Public Audit and Post-legislative Scrutiny Committee

Meeting date: Thursday, September 26, 2019

Official Report 667KB pdf

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Section 22 Report

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“The 2018/19 audit of the Scottish Prison Service”

Agenda item 3 is a section 22 report: “The 2018/19 audit of the Scottish Prison Service”. I welcome our witnesses: Caroline Gardner, who is the Auditor General for Scotland; Gary Devlin, who is a partner at Scott-Moncrieff; and Mark Roberts, who is audit director for performance audit and best value at Audit Scotland. I understand that the Auditor General would like to make an opening statement.

Thank you, convener—I will be brief. My report focuses on the multiple pressures that are facing the Scottish Prison Service, which together threaten its financial sustainability and the safe and effective operation of the service. Those pressures are clearly outlined in the auditor’s “2018/19 Annual Audit Report” for the Scottish Prison Service. The SPS’s revenue budget has been decreasing in real terms in recent years. Its 2019-20 budget for the current year is under pressure from a significant rise in prisoner numbers that has occurred over the past year, as well as from increasing costs.

Prisoner numbers exceed the operating capacity of Scotland’s prisons, and delays in upgrading the prison estate are increasing the system’s risk of failure. On 13 September this year, there were 8,231 people in Scotland’s prisons—555 above operating capacity. The situation is most evident in Scotland’s largest prison, Barlinnie, which is operating at 50 per cent over capacity despite being considered to be no longer fit for purpose. Any decision that is made now to replace important components of the prison estate will take a long time to have an effect.

There are things that the SPS can improve in the way that it delivers its services. It needs to improve its financial planning to deliver its aims and objectives. It also needs to reduce the high and increasing levels of sickness absence among prison officers, much of which is driven by high levels of stress-related absence. However, the fundamental pressure on the service from rising prisoner numbers is largely outwith its control and requires solutions from across the justice system.

Despite the aims of the Scottish Government’s justice strategy, Scotland still has one of the highest rates of incarceration in Europe. As exhibit 5 in my report illustrates, there is a range of issues that are leading to more people entering the prison system and staying there for longer periods of time. Without any meaningful change in the way in which the justice system as a whole operates, there is a real risk that prisoner numbers will remain high, or even continue to rise and exceed the SPS’s maximum capacity in the near future.

In its programme for government, the Scottish Government committed to considering the whole-system changes that are needed to address Scotland’s internationally high rate of imprisonment. The speed with which that work needs to be taken forward is very clear.

Alongside me are Gary Devlin as the annual auditor and Mark Roberts from the Audit Scotland justice team. Between us, we will do our best to answer the committee’s questions.

Thank you, Auditor General. The report is very concerning. I ask Liam Kerr to open questioning for the committee.

Good morning. Auditor General, you started by talking about a decreasing budget, rising prisoner numbers, delays in upgrading the estate, an increase in violence and a rise in staff sickness absence. None of those things has happened overnight; the issues have presumably developed over several years. What analysis has been done in previous years by the SPS and/or the Scottish Government to address those matters?

Mark Roberts will address that question in a moment, but first it might be helpful if I direct the committee’s attention to exhibit 4, which helps to set some of those issues in context. We have tried to show prisoner trends and projections over the past few years. You can see that the upturn over the past year is the reverse of a trend of reducing prisoner numbers previously.

Exhibit 5 sets out some of the reasons for that. There is an increase in the number of prisoners entering the prison system, and fewer people are leaving. However, that issue is not as long term as you might think from the urgent way that I have described it today. Mark Roberts will give you a bit more background on that.

As Liam Kerr said, those pressures have been building for a number of years. They were identified in both the SPS’s annual reporting and the annual audit reports that Gary Devlin has prepared in previous years. During 2018-19, an awful lot of those things started lining up together. Factors such as staff wellbeing, the condition of the estate and changes in the wider policy around the justice system all started lining up to drive the number of prisoners in the prison estate upwards. It was not that that had not been happening previously, but that everything started to coalesce to push the number of prisoners upwards.

I understand the point. However, to take an example—although I do not want to pre-empt colleagues’ questions—prisons such as Barlinnie or HMP Inverness have always been Victorian; that is not a new problem. Decent planning would have addressed that issue years ago, would it not?

10:15  

Both prisons have been in the Scottish Prison Service’s plans for redevelopment for a number of years, but the pressures on capital budgets and so forth are such that redevelopment is taking longer than the SPS would have wished it to take. The SPS is keen to progress the development and modernisation of the estate, but it has not been possible to do that as quickly as the SPS would have liked.

