Chamber and committees

Our prison system is not working. Like so many other institutions, including our national health service and our schools, prisons reflect the society that they serve. That society is deeply unfair and profoundly unequal. Schools struggle to help young people to learn and thrive, as too many children arrive in the classroom hungry. Hospitals struggle to treat people with physical and mental health conditions that stem from the massive health inequalities that we still have not tackled. It is the same with our prisons.

Our prisons are beyond capacity. That is because our imprisonment rate is significantly above the European average and is even above the rates of a string of non-democratic countries such as China and Saudi Arabia. It is not because crime is out of control in Scotland. Overall levels of crime are about half what they were in 1991. However, we have left prisons, just like our schools and NHS, to pick up the pieces of failures elsewhere in society. That does not serve prisoners well, it does not serve prison staff well and it does not serve the communities that will receive those prisoners after their incarceration well at all.

As we have all accepted with the Promise, our care system is failing, and that shows up in our prisons, where about 30 per cent of prisoners have had previous experience of the care system. Nobody disputes that we have a major drugs crisis in our country, and it is no coincidence that most prisoners enter prison with drug challenges. Many prisoners will leave with a drug problem, too, prison having done little to help them.

Far too often, we take people who have already been failed by society and place them in institutions that fail them again—institutions that are increasingly unable to guarantee basic standards of welfare, dignity and human rights. Just yesterday, the Criminal Justice Committee heard that the United Nations’ Nelson Mandela rules, which lay out the bare minimum standards that are expected, are not being consistently upheld in Scottish prisons.

We have also had instances of foreign courts refusing to extradite prisoners to Scotland because basic conditions are so poor. If our prisons cannot guarantee basic standards of safety, dignity and human rights, what confidence can we possibly have that they are doing the far more demanding work of rehabilitation?

It is no surprise, then, that prisons often perform worse than alternatives when it comes to reducing reoffending and preventing future harm. Short sentences for non-violent crimes, in particular, for which there are the clearest alternatives, result in some of the highest rates of prisoners leaving prison and coming into conflict with the law again. However, 73 per cent of the custodial sentences that were received in 2023-24 were for one year or less, and sentences of three to six months have been the most common over the past decade, making up 30 per cent of all custodial sentences in 2023-24.

For those who have committed less serious crimes and are serving shorter sentences, it makes no sense at all to spend, as the motion states, £52,000 per year on prison, given that we know that, in many cases, prison will not help them to stop reoffending. We cannot build our way out of this challenge, because building more prison places does not address why our prison population is so high in the first place.

Therefore, we need to totally rethink what prisons should look like and what they are there to do. Scottish Greens believe that we need a justice system that relies far less than it does today on imprisonment and far more on prevention, restoration and rehabilitation. With greater use of effective alternatives to custody, and sentencing that follows the evidence, we will need fewer but better resourced prisons that can genuinely support rehabilitation and reintegration.

That approach is working right now in other countries. As is the case in Scotland, crime in the Netherlands has fallen over recent decades, but, unlike here, that has resulted in significant falls in the prison population. Between 2005 and 2010, there was a 44 per cent fall in the population of Dutch prisons, and the Netherlands closed 20 prisons. That is because they are making greater use of community sentencing and focusing on prevention rather than imprisonment.

No, not just now.

Prison reform should allow us to do the upstream work that we know will help people to avoid prison in the first place. The Scottish Government’s penal policy advisers have cited evidence from the Edinburgh study of youth transitions and crime that shows that poverty, poor housing, unemployment and weak community infrastructure increase the risks of social exclusion and fuel distrust and disaffection, which ultimately increases the risk of conflict with the law. The same advisers have said that, when people do fall foul of the law, we need much more focus on early intervention pathways, because formal prosecution often escalates problems, increases stigma and limits opportunities for change.

Some people pose a significant risk of harm to society. We must have ways of preventing such harm. Indeed, harm reduction must be a cornerstone of our justice system. However, for many people—I would argue that this applies to the vast majority of those who are currently incarcerated, including women, neurodiverse people and people with mental health issues—the evidence overwhelmingly shows that prisons not only do not work but actually make things worse.

