Chamber and committees

In short, that is correct. There have been some issues on which we have entered into correspondence or dialogue at an official-to-official level. For example, the issue of proceeds of crime is both reserved and devolved, whereas entering into international agreements is, of course, entirely reserved to the UK Government. Bearing in mind that policing is devolved and that we have our own legal and criminal justice systems, the Scottish Government’s position is that the legislative consent motion process has been triggered in relation to some clauses. We have come to pragmatic positions on that, but we felt that it would have been appropriate for the UK Government to seek the Scottish ministers’ consent for particular clauses.

At the end of the day, we have agreed with particular provisions that are about tackling crime, keeping communities safe and cracking serious organised crime, and we have settled to be a statutory consultee on matters. We have been co-operating with pragmatism.

The information before me might not relate exactly to the question, but we will see how we get on.

We are very interested in further amendments that we anticipate the UK Government lodging around child sexual abuse and exploitation online, specifically concerning what are euphemistically called child sexual abuse manuals. There will be new offences on the possession of materials that contain advice, guidance or content on how to groom, otherwise known as “paedophile manuals”—forgive me for using that term. The volume of indecent images of children is also an issue that we will be considering with interest.

Further possible amendments might be lodged as a result of the pornography review by Baroness Gabby Bertin, which would be around the possession and publication of depictions of strangulation and suffocation in pornography. We are standing by to see the detail of that.

Were you, in any shape or form, asking about spiking?

We are strongly of the view that we do not need further legislation on spiking. Spiking is addressed under common law as well as under the Sexual Offences (Scotland) Act 2009, so, in my view and in the view of the Government, there is not a legislative gap around that in Scotland. Legislation is there to prosecute people who do that and to imprison them for up to five years.

Where work has been done on spiking—the Minister for Victims and Community Safety, Siobhian Brown, has led round-table discussions on the issue across the stakeholder groups and parties, and there has been considerable interest in it in the Parliament—the focus has been on raising awareness and on the work that Police Scotland does around the night-time economy in pubs and clubs. There has also been work on the pathway to report spiking and to get care. There was a need to be clear that people can and should report spiking, but they also needed a healthcare pathway.

Good morning, convener, and thank you very much for the opportunity to appear before the committee. I thank the committee for accommodating my request to move this session from last Wednesday, due to stage 3 of the Victims, Witnesses, and Justice Reform (Scotland) Bill. That is much appreciated.

I very much welcome the committee’s inquiry into drugs in prisons, which recognises the significance, harmful impact and dynamic nature of issues that relate to illegal drug and substance supply in prisons, including concerns about the rise in strength of synthetic drugs, the impact on people in prison—and, of course, prison staff—and the importance of access to effective rehabilitation and support, on which, I am aware, you have taken evidence.

As the committee is aware, there is a high and complex prison population, and issues that relate to preventing supply, keeping people safe and managing the impact of substance use in prisons is demanding, to say the least, for the Scottish Prison Service as well as for our national health service colleagues and other partners. I put on record my thanks for the hard work and dedication of the staff in those organisations in keeping safe the people in our care as well as their colleagues.

The health and wellbeing of those in the care of the Scottish Prison Service is a key priority. Having been Minister for Drugs Policy and now Cabinet Secretary for Justice and Home Affairs, I have a strong appreciation of the importance of a strategic approach across health and justice. I know that the committee is interested in how the health and justice portfolios are co-ordinating to reduce deaths and support recovery, and in how lived experience and evidence are being embedded in strategy.

As you may be aware, I chair a cross-portfolio ministerial group on prisoner health and social care, which provides clear leadership and helps to ensure a joined-up strategic approach to health and social care in prisons. The vision for justice provides an overarching strategic approach, including focusing on person-centred approaches to reduce crime and harm in our communities and support rehabilitation by the most effective means possible. Our national mission to reduce drug deaths continues to focus on a public health approach to improve the treatment and care provided for people with drug issues. The Scottish Prison Service’s 10-year drug and alcohol strategy, which was published in February, sets out a framework for improving the outcomes of people in custody.

I am sure that you will want to ask about a range of issues in more detail, convener, and I look forward to the committee’s questions, but first, I hand over to Ms Todd.

Mr Kerr is quite correct to point to the impact of significant overcrowding on prisoners, staff and access to drug treatment, as well as to other forms of rehabilitation. Overcrowding puts the system under immense stress.

I would be the last person in the room—and, I suspect, the last person in the Parliament—to ever demur from the serious and significant challenge that we face with a prison population that, as I have said on a number of occasions, is too high. Our prison population needs to be sustainable, because ultimately that is what keeps our communities safe; our prisons need to be able to accommodate those who pose the greatest risk.

I respectfully remind the member that every time that I have taken action I have reminded Parliament that there is no one solution. Early emergency release provides temporary relief. The Prisoners (Early Release) (Scotland) Act 2025—and the programme known as STP40 that it brought in—reduces the prison population in a sustained way by 5 per cent from what it would otherwise have been.

I, too, would quote Teresa Medhurst, who also said in The Scotsman:

“I am grateful for the leadership and support we have received from the Cabinet Secretary ... and colleagues in the Scottish Government. Were it not for the emergency early release programme last year, and the Prisoners (Early Release) Scotland Act, which came into effect this year, our situation would be far worse.”

I accept that that in itself is not good enough, though, so I reassure the committee that I am intensively engaged with the Scottish Prison Service. I have always proactively kept Parliament up to date with the situation, and that will not change. Should new measures be required, I will announce them in Parliament, as I have always done.

