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Going back to focus on summary cases, you have spoken, Mr McQueen, about the fact that one in 10 police officers cited for summary cases do not give evidence. That is a monumental waste of their time. It takes them away from communities when police budgets, as we heard last week, are under extraordinary pressure. You used the word “churn”. This has been a blight in the justice system and the court system for years. Given that there are tens of thousands of summary cases where work is done and a guilty plea is ultimately reached and all that work has not been needed, why on earth has there not been a better grip on this until now? What can be done? Is it a question of too many organisations all blaming one another? Does the blame lie with the Crown, with the courts, with the judiciary, with defence lawyers? Why are these figures so appalling and these delays so built into the system? What can be done apart from continually recognising it and talking about it?

It is worth noting that the committee has done well, particularly Pauline McNeill, who identified the issue during the visit, and pushed to raise it, as did Rona Mackay. It shows that simply by our asking questions and intervening, we can make a bit of a difference.

Towards the end the letter, the Wise Group talks about former prisoners who do not have a fixed address and cannot register with a general practitioner. What might be done about that? I am sure that there is no easy fix, but it is certainly a significant matter that probably requires a bit of attention.

It will therefore not impact on Crown budgets in any way.

Okay. Thank you.

It may be that further costs are expected or have been agreed to but the money has not gone out the door.

I have two unconnected questions—one for each of you. The first is for the court service.

In your letter, you mention the income that is generated from civil court business, which is about £46.5 million in the current year. You may recall that I wrote to you earlier this year about a court press agency that accesses certain information for an annual fee. It was a fairly nominal fee of £350 per annum, but the agency has been informed that that will rise to £34,000, which is an increase of over 4,000 per cent. You were kind enough to reply and you said that that would be looked at as part of a broader review that was to begin last month.

I am curious to know whether there has been any progress on that front and whether there is any sympathy given how extreme and, to be frank, unworkable such an increase would be.

I appreciate that it is all largely speculative just now, but some of what you have spoken about will have real effects on police officers and members of the public. We are talking about 101 services potentially being suspended. As I understand it, in recent years murder inquiries have been the subject of investigations by major investigation teams—MITs—as a given. I suppose that only the chief constable could answer a specific question about an operational need to change that: only the chief constable or one of his senior officers would be able to answer much of what I would like to ask.

It was reported a month ago that the chief constable is pursuing other roles. Have you had discussions with him? Is that in any way connected to the budget projections?

Where is the chief constable today?

Sure, but dozens of forces elsewhere in the UK have managed to overcome similar challenges and have prioritised such spending.

The next issue that I want to ask about is to do with mental health. Lynn Brown has already touched on the fact that officers have to deal with people in the community who require mental health support and treatment. I am coming at the issue from a slightly different perspective—my concern is police officers’ mental health. We have heard very strong evidence on the pressures that officers are under and the struggles that they face, and how that can seriously impact on their wellbeing. There is a sense that they do not currently have the support that they need. There have been some absolutely tragic outcomes, with officers taking their own lives and others coming close to doing so.

If what is proposed comes to pass, even in part, that situation will only get a whole lot worse. What thought has been given to improving the support that is available for officers?

Normally, as a committee, we try to avoid party-political issues, but I think it important to get on the record a response to the points that were made by Fulton MacGregor. The Scottish Government makes decisions about how it spends money. It is in receipt of a record £41 billion block grant from the UK Government. In June, the chief constable told the SPA that the Scottish Government had

“clearly set out its spending priorities”

and that

“Policing is not among those stated priorities”.

Perhaps that helps to give some context to the bigger financial picture.