 Rwy'n cael ei wneud i'w digwydd y 4 yddiad o'r Ffgolwch Cymru yn 2024. Wrth gwaith y gwneud ystafell, mae'r iawn i'r wybodaeth y cysylltiadau i'r cyfnod i'r gwneud i'r gwneud I3 i'r gwneud I4. Maen nhw, yn rhaid, mwy yw? Mae rhaid, rhaid. Aquad waiting and busy, dweud yn llaw ddim yn cydynhu o'r Bwg Mbledigol Fawr 22. Ychydigion Llywodraeth yw'r Prifysgol, yr Eidol Llywodraeth, yw unig i mi ddweud. Can I welcome our witnesses this morning? We are joined by the Audit General. Alongside the Audit General this morning is Michael Olafant, who is an audit director at Audit Scotland and Tommy Ywle, who is a senior audit manager at Audit Scotland. We have got quite a large number of questions to ask you about this morning's report, but before we get to those Audits General, can I invite you to make a short opening statement? Many thanks, convener. Good morning, committee. I am presenting this report this morning on the 2022-23 audit of the Scottish Prison Service under section 22 of the Public Finance and Accountability Scotland Act 2000. The external auditor issued an unqualified opinion on the financial statements of the Scottish Prison Service for 2022-23. My report brings to Parliament's attention issues relating to the Scottish Courts Custody prisoner escorting service contract managed by the SPS on behalf of justice partners. It also draws attention to wider concerns about projected increases in the prisoner population and its impact on the prison estate. I highlight the following areas of my report. The first that is on the prisoner escorting contract Scottish ministers awarded the contract to GOMA in March 2018 for an initial period of eight years. In recent times, GOMA has been unable to achieve the staffing levels required to effectively deliver the required levels of service. Between July and September 2023, only 62 per cent of prisoners in due and court arrived on time, and only 65 per cent of non-court escort services such as hospital transfers or police identification periods took place on time. SPS has taken action to support improvement in GOMA's performance, including financial support to aid staff recruitment and retention. It is expected, though, that that will take a further six months to take effect. The second area of focus is on Scotland's prisoner population. In 2022-23, the average population was 7,426. By mid-November of last year, it had increased to 7,948, with the SPS now forecasting that the population will further increase to over 8,166 by the end of March of this year. That puts extensive pressure on the prison estate, which requires significant investment for it to be fit for purpose. Convener, those are not issues that can be resolved by the Scottish Prison Service alone. It will require close collaboration with the Scottish Government and its justice partners to ensure that prison services can be maintained in a safe and secure environment. As ever, my colleagues and I will do our utmost to answer the committee's questions. Thank you very much indeed. That is a useful thumbnail sketch of the three principal themes in the report, which we will look at in some detail this morning. Can I begin by handing over straightaway to the deputy convener, who has some questions especially about that Court's custody prisoner escorting service? The prisoner escort contract is managed by the SPS on behalf of the Justice Multi-Agency Liaison Group, which consists of the SPS, Scottish Courts and Tribunal Services, the Crime Office and Procurator Fiscal Service and Police Scotland. Do you know what input those organisations had in the Justice Multi-Agency Liaison Group had to the terms of the GOAME contract before it was awarded by Scottish ministers? You are absolutely right, deputy convener, in terms of the partnership arrangements. As I mentioned in my introductory remarks, the contract runs through to 2020-27 and is experiencing challenges. It is going to take a multi-agency approach to resolve the issues. I will bring Michael in a moment to set out a bit more about the background to the awarding of the contract. However, it is affected by the heart of today's report that there needs to be an effective resolution to the scale of the challenges that are being faced by the contract. As the report touches on later on, the prison service and its partners are already beginning to think about their arrangements for the next iteration of the contract. Of course, should there be one, that remains one of the options at the disposal of the prison service. Reflecting on the lessons from the award of the contract last time will be very important to inform the stability of the service into the future. However, I will pause and invite Michael in order to set out a bit more detail for the committee. The agency partners that you highlighted have been involved from the start and are involved in our regular basis. The prison service managed the contract on their behalf, but the partners are involved in monthly performance meetings around the service, around the service reporting requirements of the contract. Some of the changes that we have seen since the contract was awarded, particularly during and after Covid, have been involved in discussing the religious all aspects of the criminal justice system from police ID parades through to the prosecution services and so on through to the numbers that are going in and through the court system in Scotland. One of the changes has been additional high court docs that were required to be serviced during this time. It is very much seen as a partnership approach, all with their own direct interest in ensuring that the contract is served as best as it possibly can. So did you say that they are having monthly meetings? There are monthly performance meetings, yes. And is that involved? Sorry, sorry, I connect myself. It is quarterly meetings of the marl that includes prison service, Police Scotland and the Crown Office prosecution service, as well as the courts and tribunal service. There are monthly meetings to manage the contract that involves people from prison service. Right, okay. The second question is the report highlighting the importance of SPS and its partners working together with support from the Scottish Government to consider all options available to ensure the safe and effective delivery of prisoner escorting services. Are they looking at the way they operate as well to see how they can assist GOA me because it seems to be a changing service that they have had since the initial contract was brought in? Absolutely. The number of changes that have to be made, particularly around the flow of staff through courts, so introducing virtual courts to try and assist the number of high courts that come in to try and support the courts recovery programme. There are now fewer numbers being transferred from custody to courts because of a number of the interventions that the courts recovery programme has brought that involves, for example, sharing of evidence earlier before the need to get to a trial and to get to a court case to try and resolve these earlier. These all have impacts on the contract and the demands from it. I was just going to add, hopefully, that it is relevant that there are clear interdependencies here in this effective management of the contract. As Michael mentioned, the conditions have changed since it was awarded, undoubtedly through Covid, the impact of that. Then, as indeed the committee considered last year, the Scottish Courts and Tribunals plans in addressing the courts backlog, that has also had a bearing on the delivery of the contract, in terms of contract volumes, the demands that are placed upon custody officers. What would have been fairly predictable and stable in terms of court transfers before Covid is no longer exactly the case. It is central to GeoAmy's position that the environment in which the contract was awarded is no longer replicated to its entirety post Covid, so there are different flows of prisoners. There are other aspects that are relevant, too. You mentioned working with other partners. One of the things that we touch on in the report is about hospital appointments and so forth. The clashing nature of when prisoner hospital appointments tend to be timed early in the morning, which is the time when prisoner transfers to court would typically take place. We have seen steps being made by the prison service to engage with the national health service to say, is there something that can be done that can work for both sides? That, as we have seen, is still a work in progress. There are opportunities still in here to make it more efficient, but I am not sure that it addresses the more fundamental nature of the contract environment. It is quite different to what it was when it was first awarded. Are they continuing that engagement? I did not, because the report said that the majority of the hospital appointments were half past nine and that the SPS had engaged with the NHS, but we are still sitting with the majority of the appointments that are half past nine, so that is not obviously helping GeoAmy. There is constant engagement there. As far as our understanding is that it is an on-going conversation that is not yet resolved to ensure the safe and effective delivery of the contract, we recognise that there are multiple pressures in the NHS. There will not be one single reason why that has not been accommodated, but it is an outstanding matter. That also says in the report that the contractual arrangements for GeoAmy differ between Scotland and England and Wales. Are you aware of any issues or concerns with the service that GeoAmy provides in England and Wales? Is it the same problems that are having there, or are there different contracts or those different issues? I will bring my clinic in a moment, but just in terms of the scope of our work, we have not looked at the fundamentals or the detail of the contract arrangements in England and Wales compared to Scotland. At a high level, it is our understanding that there is a broader contract in Scotland as it relates to an additional range of services that the prisoner escort service contract provides here compared to England, which Rychel can clarify. It is primarily court transfers in England. It is effective for that. There are different contracts. The ones that they have in England cover transfers from custody to courts predominantly and police custody as well. In Scotland, they have additional elements to cover, which includes the healthcare facilities that covers things such as special escorted leave, funeral escorts, escorts that might