The report says that the Scottish Government agreed to

“provide additional funding to SPS during 2019/20”,

an element of which is to purchase “additional capacity” in the two private prisons. How much is that funding, and what else will it be spent on?

Gary Devlin, the auditor, will come in with the detail. It is important to say that our understanding is that the Government has agreed to provide the funding but the funding has not yet been confirmed in the SPS’s budget. We assume that that will happen through the autumn budget revision process that is due at the back end of this year.

My understanding is that the additional funding will be in the region of £6 million, to fund the additional places.

You think that it is £6 million to fund the additional places in the private prisons, but you do not know what else the money will be spent on, whatever the amount is. If the Scottish Government said to the SPS, “We will give you extra money”, what would that be spent on, aside from the private sector places?

The report sets out a range of pressures that the Scottish Prison Service must address. Some are capital pressures, which relate to investment in the estate, and some are revenue-type pressures—the increase in prisoner numbers means that prisoners have to be housed by using more places in the private finance initiative prisons, where additional capacity might be obtained in the short run. Simply by having more prisoners, there are more costs in relation to catering and reform, for example—I am thinking about education costs. When prisoner numbers increase, the costs increase.

The gap that was identified in the report is in the region of £20 million. The Scottish Prison Service identified savings of about £6.4 million, which leaves a gap of £13.5 million.

I am curious about something. I see from your report, Auditor General, that it costs about £35,000 a year to house a prisoner in the state sector. My understanding is that the cost is about £24,000 or £25,000 in the two private prisons—and they have spaces. What is different about those prisons? Why do two private prisons have spaces when the SPS has no spaces, and why does it appear to cost £10,000 a year less to house a prisoner there than it costs to house a prisoner in an SPS prison? What is going on?

Again, Gary Devlin will give you the detail on that. We have spent a lot of time probing the difference between prison places and prisoner places. They are slightly different things, which cannot be directly compared. Gary will talk you through what we know about that and what the questions are for the SPS.

The answer is a little complex. First, the Prison Service does not calculate a cost per prisoner place separately for PFI prisons; it calculates an overarching cost per prisoner place. To calculate the separate cost would require a detailed exercise, and it has not done that exercise. Therefore, I am not sure that I recognise the numbers that Liam Kerr quoted, but perhaps the Prison Service can give you more detail on that.

When the Prison Service is budgeting, it estimates the total number of prisoners that it will have to house. It tries to take up the public sector prison places first, because those places are already paid for, in a sense—they are there. If it has to take up additional places through the PFI prisons, there are significant additional costs: the cost of taking on an additional 200 prisoners is in the region of £1.2 million, which is not budgeted for.

Auditor General, you said in your report:

“SPS does not currently have a medium-term financial strategy.”

That seems odd. Why does the SPS not have a financial strategy?

You would have to ask the SPS that question. As the committee knows, for a number of years, given the pressure on public finances, the increasing demand and the increasing volatility that there will be in the public finances, I have recommended that all public bodies need to have medium-term financial strategies. The SPS is preparing a strategy to align with its revised corporate plan, so there is a timing issue around that. However, given the pressures that it faces, it is critical that it has a clear understanding of what its cost pressures are likely to be and, therefore, what funding it needs in order to meet them.

In recognition of that challenging position, with the rise in prison numbers, the corporate strategy that the Auditor General mentioned was revised early in the course of last year by the Prison Service. As the Auditor General said, a medium-term financial strategy would be valuable to support the delivery of that.

I will ask about the payments that are made to prison officers. I was surprised that there is no overtime mechanism for prison officers. If they are not properly managed, the ex gratia, non-contractual payments that are made on a voluntary basis to officers who are working increased hours are open to problems and issues. The report indicates that there is a problem with about half of them, although that was based on a sample of only 10; with regard to the whole volume of transactions, I do not know whether that is statistically significant. Why is there an appropriate approval process but no appropriate control mechanism?

The agreement that prison officers are not eligible for overtime payments was reached some time ago between the Prison Service and the prison officer unions. It starts from a good place, which is the assumption that the prisons should be staffed for the number of people who are housed in them and the service should not, as a matter of course, rely on overtime in order to be able to run safely. However, given the pressures that are set out in the report, that is leading to significant ex gratia payments. Gary Devlin will talk you through what he sees there and the question of the controls around the payments.