We cannot keep doing the same thing over and over again and expect different results—there is a word for that. However, we do not have to do so, because other countries have shown us the way. We must understand the socioeconomic causes of crime and tackle them accordingly. When people commit crime, we must exhaust the whole suite of approaches that work better to punish appropriately and rehabilitate before considering prisons, which most often do neither. When incarceration becomes necessary, those places must have the resources that they need to rehabilitate and genuinely help people to do better in the future. Only then can incarceration genuinely be the last resort, rather than a place where we warehouse the problems that society has chosen not to solve.

I move amendment S7M-00469.3, to leave out from second “operational” to end and insert:

“human rights and safety risks for staff and prisoners; further recognises the importance of prioritising harm reduction across the justice system; believes that incarceration should always be the last resort, once all other alternatives have been exhausted; notes that Scotland has one of the highest prison populations in western Europe, including a disproportionate remand population; acknowledges the underlying drivers, including poverty, inequality, homelessness and experience of the care system; notes that the cost per prisoner per year to the public purse is £52,200; recognises the need for effective rehabilitation to reduce offending and re-offending and to benefit the communities that individuals return to; agrees that public safety is paramount and that it is vital that victims and survivors should be at the heart of the justice system, and must be supported and have confidence in it, and agrees, therefore, that a balanced package of measures to expand effective community sentencing and other alternatives to prison, such as restorative justice, bail supervision and supported accommodation, and to enact preventative measures to stop people entering or re-entering the prison system, including sustained investment in housing, mental health services, youth work, addiction services and community support, as part of a transformative justice approach, are necessary to achieve a sustainable prison population now and in the future.”

[Inaudible.]—the need to protect Scotland and the UK from hostile states, and, as it is framed, the bill covers state threats, it is ultimately individuals who will be investigated, prosecuted and convicted under the new offences that it creates. That means that we need to tread carefully in our scrutiny of the legislation. When we change the law, particularly criminal law, the Parliament needs time to consider carefully the justification for such changes and to assess their intended and unintended consequences.

When those changes come from Westminster and legislative consent is required, we need time to consider all the issues properly. That has not happened here. The UK Government did not share the final text of the bill before it was introduced on 9 June, despite the fact that, for more than a year, it has had a report recommending that the actions be taken. The Scottish Parliament goes into summer recess tomorrow. Therefore, in practice, we have been left with only eight days to scrutinise proposals that will alter Scots law and the functions of the Scottish ministers.

The justification for such a rushed process is not convincing. The UK Government has argued that the legislation is entirely reserved, but it should have been obvious—as it was obvious to Scottish Government lawyers—that the bill has consequences for Scottish sentencing, parole and release arrangements, and therefore that it requires a full and timely legislative consent process.

As the policy memorandum notes, there has been no opportunity for the Scottish Government to consult stakeholders on the effects of the changes to Scottish legislation. That is not how good law is made, which is a key reason why Scottish Greens cannot support the motion.

We are also concerned about wider issues in the bill that deserve more scrutiny than the Parliament has been able to give them. The designation regime and the new offences relating to support, assistance and material benefit are very broad. Humanitarian organisations, peace-building groups, journalists and others working in conflict-affected areas will want reassurance that legitimate humanitarian engagement cannot inadvertently expose individuals to criminal liability.

The Government may believe that adequate safeguards exist, but Parliament has not had sufficient opportunity to test those claims, hear evidence or examine possible unintended consequences. The lack of scrutiny matters, because, although national security legislation is often enacted in response to genuine threats, its effects can extend well beyond the circumstances that prompt it.

The Scottish Greens recognise the case for ensuring consistency in sentencing and release arrangements across the UK where these offences apply. We also recognise the importance of protecting our national security. However, we cannot ignore the inadequate process that has brought us to this point, nor the missed opportunity for proper consultation and scrutiny. For those reasons, although we will not oppose the motion, we are not persuaded that the process that has been followed merits our support, and we will abstain.

