Chamber and committees

My question is on remand accommodation and is for Teresa Medhurst. Did you say that the remand population is now at 30 per cent, whereas the previous figure was 27 per cent? I appreciate that you have to manage the prison environment according to the situation and the legislation that you are given. If 30 per cent is the figure now, and if we extend the provisions of the legislation, is it inevitable that remand prisoners will be held in more difficult conditions?

Good morning. I have just one question. The committee has been asked to comment on the extension of court time limits. You both expressed concerns about the previous level of adjournments. Are you not more concerned that if the Parliament gave its authority to an extension, we could end up in the same place again, being asked to extend the limits by another six months?

Perhaps it is time that we put some pressure on to fix the system. I am deeply concerned about the extension of court time limits, given the evidence from you both. I am concerned that we may be back here again if we extend the limits for six months. Do you share my concern?

What if we are in the same situation in six months? Will you be saying the same thing? Will we be saying that the system is so broken that we have to extend the limits further?

I will get to John Mason in a minute. He does not seem to think that any people on low incomes own cars, which is deeply disturbing. If Susan Aitken and Anna Richardson are going to consult about such a scheme in Glasgow, I ask the Glasgow MSPs whether they will support it—let us be clear about that.

The policy is designed to stop people using their cars; that is its purpose. The Government is hiding behind the notion that it is up to cash-strapped local authorities to make the decisions, but it knows full well that, even in Glasgow, public transport is not up to the mark.

Let us look at who will be affected: women with childcare responsibilities, for example. In the city that I represent, there are people who work shifts in factories, and they will simply not be able to get to their work without a car. The Government is going to tax them up to £500. If businesses had been asked whether they had some issues with that, perhaps the Government would have got some deserved feedback.

According to the Government’s figures, in households in which total combined income—that means that it is not just one person’s income—is between £20,000 and £25,000, 59 per cent of people travel by car to work. Does the Government know that? Whatever the merits of the workplace parking levy, is now the time to introduce it? I suggest that it is not.

In its motion and its rhetoric, the Government talks about public transport, but there has been no serious investment in transport in 14 years in the west of Scotland. As I have mentioned in the chamber, the mythical Clyde metro is a nice dream and one that I support, but it does not seem to exist. The Government will not even invest in an air link to take traffic off the M8. I am sorry, but I cannot take the Government’s climate change notions seriously, because in 14 years the SNP has done absolutely nothing to take traffic off the M8. We may see the Clyde metro in 30 years—the Evening Times has reported on that—but the SNP has not even blinked over this policy.

Energy prices are rising by 50 per cent, petrol and diesel prices are up and we have the highest food prices on record, all of which disproportionately affect poor people. If it had wanted to, the SNP could have legislated to say that this tax should be borne by the owners and employers, but it did not—we would at least have had something in common had it done so.

The levy will not raise the levels of public money that are needed for investment. Nottingham raised £2 million. That sum will not even touch the sides of a rail link to Glasgow airport.

On a point of order, Presiding Officer. You may have me recorded as voting yes. I tried to change it to no within the time limit, but I lost connection. I would have voted no.

The Government is not serious about the scheme and it should rethink it. The SNP will pay the price when ordinary working people see that it has imposed a tax on car drivers.

As one of the co-conveners, with Rona Mackay, of the cross-party group on medicinal cannabis, I ask the cabinet secretary whether the Government is opposed to any kind of scheme if it is not in favour of Cancard? The Cancard scheme was designed with the help of doctors and senior representatives of the Police Federation of England and Wales—admittedly, that is for the United Kingdom. We have had a very helpful response from Assistant Chief Constable Gary Ritchie on the issue. Would the cabinet secretary be prepared to meet with us and discuss something similar, so that a similar incident to that in Shetland does not happen again?

It is astonishing that, at a time when the Bank of England is predicting that inflation will go up to 7.25 per cent in April, the SNP still refuses to recognise the consequences for ordinary people of implementing a car tax. The SNP says that it is a levy on the parking provider, but we all know from the legislation that Nottingham City Council used that the cost was passed on to workers. As we have heard from all the SNP back benchers, that is the policy’s primary purpose. It is a devolved policy when it suits the Government but not when it comes to freezing council tax. The Government needs to be consistent about when it thinks that local authorities should be trusted to carry out their own policies. It is total hypocrisy.

No amount of reasoning with SNP ministers in trying to cushion the blow led to exemptions for low-paid workers, single parents and people in our public services who work shifts, including night shifts, such as those in the police and the ambulance service. The SNP gave exemptions for some people but, for some reason, it chose not to exempt anybody else. SNP back benchers voted down every one of my amendments. It could still be a local policy if there was a floor to protect ordinary working people. Even though there is a statutory obligation on the Government to poverty-proof single parents in the anti-poverty plan, the SNP voted down my attempt to exempt single parents from the tax.

The SNP has washed its hands of the consequences of the legislation—one of the most damaging policies in 14 years—on low-income drivers.

I hope that the Scottish Government will support the Labour Party’s amendment, because we are being constructive in backing significant reforms to the criminal justice system in this parliamentary session, although we have specific views to offer.

I will begin with an overview of our prison system, which is far from modern—and the pandemic has set us back in many ways. I agree with Jamie Greene that it is deeply concerning that Scotland as a nation has such a large remand population. As the Scottish Government says in its vision for justice, that is a problem for population management. Overcrowding is a major problem in our prisons; reports have noted that Barlinnie has been operating at more than 40 per cent over capacity for the past couple of years, although I think that that has happened for a lot longer.

The vision notes that

“international evidence suggests that remand is associated with negative effects that may hinder longer-term desistance from crime including an increased risk of suicide and mental distress, disintegration of social supports and family ties and disruption to employment that increase the likelihood of reoffending upon release.”

No one should need any convincing that one of the Parliament’s jobs must be to reduce the remand population. We need to tackle the issue urgently. I look forward to hearing proposals from the Scottish Government on how it plans to reform bail legislation and to hearing whether electronic tagging will be used as an alternative to custody, when appropriate.

Our ageing prison estate accentuates the difficulties that are borne by staff and management. Prison staff have written to me—I have had several letters—to raise concerns about staffing levels putting pressure on prison officers, who are doing their job. I have asked twice to meet the Scottish Prison Service, and I will use this opportunity to say that I would like a response to my letter.

If we want to have minimum standards, we desperately need to modernise the estate. The work has still not started on the new Barlinnie prison and it is set to miss the deadline of 2025.

I agree with the cabinet secretary that prison is appropriate for many offenders and will remain so, but, for some, punishment is better conducted outwith prison and through community sentences. Community sentences can be more effective than prison sentences in preventing reoffending, but judges will use community sentencing more only if they are confident that such sentences are robust.

The number of deaths in custody remains too high—the figure was 54 in 2021, and the number has more than doubled since 2015. It is also taking far too long to complete fatal accident inquiries. In 2021, the average time that an FAI had taken was almost three years, which is unacceptable for families who are waiting to find out what an FAI has concluded. I await with interest the Government’s response to the independent review on deaths in custody, which said that, when such deaths happen, there should be unfettered access to establish the cause of death.

Given that we have heard the testimony of women victims who said that they felt like criminals, will the Government give any thought to what reforms of the system could address that issue? I am not convinced that the victims commissioner is the answer. Will the Government give some thought to how we deal with that point?