It is a good question. The sample size sounds small, but it is statistically representative. It goes through a sample size calculator, which gives a statistically reliable outcome. However, when we tested, we found that all those ex gratia claims had been appropriately signed but, in 50 per cent of cases, we could not trace them back to the source evidence that would confirm the additional hours worked. One of the recommendations in our report is that the Prison Service needs to tighten up that process and do an additional exercise to investigate the outcome. In the interim period, it has done that. Perhaps, if you meet the Prison Service, it will give an answer on that.

You said that 10 transactions is statistically significant. How many transactions of that nature are there?

I do not have that figure. I could come back and tell you exactly what the population is. The population spans three years. Payments were made in 2016-17, 2017-18 and 2018-19, so there will be a different population number each year.

I am interested in finding out what the volume is. What control mechanisms would be satisfactory for managing such payments? The report says that there does not seem to be a correlation between the notional overtime worked and the size of the payments.

We say that there is a correlation between the overtime worked and the size of the payments. It is clear that the ex gratia payments go up. They go up in correlation to sickness absence.

However, you say that you cannot reconcile them.

I would have expected to be able to reconcile them to a time record that demonstrated that the prison officer who was making the claim for an ex gratia payment had worked the additional hours. We expected that primary record to be available to the auditor.

So there is no link between the hours worked and the payment that is being made. There is no evidence of the hours worked.

The link is that, within the terms of the ex gratia payment, the payment made is valid for the hours that were claimed and approved. However, in 50 per cent of the cases, we could not find evidence that the hours had been worked.

Is it correct that most of that seems to relate to compensation for sick leave?

No. Sick leave reduces the number of prison officers who are able to staff prisons safely, which requires the Prison Service to have its prison officers work longer hours to compensate for staff sickness absence.

The value of the ex gratia payments has increased by 65 per cent. Does that directly correlate to the increases in the SPS’s sickness rate?

It does. The report shows that sickness absence goes up by about 65 per cent. If we were to map that into an expectation of the additional hours for overtime worked, it is a good correlation. When it comes to the additional resource, those things happen in a lumpy way; they do not happen in an entirely linear way.

According to exhibit 2 in the report, there is not directly a 65 per cent increase in the number of days lost.

It is a 65 per cent increase in the sickness absence rate. We transfer that into the number of days lost and translate it into the additional hours for overtime.

However, the value of the ex gratia payments in 2018-19 increased by 65 per cent, which I would expect to correlate to the number of days lost to sick leave. Exhibit 2 shows a significant increase for 2018-19, but it is not 65 per cent.

We would not expect it to be exactly 65 per cent. Maybe I could come back and demonstrate that connection.

I do not see how that links in. The increase in the number of days lost looks like a lot less than a 65 per cent. I would be interested to see how that fits in.

I am confused by some of the terminology around prisoner numbers. The report talks about different capacities: operating capacity, design capacity and maximum capacity. What do those terms mean?

Operating capacity is the level at which the SPS thinks that it can operate safely with its current workforce. The design capacity is the capacity of the current estate, which is the structures of the prisons and the facilities that are available, recognising that there are different types of prison and different elements in the prisons that reflect the varying needs of prisoners. Maximum capacity is the maximum population that the service can house. That would require significant changes to operations, such as greater sharing of cells and reduced opportunities for prisoners to be outside cells in the course of the day.

With present prison officer numbers, the service cannot achieve maximum capacity.

It could, but that would place significant pressures on the service with regard to its safe and effective operation.

Do we have a feel for why so many prison officers are going off sick? Presumably, it is because of stress.

The system is under pressure, which leads to increased pressure on prison officers. Financial pressures make it more difficult to do things, such as education, time out of cells and other leisure, that would release the pressure within prisons. Given the current operating circumstances, pressures are building up in a way that is difficult to release. That is one of the reasons for our concern.

That captures it well. It is a function of the ever-increasing pressures that the service has faced over recent years, which came to a head during 2018-19.

Exhibit 4 shows that the number of prisoners had been dropping for years. In 2018-19, we had a significant uptick. You have given various reasons for that. Is it a one-off uptick? Will the decrease in numbers resume? Are there any projections on that?

10:30  

That is a challenging question to answer. As you said, the long-term trend over the past decade has been a reduction in prisoner numbers, which is in line with what the Scottish Government is trying to achieve. The reversal came as a surprise to many people. As I said to Liam Kerr, a range of different pressures came together. We have had conversations with SPS and HM inspectorate of prisons for Scotland on whether it represents the new normal or whether it is an anomaly and we will revert back to the previous trend. The answer is that, at the moment, no one is entirely sure.

