���˿���

I understand what the cabinet secretary has said. I know what we said and what he said, and I know what he is now saying. I do not think that he has changed his position, and I am not accusing him of doing so.

I am less interested in that and more interested in the context and the content of what he says. It is welcome that the cabinet secretary will not preside over a budget that will result in 4,000 officers leaving. Nobody wants to lose 4,000 officers. The inference from our exchange was that there would not be a cut of that nature. Whether the cabinet secretary or the chief constable makes that decision is irrelevant. He goes on to say that he has found some cash in the pot, which, again, is welcome. No one has a problem with that. The cabinet secretary might not be content with presiding over a budget that results in 4,000 officers lost, but I do not know whether he would be content with losing 3,000, 2,000 or 1,000 officers. We do not know that, so there are unanswered questions.

If it is correct that those are operational matters for the police and not the cabinet secretary, we should be asking Police Scotland what the £80 million will be spent on, and whether, in that context, it is still considering a reduction in officer numbers. I say that because officer numbers are at their lowest levels since 2008, so any suggestion that they will drop any further should be a matter of concern for the committee.

I want to pick up on some of my other points, some of which have been touched on by other members.

I hope that Fulton MacGregor is wearing a seat belt—otherwise, he will end up with a blue plaque on the tree next to his car.

I am glad that Fulton MacGregor is positive about the cabinet secretary’s reply, but there is nothing positive about uncertainty about police numbers. They are not around the edges of the budget; they are absolutely core to delivering good public safety.

I echo the comments about body-worn cameras. That is about the minutiae of operational matters, but that is a big detail. It is inconceivable that officers should have to wait years for fairly simple equipment that is standard in other forces. That is not going to go down well at all with officers on the front line.

On the fire budget, my colleague Russell Findlay pointed out the massive capital backlog. The response says:

“We have maintained the £32.5m capital budget”.

I assume that “maintained” means that the budget is still what it was. In other words, there has been no increase at all, which means a real-terms cut in the capital budget for the fire service.

I do not know how on earth that will go any way towards solving some of the problems that Katy Clark identified, which we have already debated in the Parliament. Those are quite serious and urgent matters. I know that we cannot magic up new fire stations overnight and that they take time to properly procure and build. That needs to be a longer-term project. However, I am pretty sure that many existing fire stations could do with an injection of cash to make them at least semi-fit for purpose. It is absolutely deplorable that we send our firefighters into the situations that we send them into and expect them to work in those conditions. I am willing to be corrected—the cabinet secretary is happy to correct me on other matters—but if it is a flat cash settlement for the fire service, it will come as a disappointment to it.

On prisons, notwithstanding the convener’s comments, I question the

“£97m in capital funding to continue the modernisation of the prison estate.”

The response goes on to say:

“This will include … the completion of the new female national prison at HMP Stirling.”

I am afraid that I do not think that that is new money. Again, I am willing to be corrected if that is the case, but surely that will just be the next tranche of the procurement and building costs of the prison, and it would already have been known to us prior to the revised budget. I do not think that it is new magic cash. It is probably going some way towards resolving payments to those who are building HMP Stirling, as the response seems to imply.

There are major issues around HMP Greenock. I know that we have asked about it many times and that we have been given the honest answer that there simply is not enough money in the pot to do anything there, but it will close if things go on as they are. If it does not receive cash in any shape or form, it will inevitably close. That is not scaremongering, as was reported in local media; it is a real possibility.

We have not discussed legal aid. I was quite intrigued by the cabinet secretary’s response. I am not sure that it was meant to be read in this light, but he said:

“In addition, following positive engagement with the legal profession, we will bring forward regulations in the New Year to further increase and reform Legal Aid fees.”

Nobody in the legal aid profession whom I spoke to thought that the engagement was positive or was happy with the outcome of that engagement. In fact, the Scottish Solicitors Bar Association is on the record as saying that it is better than nothing, but it does not really go far enough. That has been echoed by many others in the sector.

There is a little bit of head-in-the-sand syndrome in the cabinet secretary’s response. It is unclear what the additional budget will look like in fees versus what the solicitors think is required to continue to provide services. We are now starting to see the very real effects of the financial problems in the legal aid sector. Members are probably aware that people in Orkney, for example, have little to no access to practitioners and that that is repeated throughout the country. Again, we have been raising that issue for many years, and I do not take much that is positive away from the cabinet secretary’s statement.

