Chamber and committees

Sharon Dowey has not yet mentioned whether the police deserved a pay rise. The police in Scotland got that, but elsewhere they did not. In the budget that the Tories will propose, how much more should go to policing? Where will that money come from?

I have a great deal of sympathy with the member’s amendment and the proposals that he makes in it. However, we cannot support it today because it would jump ahead of what we are doing with the forthcoming bill on the reform of bail and release from prison arrangements. I am sure that things such as the route map and the milestones that he talks about in relation to throughcare will be covered at that time. That is the only reason why we cannot support the amendment; we are supportive of the sentiments behind it.

I will quickly cover a couple of points. We have had a meeting to discuss the deaths in custody report with stakeholders, and a governance group will be established shortly.

The Government will support Labour’s amendment. On the request to meet the SPS, I will ensure that that happens as quickly as possible. The SPS is going through a recruitment exercise for a new chief executive.

On bail and release reform, I hope that the Labour Party and the member will support the proposed bail reform bill, because that is the only way in which we, as a Government, can tackle the issue. We cannot tell the courts to do those things; we have to do it through legislation. There may be a difference of opinion on elements of the legislation, but we hope that it will get broad support.

I am grateful for the opportunity to present the Scottish Government’s new vision for justice in Scotland. We want to transform our justice services and put people at the heart of everything that we do.

We have a long and proud tradition of effective justice in Scotland and we have worked hard, over many years, to strengthen and modernise a justice system in which individuals and communities can have trust, but we recognise that we must do more. Our vision for justice will continue to strive to deliver a just, fair and resilient Scotland. I am bold in my ambition that the people of Scotland should be living in even safer, more tolerant and inclusive communities, free from inequality and hate.

Our vision is a Scotland where there is less crime and unintentional harm in our communities and where we all have fair access to justice, so that when we experience crime, something is done. It is a Scotland where we will be treated as people, first and foremost, and where our voices will be heard and we will be supported to recover from the trauma that we have experienced. It is a Scotland where those who have committed offences will be supported in rehabilitation by the most effective means, primarily remaining in our communities with support and opportunities for fair work, employment and housing.

I want to highlight two key messages from that vision. First, all our justice services, including those that are delivered by our third sector partners and the legal profession, must be person centred and trauma informed. No matter what our role is or what our interaction with justice services is, we know that how we are treated affects our feelings about justice processes and our confidence in them. Those experiences are often as important as the conclusion of a case or a dispute. Delivering person-centred services will ensure that a person’s needs and views are respected, that people receive timely and clear communication that they can understand, and that individuals and families will be involved in decisions that affect them.

Many of the issues that bring people to the justice system, whether as a victim or a person accused of crime, are very traumatic. It is our duty to minimise the inflicting of further trauma or retraumatisation and help recovery. We will embed trauma-informed practice and ensure that our justice services recognise the prevalence of trauma and adversity. We have already invested £250,000 over three years to fund a trauma specialist at NHS Education for Scotland to help to drive forward the development of a trauma-informed responsive workforce in our justice services in relation to the needs of victims and survivors.

Secondly, we must work across our public services to improve outcomes for individuals and focus on prevention and early intervention. The causes of crime are complex and varied, but we know that, to address those causes, we must tackle societal inequalities, such as gender inequality, child poverty, mental ill health, addiction and adverse childhood experiences. Those issues are beyond the responsibility of justice alone, but justice has a role in responding to them. I am determined that Scotland’s public services will work together to address those issues and that individuals will be supported at the earliest opportunity to improve their life chances and, ultimately, to reduce the risk of offending and reoffending. By focusing on early intervention, we can also ensure that the right services are provided at the right time and, where possible, that they support people to avoid contact with the justice services.

I have three priority areas of action. The first is women and children. Violence against women and girls in any form has no place in our vision for a safe, strong and successful Scotland. It damages health and wellbeing and limits freedom and potential, and it is a violation of the most fundamental human rights. The Government is committed to tackling behaviour that stems from systemic and deep-rooted women’s inequality. That inequality leads to violent and abusive behaviour by men directed at women and girls precisely because they are women and girls.