17:40

I agree with that point. The abrogation of duty under that licence agreement is a real concern, and I will say a little bit more about that in a moment.

We know that the north of Scotland, as such a diverse part of our country, needs dedicated local coverage that reflects the challenges of the communities to whom it broadcasts. My region, North East Scotland, is hugely dependent on oil and gas, and my constituents rightly want to be kept up to date on how the just transition to a net zero future is or is not going. That issue involves complicated, ongoing issues that require coverage from informed teams of journalists who are embedded in the region. With the best will in the world, TV news programmes with up to 70 per cent generic or shared content will just not be able to do justice to issues that are more local and, in some cases, more remote.

We know that jobs are on the line. Reducing coverage and moving production from Aberdeen to Glasgow will lead not only to an immediate loss of jobs but to an ongoing running down of jobs and training opportunities. People from privileged backgrounds are already overrepresented in the industry, so it is vital that we keep alive routes for underrepresented groups to get work experience in TV. Media and journalism students at Robert Gordon University and North East Scotland College, who have shown their commitment to the area by studying there, should be able to stay in that area for work. Moving production to Glasgow will lead to a loss of those opportunities, and it will be hard to re-establish them once they have gone. The NUJ ran a truly inspiring campaign on behalf of its members, exposing the price that current and future news workers may have to pay for the mistakes made by management, and I thank it for its incredible work.

Before closing, I want to say a few words about the role of Ofcom, which I think has been found wanting. Ofcom has correctly said that it has no role in imposing requirements on STV’s online content, yet it has repeatedly emphasised the mitigating role of online content in continuing to provide local coverage. Surely, if its role is only to regulate the TV element, it should not be taking the online element into account when ruling on varying the licence terms. That is also happening despite Ofcom’s 2025 report, “Online Nation” noting that one in five people in the UK aged 75 or above lacks home internet, and the fact that evidence from the Save STV North News campaign shows that the algorithms make local public service content hard to find online.

I question how genuine Ofcom’s consultation was. Well before the consultation finished, Ofcom wrote to the Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee saying that it was proposing to approve STV’s request. It sounds like it had already made up its mind.

Ofcom’s decision is worrying for the precedent that it sets. Local and regional journalism is already under threat, with Reach plc hollowing out Scottish local press. If Ofcom does not reverse its decision, it might pave the way for attacks on local TV coverage in other areas of Scotland, such as ITV Border.

Someone once said that all politics is local. That is true, but all news is local too. In many aspects of our life, we need a local news service that reflects the people, the environment, the society and the culture of our local areas.

18:49

I thank Jack Middleton for securing this debate. I was pleased to support STV workers in the last session, when plans to cut STV North were first announced, and I remain as resolutely against these cuts and behind those workers now as I was then.

As others have said, high-quality local news is crucial to supporting local and regional identities, building communities and strengthening our democracy. That is especially important in our country, where so much focus is on Glasgow, Edinburgh and the central belt. Our TV coverage should reflect life in all parts of Scotland.

Based in Aberdeen, STV North—formerly Grampian Television—has been providing local news by and to the north of Scotland for just three months short of 65 years. It has covered the inspiring community campaign to save St Fittick’s park from development and the fight to highlight the miseries faced by residents affected by the reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete situation.

STV North has served our Highland and Island communities well, too, with issues around ferries, depopulation, housing availability and the benefits and challenges of tourism being aired and discussed because of the journalists and camera crews in communities.

I hear what the minister says about the wider financial constraints that the sector is facing. If universities decide that job cuts are the answer—I do not believe that they should be—surely the Government would expect them to do the appropriate assessments on the impacts of those cuts. However, I am hearing from staff at the University of Dundee and the University of Aberdeen that there has been no stress risk assessment or suicide risk assessment, and that staff have been put into discriminatory and non-voluntary redundancy pools. Does the minister agree that that is not how our sector should be operating? Will he outline what he is going to do about it?

