Chamber and committees

Of course, because these are serious, important and sensitive matters that are not without their complexity. Given the journey that we have travelled with hate crime law and its implementation, I do not expect to need to resolve any further knotty issues, but we will continue to engage with Police Scotland. I also have a series of engagements with other parties, some of which you have mentioned, that are understandably disappointed that the misogyny bill is not proceeding at this time.

I will briefly add to that. It is of fundamental importance to me, particularly as the chair of the cross-Government ministerial group, to knit together that collaboration between our national health service and the work that the Scottish Prison Service facilitates.

The committee will have heard me say before that, irrespective of where a citizen is residing, whether that is in the community or in custody, the equivalency of service and support in healthcare is imperative.

There are obvious changes and demands in and around delivering services in the context of safe and secure prisons, but, with regard to that collaborative work, what is being rolled out now is an improved healthcare referrals process. There is a revised memorandum of understanding between the Prison Service and the NHS. Crucially—and this is important in relation to the multi-agency working that Ms Todd referred to—more joint training is now taking place between the Prison Service and the NHS. That may sound like a technical point in relation to a target operating model, but I cannot, for a minute, underestimate the importance of getting consistency in the delivery of healthcare to our prisoners at a national level.

Actually, Mr Kerr, I answered your question when I said that I was intensively engaged with the Scottish Prison Service. That work will be built on through engagement with trade unions, victim support organisations and other justice partners. If further measures are necessary, I will, as I have always done, communicate them to Parliament as a whole and explain any action that I believe is required and why that action is necessary at any point in time.

They do, Mr Kerr, and I hope that you will hang on to that thought, particularly when the sentencing and penal policy commission reports later in the year.

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.