 Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the third meeting of session 6 of the Criminal Justice Committee. There are no apologies that have been received today, and the first agenda item is to agree whether to take items 3 and 4 in private, which is consideration of our approach to pre-budget scrutiny and consideration of today's evidence. Are we all agreed? Thank you. The next agenda item is a round table discussion about the impact of Covid on the justice sector and plans for recovery. We will take evidence today from a round table of witnesses who will be joining us virtually. I am sorry that you cannot join us in person, but this is due to current rules on social distancing. I very much welcome our panel of witnesses this morning. We have Mr Tony Lennon, President of the Scottish Criminal Bar Association of the Faculty of Advocates, Ken Dailing, President of the Law Society of Scotland, Assistant Chief Constable Kenny MacDonald, of the Criminal Justice Division and Chief Superintendent Barry Blair of Criminal Justice Services Division, both of Police Scotland, Mr Eric McQueen, Chief Executive of the Scottish Courts and Tribunal Service, Chief Officer Martin Blunden and Deputy Chief Officer Ross Haggart of the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service, Theresa Medhurst, Interim Chief Executive and Mr Tom Fox, Head of Corporate Affairs of the Scottish Prison Service, Mr James Mayby, Chair of the Justice Standing Committee of Social Work Scotland and Ms Kate Wallace, Chief Executive Officer of Victim Support Scotland. We very much appreciate you taking the time to join us this morning. I thank those witnesses who have provided a written submission and these are now available online. I intend to allow one hour and around 30 minutes for questions and discussions, but we can go on a little longer if needs be so that everyone can have their say. I also just add that we have received an email from the Criminal Justice Voluntary Sector Forum saying that they wished that they had been invited today and also providing us with some additional information on how Covid has affected them. We will arrange to circulate that material to members and I would note that we will have further sessions coming up and so we can see if we can hear from this important body in the future. I now ask members to indicate which witness you are directing your remarks to and then we can open the floor to other witnesses for comments. If witnesses wish to respond, can I ask you to indicate that by typing an R in the chat function on blue jeans and I will bring you in? If time permits, if you are merely agreeing with what the witness is saying, there is no need to intervene to say so. Other comments you make in the chat function will not be visible to committee members or recorded anywhere, so if you want to make a comment, please do so by requesting to speak. The blue jeans platform only shows nine people at any given time, so you may not be able to see yourself on screen. However, the clerks will advise us if anyone loses their connection. We will now move directly to questions. Can I ask members and I have invited guests to keep their questions and comments as succinct as possible? That said, I am keen to encourage a free-flowing discussion. I will kick things off. First of all, I would like to ask our colleagues from the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service a couple of questions in relation to reform within the service. Before I do that, I would very much like to put on record my appreciation of the work that Scottish Fire and Rescue has done throughout the pandemic and before that and beyond. Mr Blundin and Mr Haggart very much appreciate the work that your service has undertaken over the past 18 months or so. I think that it is quite important to acknowledge the well-established role of Scottish Fire and Rescue in local and regional resilience partnership working in responding to emergencies, albeit that everybody would agree that none of us were quite prepared for the Covid pandemic. However, I am sure that such experience came into its own during the period of the pandemic. I noticed that, in your written submission and the chief officer's recent report, you outlined some of the operational and organisational changes that were put in place, such as supporting the Scottish Ambulance Service in some of your work and some flexibility that you introduced around your tactical response as things developed during the period of the pandemic. What I would like to ask about is a little bit about reform. Thinking about the opportunities that Covid presented from a reform perspective, I am interested to hear how Scottish Fire and Rescue might be able to embed some of those practice changes into the organisation going forward. Given that, yesterday, in the programme for government announcement, there was some reference, albeit brief, to modernising the fire and rescue service. I will hand over to you, Mr Blund and Mr Haggart. Morning, chair. Morning, committee. Many thanks for your question and the opportunity to provide evidence this morning. You are right to say that the modernisation of the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service was included in yesterday's announcement on the programme for government. We welcome that inclusion in the programme for government, and we are absolutely committed to doing more for the people of Scotland as a national fire and rescue service, so we really welcome that opportunity. In terms of the lessons learned from the Covid pandemic, we have made a number of