Chamber and committees

We know who does not support it, but I just wanted to give you a chance to say who does.

I know that the cabinet secretary agrees that, as part of the strategy, we need to improve throughcare services. The Wise Group recently advised me that one of the big issues for offenders who leave prison is the fact that they will have lost their place on their general practitioner’s list. That is one of the stumbling blocks in getting them resettled back into the community.

Will the cabinet secretary consider finding a way round that, perhaps by freezing the place of offenders on GP lists, so that it will be much easier for them to see their GP when they leave prison?

Given that the Mental Welfare Commission has visited Skye house on six occasions since 2017, and given that the main issues that were raised in the BBC’s investigation include allegations of physical abuse—including nurses quickly resorting to force such as physical restraint and dragging patients down corridors, leaving them bruised and traumatised—can we have any faith that the enhanced programme of visits will provide the necessary oversight?

Given the magnitude of the allegations, surely it is time to consider regular unannounced visits to such facilities, because Skye house is not the only institution that has had allegations made against it involving abuse of children. Otherwise, we cannot be sure that children are getting the standard of care that they need.

Will the cabinet secretary take an intervention?

It dumbfounds me at times. I have been taking part in debates on this issue for two decades now—indeed I have—and we know that the answers lie in throughcare and supporting prisoners. However, we are nowhere near doing that. A budget line that demonstrated the Government’s commitment to throughcare would definitely be appropriate.

I want to set out why we are not convinced by the policy review.

Our prisons are bursting at the seams and we are being forced to release prisoners early, causing deep public concern. We have some of the highest levels of incarceration in Europe, so it is clear that one of the answers to this situation is to focus on sentencing.

It is also obvious that, to do so, we have to give the courts serious alternatives to imprisonment. I do not know how many times that that has been said in the chamber, but it is a failure of SNP justice management that we have not made progress in that area. For example, the number of community payback orders has slumped over the past decade. In 2014-15, there were more than 19,000 orders, but nearly 10 years later, that figure is just over 15,000. To me, it seems extraordinary that we are going backwards.

If we want to send fewer people to prison, where that is appropriate, and relieve our bulging prison estate, it is important that we run our prisons better from within. The point about the importance of being able to work with offenders has been rehearsed many times. It is all about the work that we do with them, about their conditions in prison and about staff being given an opportunity to do the job that they were employed to do inside the prison.

Research suggests that community sentencing can have a positive effect on both the chances of the perpetrator reoffending and the public purse. What is crucial in those cases is that it makes sense to use it and that it has the confidence of the public and the judiciary—we all know that. It is not an easy fix, and it requires a serious focus to make it work. To that extent, I agree with the cabinet secretary and assure her that Scottish Labour thinks that this is a matter on which there should be cross-party working.

I have heard this many times, but one reason for community payback orders not being used as much as they should be is that judges do not seem to have the confidence in some of the programmes or in the ability of the convicted person to complete them. We need to improve the suitability of community payback orders, particularly for those with addictions and those who lead chaotic lives. The Criminal Justice Committee heard as much fairly recently, when Karyn McCluskey, the chief executive of Community Justice Scotland, pointed out that

“We must imprison those whom we are afraid of, and not those we are mad at. People enter our justice system with mental health issues, addiction problems, homeless, from the care system and many who’ve been victimised as children.”

However, for those who receive a jail term, we need to improve access to throughcare services. Such services involve trying to get people who are coming out of prison back into their homes and communities, something that many third sector organisations such as the Wise Group are, as we all know, brilliant at.

The throughcare budget is around £5 million, but it has been estimated that providing throughcare for everyone who comes out of prison will cost nearly £19 million. Given that the majority of sentences are short term, and that many people with addiction issues cycle through the system time and again, it is a false economy not to invest more in those systems.

I have had many letters from constituents who have written to me from prison, frustrated that they cannot get on to the courses that they are willing to go on to demonstrate that they have been rehabilitated. I confess that I do not have the data, so this is somewhat anecdotal, but the suggestion is that there are long waiting lists in prison for people who want to go on rehabilitation courses, and it has also been suggested that someone could be waiting on the list, but someone else could go above them. It seems a bit unfortunate that there are issues inside prisons with trying to do that kind of work, and it would be helpful to get more data on that.