provide educational or employment opportunities as part of parole arrangements. A whole host of additional services. Some of them are quite staff-intensive for GeoAmy compared to some of the route transfers. For example, hospital detainments in bed watches require a certain level of staff, 24 hours a day, to accommodate, and sometimes the demand is difficult to predict. The contract allows for up to eight bed watches per day, but we have seen fluctuations to sometimes well over 20. It is a very staff-intensive part of the contract for GeoAmy, and that is one of the reasons why they cite it as being financially unsustainable. The report states that the operating environment has changed since GeoAmy was awarded the contract 2018. Is that one of the issues? Is there other issues in there? Is the ageing population and the fact that the prison population is going up as well, is that adding to the problems? Those are relevant factors about the wider pressures on the Scottish Prison Service, drilling down into some of the nature of the contract. Undoubtedly, the demands on the prison and court service post Covid tackling the backlog, the provision and how that interacts with the virtual trials that Michael Russell mentioned is another factor. Perhaps the most fundamental of all, GeoAmy, is that GeoAmy has not been able to sustain staffing levels that were anticipated in order to effectively deliver the contract. It is fair to say that the prison or custody officer roles are at the heart of that, and just how attractive those posts are relative to alternative jobs that exist. At a high level, the general rates of pay that the prison custody officer roles attract are comparable with what somebody could earn in a supermarket, for example. At that level, bearing in mind the conditions, those are demanding and responsible jobs. That is not to say that a supermarket is not, but there comes with an additional level of stress and scrutiny in those roles. For a combination of factors, changing aspirations and employment patterns have meant that they have not been able to sustain the level of numbers to safely deliver the contract. I am sure that we will speak further about some of the steps that the prison service has taken to try to sustain the contract, but specifically looking at the staffing levels, it is that there has been an additional investment from the prison service to try and arrest the decline in numbers of financial support that they are providing to G.O.A.M.A. to try to sustain and then increase back to the level of staffing numbers that were required. Michael might want to say a bit more about some of the detail behind that. I think that a key aspect of the contract is that it is volume-based, so the more activity that is undertaken by G.O.A.M.A. the more income it can generate from that. We have seen, as a result of or compared to pre-Covid levels, the number of routes from custody to courts has fallen quite dramatically as some of the interventions to support the court reform programme or recovery programme. The other parts of the contract that I mentioned are quite staff intensive, so hospital detainments, bed watches, supporting and servicing court docks and court sales, they are staff intensive. Overall, we see that volume increase does not offset the loss from the route transfers to courts. Overall, we have seen lower income as a result and higher costs as a result of staff costs, overheads, fuel and so on. However, a key aspect of the contract is for the provider to have operational flexibility to accommodate that. However, when you have seen staffing levels drop 20-25 per cent from where they should be, you remove that flexibility to the point that it is very difficult to manage that base service provision. The real fundamental problem is that they do not have enough staff to service a contract, a contract that needs to be flexible. It is labour intensive. The money is going down in the tasks that they are doing. Unless they go in and change that contract, if somebody else took over that contract, are they just going to have the exact same issues? There is an element of speculation on our part to address that properly, but it is an important context for the committee that, when the contract was first tendered 2017-2018, the GOMI would only bithers for that contract. Other potential providers will have made their own business assessment of how sustainable that was and what it looks like into the future. As we touched on in the report, the prison service is considering where to go next with its partners. It needs to get that rounded view about what is a sustainable contract, when it is offered to the market or whether there is an alternative way of delivering the contract through public services. However, what is clear is that it is in its current guise needing a different path. The current path that the prison service is following at the moment is one of additional financial support to GOMI to keep it sustainable. I would be happy to say further, Deputy convener, but there have been a variety of approaches that have been deployed in terms of financial penalties or financial support, but in the additional financial support largely in the current prison. However, looking into the future, those will all be factors that the prison service and the partners want to consider for future contracts. That is actually one of your key messages. It said that civil actions to support improvement in GOMI's performance included issuing improvement notices and applying financial penalties of around £4 million. Then it goes on to say that SPS is now taking more direct action, including financial support to support GOMI to aid staff recruitment and retention, which seems a bit of a contradiction. You are going to go and find them and then you are going to go and give them financial support. To what extent may the application of service credits totaling over £4 million have contributed to GOMI's claim that the contract is financially unsustainable? I think that we are probably reporting the facts in the report. In terms of exhibits 1 to 3, we are setting out the service performance of the contract. Some of that coincides with the application of service credits or fines, and then, as we have seen more recently, the application of financial support. As we mentioned in opening remarks and in the report, the prison service expects to take another six months before they can form an assessment as to whether or not the financial support levels of £1.8 million in 2022-23 and plan £2.2 million thereafter will have an impact on service performance. The service credits application did not fundamentally change the reduction in performance, and that is why the SPS has arrived at a point. If fines are not working, is there a more of a financial incentive that might lead to a better application of the contract's performance? The report also states that, in August 2022, the SPS implemented a moratorium where it would not impose certain service credits. Can you tell the committee what areas it relates to? I will bring Michael in just to share a bit more detail on that. The service credits, the detail within the contract divides the service credits into three categories. The first one is about outcomes. Those are the most significant issues that might arise from poor performance. If it led to missed appointments or delays to court proceedings, a penalty per prisoner can apply. Even things like if a prisoner is at large or the prisoner dies within their care due to that it is not connected to natural causes, there are certain service credits that have to apply. Those service credits, such as injury by prisoners, death prisoners at large and so on, are not covered by the moratorium. There are also aspects such as certain amounts of documentation that has to be provided, services that have to provide to the prisoner, including food and water and access to medical advice and so on. Those are things that are not covered. Some of the things that are covered by the moratorium are looking at later arrivals that do not impact on proceedings and so on, but that does not automatically generate a financial penalty. There are thresholds that apply based on a points-based system, so once you breach an overall threshold, then a penalty will apply. It is based on a formula driven by the percentage of the transfers that take place. It would take six months to see the impact of what is called the pass-through funding that the prison service has given to increase the pay rates of GOMA staff. The reason it is described as pass-through is because it is designed deliberately to be passed directly to staff so that the pay rates can increase by 17 per cent to take them above a competitive level compared to other equivalent employers and some of the big retail employers that had lower pay rates by comparison. It was interesting last week that the staff had to pay back money for their training. Do you know if that is still happening? Is that part of the contract? I do not know if it is part of the contract. We see in quite a lot of organisations that have a training element to a contract that there can be these clauses that if someone leaves early within the contract, they might have to pay back a proportion of the training and so on, but I do not know the specifics around that in this case. A couple of times a wage comparator with supermarkets, but the genesis of the contract is that it was outsourced work that was previously carried out by prison officers and Scottish Prison Service staff. Would not a better comparator be given the nature of the work that is involved a comparison with the pay rates that the Scottish Prison Service pays its own staff? I think that that is a very fair argument, convener. It is perhaps worth clarifying that the roles that prison custody officers do, if they are not available, the only alternative to the prison service is a prison officer or a police officer to carry out the function of transfers. It is perhaps not for me to judge the relative rates that are fair to individual roles by looking at the responsibility that is afforded to prison custody officers. I can understand why the Scottish Prison Service has arrived at the point where pass-through funding, as Michael described, has been necessary to give more certainty and security for the safe delivery of the contract. I think that Willie Coffey wanted to come in on this. On the issue of potential financial support for GOA, we have just filed our accounts and it was signed off in September just there. It shows that the company reported