The nature of the prison population is changing. It is ageing. As we detail in exhibit 5, there are longer sentences and more convictions for historical sexual offences, which are associated with a different type of prisoner. There are more convictions for serious organised crime and domestic abuse. As well as the quantitative number of prisoners increasing, the nature of the prison population is changing. Whether that becomes the new normal remains to be seen.

The bottom half of exhibit 4 sets out the Scottish Prison Service’s scenarios for what might happen. In the best-case scenario, the number comes back down slightly; in the worst-case scenario, it continues to increase over the next few years, beyond SPS’s capacity to accommodate those prisoners.

Auditor General, I will focus my questions on HMP Barlinnie. The most startling statistic is the 50 per cent overcapacity. Before we go into more detail, what day-to-day operational dangers are there in Barlinnie?

That is hard for us to comment on. It is not our area of expertise. HM inspectorate of prisons for Scotland is in a better position to comment on that detail. First, as we highlight in the report, that pressure on the prison system makes it harder for prisons to do re-education and retraining interventions to reduce reoffending, which are part of the solution to the pressure on prisons and are also important for society as a whole. Secondly, as we say in the report, it is a Victorian prison. It is difficult to maintain safely. Given the number of prisoners that it accommodates, if there were to be a failure in part of the prison infrastructure, it would have serious consequences for the system as a whole.

Last month, HM inspectorate of prisons for Scotland conducted an inspection of Barlinnie. That report will make its way into the public domain in due course.

To focus on the risk to staff, at Barlinnie, at any one time, almost one in five staff are off sick. You said that that is related to stress. A lot of that stress might be due to the fact that there is overcapacity. There was also an incident earlier this year in which four prison guards were seriously assaulted in the exercise yard, and four individuals were left to monitor 93 inmates in the exercise yard. Do we have recorded figures of the number of attacks or assaults on prison staff across the board or in Barlinnie specifically?

Exhibit 6 sets out the SPS’s key performance indicators. Two of those focus on assaults on staff by prisoners. The service categorises the assaults as serious or minor. As you can see from the exhibit, both figures have increased over two years. We do not have specific figures for Barlinnie.

Are we able to find specific figures for Barlinnie? Looking at the capacity figures, we might assume that there is a higher incidence of assaults at Barlinnie. The numbers would tell us that. Are we able to find those statistics?

The Prison Service will have those figures. Our report focused on the prison system as a whole.

One of the frustrations that was expressed at the time of the assault on the four prison guards earlier this year was that there was a feeling, particularly among staff—as their union reported—that, often, attacks and assaults were not reported or recorded.

For example, the assault on the four prison officers was not reported to the police until three days after it took place. Is there anything that covers how the level of attacks on staff is recorded and reported? Has that been audited properly?

That is part of the remit of Her Majesty’s chief inspector of prisons and, as Mark Roberts said, there has been a recent inspection of Barlinnie. That focus on the professional running of prisons, the regime within them and the impact on both prisoners and staff is part of the chief inspector’s responsibility.

That covers the staff side. However, on the risk to inmates, we have had lots of sad reports, particularly in recent months, about attacks in prisons and the safety of individual inmates, particularly around mental health, suicide attempts and so on. Have any numbers come through the audit about the level of danger to inmates in terms of adverse incidents and the possible connection to overcapacity at Barlinnie?

I have no doubt that the pressures on prisons and the prison system that we set out in our report are bad for everybody involved. They are bad for prison staff, for prisoners and, in the bigger picture, for Scotland as a whole. The KPIs in exhibit 6 capture prisoner-on-prisoner assaults, categorised as minor or serious, but they do not capture some of the wider dimensions that Anas Sarwar mentioned. The chief inspector of prisons has raised concerns about the quality of healthcare in prisons, particularly in relation to the levels of mental health problems that we are seeing. I am not sure that we can comment on that directly other than to recognise that the pressures on the system are exacerbating existing problems. Mark Roberts may want to add to that.

No—that is exactly what I was going to say.

Barlinnie prison has been earmarked as not fit for purpose and requiring new capital investment in a new build, but there is no clear path for when that will happen. Is that impacting on maintenance? Is that work not happening at Barlinnie because it has been earmarked for a new build? Is there a backlog?

There is a maintenance backlog. Of the £6.4 million of savings that the Prison Service has identified, 50 per cent comes from a reduction in planned maintenance across the prison estate. In the report, the Auditor General raised the issue of the pressure that that puts on the whole prison estate, with more focused pressure on the older Victorian prisons. They suffer from the natural issues that you would imagine for an older prison.