The last point, which is an important one, is on victims. There is a welcome announcement on multiyear funding for some of the third sector organisations. A committee on which I sat in the previous session of the Parliament did a huge piece of work on that. That certainty of funding is welcome.

On the bairns’ hoose model, my understanding—I am happy for the clerk to correct me if I am wrong—is that a report was due to the Parliament to outline the plans for future bairns’ hooses. I think that the Government was doing a piece of work to identify how many would be needed and how much budget would be required to roll that out. That piece of work is overdue, but I could be corrected on that. That report would be helpful. I do not think that the roll-out will happen in the next financial year anyway, even if the report had been released, but it would give us an idea of what is happening down the line with that. I appreciate that getting the first bairns’ hoose off the ground is the priority, and I support that.

Can I clarify something, convener?

This is not the first time that we have been put in the position of being asked to review legislation days before it comes into force. Especially ahead of a recess, there is no opportunity to discuss the matter until after the SSI has come into force.

It would be a different matter if there were clear policy differences or matters of opinion in the SSI that would be suitable to oppose, but there is little to oppose. There is nothing in the SSI that I disagree with, and it seems to make some sensible changes, but there are things that could have been done differently or better, and things that should have been added to the SSI. That is where the matter is unclear. If our only option is to lodge a motion to annul, we would lose the 70 per cent of the SSI that is comprised of good bits if we have a problem with the other 30 per cent. That is the unfortunate position that we are in.

In this scenario, there is no point in stopping the SSI going ahead, but I wonder how we can raise those issues. They could perhaps be dealt with in a further SSI, which I am sure that the Government could find an appropriate way to get to us in good time. We should stress to the cabinet secretary that we should have had a paper on the SSI weeks ago.

I am happy to put this to Mr Lamont and the cabinet secretary. We heard evidence last week from David Fraser from the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service. He said:

“I have managed to determine the number of people who are on remand and awaiting trial in our legal system … In summary cases, only 1 per cent of people are on remand. For sheriff and jury cases, it is 12 per cent, and for High Court cases it is 27 per cent.”—[Official Report, Criminal Justice Committee, 25 January 2023; c 33.]

That contradicts what I have just heard from Mr Lamont, who said that, by the very nature of those types of offences, those people will likely be held on remand anyway, even under the new rules. Surely that contradicts the purpose of the legislation, because you are trying to reduce the number of people held on remand who you consider do not need to be, but, at the same time, we are saying that people who commit serious offences and who should rightly be held on remand will still be held on remand. The two do not add up. Either those people will still be held on remand or we will be letting them out with bail conditions.

I am a bit confused about the purpose of the legislation. It is clear from the statistics that the lion’s share of people held on remand are there through High Court cases, which are normally quite serious cases that result in a custodial sentence.

In summary cases, it is only 1 per cent. Very few people in summary cases are held on remand, which is where you would think that the bulk of it would be. If that were the case, there absolutely would be a problem, but there does not seem to be a problem.

That is interesting. The cabinet secretary said that it is not for the Government to interfere overly with decisions that are made by the Crown but, if we make legislative change, that will alter its behaviour and decision making.

Mr Lamont mentioned Kenny Donnelly, who raised a particular concern that I do not think has been properly addressed in the bill—I hope that that is done as the bill moves forward. That concern relates to section 23C of the 1995 act. Mr Donnelly talked about removing

“from a summary court the ability to oppose bail for people who simply have a record of not attending or about whom there is information that they will not attend.”—[Official Report, Criminal Justice Committee, 25 January 2023; c 27.]

That would not necessarily fulfil the public safety criteria, based on the ordinary meaning definition that you have described.

How do we counter that? How can we ensure that courts have the ability to remand people where there is a significant risk of their not appearing at or attending future hearings? We know all the implications that come with that—the financial and human costs and, of course, the implications for court time, which is precious. It seems that people feel that their hands may be tied in that respect.

I could talk all day on this subject, but I appreciate that there are lots of other members who want to ask questions. I am happy to come back in if there is time later.

Is what you have just said, by its very nature, vindication that judges and sheriffs are sending people to prison on remand because of the offences that they are in front of the courts for? There is a perception—the Government is stating—that we have a high remand population. As you know, the committee previously criticised the Government for that. Is that because too many people are being sent to remand in the first place, or are they spending too long on remand? Those are two very different things, and they are dealt with very differently. The bill seems to address the latter by implying that too many people are being sent to prison on remand, rather than by addressing, perhaps, the real issue, which is not that there too many people being sent to prison on remand but that they are there for too long.