a profit of £2.6 million. It paid out dividends of more than £4 million and it has got cash reserves of more than £1 million. Why are we talking about financial support to a company with figures like that? I think that that will be a question for the Scottish Prison Service, Mr Coffey, to come to a view as to why it arrived at that decision. If I was speculating, there will be aspects of that organisation's business that will not apply to the effective delivery of this contract and the prison service will have reached a view that, in order to sustain the contract, they needed to have a financial intervention. I think that, as we have described, their application of fines or service credits was not having the desired effect. Without alternatives being explored, we are into the realms of sustainability of this contract. As we have seen in other circumstances, private sector providers can resign from a contract. I would be taking an additional leap and speculating whether that would be an alternative, but it is undoubtedly at risk that the prison service would have considered it. I will cover an area about staffing levels and so on. We have touched on that already. Paragraph 2022 talks about the 25 per cent decrease in staffing below required levels. The comments are about comparatively low pay, and you have done a comparison to supermarkets. To me, there are only three possible reasons for that. Either there are no staff to be able to recruit, shortage of staff in the market, difficulties with retention. The staff levels have been dropped in order to make the contract financially sustainable for the company as a deliberate policy. Leading off from the possibility that staff levels were cut by the company to make the contract sustainable is linked into that deliberate suppression of salary levels. I know that later on there is talk about increased salary levels being offered in order to be able to recruit staff. Why did they not do that earlier? What is your opinion behind that? Was it deliberate? Is it the market? Is it what? We have not seen any evidence that this is a deliberate attempt to make the contract unsustainable. That is not our understanding. Michael Cymru can provide the committee with a bit more insight in some of the understanding that we have about the engagement that the prison service has had with GoAme on a quarterly basis. Our impression remains that there are attempts on going to sustain the delivery of the contract, both from the Scottish Prison Service and their partners and the interaction that they have had with GoAme. We do not believe that there is a deliberate manipulation of prison custody of the number of officers to try to generate more profits. I think that there are more fundamental issues that the disruptive nature of the pandemic has caused to the volume of the delivery of the contract, together with changing working patterns, people's aspirations, what they want in terms of pay, terms of conditions, the environment that people work in. Most significantly of all, those are very demanding jobs, and they do not attract high levels of pay. In that environment, turnover will be higher. The steps that we are seeing the prison service taking in more recent times for the past through funding, the additional to go into the pay pockets of prison custody officers. I can see that there is logic to why that would be, but for the other circumstances that you said, I am not sure that we are seeing that manipulation. I think that it would be useful for the committee to hear more from Michael about the nature of the engagement that the prison service is having with GoAme. We see quite sharp fluctuations in staffing levels with GoAme. As the report mentions, staffing complement was at appropriate levels to begin with. The service was provided to agreed levels. What we find is that they can recruit okay retention, which can be difficult. We saw the numbers come back up to about 660. I think it was the whole-time equivalence in October 2022, but they fell quite sharply as a result. It is not just about recruitment, it is about retention. Levels of attrition are quite high. There is daily engagement with GoAme because you have a system where appointments are booked for prison transfers, for hospital appointments, to support court docs and court sales and so on. When that does not happen, it is known, so there is daily communication between the prison service and GoAme about the reasons why and so on. Staffing levels, convener, you mentioned about the comparisons with the retail sector. It is fair to say that the prison service is also a competitor in terms of the staff that they employ. We have seen some examples where staff have gone from GoAme to be employed by prison service. In fairness, we have seen it go in another direction as well. There are a number of moving factors with that. It always comes back to the fundamental that they were not paying staff enough to keep them low pay rates by comparison. Generally, it means that people will not stay for the periods that they need. In addition to what the Auditor General has said, there are probably not very attractive roles, given some of the risks and some of the physical demands of the role as well. I will touch on hospital appointments. Paragraph 29 says that 705 hospital appointments were recorded by GOAme's failures. Of those, 561 were cancelled by the escort due to resourcing issues. 86 went ahead late, but we do not seem to know much about the impact on the prisoners or the NHS for these cancellations. Obviously, the NHS has geared up to receiving hundreds of appointments that are suddenly cancelled, presumably at the very last minute. The impact on their efficiency is not insignificant. Are there any plans to assess the overall impact of the delayed and cancelled NHS appointments, both in the health of the prisoners and on the NHS? I am not sure that we know further than what we have stated in the report. Mr Beattie, this is an issue that needs to be tackled for all the reasons that you set out. It is certainly an area that impacts not just on the prisoner but on the efficiency of the contract, the health of the prisoner and on the effective operation of both organisations. You are right to mention fourth value. As we touched on in discussions last week, it will have a particular impact on that health board, given the additional waiting of prison facilities that are within that health board. However, it may be an area that the committee would need to follow up directly with the NHS providers. I think that it probably is. Just to move on from staffing levels. The contract is obviously going to be re-tendered. What are the SPS and the partners, what steps are they taking to ensure that this contract will take into account of all the external factors that are believed to be impacting on the current contract? In other words, that we do not head down the same path again. I realise that hopefully we won't have COVID to create that disruptive factor, but nevertheless, how are they approaching this? As we touched on the report, I will bring Michael in to say a bit more about both the learning and the application of that learning from the current contracts to future arrangements. There is a contract unit within the Scottish Prison Service that is gearing itself up for the next iteration of the contract. I am being mind that we are four years potentially away from that. I think that I am also right in saying 26, my apologies. Colleys, there is also an additional four-year option in terms of the contract. Well, the option will ultimately be for both parties to decide whether or not they wish to extend the contract. That is all set against, as we set out in the report, sustainability issues for the contract. The thinking will need to be worked through fundamentally by the Prison Service and wider justice partners about what is required of the contract, what variation arrangements exist within it, whether it is application of service credits or additional funding, and what the triggers would be for either of those factors. There has to be a balance between the effective performance operation of a contract, value for money, for public spending too, and the safety and security of prisoner transport. Those are the factors that will need to be weighed up. That is our expectation and understanding of what the contract unit within the Prison Service and the partners are now doing. Just to go back on the actual timing of the contract, I believe that it actually ends in January 2027. Tendering is expected to start in 24, which seems an awful long way in advance, but maybe that is how long it takes. Presumably you have seen nothing as yet as to what the approach is going to be. I hope that I can clarify, Mr Beattie, that this would be the early preparatory work to ready the Prison Service for tendering arrangements at the right time that it is appropriate for them to go to market. It is fair to say that a contract of this complexity, and drawing on experiences from when it was tendered last time round, that there was only one bidder is not a place where any public service provider would ideally want to find themselves. You want to have that choice available so that you can do a balanced assessment in terms of price, quality and service provision. Those are the factors that I am quite sure that the Prison Service will be considering as they ready themselves and gear them up for market testing over the course of the next two years. As this goes forward, are you going to be in a position to monitor the contract and the bidding process? I am absolutely delighted to confirm that. That is our plans. Given how central the contract is to the effective operation of the Scottish Prison Service, but the justice system more widely will remain part of our work. What support is the Scottish Government giving in terms of this process? In terms of the contract tendering. Michael Cymru might say a bit more about the role that the Scottish Government is playing in supporting the contract unit within the prison service, but there are expertise within the Scottish Government. Indeed, the procurement department team has appeared before the committee in recent evidence sessions, and they are all available for the prison service to draw on, especially recognising that the prison service is an executive agency of the Scottish Government, so there is a close working relationship between the two. Michael Cymru is available. Are they going to avail themselves of the facility? If Michael doesn't know that, we can come back to you, Mr Beattie, on