Chamber and committees

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.

In the illicit supply of substances, it is quite correct that it is less about hooch, as Mr MacGregor said, and much more about the very dangerous synthetic opioids that are making their way into our prisons and having an impact on the prison population, similar to what is happening in the community.

Nonetheless, alcohol remains a feature in offending behaviour. There are people who are poorly on admission to prison because they are not getting access to alcohol, and there might also be issues to do with withdrawal and people who will need care and treatment as a result. If alcohol is a factor in someone’s offending behaviour, they will benefit from access to the recovery community or other rehabilitative-type opportunities related to their offending behaviour.

It is not that alcohol is not an issue, because if it was an issue for an individual in the community, it is an issue in prison. There is then a risk that needs to be addressed while in custody and that needs to feature in any release planning for that individual. That might be in the conditions that the Parole Board sets or in the more detailed throughcare planning that takes place for individuals.

In general terms, the health and welfare of prison staff is a matter that I discuss with the chief executive of the Prison Service. It is a matter that she raises with me. It is a factor in the issues around overcrowding and staff resilience, for example. The specific issue that you raise is, of course, a purely operational matter, but I know that there are very specific procedures and guidance for staff when they have to have contact with a prisoner when fumes or illicit drugs are involved, because one of the issues with those novel substances is that they can be absorbed by the skin. There are procedures around when to engage in those circumstances, and there are procedures around how that should be approached and the equipment that is required. I can ask the Prison Service to supply me and the committee with a more detailed account of the specific procedures that are in place.

It is an important point that speaks to the change and increasing challenge associated with drugs. It is not just about people ingesting something into their body that has an impact on their behaviour. It is about the ingestion of substances that have a direct bearing on the health and wellbeing of prison officers. I have certainly had constituency cases raised with me about the impact on prison staff and on their health of being in close proximity to fumes and so on.

That is an operational matter, and I am not sure that you necessarily want a politician or former social worker to talk in detail about the exact training that should be given to prison officers. That said, I have visited the SPS college and had the pleasure of meeting new recruits on more than one occasion. What I have observed is that the Prison Service is certainly recruiting a greater diversity of people, by which I mean people from different backgrounds. As you would anticipate, the Prison Service often attracts people who have worked in the military, but I have observed that there is a growing number of people who have worked in the care sector or with children, and I think that that blend is quite important.

The old terminology—this is very outdated language, so I apologise—was that, for criminal justice social work and the Prison Service, it was about care and control. These are controlling institutions, but it is also about the care that is provided, so people need to be safe and secure. Prison officers need to be able to prevent violence, but they also need to be able to respond to violence.

I have also seen mock operations to train prison officers to deal with disruption. The SPS has a facility, which, by chance, is in my constituency, in Fauldhouse, where more operational and tactical training is provided. That is part of the on-going training and development of officers who are given specialist training, because some officers will carry out specialist roles, should that be required, in the prison that they work in or in another prison.

The training is always evolving. For example, the SPS has developed pain-free control and restraint, which came about through its work with and concern about young people. That training has attracted a lot of attention internationally, and that matter is kept under review.

I am very cognisant of the demands on Prison Service staff and of the strains and stresses that they experience, which is probably putting it mildly. We must have acuity with regard to ensuring that we retain experienced staff, because the mix of old and new is really important. I do not imagine that this will surprise colleagues, but the number of prison officers has increased. There is often much talk about the public sector workforce, and rightly so—this is a workforce that has increased from 3,462 prison officers in 2023-24 to 3,797 today.

Of course. Anyone with an interest is welcome to respond to the consultation. It launched on 28 August, the same day that the draft SSI was published. On the Scottish Government citizen space website, there is the draft SSI and text to explain the small number of policy choices that have been made. My officials proactively sent that information to bodies on the hate crime strategic partnership group and those who had responded to the consultation on the proposed misogyny bill.

I appreciate the question. I will not rehearse the arguments that were made at the time when the hate crime legislation was passed; I was not prepared to leave a gap in the law and in existing hate crime legislation for women. That does not mean that a future Government will not take forward a misogyny bill but, right here and now, I have come to the conclusion that, to put it bluntly, I am not having a gap in the law for women. That is my straightforward view.

The Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021 deliberately left a power to address the issue. The definition of sex fits well with the hate crime framework, in that it minimises any overlap with other characteristics, although there is always the potential for overlap. At the end of the day, it felt to me as though the gap that had been left was not justifiable, and I wanted to address it before the end of the parliamentary session.

Misogyny legislation differs from hate crime legislation in that the former is specifically gendered legislation and is a more nuanced approach. Baroness Kennedy led some excellent work to lay out the extent of the misogyny and harassment that women face in this country, if anyone was in any doubt about that.

It is complex legislation—I wish it was not thus, but it is. When 16 Scottish Government bills and 15 members’ bills are still to come to a conclusion before purdah, there is a practical reality that is regrettable. I do not think that Baroness Kennedy’s work in the area will be lost. In my view, there is an opportunity for us to strengthen the law with the SSI, and it is important that we do it because, I repeat, I am not having a gap in the law for women.

In short, yes. The hate crime legislative framework is a proven model for providing legal protections. Although there might be a range of views on the approach that was taken, or, indeed, on our not being able to progress with the misogyny bill, I am taking some comfort from the recognition that there is a gap in hate crime legislation and that it needs to be addressed. Of course, it is never as simple as just slotting things in. Philip, would you like to speak to that, since you have done the slotting in?