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We have not given a priority status that is different from what the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation has recommended. That recommendation is what we have followed. Members will have seen that the same demographic step change is happening in prisons for prisoners who are willing to take the vaccine and for prison officers. Those views have been expressed by police officers, too, but we have followed the JCVI advice.

More recently, we have agreed that we should bundle together prisoners and prison officers in a particular setting, and the health boards are aligning with that to ensure that we drive up those figures.

As I said in my opening remarks, when it comes to what prisons have had to do to respond to the situation, we have had a fantastic response in compliance from inmates and from prison officers. That has been evidenced. I do not deny that we have had outbreaks in prisons. However, it is in the nature of prisons that they are much more vulnerable, and the way that the situation has been dealt with by the prison authorities has been tremendous. We will continue to follow the JCVI advice.

We are content with the draft code of practice; we just want to see the final version first.

I am grateful to the committee for giving me the opportunity to take questions on the LCM for the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill.

I recognise that crime has no respect for borders or boundaries and, as such, must be tackled across multiple jurisdictions. Applying the relevant provisions of the bill to Scotland will help to meet the Scottish Government’s commitment to modernising and reforming the justice system, and to making Scotland a safer, fairer and more inclusive country.

The UK Government’s stated policy aim of the bill is to enhance the democratic accountability of police forces, to build public confidence in policing and to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of emergency services through closer collaboration.

I make it clear that policing is, of course, a devolved matter, so significant portions of the bill do not extend to Scotland, including elements of the bill that many will see as being controversial.

However, some of the provisions impact on devolved functions. On 5 August, the Scottish Government lodged an LCM for those provisions that extend to Scotland, in which it recommended consent for amendments to the Crime (Overseas Production Orders) Act 2019; orders under the Sexual Offences Act 2003 and the Abusive Behaviour and Sexual Harm (Scotland) Act 2016; the extension of the Summary Jurisdiction (Process) Act 1881; the amendment to section 60 of the Police Act 1996; and the extension of the annual reporting duty for the police covenant to cover the British Transport Police and the National Crime Agency.

At the time of lodging the LCM, the Scottish Government was not in a position to be able to recommend consent for the power to extract information from digital devices of witnesses, victims and others, as discussions were still on-going between the former Lord Advocate and UK ministers.

The Lord Advocate had written to UK ministers to ask them to consider the case for extending the provisions on the extraction of information from devices to allow for the extraction of information from devices used by persons other than the deceased. UK ministers have since denied that request.

Although the Lord Advocate and I find that decision disappointing, UK ministers have committed to keeping the provisions under review, once they are in force. That will allow the issue to be returned to, should operational difficulties be identified.

On 30 August, I wrote to UK ministers to recommend, in principle, that the Scottish Parliament grants an LCM in relation to the extraction of data provisions. However, I advised them that I would not be prepared to start the formal LCM process until the draft code of practice had been finalised. That will allow the Scottish Parliament the opportunity to carry out proper scrutiny of the provisions before consenting to them. Incidentally, I think that the Northern Ireland Executive has taken the same position.

I hope that my time at the committee will provide an opportunity to address any concerns, although I am sure that I will rely heavily on Graham Thomson to do that. I welcome the chance to answer any questions.

Apart from the responsibility for ministers, the responsibility lies with the Scottish Prison Service and Teresa Medhurst, who is the chief executive. She has been very open with me about the challenges of dealing with individuals who are involved in serious organised crime—I agree with the member about those challenges. There may well be gratuitous violence, but it is often violence with a purpose, which is seeking to intimidate or do other things. That is a challenge and, incidentally, it is one reason why I would say that the UK Government’s idea of making prisoner officers serve until they are 68 is a nonsense that should be opposed by everybody.

Organised crime is a challenge. We of course look seriously at any reports such as the one that the member mentions. Of course, HMP Addiewell is a private prison, which will revert to the public sector. We will look at the issues, but we will do so in consultation with the people who are most directly affected. The remit of Teresa Medhurst and the Prison Service does not extend to Addiewell while it is a private prison, but we are seized of the issues.