Would it be correct to say that capital investment is probably not being made in maintenance work at Barlinnie because it is earmarked for closure and a new build?

Just to be clear, you are asking the right question, but repairs and maintenance are revenue expenditure that comes out of the revenue budget. Capital expenditure tends to be for new prisons or major works—

Or major redesigns.

For re-roofing a prison or something like that.

Has any value been placed on the level of maintenance that would be required if, for example, it was decided not to build a new Barlinnie prison and the current one needed to be used for the next 10 or 20 years? Do we know what it would cost to maintain it at its current site?

The Prison Service has a detailed planned maintenance schedule for the entire prison estate that sets out its expectations of the maintenance level and costs that would be required. Given current budget pressures, it is not able to maintain the prison estate to the level that it would wish to.

What is the gap, in terms of money?

I do not know that off the top of my head, but that information is available. It is part of the £6.4 million of savings that has been proposed by the Prison Service. It will be around the £3 million mark.

When will we be in a position to have a new Barlinnie prison?

That is a question for the Government, relating to when funding can be identified. There is a commitment to replace HMP Glasgow and HMP Highland but funding is not available. As I said in my opening remarks, even once funding is available there is a long lead time until the prisons are built and up and running.

Do you have any idea of the level of funding that is required?

I am not sure that that is a question that we can answer.

I have a general question about the budget situation. The report shows that the allocation has pretty much flatlined, although I think that there is an additional capital allocation of £2 million to come. In paragraph 9, it says that there was an underspend last year of £6.37 million and that there has been an underspend trend over the past decade. Do we have any figures on the total underspend over the past 10 years and any explanation for why that has happened?

You are right to say that the budget has been flat cash over the past few years, which equates to a real-terms reduction. The underspend of £6.37 million that we quote in paragraph 9 is mainly due to slippage in the capital programme. I think that the same is true for the underspend in previous years, but Gary Devlin will keep me straight on that.

Yes, that is true. The biggest single element of that is the replacement for HMP Glasgow. The Prison Service will be factoring an element of capital in its budget to start works on a replacement prison for HMP Glasgow. There are several other things in there, such as the fresh start project, which has not progressed, and so there is an underspend at the end of the year.

We have also seen slippage in replacing the estate for the women’s prison at Cornton Vale and moving to the planned community units instead. That is obviously not welcome, given that replacing Cornton Vale is a policy priority.

Do we have a figure for the total underspend over the 10 years?

I do not think that we have that figure. It is a matter of record, so it is something that we can get to you.

I am interested in that because if there has been a significant underspend each year, it does not seem right that there should be an additional capital allocation.

That is because the Scottish Government’s budget works on an annual cycle—it is as though it starts afresh every year, rather than carrying forward underspends from previous years and reallocating them to the same capital project.

Okay. Exhibit 6 sets out key performance indicators. There is an interesting one on purposeful activity hours. There seems to have been a significant drop in those hours, year on year. I cannot see any commentary around that. Caroline Gardner—can you explain what is going on there and the possible impact that that might have on the prison population?

We are happy to answer that, but I will ask Mark Roberts to pick that up.

It is a significant decrease and it reflects the financial pressure that the service is under: there is less capacity and less time for prison officers to support prisoners in purposeful activities. That has knock-on effects on the ability of prisoners to complete programmes that might assist them in leaving prison and might reduce the positive effects that accrue from such purposeful activities when people leave prison and come back into the community. It has potential knock-on effects both on prisoner numbers—with slower rates of release—and on the individuals involved and the potential for reoffending.

It might be unfair to ask you about this, but presumably the inspectorate would have a view on the impact of that on prisoner behaviour, which is an issue that other members have raised. Is there a correlation between the two?

The inspectorate would be better placed to comment on that.

Finally, in your opening remarks, Auditor General, you said that we require people across the justice system to participate in helping to find solutions and to improve the situation that we find ourselves in. Can you say anything about the remand situation in Scotland? My understanding is that it is double the level in England and Wales. Why might that be? Are any solutions being deployed to try to manage that better in Scotland?

First, you are right that addressing the Prison Service’s problems requires a response across the justice system. At the highest level, our incarceration rate is the highest in Europe. We have to ask why that is and whether there are better ways of dealing with offending, reducing reoffending and reintegrating people into society.

