Chamber and committees

That information was not utilised at the time of the application, but the courts can and do share information on unspent convictions with Police Scotland. The flow of information can happen but not at the time of the application. That would involve a process—

Yes—so that the information is all there at once when it is presented to the court by the police.

We have always found that our partners are keen to expand on electronic monitoring, so I do not have any concerns in that respect.

Let me run through the costs. The GPS service will cost £210,000 per annum. There is the one-off installation cost of £139.58, which covers both the fitting and the removal of a tag, and there is a monitoring cost, which is slightly more expensive per day for GPS monitoring in comparison to radio frequency monitoring, at around £7.20 compared to £5.99.

The Government is increasing investment in electronic monitoring, and the budget has had a 10 per cent uplift, meaning that an additional £500,000 has been put into the budget. Graham Robertson may have more to say on the details of the contract.

I would not describe it as a delay. However, I welcome your support for GPS technology, which adds to the tools that we have. It represents a step in the right direction in realising our ambitions to expand the use and widen the scope of electronic monitoring.

Members are probably aware that the new contract with G4S came into force in 2020. Thereafter, we wanted to ensure, as a priority, that our plans for electronic monitoring aligned with the community justice strategy. That is why, in the first instance, there was a big focus on electronic monitoring of bail and on the use of electronic monitoring in community payback orders when they are applied at first instance.

We are now moving to the introduction of GPS monitoring and the initial phase of that is focused on home detention curfew, for which the numbers are quite small. We have done that in order to test the processes, because this tool is shared between our justice agencies and our justice partners and it is important that, in engaging and operating with each other, those agencies and partners have the opportunity to learn from the initial phase before it is scaled up.

However, I appreciate that, across the political spectrum, there is an interest in different forms of electronic monitoring.

It is not a substantial change—

The matter was brought to my officials’ attention in August, and we want to rectify it. I described it as a potential gap, but—if I can put it this way—it is a matter of fact that there was not the same issue for the previous orders as for the new orders.

Based on the assurances that I sought from officials and the information that my officials have received from the courts and Police Scotland, there has not been any negative impact. That goes back to the fact that courts tend to be more interested in current behaviour—I appreciate that that is a generalisation—and that they can, and do, share information with the police on previous convictions and extract information. Court is in public, so that information is available, and we want it to be included as part of the original application—hence my comment about process, although, as Louise Miller emphasised, the issue is not just a two-dimensional matter of process.

It is a matter of completeness. We want the orders to work on a par with previous orders. However, to the best of our knowledge, there has been no negative impact, and any impact has been minimal. It has just required a bit more work between the police and the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service.

Good morning. If the regulations that the committee is considering today are approved, they will enable the use of GPS monitoring devices for the first time in Scotland, for the monitoring of people as part of the criminal justice system.

We have laid the Electronic Monitoring (Approved Devices) (Scotland) Amendment Regulations 2024 under the negative procedure. Those regulations amend the Electronic Monitoring (Approved Devices) (Scotland) Regulations 2020 to approve GPS-enabled devices as the types of electronic devices that are designated as approved for the purpose of electronic monitoring. The Electronic Monitoring (Use of Devices and Information) (Scotland) Regulations 2025, which is an affirmative instrument, will govern the use of those devices. The regulations will work together to prescribe the terms of use of GPS devices for monitoring compliance with certain conditions of a home detention curfew licence on release from prison.

The Electronic Monitoring (Use of Devices and Information) (Scotland) Regulations 2025 limit the use of GPS to monitoring conditions imposed when Scottish ministers release an individual from custody on HDC licence. The regulations also allow for a continuity of current monitoring arrangements by allowing existing radio frequency electronic monitoring devices to continue to monitor the court disposals set out in section 3 of the Management of Offenders (Scotland) Act 2019, and the conditions imposed on an individual when they are released on licence, which are set out in section 7 of that act.

The regulations also clarify the maximum period for which information obtained through the use of radio frequency and GPS-enabled electronic monitoring devices will be retained, and the purposes for which the Scottish ministers, or those acting on their behalf, may share that information.

I invite the committee to consider the regulations.

It is fair to reflect that GPS and other forms of electronic monitoring are used widely elsewhere on these islands and across Europe. We have certainly learned much from the pursuance of GPS in England. For example, we will not require people to be tethered to a wall to charge their devices. One of the valid lessons that we have learned is that if we do not treat people like human beings, their prospect of success diminishes. I am sure that Ms Clark appreciates that point.

The numbers in the initial phase will be quite small, because home detention curfew is a bespoke intervention. Yesterday, out of the total prison population, 138 people were out on home detention curfew. Members will be aware of the steps that we have taken in recent times to increase the use of home detention curfew. However, we anticipate that, at any one time, there will probably be up to about 20 people on GPS monitoring and home detention curfew.

We want to have an initial phase that lasts for around a year. Once we are absolutely sure that there are no issues with the operational processes of engagement, the important next stage would be to scale that up in relation to other orders. Much depends on what we learn. It is important that, due to the complexity of operational processes among justice partners, in the first instance, we use GPS with one order, as opposed to rolling it out across a range of orders.

I was about to get to that. I do not believe that it is all about the budget. I am not for a minute denying the importance of the budget in relation to sustainability, increasing capacity and flexible use of resources to get the increased budget to the front line. Of course, we do that with the criminal justice social work grant because it is ring fenced. I know that not everybody likes that word.

There are recruitment challenges, which can be harder in some parts of the country, but I am not denying that the quantum of budget has an impact. In every portfolio in which I have had the privilege of serving, I have found that, even though we are a small country, we have regional variation in practice and delivery. That is not necessarily a bad thing, but I am never convinced that it is all about money. Money is part of it, but it is not all about that.

That is why we need scrutiny and a focus on community planning partners. Community Justice Scotland has a statutory role in promoting and sharing good practice, highlighting the evidence and advocating for change, but we should not forget the role of community planning partners, who, under the community justice legislation, also have a responsibility to support community justice priorities.

I refer Ms Dowey to our more recent manifesto commitments and our programme for government commitment, which was to provide resource to enable the chief constable to return police officer numbers to 16,500. I am pleased that the chief constable has advised that that has been achieved.