asking our colleagues from the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service a couple of questions on reform in that service. Before I do that, however, I put on my record my appreciation of the work that the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service has done throughout—and before and beyond—the pandemic. Mr Blunden and Mr Haggart, I very much appreciate the work that your service has undertaken over the past 18 months or so.

I start by acknowledging, as is important, the well-established role of the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service in local and regional partnership work in responding to emergencies—albeit that I think that everybody would agree that none of us was quite prepared for the Covid pandemic. However, I am sure that that sort of experience came into its own during the period of the pandemic. I notice that, in your written submission and in the chief officer’s recent report, you outlined some of the operational and organisational changes that were put in place, for example in supporting the Scottish Ambulance Service in some of its work. You also introduced some flexibility around your tactical response as things developed during the period of the pandemic.

I would like to ask about reform. Thinking about the opportunities that Covid presented from a reform perspective, I am interested to hear about how the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service might be able to embed some of those practice changes into the organisation. Yesterday’s programme for government announcement contained some reference—albeit brief—to modernising the service.