the precise role that the Government is playing. It is too early to say, because I think that the discussions will be starting around now. I think that we would expect the Scottish Government to be involved. A key aspect of consideration, whether it is part of any re-tending exercise or other options for escorting prisoners, the policies that the Scottish Government makes have a big impact on what prisoner numbers will be. For example, we have longer-term prisoners as a result of no automatic release and so on. That impacts on the support and services that, in this case, GUA may need to provide in terms of hospital appointments, transfers and so on. I would expect the Scottish Government to be around the table at these discussions. The early discussions really need to look at what is the contract hoping to achieve, to be fair, and without getting too ahead of ourselves, it will be radically different to what is currently in place because of the problems that have existed with the current contract. How does that end up in terms of the time for any new contract to commence? We will just have to wait and see, but it is one that will keep an eye on. I will move on to the last couple of questions. In paragraph 37, a reference is made to the greater number of older prisoners that are in the system. Last week's evidence session comment was made on the NHS 4th valley about the ageing prison population and more pressure on NHS as a result of that. What is the impact of a greater number of older prisoners and the level of support that is required? I mean, there seems to be an implication that we should have a care facility within the prisons or whatever, and there are a number of reasons that have been put forward as to why we are having such an older population that are sentencing historic sex abuse cases, all sorts of things. How is this impacting on the NHS and the SPS? You are right, we did touch on this briefly in last week's evidence session, Mr Beattie and the committee may have seen some news coverage over the course of the past few days drawing a comment from Governor Beall, from Glen Oquel prison, which highlights the emerging challenges that the prison service is facing with an ageing prison population for the reasons that you set out as to why there are now many older people in Scotland's prisons, prisons that were not designed to cope with such a much wider range of age profile in prisons. We discussed briefly last week also that the NHS provides healthcare services in a prison setting, but the prison services themselves are responsible for care provision, and many of the older prisoners will require care services. Whether it is personal care and the like, those are now fall on the responsibility of the prison service. I note that Governor Beall's suggestion that the prison estate needs to evolve into a provision of not just secure prisons but also perhaps secure care facilities. As we also set out in the report drawing from our infrastructure briefing of last year, capital budgets are incredibly challenged, so those will be the prioritisation that the prison service, the Government and partners will now need to make about what is the service that the prison service is offering to Scotland's prisoners. What is clear to see today in drawing on the insight that Governor Beall provides is that the current estate is not designed to cope with the changing profile of prisoners? You said that the prison service is responsible for providing the care. It is not presumably the prison officers who presumably cannot be trained or have been trained in that particular area. Do they bring in resources from outside who are qualified to provide that care? I will bring Michael back in. I think that it might be interesting for the committee. Michael and Tommy, as part of their external audit work, went to Glen Oquel prison just to learn a bit more about the challenges and the circumstances that the prison is dealing with. Michael might want to say a bit more. You could see some of the challenges directly. Some of it is just down to the basic daily routines—washing, feeding and clothing—where there are more fundamental things, such as services for palliative care, to support dementia and mobility issues. As Governor Beall mentioned, in some of the Victorian prisons, there are no accessible cells, so that all provides a different dynamic to the care that is provided to prisoners, particularly in that group of the oldest prisoners that are within the system. They are growing in number as a result of longer sentences. You mentioned the historic sex abuse cases, so people entering the prison system later in life. It is a big change in dynamic for what the prison service has to manage and so on. There will be a certain element that I would imagine that prison officers are able to carry out in support, but the prison service has to bring in the specialists to deal with the more complicated issues, if I can phrase it like that. I suppose that what I am trying to do is to understand the impact on the prison officers and the prison services such as providing that care. Is it taking their resources or are they independent resources that are brought in? You seem to be saying only for the more extreme cases, and that the prison service deals with the sort of day-to-day stuff? It is probably a combination of both. A prison like Gleinwogol has healthcare facilities in its estate, so prisoners are going to get medical appointments, dental appointments as part of that. It would be more disruptive where they have to be taken to external healthcare facilities involving a prisoner transfer, as we have already covered and so on. There will be a demand on prison staff to support the transfers and so on, but in terms of the direct care that will be done by professionals that are indeed brought in or the prisoners taken to get that attention. You are talking about prisoners who have dementia. Presumably, at some point, we have just said that it is not even clear to them whether they are in prison or not. Is there a process whereby they are transitioned out into an existing care facility outside the prison service? That is our understanding, Mr Beattie, that prisoners' health conditions will be considered as part of their suitability for the environment that they find themselves in at certain points in their sentence. Beyond that, the detail of how that is applied is probably a matter for the probation service together with Scottish Courts and Tribunal to take a view that perhaps better place to inform the committee's interest in that. I am just trying to understand that there is a sensible look at the realities. Just one final question, which is about the prison estate. The issues that have been reported in the condition of the prison estate, for example, underspins in the capital budget, and savings made from reduced planned maintenance, do you have any particular concerns about that? Do you have any odd given other comments about the estate? I think that we are going to talk a little more about the application of the capital budgets. There will be local factors, Mr Beattie, about the provision of contractors available to service particular aspects of the estate. I think that our conclusions are that the estate is under pressure in terms of both maintenance but also, as Michael mentioned, the reasons for why it is suitability to provide a modern prison service. We reasonably draw on the conclusions of the chief inspector of prisons that 35 per cent of Scotland's prison population is still housed in Victorian or Victorian age prisons. We still have prisoners who are sharing cells and that the suitability and durability of those environments and the extent to which they are consistent with human rights are concerns that the chief inspector has drawn attention to. Having said that, there is absolutely the case that there has been considerable investment in the prison estate. We have had four new prison facilities over the past 20 years, but there is a way to go and there is still an evolution of requirements given the changing nature of the prison and the longevity of the estate in the round. There is work to be done in this area, Mr Beattie, but Tommy might want to say a bit more about the application of the budget. For the 24-25 budget, we noted that there is additional funding being provided to progress development at HMP Glasgow, the new replacement for HMP Berlin and HMP Highland, which is taking over from HMP Inverness. There is an additional £70 million. The total is now £167 million in capital funding in 24-25 to support that. As the Auditor General highlighted, there has been refurbishment, redevelopment and work on going over the past 20 years, not just with the new facilities that the Auditor General mentioned, but also community facilities to support female prisoners prior to release and also in terms of refurbishing. The fundamental issue is still there, particularly HMP Berlin, which is an ageing prison. It is relied upon by the Scottish Prison Service for surge capacity. When there are fluctuations in the prison population in Berlin, it is asked to provide the flex there. Given the age and condition of that building, there is an increased risk to the Scottish Prison Service of failures in how they would manage that in such a case. There is on-going redevelopment work, but it is worth noting that the HMP Glasgow project has been on the major capital project list for a number of years. It is just the case of getting the funding in place for that, which I believe that the prison service is hoping to have this year. Clearly, Berlin is a bit of a priority. Just very simplistically, we are talking about an underspend on the capital budget. That was in 2018-19. Presumably the underspends are not real underspends, because they are just money that has not yet been paid out for on-going contracts and so on. Is it as simple as that? I think that that is a pretty fair assessment that underspends will be consumed as they move forward in tackling the challenges that the estate is presenting. There is not yet enough capital available to tackle all of the requirements that the Scottish Prison Service needs to in terms of its estate, so there are facts about what you are describing as timing differences. It is fair to mention that capital investment is being applied, particularly for the new prison facility in the Highlands, but there is also a significant decision to be made by ministers for the timing, the cost of replacement for HMP, Berlin and Glasgow. Work is progressing on that, so our understanding