Chamber and committees

There are no more questions, so we will draw this session to a close. Thank you very much, minister and officials, for joining us today. We will suspend for a few minutes to allow our changeover of witnesses.

Our next item of business is pre-budget scrutiny, which we commence today, focusing on prisons. We have one panel of witnesses. I intend to allow up to 90 minutes for the evidence session, and I refer members to papers 3 and 4. From the Scottish Prison Service, we are joined by the chief executive, Ms Teresa Medhurst; the deputy chief executive, Linda Pollock; and the director of finance, Amy McDonald. You are all very welcome, and thank you for your written submission.

Teresa Medhurst, have you found the funding for 2025-26 to be sufficient, and what are your organisation’s main asks for 2026-27? If you are unsuccessful in your bid, what will the consequences be?

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 criminalising 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?

We can maybe come back to that if there is time. I am keen to let other members in. I will bring in Sharon Dowey and then Rona Mackay.

That would be appreciated.

I come to my second question. During this morning’s session, we have spoken a lot about the size of the prison population, but we have not really dug into the distinctions between the convicted population and the remand population. We have also spoken about long-term prisoners and the pathway project work.

I would be interested to know—again, from a budgetary perspective—if there are elements of the prison population that are what we might call budget intensive. Is it quite difficult to see the nuance of that?

As members have no further questions, I will finish with one that has evolved from a wider bit of work that the Parliament and its committees are undertaking, to look at the activity that is under way in public sector organisations to meet our climate change targets and reduce emissions in specific sectors. I am interested to hear a wee bit about what has been undertaken in the Scottish Prison Service and whether you anticipate that additional resource or funding will be required to allow the work to continue.

I will come in with a couple of questions. The first is on early release. New legislation has been enacted with regard to early release, as opposed to emergency release. I am interested in the budgetary impact on the Scottish Prison Service in facilitating the early release of prisoners under the new legislation. Is a rough figure available for that cost? There has been emergency release, and the on-going early release programme is under way now. I am interested to understand what the cost of that is to the Scottish Prison Service, if you are broadly able to share that with us.

Good morning, and welcome to the 31st meeting of the Criminal Justice Committee in 2025. We have received no apologies this morning, and we are joined by Ash Regan.

Our first item of business is to continue our scrutiny of the Prostitution (Offences and Support) (Scotland) Bill. We have one panel of witnesses, and I intend to allow up to 90 minutes for this evidence session. I refer members to papers 1 and 2.

I welcome to the meeting Siobhian Brown, Minister for Victims and Community Safety; Anna Donald, deputy director of the Scottish Government’s criminal justice division; and Jeff Gibbons, the violence against women and girls unit head. You are all very welcome.

Before we start, I remind everyone to be as succinct as possible in your questions and responses, please. I invite the minister to make a short opening statement, and we will then move on to questions.

Thank you, minister. There is a lot for us to think about and cover in our lines of questions.

I will open up the questions with a fairly general one relating to the equally safe strategy, which has been embedded for quite some time. The strategy includes provision regarding prostitution, recognising that it is a form of violence against women and girls. Could you set out in a bit more detail the approach that has already been taken in Scotland to tackle prostitution within the context of the equally safe strategy?