We must recognise the role that our justice system plays in perpetuating that inequality. Historically, our justice system was designed by men for men. Put simply, it does not meet the needs of women and children in our society. Survivors tells us that how they are treated by justice services affects their feelings of confidence in the justice process.

Low conviction rates for sexual crimes are also a real cause for concern. That is why we want to improve how the justice system can serve women and ensure that survivors have trust in the criminal justice process.

I welcome the establishment of the new women’s justice leadership panel, which is chaired by the Minister for Community Safety, Ash Regan.

In “Improving the Management of Sexual Offence Cases”, Lady Dorrian made a number of recommendations to benefit and empower women who have experienced sexual abuse. A governance group that is led by the Scottish Government and which comprises key stakeholders met for the first time on 21 December. That group will drive forward progress and detailed consideration of the individual and collective recommendations in Lady Dorrian’s report.

We also have work to do to improve justice for children. We are committed to keeping the Promise. We will continue to deliver our reinforced and reinvigorated whole-system approach to prevent youth offending and, to the extent possible, no under-18s will be remanded or sentenced to detention in a young offenders institute. We will continue to invest in services to strengthen support for families that are affected by parental imprisonment and to listen to the voice of the child in family law cases. During the lifespan of the vision, we will fulfil our commitment to provide access to a bairn’s hoose for every child who needs it.

Overall rates of offending have fallen under the Government, but we must ensure that victims are heard. We must offer approaches to justice that place victims at the heart of the process and support them in their recovery. We will deliver on our commitment to appoint a victims commissioner to provide an independent voice for victims. We will also look towards progressing different forms of justice, including restorative justice, which allow victims to take a prominent role.

We know that delay and uncertainty caused great stress to victims and survivors. Covid-19 has put significant pressure on our justice system, increasing the time for cases to progress through the criminal justice system, and that brings additional stress to victims.

While we continue to recover our services and reduce the backlog of cases, we must avoid going back to the system as it was before the pandemic. Instead, we should embrace innovative approaches that allow our services to operate efficiently and with the needs of victims at their heart. We have established a justice recovery fund of £52.3 million in the next financial year, which will be allocated to recovery, renewal and transformation activity across the justice system.

Although there will always be a place for prison in our society, we must support people in their rehabilitation in the most appropriate and effective setting. Many of those who offend have themselves experienced poverty, disadvantage, adverse childhood experiences and trauma, and have often had substance abuse or health problems that require our support. Ultimately, the evidence demonstrates that community interventions are more effective than short prison sentences in addressing offending behaviour and reducing the risk of reoffending. I repeat: community interventions are more effective than short prison sentences in addressing offending behaviour and reducing the risk of reoffending. Surely, we all want to reduce the risk of reoffending.

The consultation on bail and release from custody arrangements closed yesterday after running for 12 weeks, and that represents the first step in a wider discussion about how custody should be used in a modern, progressive Scotland. The responses to that consultation will inform the legislation that we will bring to Parliament for scrutiny. Additionally, a refreshed national community justice strategy has been developed, and it will set out clear aims for partners, with an emphasis on early intervention and encouraging a further shift away from the use of custody.

Public protection remains paramount, and, for many crimes that are committed, there are victims who have suffered and continue to do so. As we work to ensure effective rehabilitation and recovery for those who have offended, that must be balanced with the safety of victims and their own recovery from harm and trauma. That is a principle that we have taken forward in our work on bail supervision. The new guidelines place a specific emphasis on victim safety in decision making, with greater focus on using remand for those who pose a risk of serious harm.

There are two views about how the justice system can evolve. We can have the puerile practice of trying to look tough on crime after crime has happened and victims have suffered, which usually involves locking more people up for longer periods and building more and bigger prisons, paid for, presumably, by slashing police numbers by around 17,000; or we can be tough enough to make the difficult decisions that will lead to less crime being committed, which means that there are fewer victims and less suffering.

Our new vision for justice has been developed in collaboration with our justice partners and has been endorsed by the justice board for Scotland. Our year 1 delivery plan, also published today, demonstrates the commitments that Government and the justice agencies have already made, but we recognise that we need to do more. Therefore, over the coming months, we will work across the justice sector and beyond to develop a delivery plan setting out our medium and long-term actions for the rest of this parliamentary session and beyond.