consideration will also be made by ministers following their assessment of the business case. However, those are the key challenges in terms of the— Is there a time to go for that? I was understanding that, due this year, Mr Beattie, I am not sure that we are able to be any more precise than that. I am sure that the committee did too, read carefully through the director general for the Scottish Exchequer's submission to the committee in terms of the major capital projects update, and I think that what we can hope to see is that there is a position laid out when the Government publishes its next medium-term financial strategy and the accompanying infrastructure investment programme, which I think is due in May of this year. If not, the precise detail of that stage will hopefully be over the course of 2024. Just one last question. Previously, references have been made to reducing plan maintenance in order to achieve savings. That is really just pushing a problem into the future. Are you satisfied with the programme of maintenance that is in place for the prison estate? It is probably a level of assurance beyond what I am able to offer the committee this morning that there are clearly challenges in the prison estate in terms of issues that have been highlighted, primarily drawn on the reporting of the chief inspector of prisons that draws attention to unsatisfactory conditions within the prison estate. That is not to say that the money is not being spent properly from what is available. I think that it is both of those things. It might be well being spent appropriately, but just that the budget is not enough to tackle all the requirements within the estate. Our audit work is not drawing attention to capital spending being made inappropriately, but it is not yet tackling what needs to be a transformative approach that addresses the fact that 35 per cent of Scotland's prisoners are still residing in Victorian-era accommodation. Reference to savings that are being achieved by reducing maintenance are slightly historic in that they are several years ago. Is that still the case now? You can have any sort of budget, but if you are going to be creating savings out of that by cutting the maintenance... I will bring Tommy in. Tommy has looked a bit more detail-less during the course of the audit, but in overall terms, the financial position of the prison service is challenged. It has had additional financial support in terms of the £24 million, £25 million revenue budget and additional capital provided, but in terms of some more detail, I will pass to Tommy. Of time, you have had about three last questions. I am going to have to ask if we can move on and invite Graham to put some questions. Thanks very much, convener. Mr B.T. has moped up rather a lot there in that session, including some questions around Barlinnie and the replacement of Barlinnie. You have said all those to general, but we are expecting a business case sometime this year for HMP Glasgow. We will get a business case, but then the funding has to be approved. How long do you think it will be before we actually see a new prison? It is probably unhelpful for me to speculate, Mr Simpson, on when that will happen. What we have seen and what we have set out in paragraph 55 is that the consideration of a replacement for HMP Barlinnie has been on-going now for over 10 years from the first iteration of its inclusion in the infrastructure investment plan in 2011, and then again our most recent plan in 2015. We do not know when that new prison will open. We also do not know what its final cost will be. As plans exist at the moment, it is reasonable to say that costs will be more than they were when the last figures were attributed to it. Because of known factors, we have seen against many other capital projects in terms of build cost inflation, availability of labour, external factors such as conflict in Ukraine have all led to capital projects costing more. The committee will be familiar with the fact that prioritisation is where the Government is now at. The publication of its next infrastructure investment programme will be key in setting out where HMP Glasgow, in terms of the consideration of the business case, based on existing designs or otherwise, sits alongside the Government's other priorities. We look forward to seeing its publication. If we have the prison service in, we could ask them questions about that. Can I go back to some of the stuff that you said earlier? You were mentioning the mention of pay rates and the differential pay rates between prison officers and people who work for G.O.A.M.I. I was just having a quick look there. The starting salary for a prison officer is £24,700, rising to £28,400 after three years. Do you know what G.O.A.M.I. staff are being paid? If we have the detail of that, I think that it might be helpful to draw the comparison of what the application of the flow-through funding has been in terms of a 17 per cent increase in the early rates. I do not have that information to hand, but we could look to see if we can find that out to make that comparison. I think that that would be useful, because it has come up. We have made the comparison between what G.O.A.M.I. staff are paid and supermarket workers, for example, or prison service staff. I think that it would be useful to know what the difference is. Absolutely fair, as we commit to come back to the committee on that point. It is also relevant, as Mr Beattie touched on our last report on the Scottish Prison Service in 2019, some of the challenges and staffing levels. One of the key features of that report was the application of what is referred to as ex-Gracia payments. I think that that is necessarily a direct comparison, Mr Simpson, that would suggest in terms of the early rate for the staff working for G.O.A.M.I., but also those who are working for the prison service. The committee will recall that one of the aspects of ex-Gracia payments was that just some doubts about its application, the control environment around it and the totality of it. Even allowing for pay rate growth that we have seen over recent years, the Scottish Prison Service paid £6.3 million in ex-Gracia payments during 2022-23, and that jumped by 46 per cent from the previous year. All that echoes the judgments that my predecessor made about the challenges that the prison service was facing in terms of staffing levels are largely still the same. It is also the case that, while there may be movement between prison custody officers into Scottish Prison Service employment, it is not addressing the overall sustainability of the service. I am very happy to do that comparison, Mr Simpson, but there are a range of factors that are driving the sustainability of staffing levels in the prison service. You said that G.O.A.M.I. could resign the contract, is that correct? In any contract, there is the opportunity for the provider to resign from it, but with the potential application of penalties and termination arrangements that will be set out in the contract. In your view, is there a risk that the contract, given the problems that it has had for several years, could fail? I do not think that there is much of a stretch to say that yes, there is a risk in any contract that it could fail on it, especially given the level of challenges and that we are highlighting risks to its sustainability. That is a factor that the prison service is going to have to carefully manage with its partners, in conjunction with the dialogue with the service provider G.O.A.M.I. Yes. Did you speak to G.O.A.M.I. at any point? Yes, we did. We engaged with G.O.A.M.I. through, and Michael can say more about the engagement that we had to reassure the committee when we publish any report if it makes reference to any organisation as part of our processes. We will bring that to their attention through fact checking and an opportunity to engage with them, so Michael can set that out for the G.O.A.M.I. Really nothing more to add to that, but we shared the content of the draft report with them and invited any comments on factual access that we would do with all the reports and the managing director of G.O.A.M.I. to get back in touch with some comments that we considered and reflected in the final draft. So was G.O.A.M.I.'s up position on all this? So I think to be fair to G.O.A.M.I. I think to accept that the performance has been poor. I think they accept that staff numbers haven't been there. It would be very difficult, I think, for them to dispute otherwise. I think they'll maybe have a slightly different view on the circumstances behind or the impact of the changes to the contract as a result of Covid and so on. These are big factors, but as I said earlier, the main one is that G.O.A.M.I. haven't had the staff to service the contract, so I think it's from G.O.A.M.I.'s point of view that they accept the failings, but I think their focus will be more on the changes to the environment as has been a main cause of that. All right. Would you say that the problems really started occurring because of Covid or around about that time or were the problems before that? I think that, in general, that is a fair conclusion to reach. The report touches on, I think, that there were initial teething problems with the contract, which were resolved, whether through service credit application or improvement notices. In general terms, and Michael might wish to elaborate, is that, in overall terms, the contract was performing as intended before the pandemic, but the disruptive nature for the reasons that we have set out to a degree this morning have resulted in the contract not operating as intended and risk to its overall sustainability, Mr Simpson? I certainly agree with that. Some of the earlier teething problems were just around the flexibility that was required with the contract supporting hospital appointments at the same time as transfers to co-op the demands of hospital detainments and bedwatches and so on. I think that those were the initial teething problems that you would probably get at the start of any contract until it beds down, but certainly the impact of Covid. Prison numbers dropped during that time because the court cases did not come through, but now we have seen that increase back up in many cases. As I said earlier, it is a volume-based contract, so the more activity that the GOA may undertake, the more income it can generate from it. In terms of an improvement notice, what does an improvement notice involve? It is effectively a letter that will be sent from the prison service to the GOA may laying out