changes to our operating practices, and those were very much done to ensure that we could continue to deliver vital services to communities, while at the same time keeping our people safe as they were doing. We have a programme in place, a recovery, reset and renew programme that has led to our senior management board. Some outline details of the areas that that is looking at are contained within our submission. We will absolutely take the opportunity to learn any lessons that we can from the Covid pandemic in the way that we have operated so that we could make enhancements to how we continue to protect the communities of Scotland going forward. I will come back to your written submission, if I may. Within it, you set out a range of what you described as work packages that have been developed and are being progressed as part of your recovery programme. They include things such as your operational strategy, technology, communications and engagement, prevention and partnership. I was just interested in, within those packages, are there areas of work that you would consider to be priorities, thinking about the opportunity to reform and renewal within Scottish Fire and Rescue, that you might look to action in a quicker time and that others might be longer-term pieces of work? Yes, thanks for that. All those areas are key areas that we are focusing on at the moment to our recovery, reset and renewal programme. There are some things that are longer-term pieces of work within that and we have also got a change portfolio of more significant change projects and programmes on going within the service. I would particularly highlight from the work packages that we are developing in quicker time. In terms of the people area, we have just introduced what we are terming our agile working framework, which is very much providing our staff with much more flexibility regarding how they undertake their work, particularly support staff who have been enabled to, for example, work from home during the pandemic. We have the agile working framework that is now in place to give much more flexibility to our staff, particularly support staff who do not need to come into the workplace to undertake their role. We are also very significantly advanced with a new concept for our operations strategy and the way that we have different concepts of operation for different types of activities that we undertake, for example, wildfire, specialist rescue, that operation strategy and the way that we deliver our operations and organise ourselves to deliver those operations. Again, that is quite an advanced piece of work. The other thing that I would particularly highlight is in terms of prevention, protection and partnerships. You mentioned earlier, chair, the work that we do in conjunction with local and regional resilience partnerships and that is really important to us to deliver our roles. We have had to make some quite fundamental changes to how we have delivered our prevention and protection work over the pandemic. Again, those are things that we are absolutely learning all the lessons from so that we can ensure that those services that we provide are done so effectively and efficiently and using any new technologies or new working practices that we have embraced during the pandemic. That is an interesting overview. My final question is really more a practical issue or a practical question around people's behaviour and how, obviously, we were in deep lockdown, very much confined to our homes. I am wondering particularly around the issue of vulnerable people that I know that Scottish Fire and Rescue comes into contact with on a fairly regular basis. You have some very clear and productive partnership arrangements in how you respond to vulnerable people that your staff encounter. I wonder if there was any learning that came from that period of lockdown and the way in which it impacted on people confined in particular, confined in their homes and whether or not there are some learning opportunities for Scottish Fire and Rescue in that regard, and in particular in informing your prevention work going forward? Yes, thanks for that. It would be true to say that our prevention work was impacted by the pandemic in order to keep our firefighters and communities safe. We changed our approach to prevention work and we still visited the most vulnerable from fire because we felt that the risks of not doing that were greater than the risks posed by the pandemic, but we obviously took all control measures necessary when we were doing that. We also worked very closely with local partners who are very often in touch with the most vulnerable people in society. We engaged at what we termed our making the call campaign, which was very much a call to action for communities, family members and friends of the most vulnerable, to look out for their health and wellbeing during the pandemic. We had a whole range of media and social media advertising campaigns so that we could use a whole suite of forums to put safety messages across, which was heard from physical visits where we still felt that that was appropriate with control measures due to the making the call campaign, working with partners to identify the most vulnerable so that the partners could often put across those safety messages and also general safety messages to the public as well. A whole suite of measures were put in place that we deployed, as appropriate, depending on the risk to individuals and to households, very much working with partners in mind over that period. Again, as you say, chair, those are all things that we are