I want to conclude by making a commitment that the minister and I will ensure that Scotland’s justice services are transformed to meet the needs of people in today’s society. To them, I say: justice will be for you and with you, at heart.

I move,

That the Parliament recognises that the new Vision for Justice enables a programme of work to transform the justice system to ensure that services are person centred and trauma informed; further recognises the need to work across public services, taking a whole-government approach, to improve outcomes for individuals and focus on prevention and early intervention, and making communities safer; acknowledges that there must be urgent action to improve the experiences of women and children and ensure that the voices of victims and survivors are heard and acted upon; acknowledges that, to address the causes of crime, any action must tackle socio-economic inequalities such as gender inequality, child poverty, mental ill health and addictions, and support individuals at the earliest opportunity to improve their life chances and reduce offending and reoffending, and acknowledges that, while there will always be a place for restricting people’s liberty in society, there must be a safe and secure environment for those in custody, as well as those who work in prisons, and that the balance should be shifted to ensure that the role of custody is used only when no alternative is appropriate, making greater use of alternative options in communities.

The Scottish Government “Good Practice Guide on 20 mph Speed Restrictions” suggests that

“Any changes should be monitored, and where compliance levels are not at an acceptable level, consideration should be given to the addition of traffic calming measures or”,

in some cases,

“reverting to a 30 mph limit, if necessary.”

Such measures are the result of a dialogue between a number of partners, primarily the council—in the case that Christine Grahame mentions, councils—involved and Police Scotland.

The 20mph roads in Midlothian South, Tweeddale and Lauderdale are a mix of local roads, which are under the responsibility of councils, and trunk roads. I know that that is a concern of Christine Grahame’s. Scottish Borders Council has undertaken some speed surveys, including on the trunk roads that are of concern to Ms Grahame. If she wants to have further discussion with the local authorities and the police, I will be happy to pass that message on and add my support to the further dialogue that she seeks.

The Scottish Government does not hold the information requested. Police Scotland is responsible for the enforcement of speed limits.

Craig Hoy neglects to mention that we have around 50 per cent more police officers per capita in Scotland than there are in England and Wales. His Government cut the funding for the police and cut 20,000 police officers in England and Wales, so we will take no lessons from the Tories on proper police funding.

The practice that is undertaken by the Scottish Prison Service—in common, I think, with other prison services throughout the United Kingdom—is to adopt a process that seeks to make sure that the rights and safety of everyone in prison are looked at when such issues are taken into account, and I think that it does that in a very structured and sensitive way.

However, John Mason will know, because he mentioned that he had previously corresponded with the Scottish Prison Service, that the service is going through a review to look at the collection of further information. That will help with the provision of the information that he sought previously, which he now has. I hope that the fact that that information, which will be specific to the day on which the question is asked, will be provided more regularly will help John Mason.

The SPS regularly judges people’s rights and the safety of all the prisoners in its care in a very sensitive way, not least in relation to transgender prisoners.

The Scottish Government works closely with Police Scotland and other CyberScotland partners, including the National Cyber Security Centre, to protect the public and organisations from cyber threats. We also work with Police Scotland and partners on the serious organised crime task force to oversee work that is being carried out to reduce the harm that is caused by serious organised crime in Scotland.

The sharing of intelligence and experience is key to responding to cyber threats, particularly when it comes to ransomware attacks that seek to extort victims. The Scottish Government, along with Police Scotland, is an active member of the UK cyber security information sharing partnership—CISP—which we encourage all eligible organisations in Scotland to join.

I think that Maggie Chapman’s question was about ensuring that people are protected from crimes of different types while they are in prison.

A host of things are undertaken by the Prison Service in relation to that, not least when people are first admitted to prison. That process will take into account, for example, whether a person might be involved with or allied to serious organised crime groups and whether, because of the nature of the crime that they have committed, they might be under undue threat. At that point, an assessment is made as to which establishment and which unit within the establishment they should go to, whether they should be put in a single-cell facility, and many other factors.

The Scottish Prison Service is not new to doing that. It does it for every prisoner, and it will continue to do it and to review its processes to ensure that it safeguards and cares for all prisoners in its custody.