Chamber and committees

In partnership with its stakeholders, the Government commissioned a comprehensive needs assessment of the prison population in relation to social care, substance use, mental health and physical health. We are working with senior leaders from across the Scottish Government, the Prison Service and national health service boards to provide additional oversight and to drive forward priority improvements.

We are fully engaged with the SPS in the development of the Scottish Government’s new mental health and wellbeing strategy. The Scottish Government also sits on the SPS mental health and wellbeing steering group. That close working is informing our collective approach to improving wellbeing and suicide prevention in all our prisons.

The Scottish Government works closely with national and United Kingdom partners—including Police Scotland, the National Cyber Security Centre and the Cyber and Fraud Centre Scotland—to tackle fraud and cybercrime and to reduce the harm that they inflict on communities in Scotland.

A range of advice to help people to improve their online safety can be found at cyberscotland.com, as well as on the National Cyber Security Centre, Cyber Aware, Take Five and Get Safe Online websites. Victims of any crime should phone Police Scotland.

I highlight that it is currently cyber Scotland week, which I opened at the FutureScot cybersecurity conference on Monday. More than 100 events are taking place across the country to raise awareness of being safe and secure online, and to promote cybersecurity careers.

Kenny Gibson has raised a very important point, not least because it has been shown that smaller companies are now being attacked through cybercrimes—particularly ransomware and so on—whereas, in the past, it tended to be larger companies that were affected.

The Scottish Government has funded Cyber Scotland to partner ScotlandIS to engage with and support the information technology managed services sector, as many small businesses rely on it for their security. We also support another partner, the Cyber and Fraud Centre Scotland—which was previously the Scottish Business Resilience Centre—in hosting a cyberincident response helpline, which aims to offer first-line incident support to small businesses.

The allocation of other resources is a matter for Police Scotland. However, despite UK Government austerity, the Scottish Government has increased police funding year on year since 2016-17. In 2023-24, the service will receive additional resource funding of £80 million, which represents a 6.3 per cent increase.

Prioritisation of maintenance work in Scotland’s courts and tribunals is an operational matter for the SCTS. Essential capital works are carried out on a priority basis, informed by an on-going programme of condition surveys. The capital position is particularly challenging across a number of portfolios, including justice. Despite that, we have been able to increase the capital allocation to the SCTS in 2023-24 by £4.7 million towards known capital pressures, on top of the baseline £8 million annual capital allocation. Current levels of Scottish Government capital funding should ensure that the programme of maintenance will continue.

It is important to provide some context for what the member mentions with regard to the 10 sheriff courts that were closed in 2015. It is worth pointing out that that context necessarily includes what we receive from the United Kingdom Government and what it spends on justice. The two are inextricably linked, as I am sure that the member will acknowledge. In England and Wales, for example, there were 239 court—

There have been 239 court closures in England and Wales since 2010. With reference to the courts, the following is a quotation from the Bar Council:

“Crumbling court buildings that are not fit-for-purpose, including leaks, infestations, and a lack of basic facilities”.

The obvious link is that what they spend on justice in England and Wales has a direct consequence for what is spent in Scotland. Despite that, and in response to Mr Kerr’s point, we have no current plans to initiate further court closures in Scotland—that is also despite the appalling funding from England and Wales and the UK Government.

I mentioned in my original substantive answer that we expect a further update from the chair of the review later this year, but a lot of the actions are already being implemented. For example, simply making sure that the family are told immediately was not done routinely previously, but is now being done by governors and their associates. Such actions are being implemented now, but, as I said, a further update will take place this year to give more information to Willie Rennie and the chamber.

We work very closely with the UK Government in that general area. We have done so in relation to its Online Safety Bill, a number of provisions of which relate to exactly the kind of crimes that Russell Findlay is talking about. It is best that we work together with the UK Government, as we do, on issues that have no borders—there are no borders online. If we did not do so, that would not be an effective mechanism to stop such crimes, so we work in conjunction with the UK Government and other partners.

The Scottish Police Authority, through the serious organised crime group, looks at a number of ways in which children can be victims through online activity. That includes human trafficking as well as sexual abuse.

A great deal of work is on-going. I am happy to provide Russell Findlay with further information on other initiatives in writing.

I do not know whether this is uncomfortable to hear, but please do me the courtesy of listening to the answer to the question that you asked, if that is possible—[Interruption.]

We recognise that people in prison often present with higher levels of risk and vulnerability than the general population as a whole. We are committed to ensuring that they can access healthcare that is, as a minimum, equal to that offered in the community. We are working with the Scottish Prison Service and national health service boards to improve health outcomes for people living in our prisons, including preventing deaths by suicide. The work is informed by the Scottish Government’s prison healthcare needs assessments, the Mental Welfare Commission for Scotland’s report on prisoner mental health support and the “Independent Review of the Response to Deaths in Prison Custody”.

Across that work, we will embed the principles of “Time, Space, Compassion”, to ensure that people are able to access high-quality, compassionate, appropriate and timely support that supports wellbeing and recovery.