Chamber and committees

The minister will be aware that, in our amendment, we call on the Scottish Government to look at all public procurement policies to ensure that community wealth building is embedded at every level. Is the Scottish Government doing work to look at its own contracts and procurement policies to ensure that the community wealth building agenda is being fully recognised and embedded in those?

Miles, are you able to talk about how big a factor organised crime is?

I was going to ask about organised crime—perhaps we will come on to that later. First, though, I would be interested to hear from those involved in this area how they think perpetrators are created. We have heard that there are a lot of parallels between perpetrators and those who have experienced violence, and there has been a lot of work on violence. We know that experiencing poverty, trauma and violence leads people to be more violent when they grow older. Are there any themes in relation to why people become perpetrators? Is it because they have been victims themselves? That might be one factor, but there might be others. We need to be able to understand those in order to frame a co-ordinated strategy.

Do any of the witnesses who have direct experience have any evidence that might be of use to the committee on that? Perhaps it would be best to start with Stuart Allardyce.

Gina Wilson, do you want to come in on that? From your perspective, is that a major issue on your radar?

That is interesting. It is a massive topic that we do not have the opportunity to explore properly now.

We have been discussing organised crime. Obviously, there are links between organised crime and some of the other issues that we are discussing. Perhaps Bex Smith would be a good person to talk a little bit about that.

On a point of order, Presiding Officer. My vote was not recorded. I would have voted no.

I congratulate Maggie Chapman on securing this important debate and on her opening contribution, which set the issues out very clearly. There is no question but that colleges and universities in this country are in crisis, and I speak today in support of the UCU and, indeed, the EIS-Further Education Lecturers Association college lecturers, who are also on strike in the face of a real-terms pay cut and have been demonstrating outside the Parliament.

As I said earlier, the Scottish Government provides over £1 billion a year to universities, so it cannot wash its hands of these issues and simply expect the institutions to behave autonomously and in a fair and benevolent way. The Scottish Government has the ability and the responsibility to intervene. There must be a clear expectation that universities in receipt of public money—taxpayers’ money—will treat their staff fairly and act as good employer. As it stands, that is not happening.

Since 2009, staff pay in the university sector has fallen by an astonishing 25.5 per cent in real terms, and employers continue to offer insulting real-terms pay cuts to staff. Around a third of all university staff in Scotland and across the United Kingdom are on precarious fixed-term contracts. I have been told that staff in some institutions in Scotland have been on such contracts for decades; indeed, I have been advised that, for some, it has been more than 30 years. The average working week in higher education is now more than 50 hours, with 29 per cent of academics averaging more than 55 hours, and in a UCU Scotland survey in July 2021, 76 per cent of respondents reported an increased workload during the pandemic.

There are several issues that the Government has a responsibility to address. The level of casualisation in the sector is alarming. It is not good enough simply to say that Governments cannot intervene. The Scottish Government needs to ensure that the Scottish Funding Council sets out guidance stating that temporary or fixed-term contracts should not be used. It needs to intervene in the current dispute, to bring the parties together and set out very clearly what the Government expects to happen. The Scottish Government needs to be at the forefront of demanding and pushing for change in the sector. That means that fair work should be the minimum standard for universities accessing Scottish Funding Council funding. The minister needs to intervene to make sure that that happens.

The Scottish Government needs to ensure that all staff in the sector are part of national collective agreements and bargaining with trade unions. Those are vital steps that the Scottish Government needs to take in a leadership capacity to ensure that we have dignity, that the workers are treated fairly and that our money is appropriately spent.

I understand that the Scottish Government provides more than £1 billion to universities every year. Does Kaukab Stewart not think that that gives it a locus to intervene on the issue?

I am a member of the Criminal Justice Committee, so I will focus on that aspect of the legislation. Audrey Nicoll, the convener of the committee, has already spoken to our report. The issues that I will raise relate largely to process rather than fundamental principle—other than in relation to the extension of time limits, which I will deal with later.

A number of the provisions in the bill will result in significant changes to the criminal justice system, some of which are complex. However, the committee was unable to scrutinise many of those measures in detail, due to the time constraints resulting from the truncated nature of the process. It would have been more appropriate for some of those provisions to be brought forward in standalone legislation, with a timetable to enable the full scrutiny process, particularly given that even some of the temporary measures could be in place until 2025.

I will focus on specific aspects of the bill. The first relates to remote custody appearances, which the Scottish Government has indicated it wishes to become a normal part of the justice system. Our understanding is that there is considerable concern in the legal profession and the wider justice system about remote custody appearances, which were enabled by the emergency Covid legislation and are therefore operating currently.

For example, in the Glasgow custody court last Monday, the court ran until half past 9 at night due to a range of technical problems. I know that because my colleague Pauline McNeill attended the court and witnessed what happened. We understand that that is far from being an unusual occurrence: in their evidence to the committee, both the Scottish Solicitors Bar Association and the Law Society of Scotland said that those appearances are often subject to technical problems.

Concerns have also been raised about the greater difficulty that lawyers have in obtaining instructions from an accused person, and the Scottish Association of Social Work expressed its concern about access arrangements. These are significant changes to how the legal system operates in Scotland, and I believe that they are matters that the Criminal Justice Committee and the wider Parliament should have had the opportunity to find out a great deal more about.

Another aspect that I will focus on is virtual trials. As the committee’s report states, there is very little evidence that full virtual trials have taken place. Therefore, there is very little evidence on how they are working. What is clear is that aspects of trials have been virtual, such as people giving evidence virtually via a link, or remote jury trials taking place in cinemas. I am concerned about some of the undertakings from ministers, and I ask that an attempt be made to ensure that those trials go ahead only when everyone agrees, and that there is proper scrutiny of how they operate.

The provisions of the bill that give me greatest concern in relation to justice and human rights are those relating to the extension of time limits, which is already in place as a result of the emergency Covid legislation. The bill proposes that, on a temporary basis—which could mean until 2025—the extended statutory time limits are continued. There are some minor changes to the provisions, but, in general, they are very similar to the provisions under the emergency Covid legislation. That means that it could take far longer for a case to come to court.

Perhaps of even more concern is that the length of time for which a person can be held on remand is also being extended. For example, a person could be held on remand for nine months before they are served with the indictment, which contains the full charges that they face. Scotland has the largest remand and prison populations in western Europe, along with poor conditions and overcrowding in many parts of the prison estate. Between 2014 and 2017, 57.18 per cent of prisoners who were later convicted in summary cases, and 28.9 per cent of prisoners who were later convicted in solemn cases, did not receive a custodial sentence at the end of the proceedings. There are considerable human rights concerns about that aspect of the process. There would never be a situation in which a person who should be in prison was not, because there has always been provision in Scots law to have time limits extended on cause shown.

I believe that those are fundamental issues that members in the chamber today should be concerned about.