the points or areas of the contract where service is underperformed. There is no real trigger for it other than a view by the prison service that an area has underperformed. The purpose or point of an improvement notice is to encourage a short and sharp recovery in reaction to it. As you see with the first improvement notice that was issued in relation to hospital appointments, they were not designed to address the quite seismic failures that we have seen in terms of service performance. The subsequent ones are still alive, and the improvement notices have not been resolved. One of the issues in subsequent notices is that to address one area, for example hospital appointments, the GOA may staff has been transferred to support that part of the contract and the service drop in other parts. Some of the subsequent improvement notices address the point that improvements are required in certain areas, but it should not be the detriment of the improvement notices that are currently in existence. You get to the point where the improvement notices were not having any real effect, the problems being lack of staff. Okay, so which areas are still outstanding then? So, the first one around hospital appointments has been resolved. The second of the subsequent ones are all still alive. If I just get a paragraph reference at 29, so issues around data accuracy and verification, there was a further one around hospital appointments in December 2022. Police identification parades in February 2023 and the most recent one in June 2023 in relation to supporting court selling and court docs to deliver those ones are, as I understand, are still alive. That is quite a list then. So what happens if these things are not resolved? So it's all part of the same discussion, nothing specifically tied to the improvement notice. Improvement notice, as I said, is designed to address either action to improve it within 14 days or with an action plan over a longer period of time. But, as I said, we didn't see the, we've not seen the quick recovery as a result of the improvement notice, the fundamental, or the problems are more fundamental than that. Mr Simpson, I think the prison service has changed tact in terms of its approach to arriving at a sustainable contract. So, as Michael Stutt says, they could continue to issue improvement notices and service credits, but it's clear that they've reached a view that that approach won't lead to a sustainable contract and better service provision. They're now in the position of applying, as we've talked about, flow through funding. We're going to have to wait another six months or so to see if that is successful. But there are fundamental risks to the sustainability of this contract. So I think that it is a reasonable approach that the prison service is taking that using service credits, improvement notices and additional funding. They'll have to reach a point over time, though, about how sustainable that is. Is it delivering value for money in terms of public expenditure and service performance? And whether they do that for the duration of this contract or there's an intervention, that's the choice that the prison service and their partners will have to make. If they didn't do the alternative in terms of financial support, ultimately, I think that we've seen in other public contracts, there comes a point of intervention that says that the contract is not being provided to the terms and conditions and contract termination arrangements, but that's not without risk. And the question facing the prison service is, well, who's going to step in and is that going to come with additional public expenditure and potentially better performance? These will be the judgments for the prison service. Last question from me. We've got any idea how many court cases have been impacted by the issues with this contract? Michael May have that. With what we've set out, we've certainly referred to prison or transfer issues affecting court appearances, also police identification periods, as well as hospital appointments. We've got some specific examples, again at Paragraph 29, Mr Simpson, about the implication of it being felt across the justice system, an example of a solemn case being interrupted due to the prisoner not arriving on time. Beyond that, if we don't have the precise detail, we can check our records and inquire further with the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service, but Michael may know further. The focus of what we have, particularly around Exhibit 1, looks at the percentage of court arrivals and the performance against that. If we look at the quarter three 2020-23 performance, there have been total movements of just about 18,700 for court arrivals. The performance against that was 61.6 per cent, which is a good 26-27 per cent below the target. Prisoners are not arriving on time. I don't think that we've got the data, but I would imagine that the prison service will have. Did that result in delays to proceedings? If it did result in delays to proceedings, there would have been a service credit penalty applied. However, in some cases, if it is still a delay but it hasn't delayed proceedings, then a points application is applied before it reaches a threshold. I don't believe that we've got any numbers in terms of actual figures, but what I identified was that, as part of the Scottish Courts Recovery programme, there have been changes to that due to issues with the G.O.A.M.E. contracts, for example, with the roll-out of virtual custody hearings. More localised virtual custody hearings had to be delayed because G.O.A.M.E. were unable to service that part of the contract and to support them with that, so we don't have any specific numbers, but we do know that it's having an impact on their ability to get the numbers. Before we leave the subject of improvement notices, in paragraph 29 of the report, you also referred to an improvement notice that was served in May 2022, in which you said that the notice also highlighted significant issues in relation to the accuracy of verified data to assure the Scottish Prison Service that billing information is correct. I have to say that rang a bit of an alarm bell for me and reminded me of instances, admittedly south of the border, where I think CERCO and G4S had responsibility for community payback schemes and were charging the government for prisoners that they claimed they were tagging who were either dead or were back in prison. Is there anything of that sort of order going on here? I don't think that we're drawing that direct analogy, convener, in terms of concerns about the regularity of expenditure, which I think is effectively what you're describing in Scotland. However, it is an important concern that the Prison Service haven't been assured about the provision of the contract. The improvement notice is an important statement therein, but in terms of the scale of the issues in Scotland compared to what was reported in England, we're not seeing that detail. Michael might want to add a bit more. I think just that. It's a very important part of the contract because it obviously drives out what the invoicing will be and what the payments will be. I think that it was about, as I said earlier, the information in relation to verification of data is one of the performance measures that is not subject to monitoring because of its importance. That needs to be accurate. There are still concerns there. As I said, it needs a look at it on a daily basis because of the number of prisoner movements, the support to court services and so on. If things don't happen, it gets noticed. There's a monthly billing arrangement in place and a reconciliation that takes place with that. It's still an issue, but I don't think that it's as fundamental as the issues that you highlight. Okay, thanks. We are quite pressed for time. I'm going to move straight to Willie Coffey. I want to stick for a wee minute on my question on getting prisoners to something on time, whether that be the court, the hospital, their ID parades or whatever. Just to try and find out what the real reason behind it. If a prisoner is due to be at something, whether it's a time clash, it's impossible to get them there and more staff and more money is not going to change that. Has something happened to the timing and change line of all those things that are impacting? Is it post-Covid increase in activity or catching up in the backlog? Is that a factor in this sort of gym? You're right, Mr Coffey. There is a range of factors, but some of them intuitively feel more straightforward to resolve than others. We've touched on that already this morning. That NHS appointments are coinciding with when prisoners—and, primarily, the staff—would be expected to support court attendance. It feels like something that should be able to be resolved. Other elements of it about increased volume are more challenging factors that, in respect of court's backlog, will be playing into it, but you would expect that the prison service and their partners in the NHS on the hospital appointment should be able to find a resolution. I say that from a perspective of not knowing the detail and understanding that there will be complexities and challenges within parts of the public sector. Just looking at the example that Michael referred to a moment or two ago, the volume is stepping up. We're now at court arrivals. Leaving aside performance for one second, you can see the change that the pandemic has had in terms of 2021, 12,500 or 13,000 court arrivals, and that jumps to nearly 19,000 in 2023. Volume is a factor availability of staff, but some of those things are more challenging than others to resolve. I see in the report as well that there may have been a request to the NHS to help with the scheduling. Has that been rejected? Do we know the reasons why? Is it still on going to try to resolve that particular problem? Our understanding is unresolved, so the detail of the factors behind that will be best explained by the Scottish Prison Service and the NHS. Other members were talking about the potential of the contract feeling overall. That might be a factor in that. 62 per cent, 65 per cent, 61 per cent performance rates for key activities within the contract. If that happens, what is the SPA and the Government and everyone else doing by way of contingency to make sure that we can continue the service that we need? That is fundamental. Michael can say a bit more about the scenario planning that is under way that is key, because, although the Prison Service itself can apply improvement notices, service