reviewing and taking forward the best practice in our normal ways of working going forward. Thank you very much. That is very inspiring to hear that. I am sure that you have a lot of work ahead in terms of reform and modernising across a very wide range of work areas in the service. Thank you very much. That is all my questions. I would now like to move on to our Police Scotland representatives. I know that we have ACC Kenny MacDonald and Chief Superintendent Barry Blair with us. Welcome. Again, I would like to put on record my grateful thanks to your organisation for keeping us safe and for responding to an extraordinary period in our recent times. I know that it was not without its challenges for your service. What I would like to pick up on, if I may, is in the written submission from ASPs. There was some commentary around some of the challenges that you are currently facing relating to recruitment. I know that this is from my own personal professional background. This is a challenge that is not new. I live and work in the north-east of Scotland and, for many years, Grampian Police was competing with the oil and gas sector to recruit personnel and staff, so this is not a new challenge. There seems to be perhaps some indication that we are not entirely clear on what is impacting on recruitment. I am interested in hearing a little bit about your thoughts on what those challenges might be and how we can move forward and redress that recruitment balance. Good morning, members and colleagues. I start by thanking you for your very kind words with regard to the service and what our officers and staff have undertaken during the period of this pandemic, turning particularly to your question on recruitment. I am not sure where asked for that information. We have 140 new recruits starting this month. We have had a focus on rural and remote recruitment, and there are 35 new officers going to the north-east division. I think that what we experienced in the early days of Covid was a real upsurge in members of the public seeking to join. The applications for policing being one of the key public services was something that I think people saw as very attractive, as they saw avenues to help our communities. Our level of applications is returning back to a more normal level, but there are certainly no particular issues with the volume of applications that we have received. Given social distancing, however, we did reduce the intake sizes to ensure that they were safe, introduced lack of flow testing and ensured social distancing. However, recruitment is not a particular challenge at this time, and it is something that we will pick up with our colleagues in the Association of Police Superintendents for Scotland. Thank you very much. That is helpful and reassuring to know. My next question links to recruitment. It is more around training. I know the sort of criticality of some training within the police service, particularly, for example, around recertification for officer safety training. There are other parts of training that can be either adapted or deferred, but I am just interested in a bit of commentary from you about the impact of the pandemic on the training of regime timetable and requirement. I am thinking particularly in relation to COP26 coming up in the not-too-distant future and what, if any, challenges you are facing to make sure that staff and officers are ready to go and have the requisite training in place ahead of that event. I think that in terms of training, due to the nature of physical distancing restrictions, we faced a lot of essential training, as we would consider that. It was postponed. We do have a training backlog. Thankfully, with the easing of some of those restrictions, we have managed to reintroduce the training again, particularly in terms of officer safety training, which is really important to those operating in that frontline response. We also have specialist training, and we have a backlog within driver training. However, the creation of a strategic training and coordination group under Deputy Chief Constable Fiona Taylor prioritised the needs of the service to make sure that all of that essential training that we required to undertake in advance of COP26 is prioritised and achieved. At this time, there are no concerns that we will not meet the training requirements for those specialist officers in the armed policing or public order training to achieve our needs for COP26, but it requires significant coordination and innovation. We have introduced MS teams to more than 14,000 officers and staff. It is about a more virtual-based training facility to be undertaken, as well as the reintroduction of some classroom-based training, albeit with slightly smaller numbers. In terms of training, yes, absolutely, we are tackling the same as many other agencies, but being prioritised and COP26 is absolutely a matter that is to the forefront of our minds. Thank you very much, Mr MacDonald. I want to follow up my final question for you against the King with training. Police Scotland will receive significant mutual aid. I am interested in how the training requirement will be managed given that COP26 will require personnel from a number of different organisations that have no control over their training regime. How can we be sure that the required training will be provided? In terms of training, much of the training for specialist assets is under the National Police Chiefs Council, which is UK-wide standardised training. What is important in terms of our colleagues who are coming to support us from the rest of the UK is the