Chamber and committees

I am grateful for that.

John Logue, I move to your submission. You heard Malcolm Graham talking just now about the Covid time bar legislation. You mention that specifically in your submission, in which you say:

“The Scottish Parliament has approved an extension of the date for removal of the pandemic extended time bar legislation to November 2025.”

You go on to say:

“The model chosen by Parliament to end the extended time-bars represents a very significant challenge for the criminal justice system with a high risk of disruption to the operation of the courts and increases in the prison remand population.”

For the benefit of the committee, can you explain precisely what you mean by “significant challenge” and “high risk of disruption”?

Given that, as you have pointed out elsewhere, the time bar will not be extended further, what do you need to see in the budget to ensure that the disruption from the backlog does not continue to be felt in November 2025?

John Logue, do you have any thoughts on that?

Good morning. I will perhaps direct this question to Gerry O’Donnell, because it is a finance question.

In her opening remarks, Teresa Medhurst mentioned that modelling was not available until six months prior to any particular point in time. If it is not available until that point, how can you realistically be expected to budget for what is coming up? You might not know the answer to this, but how much of a challenge do you think that it would be for the Scottish Government to give you more lead time?

Very good. I have a short thing to ask about. You mentioned employee safety, and rightly so. I am led to believe that recent statistics suggest that there has been a rise in the number of attacks on prison officers in the estate. Do you have any detail on why that might be happening? Is it is due to the overcrowding that we have explored, the complex needs that Fulton MacGregor touched on, or the increased number of sex offenders and organised crime gangs in your estate, as is set out in your submission? Crucially, what funding do you need in the budget that would allow you to address employee safety properly?

I remind the committee and the witnesses that I am a practising solicitor and that I appear in the employment tribunals every so often.

Malcolm Graham, in October, the SCTS published the latest modelling for criminal business in the High Court and sheriff courts, which you referred to earlier. There is a suggestion that an additional trial court might be required in the High Court to achieve recovery by 2026. Are the resources for that available? If not, how much is needed for that in this budget?

I think that people will understand that your staff and the whole system will be doing its absolute best, given that hard stop in November 2025. For the benefit of those who are following this session, will you make it clear to them what the implications are if the backlog is not addressed in time and the time bar reverts in November 2025? I have certainly had it expressed to me that in some of the most serious cases—because I understand that solemn cases will be particularly impacted—it is possible that some accused would not be held or, indeed, tried. Is there a risk that some individuals accused of the most serious crimes that we heard about earlier—murder, rape—could walk free?

My question follows on very well from Fulton MacGregor’s question. Malcolm Graham talked earlier about capacity planning, and he has just talked about collaboration throughout the system and, especially, the criticality of the defence. There is huge concern about legal aid levels, and there is evidence that the result is that criminal defence is struggling, with those whom we saw last week—Aamer Anwar & Co—exiting the legal aid area. Of course, we know that people are perhaps less keen to enter the profession due to the conditions and pay. Where will that situation end up, if we take the holistic view of the system that you are putting forward? What needs to happen if we are not to end up in that place?

I was very interested in the part of your submission in which you stated that the

“financial implications of current legislation is significantly higher than we are able to absorb within our BAU activity”—

that is, your business-as-usual activity. Many parliamentarians, especially those on the Finance and Public Administration Committee, have been increasingly concerned about that issue, so I was particularly interested in what you said.

Is the cost of that legislation broadly what was predicted in the financial memoranda to the relevant bills at the time? In any event, given that you have built the costs of meeting those demands into your budget ask, what will happen if the Scottish Government does not cover that?

Let me press you on one point. I appreciate that you might not be in a position to answer this question; I might put it to the SPA later. In its financial memoranda to the legislation in question, did Parliament accurately predict the cost to policing? If not, there is something going wrong at this end.

Good morning. I will move to the resource budget. Chief constable, the Scottish Government asked you to model two scenarios, one in which you receive a flat cash settlement and one in which there is a 3 per cent cash reduction. In your submission, you said that a flat cash settlement would mean that officer numbers could drop to 15,100 and that a 3 per cent cash reduction would

“see police officer numbers drop below 15,000.”

How inevitable is that? If the budget shows, for example, flat cash, is that the number of officers that we will see by March 2026?