I am perhaps going to be a little bit cheeky now, Mr Kerr. I have not walked away from my obligations to take action, but other members in the Parliament have often balked at such actions. I suggest that doing so is perhaps for political expediency instead of prioritising the safety and security of prison staff and managing a very high and complex prison population.

There is a lot in that question, Mr Kerr, so I hope that the convener will bear with me.

The latest figures show that in excess of 15,000 community payback orders have been issued across Scotland. Let me stress that I am very supportive of drug testing and treatment orders when they are appropriate for an individual. The latest figures show that, in 2023-24, there were 280 such orders; they are, by their very nature, a much more discrete intervention, and they obviously involve the courts. Their implementation also varies across the country, which has presented challenges in getting a firm view of their effectiveness.

I have visited drug courts that monitor drug testing and treatment orders, and I know that they have been very successful in helping many people turn their lives around. They are, like all community interventions, delivered locally, so I am very aware of the decision that Edinburgh services took and the impact that that had on East Lothian and Midlothian. I should stress again that these are local decisions.

The orders are effective for many people. The completion rate for a DTTO is around 51 per cent, with 75 per cent of those finishing without any breach. As I have said, the evidence on them is a bit complex.

The great strength of a community payback order is that it can be tailored to the individual. One thing that the sentencing and penal policy commission is looking at is how not just custody but community disposals are used. Why a comparatively low proportion of additional conditions that are specific to drug and alcohol treatment and mental health are put on community payback orders is an interesting question. I am not necessarily saying that that is right or wrong, because sometimes we forget to look at treatment and support in a much broader context. Treating someone’s addiction could be better than treating their trauma. We also need to consider employability, support with life skills and daily living, addressing the specifics around offending behaviour and any underlying attitudes as well as treatment of mental health and addiction issues.

As I have said, it is difficult to say at this point whether that is a good or a bad thing. We need to understand it more, but I can say that the strength of a community payback order is that it can be tailored to the needs of an individual.

That is a fair point, and it is why I took the opportunity to write to the new Secretary of State for Justice for England and Wales. My officials may have some insight as a result of their engagement.

The starting point is continuity of care and grasping the golden opportunities when individuals reach the point—which is often their lowest point—of recognising the changes on which they must embark. When people have those moments, we have to be ready to grasp them and we have to keep a hold of people in those times. Continuity of care is of fundamental importance, and it is a key part of the Scottish Prison Service’s drug and alcohol strategy.

There can be challenges for remand prisoners. Individuals on remand have access to addictions healthcare in prisons, which is different from recovery cafes and engagement with the recovery movement. One of the remarkable changes in prisons that I have seen over the past 25 years is the on-site presence of the voluntary sector and the recovery community—not just people with lived experience of addictions but those who have previously been in the criminal justice system and who have experienced imprisonment. They have been able to access prisons to be peer mentors and to engage with people, and that is a remarkable turnaround from a number of years ago.

There are some good examples of establishments that have been able to support remand prisoners in accessing recovery: Stirling and Kilmarnock, and also Greenock, if my memory serves me correctly. The Prison Service continues to scope new ways of working so that people on remand can access opportunities. That is challenging, given the number of prisoners on remand and the increase in the number of long-term prisoners, where a range of statutory obligations apply. The prison rules for remand prisoners are different, because they are untried. It is all caveated around the ability of people on remand to participate in education or work, while the situation is different for sentenced prisoners.

It is hard to isolate that, apart from the obvious factors of the increasingly innovative methods of illicit supply in our prisons and the strength of those somewhat novel substances. In the work that the Prison Service has done, engaging with the Leverhulme research centre for forensic science in Dundee, sometimes it cannot be established what the substance actually is.

The danger to individuals associated with such substances, which are not only in our communities but in our prisons, requires strong public health messaging. The level of danger and distress that those drugs cause to individuals is alarming. I visit prisons all the time and—I will put it this way—I had both the challenge and the privilege of seeing some footage of an individual who had consumed a substance. The degree of personal distress to that individual was a sight to behold, but their behaviour would change very quickly from being distressed, to agitated, to angry. It requires several staff at any one time to care for such an individual.

There is an element of the unknown in those substances, which is why the testing that is done at Dundee university is important. I am sure that Ms Todd will have something to say on this as well—those man-made, synthetic substances are potent and dangerous, and they have upped the ante on the challenge that we face. The situation is very different from what it was 15 or 20 years ago with cannabis, heroin or opioids. The substances that are having a catastrophic impact on individuals in our care are the synthetic opioids, benzodiazepines and drugs that we do not know what they are.

I hope that the new national social work agency, and other measures, will help in that regard. In response to your earlier question, I failed to mention the importance of the work that Ms Somerville is taking forward on the fairer funding pilot, which is around multiyear funding for the voluntary sector. My personal view is that accountability should be seen as a positive and not something to fight against or be defensive about.

You raised the point about many services potentially being involved with an individual. That is very positive, but we always have to guard against people being passed from pillar to post. We need clear lines of accountability and responsibility. Ms Todd and I can see that work taking place through the strategic justice and healthcare work that we are involved in, which is being pursued in detail by the national leadership group, where senior officials from justice and health are getting on with the nitty-gritty. Oversight of that work sits with ministers. That is quite a general response to quite a general question—I hope that I have not missed a specific point that you wanted to raise about accountability.