Chamber and committees

Thank you very much for that. You will probably be asked about how it can be made better going forward.

I will bring in Professor Phoenix by asking a straight question. If this bill comes in and criminalises buyers, what will the impact of that be, based on the evidence that you have seen?

I shall.

I will ask two questions and will give each of our witnesses an opportunity to respond, starting with Dr Vuolajärvi. I want to pick up on the point about evidence that you raised during your opening remarks. What does the evidence tell us about the impact of the Nordic model—the criminalisation of the buyer—on the number of people who are involved in prostitution, the experience of those people of safety, stigmatisation and access to support, and the involvement of organised crime, including trafficking, in prostitution?

That begs a further question: given that we are in this early release situation for short-term relief and that there have been previous early releases, what other solutions to provide short-term relief were considered in this situation that were perhaps different from last time?

Cabinet secretary, in your opening remarks, you talked about the continuing rise in, and complexity of, the population. That is acknowledged, but that was all entirely predictable and has been known about for years—for example, as this place has been legislating. The measures to address this that you spoke about in your opening remarks clearly are not working to prevent overcrowding. In fact, in the submission that we heard about earlier, Victim Support Scotland said that the early release schemes

“are not effective in reducing the prison population in the medium or longer term.”

Therefore, how can the public be assured that, having previously endured the early release scheme and facing the release of a further 1,000 prisoners between now and, I think, April, we will not simply find ourselves in this situation again post-April?

There is clearly an emergency, but, as I said in my remarks earlier, the situation was not unforeseeable. It has been entirely foreseeable over many years. As I have just said, there is simply no evidence that the Government has taken the steps that are required to prevent an emergency happening. I am certainly not saying that the solution is to relentlessly build our way out of the problems; the solution to the prison population is to examine the justice system holistically and to consider how to address the prison population. That has not been done.

The cabinet secretary’s remark—if we build it, they will come—is simply not coherent, because it is not the availability of prison space that impacts the size of the prison population; it is the wider context of the justice system.

Yesterday, I put a point to the cabinet secretary about the new buildings—HMP Glasgow and HMP Highland—and the cabinet secretary said to me that another reason why there would be no new building was the cost. The Glasgow and Highland projects are massively delayed and are subject to massive cost overruns, and it surely cannot be correct to found on the Government’s inability to deliver infrastructure on time and on budget as a way to avoid dealing with overcrowding.

Yes, of course.

On the contrary. With respect, cabinet secretary, the problem is that the Government has done nothing, because this is not a new situation. As I said to Rona Mackay, this has been in train for so long that there have been previous early release programmes. Were I in Government, I would have immediately accelerated. I would not have allowed the cost overruns and the time overruns on HMP Glasgow and HMP Highland to go ahead. For example, one of the other things—

Thank you, cabinet secretary, for taking part in this morning’s evidence session. I will oppose the draft SSI, and I believe that the committee should vote against the motion.

I will set out my reasons for taking that position. It is clear that Victim Support Scotland is right in saying that the measure is no solution. We will be in this situation next April, following the release of a further 1,000 prisoners. The knee-jerk response has now become the default response, and I can see no real progress since the previous early releases to prevent that repeatedly happening.

I note that the cabinet secretary did not expressly rule out long-term prisoner release. Her comments were helpful but she did not rule it out. The argument around a knee-jerk release of short-term prisoners becoming the default response, without ruling out long-term prisoners, suggests that the measure could be the thin end of the wedge. I do not see enough evidence of other options being considered.

I noted the remarks made the other day, when the SPS said that a new prison the size of HMP Grampian or HMP Shotts is required to relieve the overcrowding, but the cabinet secretary suggested that there will not be any further new builds because, to use her words, if we build it, they will come. With respect, I do not find that to be a coherent argument, given that, for example, His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons for Scotland suggests that early release does not

“address any of the root causes”

of the problems. It is not the building of prisons that raises or lowers the prison population; it is other issues in the justice system.

Forgive me for interrupting, but I am conscious that I am monopolising the floor here. Given the context that you have set out, what happens if the bill criminalises the buyer?