Chamber and committees

Yes, although it is the Scottish Government that allocates funding to the trafficking awareness-raising alliance project Scotland. Is that funding shown in our figures, Maren?

That is a good question that gets brought up quite a lot. The main takeaway for the committee to remember from Northern Ireland is that, even without strong enforcement, the law has had a measurable deterrent effect. The issue in Northern Ireland is not with the legislative framework, but with the enforcement of the Human Trafficking and Exploitation (Criminal Justice and Support for Victims) Act (Northern Ireland) 2015. I will bring in Maren Schroeder, because she has looked into it extensively.

In 2017 or 2018—I cannot remember what year it was; I will have to check—I went to Northern Ireland when I was preparing the first time around for my member’s bill and spoke to the then attorney general, John Larkin. We discussed in a private meeting that, at the point that I visited, they had not made a single arrest. He admitted to me that there were enforcement challenges.

Yes.

There would be recurring and one-off costs. We have estimated the cost to Police Scotland, in relation to additional crimes and cases proceeded with, to be between £33,000 and £100,000. We have estimated the cost to the Crown Office and the SCTS of the cases being brought to be between £84,000 and £218,000. We have also added in the cost of what we consider to be the fairly unlikely event of anyone being sent to prison for this offence—the offence of the purchase of sex—of around £48,000. Similarly, we do not imagine that community payback orders would be used extensively. We imagine that most people would receive a fine, but we have estimated the cost of those to be between £2,200 to £6,600.

The largest cost would be for the support services element, because the bill would make what I would describe as a bold move, which is to create the legal right to support for victims who have been in prostitution. It is fairly difficult to estimate what would be needed in that regard. The bill, as drafted, hands that over to the Government, because I accept that it would be the Government that would either instruct local authorities to provide those services or commission third parties to do that, as it does now.

There are two funds that the Government puts money into at the moment—the victim centred approach fund and the equally safe fund—which amount to more than £60 million. I have had a discussion with the Minister for Victims and Community Safety, and I imagine that it might be possible to refocus some of that funding as a result of the bill, with some of it going to prostitution spending.

The committee will be aware of Routes Out in Glasgow, which is an example of a provider of excellent services to those who are exposed to prostitution. It is funded by Glasgow City Council to the tune of about £400,000. In calculating the amount for the support services provided for in the bill, we had to include—I thought this was slightly odd when we were preparing the documents—that Routes Out funding in our figures, even though the money is already being provided for support services relating to prostitution. We have calculated support services at something between £1.3 million and £2.2 million, depending on how that works out.

As Maren Schroeder said, a number of records, some of which are on paper, might need to be changed. The SCTS gave us a figure of what it would cost it in administrative time to find, locate and update those records.

A number of witnesses have raised the issue of how the Parliament measures the outcomes that are produced by the supported bodies. The committee has received some evidence, albeit in private session, that suggests that there are serious challenges in some areas—possibly more for advocacy-based supported bodies. Do you have any views on how that could be improved?

The committee has taken evidence that suggests that office-holders should be scrutinised by a parliamentary committee at least once a year. Do you have any views on that, and do you think that the timing is appropriate?

I want to focus slightly more on that, to get your opinion on it.

If a commissioner that is funded by the corporate body is potentially not fulfilling its remit as set out in its enabling legislation, and if Parliament is perhaps not doing its job effectively with regard to scrutiny, would that be a concern? Would you seek to suggest that the Parliament step up in some way?

I come to my final question. There are other bodies that are funded directly by the Scottish Government and their oversight, scrutiny and governance arrangements are, in some cases, quite different from those that apply to bodies that the corporate body would fund. I do not know how far you are aware of those arrangements. Do you think that anything could be learned from the way in which the Government carries out scrutiny of the other bodies that it funds?

Yes—that is what I was going to add. In addition to what Douglas Ross said, we could and should be doing post-legislative scrutiny better as a Parliament.

The other thing that I would add is about something that I was not particularly aware of. I have just started sitting on the SPCB Supported Bodies Landscape Review Committee, which is an extra short-life committee, and, during our discussions, it has come out that members of the Scottish Parliament and its committees are responsible for monitoring the performance of the bodies that are supported and funded by the parliamentary corporate body. MSPs and committees are possibly not aware of that, and they are certainly not doing that as they should be.

No—I think that we can get more capacity by making committees smaller.