understanding that we operate within a different criminal justice system, and therefore they will get specific briefings on the law within Scotland. They will also be receiving specific briefings on the policing tone and style that is being set by our Gold Commander, Assistant Chiefs Council, Burnley Higgins, to ensure that there is strategic intentions for COP26. The tone and style, which is a very engaging and facilitative one within Scotland, is what we want to achieve. There will be very clear briefings to all officers attending a mutual aid in terms of professional standards, in terms of Scots law and in terms of the cautionality in terms of approach that we will be looking to achieve in the delivery of what is one of the largest scale policing events that the UK has experienced. Those briefings are in place and will be delivered in the coming weeks. Thank you very much, Mr Macdonald. That is all from me and that brings my questions to a close for the moment. I will now hand over to Mr Finlay and then I will bring in Mr Stevenson after that. First of all, I would quite like to ask Mr Blandon or Mr Haggart a question. Obviously, you are dealing with a huge volume or a return to normal almost of fires, but we have also seen in recent weeks a spike or a number of high profile willful fire raisings, which we believe are linked to organised crime. Can you quantify that in any way and have you had any discussions specific to that either internally or with the police or other agencies? Thank you very much for your question, Mr Finlay. In terms of our incident activity, there are some figures provided within our submission and I am more than happy to provide any additional detail on any specific incident types that we are attending numbers to the committee off-table, but there are some overarching figures provided there in terms of comparing last year to quarter one of this year and indeed a return to what we would consider to be more normal levels of operational activity. In terms of specific willful fire raisings, we have a number of preventative initiatives that we have on going with partners locally in terms of willful fire raising. We also work very closely with Police Scotland colleagues to investigate incidents of willful fire raising. We have specialist fire investigation staff that work with Police Scotland and Scottish Police Authority forensic colleagues to report matters of willful fire raising into the relevant procurator fiscal and we work with those colleagues on an on-going basis. Thank you. I was going to ask questions of Police Scotland. I don't know whether it would be C.C. MacDonald or Chief Superintendent Blair. The issue of unanswered 101 calls, we know from the Scottish Police Authority meeting that in June 71,000 calls were abandoned, which represents around 40 per cent of all 101 calls in that month. Given what was admitted to yesterday in relation to the M9 tragedy, which was historic, it seems that the problem of unanswered calls or calls that are not acted upon has not been addressed and perhaps worsened during the Covid pandemic. Is that the case? Why have we still not got a grip of it and what needs to happen in order to fix this problem and give public confidence that calls will be answered? First of all, as the chief constable said yesterday, we want to offer our condolences to both families. I think that the issue of 101 calls in 2015 and where we are now is significantly different. Looking at Covid in particular, that has presented challenges to our contact command and control division in terms of social distancing and in terms of absence, as you would see in many other agencies. What I would highlight is that our emergency response answering, those who die 999, we have maintained that emergency response to an exceptionally high level throughout the pandemic and made sure that anyone who phones for the police in emergency that they are answered and responded to appropriately. For non-emergency calls, that has taken longer. Part of our Covid response is to consider whether the individual calling for service has been in contact with someone with Covid and that is part of our required health and safety considerations before dispatching officers or staff to that location. We have also introduced the contact assessment model, in which we thrive all calls that come into the service, so we consider threat, risk, harm and vulnerability to ensure that the most appropriate response can be provided to that particular incident. Although there have been challenges and those have been clearly articulated at the Scottish Police Authority and the chief constable has spoken publicly around that matter, we continue to improve our service and have an ambitious programme of change that we are continuing to work through regarding modernised contact and engagement. I think that the public can be reassured that in an emergency that the police still answer, we are that emergency service that continues to answer all calls in a very effective time, and we continue to respond appropriately. Just go back on that. Is there not a risk, though, if you put a reliance on emergency calls being answered rightly so that people might give up on 101 and it becomes a bit of a pointless option and they will turn to 999 calls? I think that 101 and we have put out public communications regarding the use of 101. We see that some of the 101 calls that we receive are seeking advice and guidance, and we are directing people to other online opportunities to get that information. Looking specifically at Covid, sometimes we were receiving calls