On the point about remand specifically, I direct you to exhibit 5, which shows factors affecting numbers going into prison; we talk specifically about supervised bail as an alternative to remand. At its height in 2005-06, there were 917 cases of people who were on supervised bail, rather than remand. In 2017-18, that figure had dropped to 268.

I do not know whether we can say much about the reasons for that, but there has clearly been an increase in the pressure on prisons, because we are not using the alternatives that we used in the past to the same extent. Mark Roberts can probably give the committee a bit more colour on that.

10:45  

The Auditor General is right. As she said, a whole-system approach is needed to reduce the pressure. The Government has established and chairs a prison resilience leadership group, which meets regularly and takes representations from across the justice sector; it is looking at the multiple factors that are pushing up the prison population. To us, that is the right approach to take, because we need a whole-system approach to respond to the increase in the number of prisoners.

Like Mr Coffey, I am looking at exhibit 6, on the key performance indicators. The key performance indicator on reduced substance abuse has deteriorated. I read from that that the Scottish Prison Service is having less success in reducing substance abuse. I appreciate that the figure has fallen, but only by 2 per cent. I am interested in the figures. Can Gary Devlin say what percentage of the prison population uses drugs?

I am sorry, but I cannot. We did not obtain that data as part of the audit. I am sure that the Prison Service would know the answer.

How did you come to the figure of 45 per cent for that key performance indicator? Did that come from the Scottish Prison Service?

It came from the Scottish Prison Service’s data, which informs its performance management system.

I am interested in the figures because the drug problem in Scotland is huge. Recently, the Dundee drugs commission reported on the interaction between people who come out of prison and the community. Maybe we can get into that matter further.

I am also interested in the figures, because I have a feeling that something like 14 per cent—forgive me, but I am pulling stats from the back of my head—of the prisoners who were released in 2007 tested positive for drugs. Last year, I think that the figure was 26 or 27 per cent. If I am right—or even if I am in the right territory—I do not see how those figures marry with the figure in the report relating to reduced substance abuse. Do the witnesses care to comment on that?

I think that that question would be better targeted at the Scottish Prison Service. You would need to ask it how it collects and reports its data. We did not look at that through the audit process, so it would not be fair to comment.

It would be reasonable to say that managing drugs—spice and so on—is a major issue and a significant challenge for the Prison Service. Part of the reason why it is gathering the data is so that it can have better insight into the challenge.

It is also not an easy issue for staff to deal with.

In exhibit 5, the Auditor General points to some of the pressures on the Prison Service. It is a very useful illustration. I am looking specifically at the headings “Growth in convictions for legacy sex offences” and “Convictions for domestic abuse”. The issue of convictions for domestic abuse has been discussed in Parliament for quite a few years; I remember Kenny MacAskill introducing legislation maybe as far back as 2012. There should have been reasonable anticipation in the Prison Service that, following the legislative moves in Parliament, the prison population might increase. Does the report say that the Prison Service did not plan for that?

I am not in a position to go that far. As Mark Roberts said, planning has been going on. For some time, the Prison Service has had forecasts about what is likely to happen with prisoner numbers over a long period. That is a positive step, which I welcome.

However, exhibit 5 shows a number of factors all happening at the same time, some of which increase the number of people who are going in, including those who get longer sentences, for example, which is difficult to predict. There are also some changes to the policy on prisoner release, and to the way in which home detention curfew and alternatives to remand are being used, which are lowering the number of people coming out, all at a time when the budget has been flat and is therefore reducing in real terms.

Although I suspect that there is always room to improve planning, my starting point is not that the SPS has not been planning well enough or is not a well-run organisation.

Are you saying that do you not believe that?

That is not my starting point in this report. I have no evidence that the SPS has not planned appropriately for the focus on domestic violence, which you rightly highlight.

It is just that those pressures are all happening at the same time.

That is right.

I am especially struck by the effect of ending automatic early release. You say that it has had only a small impact to date but might affect another 370 prisoners in the next decade, so the Prison Service is trying to deal with all that at once.

That is right.

I declare an interest in that HMP Shotts is in my constituency.

I want to focus on exhibit 5. We could pick on any one of the elements in it, but I am interested in the ones on the lower half of the page and the impact that each of those factors is having. For example:

“Financial pressures, staff absences and prisoner numbers: are adversely affecting the number of prisoners completing reoffending/rehabilitation programmes”.