At the moment, the Scottish Labour position is that we are not in favour of a sentencing policy review. I have to say that this is the first time that I have heard the cabinet secretary’s intentions. I will reconsider, but that is our position at the moment.

I absolutely do welcome it, but the two points are not mutually exclusive. I would like it to be visible, but of course I welcome the commitment. What I have been demonstrating is that a lot of the answers to the problems are already known.

There was confusion over the sentencing policy for under-25s, partly because the Scottish Sentencing Council did not seem to take any soundings from the Parliament before it arrived at it. However, there has not been a lot of discussion in the Parliament about that. There is lengthy guidance, as Liam Kerr has already said, which has been quite controversial, and there is a case to be made for the Criminal Justice Committee to look at sentencing, too.

The point that I want to make to the cabinet secretary is that there must be transparency around this important debate. One of my concerns about another review on sentencing is that it will put it behind closed doors, but the Parliament needs more transparency in the discussion. I do not fully understand what approach the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service is taking, for example, although it seems to be using its discretion more often not to take young offenders to court. I am not commenting on the rights and wrongs of that, but there should be more up-front openness about what is happening.

If the Government wants cross-party support on sentencing, it follows that we need to know exactly where the Government is heading on that, and we need to discuss what the alternatives will be. We believe that the job of the Government is to get on with it and not kick it into the long grass with a review.

In many debates, we have noted that 2,000 people are on remand in Scotland, which is a problem that needs to be discussed. We need answers on how to deal with remand prisoners in overcrowded jails, where, for obvious reasons, there are no programmes, and we need to think more about the conditions in which we hold remand prisoners.

People on remand suffer some of the same issues as convicted prisoners. I am sure that the cabinet secretary is aware of this, but the Wise Group has told me that one of the things that happens when someone goes to prison is that, along with losing their home and job, they are removed from the register of their general practitioner’s surgery—and that seems to be the case even when someone is in prison on remand. One small change that could be made would be not to do that. Indeed, the Criminal Justice Committee has successfully argued for prescriptions in the prison system to make that more joined up; small things can be done that will make a difference to prisoners, and that is one that the Government should look at.

I will listen carefully to what the Government has to say. However, at the moment, our position is this: let us get on with the job. We know where the answers lie. The Government will get our full co-operation. However, we do not want to see this happen behind closed doors.

I move amendment S6M-16532.2, to leave out from “recognises” to end and insert:

“acknowledges that prisons remain severely overcrowded, with prisons operating above capacity even after the Scottish National Party (SNP) administration’s emergency early release of prisoners, impacting on the ability to rehabilitate offenders; is concerned by the high numbers of women in prisons; condemns the SNP administration’s failure to tackle high reoffending rates, which result in offenders returning to custody due to the lack of robust alternatives; agrees that the third sector can play a significant role in the effective delivery of justice services that reduce reoffending, and support reintegration into society; calls on the Scottish Government to urgently increase the availability of robust community payback orders, and invest in safe and secure GPS electronic monitoring to drive down the remand population and give more public confidence to non-custodial sentencing; further calls on the Scottish Government to expand access to throughcare services, which are essential in assisting offenders to reintegrate into society and to stop offending; believes that a review of sentencing and penal policy will not address the urgent crisis in Scotland’s justice system, and resolves that the SNP administration should take immediate action based on parameters set by the Parliament to address these concerns, rather than focus on a review that will not take the prompt action needed to fix the justice system and keep Scotland’s communities safe.”

I will do my best, but the problem is that there is a lot of complexity in the bill. I want to try to understand what the Government is writing into the bill.

My question should be fairly succinct and is on the broad provisions to allow virtual attendance for any proceedings. The Lord Justice General has powers to say that someone can attend virtually. How is that process kicked off? My reading of the bill is that the court can overturn that, which I presume is on an individual case-by-case basis. What would prompt the Lord Justice General to make such a decision in a case that they are not directly involved in?

Why is the subsection needed, then?

The explanatory notes referred to a court “dealing with a case”. Up to what stage does that mean?