Chamber and committees

It was remiss of me not to commend the committee for its on-going interest in and work on the issue. You have certainly helped to keep the wind behind the sails of the Scottish Government and all our partners.

You are absolutely correct that the demographic around vulnerability is indeed complex for policing partners and other services to deal with. Although we know from adult protection referrals that those struggling with mental health are the biggest single client group, there are a number of indicators of vulnerability, including learning disability, age and a whole host of other challenges. It is right that we recognise vulnerability in the broadest sense, but a sharp and forensic focus on mental health is particularly important.

I appreciate the recognition that, although we still have some way to go, we are shifting the dial, which is imperative for people who need to quickly access a service. We also need to ensure that policing resources are appropriately deployed because, at the end of the day, that will ensure that we reduce unnecessary demands on police officers.

The work on safe spaces is very interesting and complex. There are good examples of peer support in community settings. We know from the scoping work that, when the approach is prioritised and designed locally, it can become more of a reality of service delivery. There is a sense of reimagining and rescoping safe places, and ensuring that there is a wider spectrum of support. That should include non-clinical support, but we need to ensure that such support has the necessary links to clinical care. Safe places can be crucial in preventing an escalation of matters.

It becomes more complex where we get into issues around the proximity of a safe place to A and E departments. The need varies geographically, so the type of formalised service that works, for example, in Glasgow—the city has a mental health assessment unit to which police can refer people on—might be different from what is needed in other areas of Scotland.

We always come back to issues of safe staffing and the ability to accommodate various population groups and people of different ages. It may be that tiered provision is required that can cater appropriately for different population groups. There is also the issue of how we ensure access in particular for those who are affected by substances.

The nuts and bolts of mental health provision relate to standards, care planning and risk assessment, safe staffing and what the procedures are when matters escalate. That work is in-depth and complex but potentially very important.

Colleagues in Government, in particular those working in mental health, are considering the next steps. Part of meeting the collaboration commitments will be to consider what is next, following the scoping work. We can perhaps look at a toolkit that supports local development. It is fair to say that there is still a fair amount of work to be done in the area.

The short answer is that I do. I will expand on that in a moment, but I first want to acknowledge the scale of the issue and the demands that are placed not only on individual police officers but on Police Scotland at an organisational level.

The committee may have heard about the 100,000 calls received by Police Scotland in relation to mental health, and the fact that the vast majority of those calls involve no offence. I understand some of the frustrations that policing partners have, but I am encouraged in particular by the comments from the deputy chief constable. As we would expect, senior police officers always speak truth to power, so it is good to hear that the police are encouraged by the partnership working, in particular around the enhanced mental health pathway and the mental health index. Deputy Chief Constable Jane Connors talks about the central role of good collaborative partnership working and the value that has been placed on that.

On ASPS’s comments about policing having to lead, I agree entirely with HMICS that the issue requires a whole-systems approach. I very much support and understand the desire of ASPS and the Scottish Police Federation to see that organisational change on the ground, but we will get that only with partnership work and a whole-systems approach. It will not happen if services are working in isolation.

The partnership delivery group that is chaired by the Scottish Police Authority has significant policing input at the chief superintendent level, both from the policing together work and from the chief superintendent who is involved with local policing, as well as the individual who is head of service delivery. There is also substantial input from the Scottish Government, the Scottish Ambulance Service, NHS 24 and, in particular, the mental health unscheduled care network. I believe that we have the right buy-in across the services and, significantly, from a senior enough level.

I will give an example of where it is clear that actions and decisions have to be led by clinicians. When people are utilising the mental health index or accessing the out-of-hours mental health clinician, it is very clear that decisions on clinical issues, as you would expect, are made by clinicians, but they also have to arrange the care. There is greater clarity on who does what when, and that has to be welcomed.

I would want to see the evidence for that. I am not trying to be facetious or pernickety, but if people communicate concerns of that nature to the committee, to other stakeholders or, indeed, to me, I would want to see the evidence. That speaks to the broader need for better data that tells us what we need to know about demand and impact.

That is a very live issue that features in many of my discussions with the SPF and ASPS. It has always been very clear to me that, in the day-to-day work, cases that have a strong mental health feature and less of an offending behaviour feature place an additional obligation and demand on individual police officers, and that will have an impact on their wellbeing. There will also be a huge impact when there are emotionally charged, disruptive or difficult circumstances when things perhaps do not go well. There are instances that are particularly traumatic in their own right.

