Chamber and committees

I think that Edinburgh is an outlier, but we will send you information on that. Perhaps Ms Todd’s team can help. We will be more than happy to do that.

I very much recognise the impact of transfers, particularly if they are done without much warning. They are disruptive for the individual and their care, as well as for families. I am sure that you have heard evidence about that.

On person-centred care and continuity of care, the target operating model should help to provide consistency. It might not be the most politically sexy thing to talk about, but the improvements that are being made to clinical IT are important for the transfer and sharing of information. Right now, however, because of overcrowding and the work that the Prison Service has to do to keep serious organised crime nominals apart from one other to reduce the risk of violence or to reduce the risk of collaboration among some of those individuals, there is little scope for flexibility in adding in a very vulnerable and complex population when the prisons are full.

To pick up on your point about remand prisoners and throughcare, convener, the new national throughcare contract has enhanced investment to give enhanced capacity and, for the first time, it will enable male remand prisoners who have been released to be supported.

I will start, particularly because Ms Clark has spoken about fatal accident inquiries, and because the cut and thrust of the question cuts across all drug deaths. I agree entirely with the need for more accountability and transparency to drive a better understanding and, therefore, more systemic improvements regarding deaths in custody.

The number of deaths in custody in the last calendar year was 64, which was the highest ever. The figures tell us that, for the year before that—2022-23—30 per cent of deaths in custody were probable suicides, 15 per cent were due to drug misuse and 21 per cent were due to circulatory system health problems. Because of our older prison population, there is a high degree of natural causes among those figures. However, I will caveat that, because we see vast health inequalities in our prison population, which should not be ignored in any shape or form.

In my response to the fatal accident inquiry and the statement that I made to the Parliament on the FAI findings on deaths in custody with regard to William Lindsay and Katie Allen, I made a commitment to establish a national oversight mechanism. That will enable scrutiny of fatal accident inquiry determinations and oversight of implementation. It is accurate to say that, right now, there is no independent dedicated national oversight body that is looking at the broader framework and scrutinising these deaths in regard to analysis, public reporting and reporting on what the trends are.

This is not just about FAIs and deaths in custody. The same could be applied to NHS significant adverse event reviews and the “Death in Prison Learning Audit & Review”—the DIPLAR. I am talking at length—forgive me, convener.

Right now, I am exploring whether we can establish an independent national oversight mechanism without primary legislation. That is quite complex; the work is on-going and we are in the guts of it just now.

In the meantime, there is the ministerial advisory board, which will meet for the second time tomorrow and which I chair. That board is a small panel of independent experts that oversees the implementation of the FAI recommendations that I have committed to. It also means that there is something in place while we work on the national oversight mechanism.

The short answer is yes. Over the past few years, I have been actively engaged in ensuring that statutory criminal justice social work and social work more broadly are on a firmer footing. New measures have been taken, such as work that has been done on bursaries and graduate apprenticeships, to ensure that we have a workforce supply and that people are being trained, which is very important. There are particular demands on social work as a profession and there are concerns about retention, particularly of newly qualified social workers.

Mr MacGregor will be aware that, over the past two financial years, we have increased investment in community justice by £25 million to a total of £159 million. I am determined that we continue to invest in and grow community justice services overall, because we know that community interventions are more effective in comparison to short-term custodial sentences. I also want to point to the importance of the voluntary sector. There has been a cross-Government commitment and there should also be a commitment across Governments, both local and national, to support and utilise the potential of the voluntary sector where we can.

The national mission funding and support that goes to alcohol and drug partnerships and other grass-roots organisations creates good opportunities for partnership working with voluntary and statutory agencies and places for referral. There is another point about voluntary aftercare, but I will leave my remarks there, convener.

I was just saying to you, Ms Dowey, that I will discuss the matter further with the SPS.

Although we have an informed view of the matter, it is hard to give you a precise figure. Based on other jurisdictions where similar laws exist, with a range of hate crime provisions, we would expect—although this is a very rough figure—around 5 to 10 per cent of cases to be attributed to malice, ill will and harassment of women based on their sex. However, as I said, that is a rough figure.

Much of the pain around resource in relation to hate crime legislation has already been resolved. We continue to engage with Police Scotland on the work that it will need to do to upgrade and update its training guidance.

Extensive policy development work has been done. In a minute, I will ask Mr Lamont to give people a feel for the size and scope of it. The issue is complex. As it is criminal law, any misogyny bill needs to have clear and unambiguous provisions. That has been central to considerations in the Government.

Such a bill must also include the policy implications of the recent Supreme Court judgment. At one point in time, we were waiting on that judgment; we now have it, which means that further work is required. It is accurate for me to say that Baroness Kennedy’s working group left some matters to legislators. I am not saying that she was wrong to do so—it is entirely fair and credible—but some matters were left to legislators to address in and around a misogyny bill, and we have not concluded that policy work.

Philip, would you like to add anything?

Yes, I do. I am conscious that no issue is considered in a vacuum and that many of our stakeholders campaigned for misogyny legislation. However, I believe that filling the gap in the hate crime legislation is a step forward.

The new protections for women and girls might have a bearing on any future work and reduce the size and scope of a misogyny bill. We operate in an environment in which we are highly sensitive to the range of views on the matter. Many of our stakeholders and partners fought very hard for a misogyny bill, so I understand their disappointment. However, as Mr Lamont said, the scope of the SSI—what the legislation allows us to do—is quite specific, and I am very appreciative of the opportunity to lay it.

We currently have hate crime legislation that rightly offers people protections based on age, disability, religion, race, transgender identity and so forth. Protections include stirring up hatred offences, which are where threatening or abusive behaviour or communication is essentially targeted at people because of their protected characteristic, such as sex, race or disability.

Also, aggravated offences, which add in the scope to convict on offences aggravated by malice and ill will, are really important, because if an offence is already being committed and it has been motivated by hatred towards women and girls, that should rightly be recorded and taken into account, for example, in sentencing, and it is a salient matter for the court to decide on.

Of course they do—they always do. I will address the specific point about the budget and Scottish Government actions, but, first, I want to put on record that I recognise that prison officers, as well as other Prison Service staff and NHS colleagues in our institutions, do a difficult and, at times, dangerous job.

On the budget, I point out that, in this financial year, there was a 10 per cent uplift for the Scottish Prison Service, following an uplift of nearly 10 per cent the previous year. We are investing nearly half a billion pounds in our prison service. Prison officer numbers have increased; today, the number sits at 3,797 people. However, I am conscious that resource is about more than top-level financial investment; the issue is also how we use our resources.

I am sure that the committee will have seen that we successfully reached a two-year pay deal for prison officers in the Scottish Prison Service. That was on a par with the deal on the agenda for change; I was pleased to secure it, and I hope that it speaks to my commitment to prison staff and my arguing the case for them in the budget process.

I am conscious that you asked about Scottish Government action, but a point that I would make—because I think that our trade union colleagues would be quite miffed if I did not—is about the Prison Officers Association’s 68 is too late campaign. Prison officers cannot retire until they are 68, which I find incredible and horrifying. As many of you will know, a few decades ago, I was a prison social worker; I cannot imagine being a prison-based social worker at 68, never mind a prison officer. There is work to be done there at a United Kingdom level, because there was an omission of the unique position of prison officers from the Hutton pension review.

I just want to put that on record, because I think that the Prison Officers Association would wish me to do so.