Chamber and committees

Your starting point was to ask whether we are listening to those concerns and taking them seriously, and we are. That speaks to the point about improvement that I made to Rona Mackay, which was that we should listen and see whether we can achieve agreement.

However, you are absolutely right that, even among defence solicitors, we see the extremes of view that you mentioned. We are not just getting different views from witnesses from different organisations; different points of view are being expressed within, say, the Law Society or the bar associations. We want to listen to see whether we can help with that. If those are the concerns of the people on the front line who are trying to be as effective as possible for their clients, we have to listen and see whether there is a way of overcoming them. If business is all virtual, it is hard to see how we could do that, but there might be exceptions.

The Government is therefore willing to listen to possible remedies, and we have a lot of good people in Government who might be able to help us to find solutions in tandem with our justice partners.

I might ask Allister Purdie to come in on this. It is certainly true, as I think that I said in the previous evidence session, that we applied additional guidance, beyond the Scottish Government guidance, through Public Health Scotland and others. There was a huge amount of provisions and guidance. That was done in recognition of the particular circumstance of prisons, which are, of necessity, confined spaces. I was not in Government when the pandemic began, but everybody was very fearful of what might happen to prisoners because of that.

Prisons will have their own necessity for taking action, and they might not always be completely aligned with the general population, which is able to take other measures. That is the general rationale for the extension.

I think that I mentioned the figures on Covid cases, at least from 4 March, in my opening statement. You can check back and confirm that.

I will take a stab at the current prison population; the latest figure that I saw was 7,502 or 7,503, but I am happy to be corrected on that. If I can just look back at my statement, I can tell you the number of inmates who currently have Covid—unless you have that figure to hand?

Sorry, I meant Allister Purdie—I thought he might have the figure to hand, but it is in my statement—

Yes, although it has to be said that that pilot would have to be done by the judiciary—it cannot be done by the Government. The format of court business and how it is run are decisions for the judiciary, although we have encouraged that. We are lucky that both Sheriff Principal Pyle and the Lord President are keen for innovation to happen. Such a pilot would certainly require their consent and possibly their initiative. However, I agree with you that, if we want to have such trials, we need to have a stronger evidence base.

I have been asked why we have not included that in the bill. The reason is that virtual trials are not strictly speaking about Covid—there might be beneficial impacts with respect to Covid, but there are different purposes. I have seen the Parliament get quite annoyed about emergency or exceptional legislation that it does not consider to be directly related to the pandemic. If there is to be a more permanent change, it must be evidenced. We have to work through some of the differences and work with the judiciary. The Parliament can always decide for itself if it wants to make a fundamental change.

There could be more virtual trials under the direction of the Lord President and others, but, in answer to your question, we should have more of an evidence base before we move forward on the matter.

It is worth saying at the start—Mr Greene will understand this, but others who are listening might not—that we are not saying that somebody who has a court case coming up now will have to wait four years for it to be addressed. However, the backlog itself will take four years, in some cases, to be addressed.

I have that confidence based on what the partners that you mentioned, including the Crown Office and the court service, tell me. They have given me the same dates that they have given the committee, and we have analysed them and explored them at some length. Within that, however, there is willingness on everybody’s part to look for other innovative ways in which we can address some of the issues that might stand in the way of a quicker throughput of cases.

Going back to Mr Findlay’s question, I note that we come up against some hard blocks that we will not be able to overcome. Given the number of people who are involved in the process and are delivering the service, there is only so much that we can do through all the different courts that we have mentioned.

I have that confidence given what I am told by justice partners and the discussions that we have had with them, but I fully expect that we will have to find further innovations along the way to make sure that we achieve it.

Part of the explanation for that might be that the 30 per cent figure applies to all releases from prison. I do not know the detail; I have not seen that. It might be useful to hear from Jennifer Stoddart about whether the 40, 50 and 60 per cent figures, and even the 30 per cent figure, are correct.

In relation to short-term prisoners, the release date will have been set as part of their sentencing in the first place. In relation to longer-term prisoners, it will be a decision for the Parole Board, which will have all the different experts to provide the risk assessment at that time.

Perhaps I can provide further reassurance. Everybody has now been made aware of the issue, so all current assessments are being looked at in the light of that. In any event, that will quickly be overtaken by the three-month assessment to which offenders in that situation will be subject. Therefore, even if we had discovered something, the process is starting to bite whereby such matters will be taken into account in future assessments.

Cat Dalrymple, as a former procurator fiscal, will correct me if I am wrong but, with short-term prisoners, the original sentence is handed down by the court, and we do not have the ability to change that.

I am happy to give that assurance. It is an on-going process, as you said, convener, so it might be worth providing more than one update as we go through it. However, we will make sure that the committee is kept informed.

I should add that, as I have said, we want to examine how we increase the evidence base. I think that Mr Greene asked about pilots and so on, but we would need the support of not just the Crown Office and the courts but the judiciary—and the Lord President in particular—in advance of our introducing any such legislation. If I may say, the Lord President is keen for innovation to happen, especially in relation to digital technology, and I am confident that he would be eager to help in that respect, but he would have to give permission for any further extension of the current basis for virtual trials or any pilot beyond what has been done already. However, you can see from Sheriff Principal Pyle’s report that there is an eagerness to examine this matter, and we would certainly be responsive to such a move.