Chamber and committees

That would be helpful. In the communities that I represent, there is a particular proposal on the co-location of police and local authority services, which I am keen to encourage. I will use my opportunity at the committee to try to nudge that along a little bit, convener. There are significant opportunities for the release of sites that could be of enormous strategic importance in, for example, the fulfilment of social housing objectives that many of us would want to be taken forward. Therefore, that analysis would be very helpful.

That takes me to my final point, which is about the urgency and necessity of advancing the agenda. I have read too many submissions in my time—some have come to the committee in the short period during which I have been a member of it—that basically say, “We cannot possibly make any more savings, because we are absolutely up against it. We need to have more money, because we have exhausted all the savings”. However, today, I have heard that Dalmarnock is 20 per cent occupied. The exercise that you are going to do, which I welcome, will probably throw up quite a lot of data of a similar nature.

I simply come back to where I started, which is about the necessity of viewing this year as one that has given the police service the time and space to redesign. To be frank and candid, the idea that the only answer to the challenges is more money is just not going to fly in the years to come, because public finances are under such pressure. I hope that the exercise will help to inform public debate about some of the realities that must be confronted.

Forgive me, but there is also an important point about partnership in this exercise. Our view might be that all of those solutions have to be found from within the police capital budget, but the dynamics of budget changes will never provide for that.

At the same time as Police Scotland is getting whatever its capital budget is—£64.6 million—I would think that local authorities will be getting ten times that in capital budgets. It is fundamental to this exercise that we try to find some ways through this by collaboration with local authorities. It has to be thought through in a broader context than by looking only at the police capital budget and asking how we can enhance it.

Deputy Chief Constable, could I pursue that a little further? Am I right to understand from your comments in response to Katy Clark’s question that your officers will go with the grain of the Lord Advocate’s guidance but keep a watchful eye out for anything that is not consistent with it? I will spit it out: I take it that, given the Lord Advocate’s position, Police Scotland will give the proposal a fair wind?

Part of what underpins the question that Katy Clark puts, which is my view as well, is that we understand, accept and do not in any way question the proper role of the police in upholding the rule of law, but that must, on this issue, be done in a manner that gives the policy intent of the proposal the maximum opportunity to thrive, if that is possible.

In essence, you have covered the internal changes that Police Scotland can make to the operating model. I would like to explore that a bit further. In some circumstances, those changes will relate to working practices and approaches to the management of the estate. Am I right in concluding that there is, within the design of that model, a recognition that we are living in a society that has, relatively speaking historically, a very low level of crime? I accept that that has to be continually suppressed and prevented, but the nature, level and character of crime, with the best predictions that we can make about the contents of the approach, should inform the construction of the police force that we require for the future.

I welcome the reaffirmation of the Government’s commitment to dual the A9, which builds on the successful completion of a range of capital projects—including the Queensferry crossing, the M74 completion, the M8 completion, the Aberdeen western peripheral route completion, the Airdrie to Bathgate railway and the Borders railway—and the cabinet secretary’s acceptance of a number of the proposals that my constituents in the Dunkeld and Birnam area made regarding the design of the route at that particularly challenging site. Does the cabinet secretary agree to herself, the Minister for Transport and their officials engaging further with community groups in Dunkeld and Birnam about the design issues and, crucially, on short-term improvements that could be made to road safety in advance of the dualling works that are being undertaken?

If we were to address Pauline McNeill’s point about the perennial discussion of the not proven verdict, it might help us to understand exactly what “not proven” means. I am struck by the reference in the faculty’s written submission, which describes not proven as a “measured means of acquittal.” I would be grateful for an explanation of the thinking behind that description of the not proven verdict. What does it actually mean?

A matter of emphasis about what?

There is probably another sentence that goes with that that is about the interpretation of a not proven verdict. In the circumstances in which the Crown has been deemed to have failed to prove a case beyond a reasonable doubt and the jury is unconvinced that the individual is not guilty, does it suggest that they are somehow—forgive my colloquialism—sort of guilty?

A judge, however, in answering a jury’s question about the difference between the two verdicts will say, “There is no difference”. Am I correct?