Police Scotland has an obligation as an employer, and the oversight of that principally comes through the Scottish Police Authority, although we all have an interest in the wellbeing of our police officers. You might have heard that Police Scotland has an employee assistance programme, in which £17 million has been invested. The programme has a focus on mental health and enhanced occupational health services. With that programme, Police Scotland is trying to take a preventative approach, by looking at assessments of resilience and stress risk, and recognising the day-to-day attrition and demands on police officers. There is also specific work through the trauma risk management programme for officers who have been exposed to particularly traumatic events.

Police Scotland is one of the first services in the United Kingdom to implement mandatory mental health and suicide intervention training for all officers. That is particularly important. It also offers a range of services to care for psychological, physical, social and financial wellbeing through the your wellbeing matters programme.

Following the HMICS review, the mental health unscheduled care network took forward a lot of the work. It was led and supported by the Scottish Government, although I think that the original recommendation suggested that Police Scotland lead it—however, Police Scotland is a member of the mental health unscheduled care network.

The national review was completed in December last year. In a minute, I will ask Dr Cook to talk about the work on developing the national guidance and the template. The core purpose of that work was to ensure consistency across 14 health boards and to remove barriers to multi-agency working. Some of that is about training. The Police Scotland mental health task force has undertaken a full training needs analysis of the police workforce. One of the recommendations was to have more joint training for leaders across different sectors and about good communication and relationships on the ground.

The other purpose of the work on psychiatric emergency plans was to be crystal clear about roles and responsibilities when responding to issues. I ask Dr Cook to add a bit more flesh to that.

The purpose of the order is to make it clear that Police Scotland can access information on spent convictions for lower-tariff offences.

It is not as direct as that, because the courts—

The purpose of the order is to enable Police Scotland to be able to lodge extract conviction information on spent convictions at the same time as making an application for sexual harm prevention orders and sexual risk orders. Those new orders, which were introduced in March last year, replaced sexual offences prevention orders and risk of sexual harm orders.

The Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 provides that, once an individual’s conviction has become spent, they are treated for all purposes in law as a person who has not been convicted of—or sentenced for—that particular offence. There are exceptions to that rule, which include applications for sexual offences prevention orders and risk of sexual harm orders. That means that Police Scotland can request relevant extract spent conviction information from the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service in support of an application for those behavioural orders.

At the time of the enactment of the Abusive Behaviour and Sexual Harm (Scotland) Act 2016, a consequential amendment could have been made to amend the 1974 act or to make provision under it to ensure that the new behavioural orders were treated in the same way as the previous sexual behaviour orders, and could also be exempt from section 4(1) of the 1974 act. Following a period of operational running, it has become apparent that making such a change would indeed be helpful as it would allow Police Scotland to lodge relevant extracts of spent convictions alongside applications for sexual harm prevention orders and sexual risk orders.

Under general disclosure, any conviction that leads to a sentence of greater than 48 months is never spent and can always be disclosed. As such, it will have been possible to use the higher-tariff sexual offences to inform applications for the new behavioural orders, where that is relevant. The new order allows for the consideration of lower-tariff offences that have become spent to be included in an application for a new behavioural order, where appropriate.

Although those court extracts are not a prerequisite for lodging an application for a behavioural order, and we understand that the court might more often be concerned with individuals’ recent behaviour than with what they did years ago, the SSI will help to ensure that court extracts of relevant convictions can be lodged at the same time as an application in order to provide potentially useful background information about the individual. That is a change to facilitate the current operation process, and it is supported by Police Scotland.

That is a brief overview of the draft order and its context. I am happy to answer any questions.

As I said in the statement, relevant convictions of 48 months and beyond are never spent. The issue is around ensuring that the relevant provisions are in place so that we can extract information on those lower-tariff offences, which are currently not accessible at the point of application.

That is an important distinction, because courts can and do release extract information on convictions to the police. However, that involves a dialogue and a process. In terms of efficiency, we want that information to be made available at the time of the application.

As I said, that is not a prerequisite for making an application. Very often, courts will have that information on a historical basis, because people are known to them. However, the order is about having the fullest possible information made available at the time of the application, as opposed to having a process in place thereafter.

It is more an issue of process. It would be for the court to put a value on current behaviour and past behaviour. I could not possibly say whether having access to that information will increase the police’s prospects of success in achieving those orders. Obviously, it is about common sense. We want the fullest range of relevant information to be presented, to which the court will then attach a value.

We do not want a post-application to and fro between the courts and Police Scotland. As I said, there is, potentially, a gap in the legislation. The new orders replaced the previous orders from March last year, and Police Scotland raised the issue with us in August.