I acknowledge the certainly increasing, and probably unprecedented, level of demand that is put on the Prison Service through accommodating individuals who are involved in serious organised crime. We must acknowledge that that is partly due to the success of the police and others in prosecuting serious organised crime, which means that we are seeing an increasing prison population in that respect.

I cannot speak for my predecessors. Is that a question for Neil Rennick or Don McGillivray?

The youth justice improvement board is looking at that issue and will report back on 15 September. To be clear about the numbers—this perhaps goes back to the concern raised by Mr Greene earlier about remand—just now, there are 11 remanded males and one remanded female, three sentenced males and one male awaiting sentencing. There has been a huge amount of work to get down to those numbers, but we still have further to go.

It is very good that we have the scheme, which, for those who might not be aware, gives victims of crime and, in certain circumstances, their close relatives greater rights to information about the status of an offender. We have legislated to make more victims eligible. In 2014, we extended the criteria to include victims of those serving more than 18 months’ imprisonment instead of only victims of those with prison sentences of four years or more. In 2015, we extended the criteria further to allow certain information to be given to victims of offenders who are sentenced to less than 18 months in prison.

In relation to the numbers, we have agreed that we will bring together all the relevant partners to review the victim notification scheme and to determine whether further improvements can be made. That move—alongside the previous measures that were taken to introduce and expand the scheme, our commitment to establishing a victims commissioner and some of the other comments that I have made—shows that we very much have the interests of victims at heart. Of course, it is always for the victims and their relatives to decide whether they participate in the scheme.

The legal professional organisations will be taking the lead in future recruitment for their professions. I think that I am right in saying that we are seeing record numbers of people going to universities to seek qualifications. However, part of it is down to how the legal professions can increase the numbers given the demographic that you mentioned.

The points about remand are well made. We have made no secret of the fact that we do not want to see as many people on remand. We understand that remand can be detrimental, especially if, at the end of it, the person is found not guilty. However, none of those things is by design. The pandemic is real and we cannot wish it away. It has implications for the justice system and, unfortunately, it has given rise to the higher number of people on remand.

I go back to what I said in my opening remarks about the fact that I cannot be too specific in advance of the publication of the programme for government, but we are looking to take early action in relation to remand, not least for some of the reasons that Mr Greene mentioned. We are very conscious of both the human rights of those who are involved and also, particularly for those who have never experienced a justice system before, the impact that it can have on the person, their family, their employment and all sorts of other things. We are very seized of that. However, the situation arises from the pandemic. Like many other jurisdictions, we want to do the best that we can to mitigate the effects of that.

The Scottish Police Authority will hold the police to account for its performance in relation to that. As you would expect, however, I have had conversations with the police about the issue.

There is a public concern and the situation requires further attention. It is vastly better than it was in the past, with the legacy forces, when people would call the numbers—I am talking not about 999, but about the equivalents to 101—and they would ring out, with no record being kept of the unanswered calls. Nobody knew the extent to which that was happening. I am told that that is very much the case now in other parts of the United Kingdom, and it cannot be satisfactory.

It is right that 101 is a triage service that directs people to the right place, because people sometimes call for reasons that are nothing to do with the police, and it is right that the police have a way of clearing those calls. However, it must be improved. I spoke this week to the chair of the SPA and senior officers, and they are seized of the need to improve on the figures.

I will be corrected by my official if this is not the case, but I think that I am right in saying that we already have that legal basis in Scotland. Down south, they do not have that; common law is used. It is a case of trying to make those things consistent. Previously, the point of disagreement was whether the provision could be extended to people who had died. That was the point that the Lord Advocate was interested in, and we have some assurances on that. It will not be agreed to by UK ministers at this stage, but we have some assurances around that, which we are willing to accept.

A draft code of conduct is not the same as a final code of conduct. If we know that the UK Government is saying, “This is our final version,” there is nothing that will give us cause for concern. As background, the committee’s predecessor went over this area quite exhaustively when it considered cyberkiosks and so on. There is a parliamentary sensitivity about that, which we are trying to be sensitive to by saying, “Let’s see what the final one says.” If it says what the draft one says, I think that we are okay.