I am dealing with quite a number of such people in HMP Shotts—they are technically my constituents at the moment—who are concerned about the lack of resources in the self change programme, which is a key part of getting people to the point at which they can get parole. I would actually say that the self change programme is in crisis. It is a good example of how, if we do not address these issues, we will end up with many more people staying in prison for much longer, and a higher percentage of those who get out reoffending because they have not had their rehabilitation programmes.

Investing heavily in the self change programme, for example, would quite quickly—in three, four or five years—save money and reduce prisoner numbers as well as reducing reoffending. I hear what you say about a task force tackling resilience across the board, but is it moving fast enough? Is it action orientated? The problem needs immediate action, rather than taking minutes and wasting years on a task force.

The purpose of my report is to bring to the committee exactly those sorts of pressures. The risk is that they become self-perpetuating: the inability to invest in reducing reoffending means that more people are being released, committing more offences, and coming back to prison, so the numbers continue to climb.

In her annual report, which came out last month, Her Majesty’s chief inspector of prisons was clear that there is a risk of a perfect storm of factors coming together and making it more difficult for the prison system and the justice system as a whole to work effectively. As I have said a couple of times, there are questions about the Government’s response to that. The justice strategic board’s work is a question for Government rather than something that we can reassure the committee about at this stage.

Cuts to funding for rehabilitation were announced recently. Have you had a chance to look at the impact of those cuts on prisoner numbers?

Not directly. As you know, we have reported in the past on the justice system and work to reduce reoffending. Last year, we reported on the slow start of Community Justice Scotland, the new organisation that is intended to develop some of the alternatives to imprisonment. We are considering coming back to it in future, and Mark Roberts is doing some work to scope that. Mark, do you want to say some more about that?

No, I do not really have very much to say about it, because we recognise that there is as a whole-system problem. The Auditor General has asked us to prepare some approaches that we could take to a major performance audit of the justice system as a whole.

That is a good idea.

The other two factors are the changes to the home detention curfew criteria and the effect of the reduction in supervised bail. We have spoken about the higher numbers, and that is well over 800 people who would not be in prison but currently are. That number represents 10 per cent of the entire prison population, so it seems that those are fairly urgent issues that must be addressed. Do you agree?

Absolutely.

It seems that there are two broad financial issues here. One is that the Prison Service claims—justifiably, I think—that it is underfunded and needs significantly more money than six million quid. The other is whether it is making the best use of the money that it has. Is it doing so, is there genuine underfunding and what level of additional funding is required just to stabilise the situation, let alone get prisoner numbers down in the medium to long term?

We can probably have a go at answering two of those questions, but not the third.

As I said in my opening remarks, there are things that the Scottish Prison Service can do to improve the way in which it uses its finances. At the very least, its longer-term financial planning will be important in that, so we will need to see the financial plan that should accompany its new corporate plan.

Having said that, the Prison Service’s budget has been flat cash since 2014-15, which represents a quite significant real-terms decrease of 12.5 per cent. That might have been manageable had we seen a continuation of the reduction in prisoner numbers that we had been seeing until 2018-19, but we have not done so; that trend has been reversing. As Mark Roberts touched on earlier, we are also seeing more older prisoners whose different needs must be accommodated, especially those who have been convicted of historic sexual abuse or given longer sentences. For the first time, we are seeing prisoners with dementia and similar health problems that must be cared for. We are also seeing increasing levels of drug use. The pressures within the system are increasing, so there needs to be a close look at what the resources are likely to be. At least in the short term, there might need to be an increase. Equally important is the capital investment that will be required to ensure that the prisons estate is fit for the future.

However, the big answer has to be that we must step back and look at the justice system and the way in which it is working, given our high incarceration rates. I should also recognise that the Scottish Government’s whole budget is under pressure. There is not an immediate source for more money for the Prison Service, given the pressure that is on other areas, so making the best use of existing money right across the Government and the justice system must be the starting point.

Serco claims to have better outcomes in preparing prisoners for leaving the system, and the destinations of its prisoners suggest a lower reoffending rate. If we compare private prisons with public ones and compare the different prisons within each sector, is there evidence to support any particular model getting better outcomes? Is performance better in some prisons than it is in others? If they were all to be brought up to the level of the best performer, what difference would that make?

We reported specifically on reducing reoffending two or three years ago. Mark Roberts led that work, so I ask him to talk you through what we knew then.

It was actually slightly longer ago than that, I am afraid; we last reported on reducing reoffending back in 2012-13. Again, that work focused very much on the whole-system approach that needed to be taken. Since then, there has been significant legislative change, with the abolition of community justice authorities and, as the Auditor General mentioned, the establishment of Community Justice Scotland. All that has changed very significantly the approach that is now being taken to community as opposed to custodial sentencing.

