Chamber and committees

That is contrary to what I have said, for example, in relation to the three-year funding for the victims fund that we are producing. That funding provides certainty and amounts, I think, to around £18 million in its own right. [Keith Brown has corrected this contribution. See end of report.] I have mentioned victims a number of times. In answering Fulton MacGregor’s questions, I mentioned a number of proposals in relation to community justice and how we can do more in the system about people on remand. It does not necessarily mean giving more money to victims organisations but, instead, considering how we can do more to take into account the needs of victims. For example, we might be able to do more for the victim of somebody who is released on bail by using electronic monitoring and providing more information, so it is not all about headline funding.

The victim surcharge fund will increase over time. So far, the fund has allowed £157,000 to be shared among victims of crime, and we expect it to increase over time to £1 million a year. We also have proposals for a victims commissioner to be appointed. Establishing any commissioner’s office takes up a fair bit of money and is a big commitment, but we have said that the appointment of the commissioner will not affect the money that otherwise goes to victims organisations. I think that we have a good track record on victims, whether that is the victim surcharge fund or our commitment to look further at the victim notification scheme and expand into different areas. At the very start, I mentioned our emerging justice strategy, which puts victims at the very front.

I might ask Don McGillivray to come in on that. As everybody knows, there has been a process of rationalisation of police stations over the years. As those in the Fire and Rescue Service would tell you—as they have told me directly—some fire stations are perhaps not in the right place. I was in one last week on my own patch, in Alloa. Sometimes, they are not in the right type of buildings, given the new equipment.

I do not know whether Don McGillivray wishes to say more on that.

To go back to the first point, it is incontrovertible that overall grant funding from the Treasury is falling. I have that as a quote and I am happy to source that for SPICe or anybody else. The exchange that we are having exemplifies the fact that politicians choose the figures that best serve their purpose. That is true, but you cannot deny the fact that Covid did not stop when that budget started. There are huge continuing Covid costs across Government. It is disingenuous to try to take those costs out to get to a lower budget starting point, but that discussion will continue.

The police budget has increased over the years, despite the fact that we have had major cuts to our capital budget over the past decade. In the past three years, there has been a substantial increase, which has resulted in the capital budget staying at about £45 million. We have recognised some additional demands from the police, including £10 million for greening the fleet.

We are ahead of the budget by a few weeks and these things are under discussion, so I cannot be too specific about how the budget will turn out or whether the police will be satisfied. The simple fact is that we have to work within constrained circumstances, and whatever budget is finally agreed—I am hopeful that it will be no less generous to the police than budgets have been in the past, given the constraints that we have—it will be for the police and the SPA to work out how to apportion that capital budget.

It might be useful for the committee to hear from Don McGillivray on one or two other points, convener.

There is a strong argument to be made for that, but there is also the argument that we would want to try to improve situations in which human rights abuses have taken place. I think that it would be Police Scotland’s point of view, although it would have to speak for itself in this regard, that, if it could improve the performance of other police forces such that they would take human rights into account, that would be a benefit.

However, you are right to say that there is a reputational issue here, too. I think that Don McGillivray would like to come in on that.

I do not like to start off on a point of disagreement, but the decision to leave the EU was not a decision of the people; it was a decision of the Government. The referendum was advisory; therefore, the decision was taken by the Government, not the people. The decision certainly was not taken by the people of Scotland, who voted 62 per cent against Brexit.

In relation to improvements, you mentioned that capital has been flat over the past 10 years. I will ask Neil Rennick to comment on the Crown Office, whose budget is dealt with separately from the budgets that we have been discussing so far. As there have been flat and reducing capital allocations from Westminster, it is not a surprise that budgets in the Scottish Government’s sphere also feel that pinch.

There are many aspects to how we attempt to address the backlog, and I acknowledge that it is a huge issue for us. The figures that came out last night on the backlog of cases in England and Wales are scary, and I acknowledge that it is also a serious problem for us. This year, we have put in money for technological changes, including remote balloting of juries and remote juries more generally, but those are not the only way in which we intend to deal with the issue.

Neil might want to comment on some of the detail on the Crown Office budget.

Yes. I made the pretty obvious point previously that Covid has not finished with us yet, and we have to continue to take that into account in whatever we do. However, looking beyond Covid, we want to aim at the best suitable system, which is why we are having the review of community justice. I know that the committee will look at that as well. We have to acknowledge that, notwithstanding Covid, we have further to go on the issue. We have to consider how community justice is best dealt with and how it interacts with the national care service, which is important. However, it requires more investment.

Neil Rennick might want to come in on that.

It might be that, as you said, the end-of-days scenario—whoever put that forward—and the estimate of the budget are not where we end up. As I think that we have said already, that will be a process that we go through. It is not only the efforts of the police that need to be funded, but those of other agencies.