I remind members of my entry in the register of members’ interests: I am the rector of the University of Dundee and a member of the university court.

A less than five-minutes-long Teams call with no opportunity to respond is how staff at the University of Dundee heard that their jobs, the courses that they teach and their livelihoods might be at risk. I ask members to think about that for a moment. Years of service, decades of expertise, research programmes, student support, careers and families were all reduced to a one-way broadcast. That tells us something important about the crisis that we are facing. We are not really talking about money; this is a crisis of governance, leadership and accountability.

At Dundee, more than 650 staff have already gone. Now, a further 190 job cuts are planned. At the University of Aberdeen, up to 111 academic posts remain at risk through restructuring and cost-cutting proposals. Behind every one of those numbers is a person—a lecturer, technician, librarian, researcher, cleaner, professional services worker or student wondering whether their course will exist when they are due to graduate.

I hear from staff and students not just concern but exhaustion, anger and a profound sense of betrayal. One member of Dundee staff described what is happening as “wanton vandalism” of the university and the city. Another simply said, “I feel completely betrayed.” Can we blame them? Time and again, the staff have raised concerns, proposed alternatives and been told that they are valued. However, when the biggest decisions are made, they are too often excluded from them.

The tragedy is that none of this should come as a surprise. Over recent years, we have had review after review—the Gillies review, the Gordon report and the work done by SUMS Consulting—all of which identified problems around governance, transparency, oversight and engagement. The problem is not that we do not know what is wrong; it is that the recommendations keep gathering dust while the same mistakes are repeated. The lessons from Dundee should have been learned long ago. Executive power without effective challenge is dangerous. Governance without scrutiny is dangerous. Excluding staff voices is dangerous. Yet, here we are again. Staff, students, senates, general councils and trade unions repeatedly raise concerns while decisions at various institutions continue to be driven from the top down. When people try to raise concerns, some of them are threatened with disciplinary action. That is not partnership, it is not transparency and it is certainly not fair work.

I want to speak a bit about what universities are for. Too often, the debate on this issue is reduced to balance sheets and budgets. Of course, universities matter to our economy—they create jobs, attract investment and drive innovation—but they also matter for a much deeper reason. They help us to understand ourselves and the world around us. They teach us how to think critically, how to question, how to challenge and how to imagine something better. That is why I am so concerned by threats to disciplines such as philosophy and languages. Those subjects are not luxuries—they help us to engage with questions of democracy, ethics, culture, identity and human flourishing. A society that cannot think critically about itself is a society that is poorer in every sense.

I will outline a specific issue in relation to that. At the University of Aberdeen, the savings target—or cuts target—that the school of language, literature, music and visual culture has been told to make would require the loss of 36.7 per cent of its current staff, and that is on top of the 40 jobs that were lost during the modern languages debacle two years ago. The target is more than double that for any other school, yet that school made a £4.1 million surplus last year.

Cutting jobs and courses will not lead magically to financial sustainability. Staff have repeatedly raised alternatives, including continuing professional development, knowledge exchange, entrepreneurship, business partnerships and other forms of genuine income generation. However, institutions appear trapped in a cycle in which cutting staff becomes the default response—the ideological response—to every challenge. That is not strategy; it is managed decline. It is like ordering men on the western front to walk out very slowly at the German machine guns, just hoping that the result will be positive.

To put it another way, it is like the medieval doctor bleeding a patient with leeches, then prescribing more leeches when the patient fails to recover. The patients, in this case, are the people who make our universities what they are—the people who make them successful but who are being made to pay the price. The impact on wellbeing cannot be ignored. Staff speak of stress, burnout, anxiety, uncertainty and real physical and psychological harm. Repeated restructuring exercises, repeated severance schemes and repeated threats of redundancy are acts of harm.