I do not have any information on the effectiveness of different approaches among prisons or between the public and private sectors. Perhaps HM inspectorate of prisons for Scotland would have that.

What Mark Roberts said gets to the nub of what the issue will be as we move forward. The SPS has been forced to axe throughcare. When you next look at the area, will you be able to assess the impact of that approach on reoffending and reconviction rates? Let us hope that its axing will be only temporary, but if it were to last for a significant period, could you assess that impact?

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I would hope that we would be able to find some way of doing that. At this time, however, I would not want to commit to saying that we could definitely find a method by which we could do it.

That would be a really important question, and we would have to think about how we would get at the matter. An assessment of the impact would be challenging, and it would also potentially be quite long term; my initial caveat would relate to how long we would have to wait to see whether there was going to be an impact. That is certainly something that we factor into our thinking about how we approach a major performance audit.

Do members have any further questions?

I want to go back to some of the numbers. On page 7, at paragraph 16, the report refers to payments totalling £13.9 million. Before I ask about that, I want to be clear that the £13.9 million does not contain the £4.25 million ex gratia payment that Colin Beattie asked about.

No—it is additional to that.

So, over three years, there were payments of £6.5 million, £3.7 million and £3.6 million, with £2,000 going to each employee in the first year, followed by £1,000 each in the next two years. If we divide that amount, does that mean that approximately just over 3,000 employees were receiving those payments?

I do not think that it works exactly like that, but it must be close to that number.

It would be roughly the same number. Were the payments going to the same group of employees each year?

Those employees are the prison officers who were initially in receipt of those payments. Prison officers were eligible to receive that payment for their engagement in the prison officer professionalisation programme.

So the same group of employees got the same payment each year.

Yes, that is right—it was the same group. It may have contained different people, because people would have left the service and so on.

Yes—taking account of that. Were those ex gratia payments?

No—the payments were approved by the Scottish Government. They were not contractual, so in that sense they were ex gratia, but they were approved and made by the Scottish Prison Service.

Would those payments be tax free?

Yes. Well, no—it is income, so it would be subject to tax.

So £6.5 million of the total would include the burden that the employer presumably had to pay on top of that.

Yes—the employer would have had to pay income tax on that.

The employer?

Sorry—the employee.

But the employer would have had to pay national insurance and pension contributions.

Yes—there would be other costs associated with that.

Do you know what percentage figure that would amount to?

The usual percentage for national insurance—5 per cent, I think.

What about the employers’ pension contributions?

It is different for prison officers. I do not recall the exact figure for the contribution rate for prison officers.

It is quite a significant number.

Yes.

Those payments were made over three years. We have been told that they were non-contractual, but the same amount appears several times. Each year, it happened. Is there not therefore a contractual element?

No.

Even so, people who did not get the payment were entitled to get it because of the following equal pay action.

It was not contractual, because it was specifically for the purpose of securing the engagement of prison officers in developing the prison officer professionalisation programme. As soon as the programme was done, it was voted against, so it did not proceed; we raise issues in our report about value for money in relation to that.

Following the implementation, because the payment was not available to non-prison officer staff, an equal pay claim was made. You can see the number relating to that in paragraph 18.

So the prison officers were paid that amount to take part in the programme, and they then decided not to take part in the programme.

No—they were paid to support the development of the programme.

And they did not do that.

They then voted against the programme.

But they got paid for three years in a row

Yes.

They got paid to support the programme, then they voted against it.

That is right.

Why did they keep on getting paid?

We raised in the audit the question of the appropriateness of those payments and the questions around value for money. I think that that is a question for the chief executive and the Scottish Government.

What answer did you get from them?

The chief executive and others felt that the payment was the best way to secure the engagement of prison officers in developing the programme.

So they tried it once, twice, three times, and it did not work. Have they continued with the payments in the current year?

No. Those payments have stopped.

Do we know why the Scottish Government approved the scheme? Was it approved only by the SPS?

The payments were approved by the Scottish Government.

As we say in paragraph 60 of the report.

And you do not consider that to be good value for money.

We say in the report that we cannot determine whether it represented value for money, because there were no success criteria for it. We have reported the facts so that they are transparent to the committee, along with the equal pay claim that came out of the approach that was taken.

Okay—thank you.

I thank you all very much indeed for your evidence this morning. I now close the public session of this meeting.

11:05 Meeting continued in private until 11:28.