credits and flow through funding, there is no guarantee that those will be successful. They have a contract with Joint Venture in GOAME, but those will be driven by a shareholder expectations and management executive decisions by that company. There is precedent, Mr Coffey, as you will know, where private sector provider can resign from a public sector contract. The obligation then still exists with the Scottish Prison Service and its partners to make this work. As I mentioned earlier on in the session, the roles that are provided by prison custody officers can only be replicated by prison officers or the police. This is the type of scenario planning that they will need to be thinking about to ensure the safe operation of the service in the event of termination by either party, but I will pass the microphone to say a bit more of the detail. Certainly the performance stats that we have highlighted have been a driver for the Prison Service and its partners to look at the contingency arrangements that it may imply, so whether that is to step into the contract to get other providers, whether that is to default or termination. They have concluded at the moment that it is in the best interest for the contract to continue, but for the service to improve. The Auditor General highlights a couple of points. For example, you could have police officers stepping in to provide support for police ID parades. You could have prison officers supporting prison transfers. You do not have any equivalent in the courts to support court docs or court sales. Only prison officers and police officers are trained in controlling restraint measures, so that is something that GOAME provides. You would have an absence sale that needs to be filled. Do you fill it with prison officers? Do you fill it with police officers? Do you try to get another third party provider? Those are all expensive, not in terms of the additional immediate money that is required, but what does that mean for the business-as-usual services provided by Police Scotland and the prison service? Even at the moment, we found out that the prison service is providing up to 20 full-time equivalents per day to substitute for some of those service failures and making some of those transfers, particularly on the higher priority transfers to hospital appointments and so on, but need to happen at a certain time. Just on the general prison population numbers issue, Auditor General, that again members have mentioned several times and you have explained the numbers are going up. To what extent are those increasing numbers due to unpacking the backlog in court appearances and so on, longer sentences being imposed for certain offenses, improving clear-up rates and so on? Are we seeing the unravelling of the Covid impact on those numbers and would you expect at some point to be unleveling off for reducing them? All those factors are relevant, Mr Coffey, in terms of particularly tackling the backlog. As we have explored to a degree this morning already, the approach to historic sexual offences as well as also impacting on prison population, but also the age profile and the complexity of prison population numbers in the round. I will bring Tommy in in a moment. I can say a bit more about the factors behind this, but the management that the Scottish Prison Service is applying to is fairly sophisticated forecasting that is in place within the service to have an idea of the demands upon them. There is no doubt that complexity is not a straight equation between the number of prison places and the projected requirements for them. Given the complexity of managing the particular prisoner types by way of not just the age profile but the need for different types of accommodation and segregation for those convicted of serious major organized crime, they all have to be housed in different environments. Tommy has already mentioned a point about surge capacity. Typically, that is used in HMP Barlinny to support where capacity is required beyond the operational norms, but there are implications for that too, so in terms of rehabilitation, work programmes, educational arrangements and so forth. However, again, Tommy can set that out in a bit more detail. Thank you, Auditor General. Mr Coffey, all the reasons that the Auditor General has mentioned are relevant to the longer sentences, increased links to serious organized crime groups, the rise in historic sexual offences and the Prisoner Control of Release Scotland Act 2015. That ended the automatic early release of long-term prisoners. Previously, that would kick in after two-thirds of their sentences. In essence, that meant those in custody staying there for longer. In terms of the challenges that Auditor General set out, as well, within the report we highlight the operating capacity that the Prisoner State is working to. That is something that they continue to try to establish a true capacity with, because the capacity is not at such a specific number. It is more likely to be a range of numbers, and it will depend on various factors, including the type of prisoner that is being accommodated. Prior to that, Auditor General mentioned the use of double occupants in cells. Before those in custody can be put in that accommodation, there is a detailed risk assessment undertaken, both taken into account of the type of crime, looking at who they could be accommodated with. It goes without saying that, if you have a higher proportion of prisoners that can be occupied in those cells, the true capacity will be higher. If there is a higher risk profile, it will be lower. There are a lot of complicated factors that feed into that. Presum that the SPS is reviewing all of this, Auditor General, especially the capacity issue, if the numbers go up in the way that you describe? Yes, they are, Mr Coffey. That is a key part of their management of prisoners and their estates. One of the points that we are perhaps highlighting is that it is getting harder to do this with the estate that the prison service has. One of the key conclusions from the chief inspector of prisons is that, as the prison population is increasing, the levers that are available to the prison service are reducing. While search capacity is an option available, it reduces the rehabilitation aimed activity, whether it is vocational or educational activity, which, although increasing, is still below Covid levels. As part of our audit, we look at the operational performance of the prison service. Tommy, Michael and colleagues draw attention through their audit to the fact that although the environment is challenging, there are some positive signs of performance. Assaults by prisoners on other prisoners are reducing, as are assaults on members of staff. Those are factors that we referred to in the previous section of the report. The overall status, though, is that the service is under pressure and the prison population is growing. There are challenges in terms of managing the estate and the sustainability of the service. On the flipside of the auditor general, you have not quite touched on it in your report, the efforts by the Government to try to reduce prisoner numbers using effective measures with changes in bail and demand that we know about sentencing and so on. Have you had a chance to assess the impact of that yet? Are we still on this unraveling the backlog issue and we are still at that peak at the moment? Will those measures that the Government has been introducing for a wee while now begin to have that impact that we may hope for to see the numbers being more manageable? There is certainly a timing factor here, Mr Coffey, in terms of the dominant factor that is addressing the court's backlog. As we saw, there was a significant reduction in the prison population during Covid, a presumption against short sentences and so forth. In terms of our own work, it remains a key area of interest. The committee will recall a briefing paper on community justice arrangements in Scotland in the summer of 2021 and it remains a component of our work programme to return to that area in future. We will do that bearing in mind that the challenge is also that the prison service is facing that we set out in today's report and how the totality of the justice system is operating effectively. I am pleased to confirm that that remains part of our interest. I will come in with a point on that. We are still looking at and flowing through, if you look at the longer-term trends and Scottish Prison Service now publish weekly figures detailing the number of people in prison. Over the past 10 years, the number of female women prisoners has reduced by around 100. The number of young people in custody has quite significantly reduced over that time, but the number of adult males continues to increase. In terms of reducing numbers, we are seeing that through the number of women prisoners and the number of young people that are in custody, but not yet in the adult males. I have a couple of questions to finish up this morning. You are right, Auditor General, as always. You gave evidence to the committee back in September 2021 about the briefing that you had prepared on where we had got to with the Government-stated policy of shifting to more community justice options. The evidence that was set before us at that time was that, A, it is hugely less expensive for the state, but also that the reconviction rate was noticeably different to that. For those people who served a sentence of a year or less in prison, 49 per cent of them were likely to reconvict within a year, whereas the comparison for those serving community-based sentences was a reconviction rate of 30 per cent. There was quite a marked contrast in the outcomes there. At that time, you told us that there was a lack of progress around shifting the balance in sentencing. So, two years or more on, where do you see things with that, because that has obviously got a direct effect on the prison population? No doubt, convener, that is the case. You are quite right. The custodial sentencing is far more expensive and, in some circumstances, leads to poorer outcomes. I think that we also talked in that session about the huge disruptive effect that a custodial sentence can have in terms of family relationships, employment opportunities and health prospects into the future. I do not think that we are in a position yet to draw a conclusion yet about the application of the Government's plans around community justice because of the numbers skewed by courts backlog and the intent to move to a more stable position in the future. I think that, as I mentioned