Chamber and committees

Yes, of course. I hope that I intimated that to Ms McNeill, particularly in relation to reserves; we can set out in more detail the work that we are doing to provide certainty where we can. That is the raison d’être of three-year resource budgets and four-year capital budgets, notwithstanding that a lot can change in that time. It is a very interesting area, and we can put on record some of the limitations with regard to additionality. It is not just a case of whether Police Scotland is able to borrow, because the money still needs to be found, and there needs to be cover for that, at which point we get into where the additionality is for public services and investment.

No. They are automatically excluded.

I cannot recall off the top of my head the average cost of a community payback order, but it is obviously significantly less. I can supply the exact figure in due course if it is available.

We know, from the evidence about what works, that the reconviction rate for people who have completed community payback orders is around 28 per cent, whereas the rate for those who have served sentences of less than a year is around 52 per cent. That is why it is important that we continue working on the availability of community sentencing options and do whatever we can, notwithstanding the effects of local decision making, to increase the availability of those options and to increase confidence in them.

Ms McNeill has been around the Parliament longer that I have, and she will remember the journey of police and fire reform. Police officers, the Fire and Rescue Service and Police Scotland are right to point to the savings that that reform has made. There is certainly no duplication within either of those services, so I am very focused on maintaining the front-line numbers, as a minimum. I am not in the business of reducing crucial front-line staff, who are essential to protect the public.

The Scottish police service and the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service are rightly very proud of what they have achieved in their reform programmes, which have assisted with running more sustainable services, notwithstanding the fact that demand on those services is changing, and indeed the fact that the financial climate has changed since the reform in 2013. They rightly challenge other parts of the public sector to look at their reforms and emulate that reform journey.

Some of that will be due to their legal status.

Yes. They are not liberated to make their own way to an airport or a UK immigration detention centre, or anything like that.

My starting point is that, at a fundamental level, we value very much the contribution of community policing. Police Scotland currently balances the need for specialism and expertise in tackling particular forms of crime, whether that is sexual offences, cybercrime or emerging threats to communities and our country—I am thinking particularly about online harms. However, Police Scotland also has a role and often talks about a preventive policing model, and there is absolutely a value in having community police officers, particularly in crime prevention.

I hope that you will forgive me for quoting an example from my constituency, where the Police Scotland local commander, in collaboration with a voluntary sector organisation called Aid & Abet and local authority partners, has implemented a very successful programme called supporting opportunities for life, which is targeted at young people in the 10-to-16 age group around offending behaviour and antisocial behaviour. The initial results of the programme are deeply encouraging. There are partnership models and initiatives that are very much focused on prevention, and I am sure that it is not only my constituency that is benefiting from those.

On additionality, I note that Police Scotland has made a significant ask for additional resource to cover pay, but we are pleased to have secured a very positive two-year pay deal. Some 87 per cent of Police Scotland’s budget goes on pay, so great care must be taken with regard to the sustainability of the service and any suggestion of increasing the numbers. However, we are looking at Police Scotland’s ask in great detail.

The chief constable has been very successful in moving police officers from mid-office roles to the front line. I can double-check the figure, but I recall that that has enabled the equivalent of 500 more officers to go to the front line. I cannot give a commitment here and now, because I do not know my allocation or what the overall Scottish Government’s allocation is, but we are looking very seriously at Police Scotland’s ask. I remind colleagues that the police budget has increased every year since 2016-17, and that has been in order to stabilise police officer numbers.

Just as the committee scrutinises the Government and justice partners, I have a role in scrutinising all the asks, whether those are made by Police Scotland or by other justice partners.

As I said, the financial situation remains very challenging. Although I will be held to account for the choices made within the justice portfolio budget, I hope that Ms Dowey would concede that that is not all within my hands and is part of the overall Scottish Government budget cake. I have been deeply disappointed that the UK Government, as well as putting an onerous burden on the whole public sector, including policing, by taxing jobs via employer national insurance contributions, has not stumped up for the cost—to the tune of £24 million—of the VIP visits to Scotland over the summer.

I say that to add to the picture of the overall resource and capital allocations to the Scottish Government; not all of that is in my gift. I say candidly to the committee that there will be some hard choices. I deeply respect the professionalism of Police Scotland and of the chief constable in particular. They work exceptionally hard to innovate and to squeeze out any savings that they can make because, at the end of the day, we are all focusing on bolstering front-line policing as much as we can.

It is fair to say, Ms Dowey, that the size and composition of the public sector workforce as a whole is under scrutiny. Work on that is being led by the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government and her junior minister, Mr McKee.

I reassure the committee that police officers, firefighters, justice social workers and prison officers are all absolutely crucial to public protection because of their front-line roles and I assure members that there is a different consideration for those positions.

My focus has been on stabilising the numbers of police officers. That has been a big focus of my portfolio budget negotiations in previous years. Police officer numbers have stabilised, and we continue to have more police officers per head of population than other parts of the UK. That is in the context of our nearest neighbours and comparable jurisdictions. I want to get the best possible deal for the police, for front-line officers and for justice as a whole.