We must also ask serious questions about equality impacts. Many of the disciplines that are facing cuts are disproportionately staffed by women. We need transparency about who is being affected and whether institutions are properly assessing those risks before further decisions are made. There is the wider question of accountability, too. Universities must be accountable. Courts must be accountable. Executive leadership teams must be accountable, and so too must the Scottish Funding Council. Consultations on the issue need to be genuine: they need to consider the full range of options, not just a return to cuts. Public confidence depends on robust scrutiny and meaningful oversight. If institutions are receiving substantial support, the public has a right to expect transparency, engagement and adherence to fair work principles.

Finally, I want to say something to the Scottish Government. The warning signs have been visible for years. This crisis is not confined to one university, nor is it confined to the universities of Dundee and Aberdeen—it is sector wide. There are warnings that demand a serious response. We cannot continue to lose expertise, damage morale and undermine institutions that have taken generations—centuries, in some cases—to build. On the crisis at the University of Dundee specifically, the Scottish Government has already provided substantial support to the institution and we need to see a return on that investment, not just a knee-jerk return to job cuts and course cuts.

I will end by speaking directly to staff and students. You are not responsible for this crisis and this decision making. You should not be made to pay the price for the failures of governance, financial mismanagement or short-term decision making. I hear your concerns, I hear your anger and I stand in solidarity with you. I stand with the staff fighting for their jobs, the students fighting for their education and the trade unions demanding transparency, accountability and fair work. If staff decide that they must take industrial action to defend their institutions, as I think University of Dundee staff have decided today, they will have my support and solidarity, because staff and students are not the problem—they are the future of Scotland’s universities and they deserve far better than what they are getting today.

I thank the minister for taking an intervention—he has been generous with his time. Although universities are already obliged to comply with two elements of the fair work agenda, it is clear that that is not happening and that that has no consequences. Either the Scottish Government or the Scottish Funding Council needs to take action. I still have not heard what action the Scottish Government or the Scottish Funding Council plans to take, even though there have been proven failures to abide by the fair work principles, which universities are contractually obliged to do.

I am pleased to speak in support of the motion recommending the appointment of Ruth Charteris KC as Lord Advocate and BJ Gill KC as Solicitor General for Scotland.

Before I turn to the appointments before us, however, I will take a moment to recognise, as other members have, the significant contribution of Dorothy Bain KC during her time as Lord Advocate. The role carries immense responsibility, and it is often undertaken under intense public and political scrutiny. Throughout her tenure, Dorothy Bain demonstrated a deep commitment to the rule of law, to the independence of the prosecution service and to ensuring that our justice system works for those who too often find themselves excluded from it. In particular, I acknowledge her efforts to help rebalance justice in favour of the marginalised and of victims/survivors of crimes of abuse of power, such as sexual violence.

Whether in relation to victims of crime, survivors of abuse or people whose voices have historically been overlooked within legal processes, she showed a clear understanding that justice is not simply about procedure, but about fairness, dignity and—importantly—humanity. For that service, she deserves our recognition and our thanks.

I also want to recognise the work of Ruth Charteris KC as Solicitor General. Over recent years, she has built a reputation for diligence, professionalism and the deepest integrity. She has brought considerable legal expertise to the office and has played an important role in supporting the work of Scotland’s law officers during a period that has been marked by significant constitutional, social and legal challenges.

The office of Lord Advocate occupies a unique position in Scotland’s constitutional arrangements. It requires not only legal excellence but judgment, independence and a commitment to the public interest. Ruth Charteris brings those qualities to the role, and I wish her every success as she takes on those new responsibilities.

Likewise, I welcome BJ Gill KC as Solicitor General. He takes up office at a time when public confidence in our institutions, access to justice and the protection of fundamental rights remain of vital importance, and all of those are at risk, so I look forward to seeing the contribution that he will make in that role.

I wish both appointees well, and I hope that they will continue the work of building a justice system that is fair, compassionate, accountable and accessible to all. They have my support now and I look forward to working with them over the coming session of Parliament.

17:28

On a point of order, Presiding Officer. I am not sure whether my vote was recorded; I would have voted no.