I am very willing to say that the police have an extremely difficult job. If they have intelligence or an expectation of a serious threat to public order, you want them there in numbers. If that threat does not transpire, they will, of course, be open to the accusation that they have, if you like, overplayed their hand. I do not think that they can win in those circumstances. I have been going to demonstrations for my entire life. If I was on a demonstration and saw that there were insufficient police numbers to deal with something that happened, I would be critical of the police. Therefore, they need to err on the side of caution; more than that, they need to act on the best intelligence that they have. Who is to say that the two things are not related? Some people who might have been bent on serious disorder—and there was serious intelligence on that—might have seen the police planning that was going on and thought, “No, we are not going to do that.” I will not be the first in line to criticise the police in that regard.

As to the cost, we do not know about that yet. As you suggest, it might come in below what has been suggested, but that would be a good thing. You are right to highlight the number of arrests. We had to estimate that ourselves, because we wanted things such as legal aid cover. That number of arrests has not transpired, and in large part that is due, first of all, to the conduct of protesters and to the engagement between protesters and the police, as well as police planning. Let us not look for failure here. We have three days to go, and a lot could still happen. It has been a very successful event so far.

I want to point out the different challenges that the police face. No previous COP meetings have taken place right in the middle of a relatively small city—they have been on the outskirts of Paris or elsewhere. Therefore, the police have planned effectively to deal with an extremely difficult situation and they have done really well.

Keith Brown has identified an error in his contribution and has provided the following correction.

At col 34, paragraph 6—

Original text—

That is contrary to what I have said, for example, in relation to the three-year funding for the victims fund that we are producing. That funding provides certainty and amounts to around £18 million in its own right.

Corrected text—

That is contrary to what I have said, for example, in relation to the three-year funding for the victims fund that we are producing. That funding provides certainty and amounts to around £30 million in its own right.

We want to have in mind the victims of crimes in relation to community services and the use of remand. If an offender is given a community sentence—that will not be because the Government says so but because a court orders it—an identifiable victim of that crime can have a continuing concern, so we are considering what more we can do to ensure that victims are kept up to date and assurances are given. That also has an interrelationship with things such as electronic monitoring.

Although community justice is often termed “soft justice”, the simple fact is that reconviction rates are lower for people who are put on community sentences. If, as we all agree, we want less crime in society, with fewer people being affected by crime, and fewer victims, we should do what is most effective. In some cases, community sentences are the effective response. I acknowledge that that has been substantially disrupted during Covid. However, we want to make sure of that effectiveness, both through the review of how community justice is currently working, which we are obliged to carry out under the Community Justice (Scotland) Act 2016—you will have seen that the Public Audit Committee has made a number of pretty trenchant observations about what is currently happening—and through considering the relationship with the new national care service, on which a consultation has just finished. All those things play into the fact that community sentencing has a vital role.

Whatever people’s political differences, they have to look seriously at anything that they think can reduce crime and reconviction, and at whether somebody will benefit more from that than they will from being in prison, for example.

I would love to be in the position of directing what the chamber does, but that is a matter for it to decide. For my part, I am more than willing to discuss not only the point that the member has rightly made about whether the budgetary situation has been properly and satisfactorily dealt with—I would say that at this stage we have a high level of confidence that that is the case—but the wider issues that I tried to address in the topical question that was asked yesterday.

There have been two cases of what the police would call moving containment, the purpose of which is not to keep people in a fixed place for a period of time but to move them somewhere else. I have discussed the issue with the police on a number of occasions, and I have been advised that that action was taken because, had they left behind the people who wanted to lock themselves on to things or to sit down, the entire demonstration would have ground to a halt behind them, with consequences for public safety. For that reason, the people in question were asked to move to one side. I am also told that, during that period, liaison officers were talking to the people in the containment area.

My latest update, which I received this morning, is that there have been more than 400 events at which people have made their feelings known, and there have been only one or two at which there have been one or two issues. There were no incidents at all at last Friday’s very big rally involving young people, and, as far as I am aware, no one has been seriously hurt during the entire conference, which is something that I am not sure can be said of previous COPs.

What I think has been masked a little bit is the extremely positive relationship that has developed between the police and many of the protest groups. Nevertheless, these are legitimate areas for consideration. The independent advisory group headed by John Scott, which includes Friends of the Earth Scotland, Aamer Anwar and a number other people, met on 5 November to discuss, I think, a complaint from Friends of the Earth Scotland among others. Because the group is independent, I am not on it, but I am told that the discussion was very constructive. The group met again yesterday, but I am still to get a read-out from that.

By and large, the event has been extremely well policed. Police Scotland has taken a very proactive approach to engaging with groups that it knew were coming to COP, and it has tried to keep that going. The arrest of Nessie aside, the Rainbow Warrior was allowed to advance much closer to the event than it had been permitted to do at previous COPs. The police did not intervene when people took part in the lock-on on George V bridge, and, to their credit, the protesters allowed one lane to be kept open for emergency vehicles. There has been a lot of accommodation. I do not think that we could have asked for much more in that regard.

It is right that any actions of the police should be scrutinised. That has happened through the independent advisory group. Another route that can be taken is that of police complaints. So far, the policing of COP has been extremely successful, but such matters should be discussed, and I would be happy to make a statement to the chamber on the subject at a future point.