to Mr Coffey, it is very clearly part of our area of interest. In terms of the sustainability of the service, the future prospects and value for money, so it is our intention to come back to that. If we do have more detail, convener, actually we can come back to you in writing in the short term, but it remains part of our work programme for the future. Great, I think that that would be helpful because I think that that is a component part of this discussion. The other thing that is not new and you have already alluded to it is that you produced a section 22 report on the Scottish Prison Service back in September 2019 and the predecessor committee to this was so, I think, it is fair to say, concerned about what that report was saying that it undertook its own inquiry and brought in its own witnesses to try to get to the bottom of things. One of the things that came out of that and one of the key findings and conclusions from that report which came out now four years ago, and I have to say when I am reading that, it looks like a lot of those issues are the same issues that we are discussing today. They remain by and large unresolved, but one of them which is contained in the report is this. According to the Auditor General, HMP Barlinny presents, and I quote, the biggest risk of failure in the prison system, but warns that there is no clear contingency plan for accommodating the 1,460 prisoners it then held. Has there been a contingency plan for HMP Barlinny? Tommy McGill will say a bit more about the specifics of the plan, convener, but before addressing that point, a couple of things I might add is that the issues that my predecessor set out in her section 22 report in 2019 are largely the same of the overall issues that the prison service is facing today. My section 22 report focuses on the two specific issues largely of the prison numbers, the prison numbers, the estate and the sustainability of the contract, but the work that Tommy and Michael have carried out as part of their annual audit, which underpins the section 22, there is a high degree of consistency with the findings that the previous auditors made as part of their work. Whether it is staffing numbers, the estate, the application of ex-grassia payments, overall performance, which is at the margin, together with the vulnerabilities that you are referring to in the Victorian estate that the chief inspector of prisons has more recently referred to of the suitability, these are all of the issues that the prison service and their partners need to resolve. It is important to stress that, convener, that the prison service cannot resolve the scale of the challenges that the service is facing. In terms of the specifics of the contingency planning for HMP Barlinny, short of the longer term contingency, which is ultimately to build a new prison in Glasgow, I will see if Tommy has more detail. If not, we may need to engage with the prison service themselves on that point of detail. The Auditor General is going to set out the size and importance of HMP Barlinny to the prison estate, as such that my understanding is that it is very difficult to have detailed contingencies in place. It would require the movement of prisoners to other facilities that presently are not available. That is not to say that the Scottish Prison Service is not doing anything to manage those risks. It is on the risk register. There is action being undertaken constantly to manage that risk, but, in the absence of any new facility, it is going to be a challenge for them. I think that it goes back to Mr Beattie's question earlier. The Scottish Prison Service has had the replacement for HMP Barlinny on their capital plan for a number of years, but it obviously needs approval from the Scottish Government. My understanding is that the Scottish Government currently has the business case and is looking at that at present. I think that the potential stumbling block is that they still need to bottom out the price and the costs of it before they are able to provide approval for the project, but they are hoping to achieve that later this year. The risk of failure of HMP Barlinny needs to be seen in the context of all the work that the Prison Service is doing around trying to reduce the population. Options are looking at that. The Prison Service is doing quite a lot of work around repurposing the estate. Tommy mentioned the different trends between the rise in adult prisoners compared to the decline in female and young offenders. You can repurpose the estate, so you need less facilities for females and young people. Part of the women's regional facility at HMP Edinburgh was repurposed to house male prisoners with the females housed elsewhere. There is the option of extending the use of electronic monitoring, reviewing the operation of the court recovery programme, about the pace of recovery and so on. Those are options that are there, but the fail of HMP Barlinny is looking at more emergency options, so use of alternative accommodation, temporary or emergency release, use of police cells and things like that. Those are at the more extreme case, but not just around HMP Barlinny. The options are considering as part of the escalation in prisoner numbers within an ageing in a challenging estate. One of the particular risks that are attached to Barlinny is the impact because of the conditions on the prisoner's mental and physical health, which, in turn, could lead to litigation linked to human rights and equalities issues. I wonder whether you have made any assessment of that. Is there a risk of a judicial review or some kind of litigation being taken out against the Scottish Government? Those are the facts. My call is to say that, in consideration of the financial assessment that the prison service makes, there is quite a history to that, convener. As you recall, prisoners are claiming that their rights have been breached, and the resultant financial implications are going back all the way to slopping out that was required of prisoners and the financial implications of that. As it relates to the current environment, this is a live risk. It is not as extreme as experience coming back to the 1980s, but it is the chief inspector of prisoners. As I mentioned a few times, I recognise that 35 per cent of Scotland's prison population is in Victorian era accommodation. That brings additional risks to presenting issue of human rights, but it downstreams a financial risk to the Scottish prison service. In normal environments, what we would expect organisations to do is to consider if they are able to do that, if that can be quantified. The proximity of the risk in terms of accounting standards as well, whether that needs to be provided for how it is being managed on a risk register or whether there is a disclosure requirement. Michael can say a bit more about the precision of whether or not the prison service is treating that. It is a big risk. Each individual case would need to be looked at on its own to make any assessment on whether there is a likelihood for a case to be brought in a financial penalty to be applied or a financial impact. However, the risks do not just end with that. One of the key risks that we have looked at is the risk of prison instability and unrest, the reputational risk that comes with it, and the greater strain that applies to prison staff. We have touched on some of that in other aspects this morning. However, it is one of those where they are open to these challenges. The longer that they have these Victorian prisons within the state, the risks are higher. They will not always go away, but they are higher. Just building on what Michael said, moving away from the financial risks and litigation risks, our report talks about the restricted regimes that are in place. What that means is that for those in custody there are employment opportunities within the prison, training opportunities with college courses provided, but they are limited. The more you go above the intended operating capacity, the higher the demand, but the supply does not alter with that. That will also have an impact in terms of prisoners being able to demonstrate core skills to move on to the next stage of their sentence or to demonstrate that they are ready for release. You have used the expression a couple of times in order to general about many of the issues that we have discussed this morning and not ones that can be resolved by the SPS alone. How do you see collaboration working in practice between the SPS and other affected public bodies and the Scottish Government? It has multi-fasted, so we know that there are good working relationships in place. There is multi-agency engagement that takes place between the prison service, the police, courts and tribunals service and others. Perhaps on a different spectrum, so the NHS issue feels like one that was discussed this morning that could be resolved perhaps more easily than some of the others. In terms of the application of sentencing community justice, we have also discussed today that looking at the estate feels that it will be key unless there is a step change in prisoner numbers or sentencing. You are right to reference back to the community justice paper that Scotland at that point still had the highest prison population in Western Europe. If that trend continues, the financial risk, the performance risk, will require investment in the estate, so that will need effective engagement with the Scottish Government and consideration of as-ever capital budgets, revenue budgets and so forth. There is a long-term plan. It is relevant that the auditors drew attention in their audit report that the prison service still has work to do in terms of its medium-term financial strategy. That will require effective collaboration and support with the Scottish Government, because the scale is different from other organisations. All of those factors to the prison service and the partners will need to negotiate and navigate over the course of the next few years. Thank you. We have covered a lot of ground. I think that there is more that we would have even liked to have got to, but times have been against us in doing that. I thank Auditor General Yu for your evidence this morning and also Michael Olyffant, Tommy Ywll, for the contributions that you have made. That has been very valuable in illuminating what is for us quite a serious section 22 report into the current state of the Scottish prison service. With that, I would like to draw the public part of our proceedings this morning to a close and move the committee into private session.