Chamber and committees

Katy Clark and Jamie Greene mentioned the information that should go to victims. Information should, indeed, go to victims, and that should happen via the Crown Office and the victim information and advice team. If concerns exist about that not happening—members might have constituency cases, for example, or might have heard experiences from victim support organisations—I am happy to hear them.

Let me be transparent with the committee and say that there remains a question as to whether the solution can be found through legislation or through policy, organisational structures or, indeed, resources. I am happy to have a broader discussion about that point, but—without ruling anything in or out—the solution to the problem might not necessarily be legislation.

I have spelled out my real concern—and, indeed, the Government’s concern—that a direct impact of separating the two requirements of the new bail test and making them alternative rather than cumulative—it would help if I could say the word—would be a significant expansion of the court’s ability to remand under the current bail test. That is where our nervousness arises—that this is not a step forward but a step back.

Amendment 58, in the name of Jamie Greene, also seeks to expand the use of remand by inserting a catch-all provision into the new bail test to enable the court to refuse bail where it considers that necessary

“due to any other substantial factor which appears to the court to justify keeping the person in custody.”

The amendment would give the court a broad discretion to refuse bail, as long as one of the grounds in section 23C(1) of the 1995 act applied.

Another amendment that seeks to expand the use of remand is amendment 59, in the name of Russell Findlay. It would expand the reasons for which the court may consider it necessary to refuse bail—

Yes.

I will pick up on a few points in and around community justice services. We invest in community justice services to the tune of £134 million. Of that, £123 million is ring fenced for local authority criminal justice social work services, and some of that—around £3 million—is ring fenced again in relation to bail assessment and bail supervision.

I acknowledge that prison is expensive and that secure care is even more expensive. If we use either secure care or prison inappropriately, it is a very expensive way of making matters worse. We invest in community justice services not because they are cheaper but because the evidence tells us that we should be investing in them. I will not deny that there is pressure on the public pound. Many of the challenges that local government is experiencing are the same as those that the Scottish Government is experiencing across the board.

I will never demur from the importance of investment. However, while acknowledging the challenges, I point to the fact that the local government settlement went up in real terms while there was a real-terms reduction to the Scottish Government block grant. Nonetheless, I recognise the pressures that mean that we need to work even harder in relation to those shifts in culture, policy and practice that are first and foremost based on the evidence. I assure Katy Clark that investment in community justice services will continue.

I point to the statistics that I quoted to Ms McNeill earlier. We are seeing the number of prosecutions of children and young people decrease, the number of custodial sentences for young people decrease and the number of referrals to the reporter on offence grounds decrease. That would indicate that we must be doing something right around supporting young people, reducing reoffending and focusing on the best disposals for them and indeed for the community.

There are always competing demands around shifting resource from acute care to community services. For example, even if we reduce a prison’s population, we still need to keep that establishment up and running.

Historically, the ring fencing of funding for criminal justice social work has not always been popular, but it is there for good reasons. It came about more than 20 years ago because criminal justice services were not getting their fair share of resource. Because it is quite a small service in comparison with, say, children and families or community care services, it had been sidelined. I will certainly want to protect the position of community justice services as well as community justice social work services.

I will do that in general terms. In the old days, what we called community service was a kind of fine on the person’s time. These days, community service sits within the broader panoply of community payback orders, within which there can indeed be requirements for rehabilitation measures to be in place. We have arrangements in and around electronic tagging and monitoring. There are also arrangements around sex offenders registration and multi-agency public protection arrangements, or MAPPA. In some instances, courts can ask for report-backs in order to review a situation.

A range of disposals and approaches are available to the court, and some of those rehabilitative measures can be intensive, whether they involve one-to-one work or group work.

It is important to consider the financial stability of the secure sector. We know, for example, that it needs to be at 90 per cent capacity—that is its financial stability vector, if you like. The system has capacity for Scotland just now, but there is reliance on cross-border transfers. That is why we have started to fund beds, and there are plans for us to increase the funding of beds so that we can ensure that children who are resident in Scotland can be cared for in secure if that is required.

I do not mean to sound dispassionate in any way, but the important issue here relates to what the evidence tells us about what will work to rehabilitate people who have come into conflict with the law and to improve community safety. I am of the view that members of the judiciary and members of the public are well able to engage in that debate based on the facts.

Particularly when we are dealing with sensitive and emotive issues—and there is, of course, great public interest in this issue—it is important that we have the courage to talk about what the evidence tells us and what will work in rehabilitating young people or other offenders and how that will improve community safety. It is important that the bill sits in the context of a wider refocusing of justice policy.

The bill as it stands places a duty on the principal reporter. Just now, the reporter has some discretionary powers, but the bill will put a duty on him or her. Where the reporter has sufficient information and contact details for the victim—I appreciate that that is not always the case—they can contact that person and advise them of their right to receive information, and ask whether they wish to do so. The type of information that the victim will be entitled to receive if they so wish is notification that a hearing is taking place and of the outcome of the hearing.

I will just check with my officials, and the lawyer, that I have articulated accurately, for Mr Findlay’s interest, how the bill currently stands.

Sorry?