seeking guidance on what the legislation or Scottish Government public health guidelines meant, and those who are available will be well aware in other online forums. We also have increased our use of online reporting, which is another means through which members of the public can contact the service. Indeed, in this modern age, many people actually prefer that as a medium of contact. I think that there is still a strong need for a 101 service and for it to perform at a high level, but the call answering times are improving and we have plans to improve that further. I think that the public should still maintain a confidence in that service. I will move on quickly to Mr Lennon, if he is there. I cannot quite make it out on the screen. In your submission, you talk about the problem of a suspicion that some witnesses and accused people are avoiding turning up in court due to fake text messages purporting to be from, presumably, medical or official sources. Can you expand on that in any way and perhaps tell us what can be done about it, if anything? The direct experience that I had most recently involved somebody from south of the border who presented on the face of it convincing text messages at three trial diets in a row, but was not prepared to have face-to-face testing done, and the eventual conclusion of the Crown was that this was a ruse of some sort. The practical difficulty is that, well, in that case, first of all, what was communicated to me was that Police Scotland, when sent to inquire, were not able to obtain information from English hospitals who simply would not engage with them. There have been any number of cases where witnesses, for example, complain of Covid-like symptoms. That is in the midst of a trial. It is very hard to accommodate the necessary periods of self-isolation within that existing trial. Very often, it has a consequence because we have a jury sitting and we cannot have a jury who idle for 10 days or so. However, it is viewed by some as an easy way out, because if they make the claim of Covid, it is very hard for us as legal professionals and for Scottish courts and tribunals to dig down to the bottom of that claim. It often means that, just from a practical point of view, a trial has to be abandoned. I am not aware at the moment of any prosecutions, for example, of people falsely claiming it, but the experience of my members and my own experience satisfies me that it is used by people as a means of avoiding something that they do not want to happen. It might be that that applies in other aspects of life in Scotland, not just in the courts, but it is an issue here. How could I fix that? I do not know the answer to that. Others might be able to determine how you could have a robustly verifiable system where it is not sufficient for you to be sent to something and then get your pal who has Covid to take the test. I do not know how people do it. However, that is an issue because it had a consequence for trials. A trial in Glasgow High Court last week in which I had a peripheral involvement, which eventually collapsed because, again, of perhaps disputed Covid symptoms on the part of one person and they just became impossible to continue with the jury sitting out in the remote centre. As from day to day, there was just a lot of uncertainty about it, so it might be that in the grand scheme of the difficulties that Scotland faces just now, this is not a big deal. However, I thought that I would bring it to your attention since I was asked to consider the negatives and the positives that have arisen in the current situation. That is very interesting. Thank you. I am conscious of time and I would like to ask questions of everybody, but I cannot do that. Finally, just to Mr Dalling at the Law Society, the thorny issue of legal regulation has been with us for many, many years. Covid appears to have put on ice the recommendations of Esther Robertson that a new, single, clear body should be established in order to deal with legal regulation. Most of you will not have read her review, but page 8 is worth a look. That is the current regulatory framework, which serves no purpose to members of the public. I am just wondering from the Law Society's perspective whether Covid is going to, given all those other massive challenges, get in the way of this long overdue reform to the regulatory system? Good morning, Mr Finlay. Members, I thank you for having the opportunity to engage with you. I offer on an on-going basis the Law Society as a constructive partner in moving forward the agenda of this committee. Without wishing immediately to disagree with you, it is not clear to me that the current regulatory system does not properly serve the people of Scotland. In fact, the representations that the Law Society has made in relation to the Roberton review after the effect that, largely, it was a review, the main conclusion of which had perhaps been formed in the mind of Mr Roberton before the investigation process had begun, and you will note that there is dissenting opinion within certain members of the review team. Can I say also that the review that was commissioned by the Government from Mr Roberton was done on the basis of identified failings in the regulatory process, which was brought to the attention of the Government by the Law Society itself. The Law Society wants to be an effective and proportionate regulator of the profession. The Law Society's position as a representative of the profession is enhanced by a robust regulatory model, and a careful examination of the review report finds it difficult, in my respectful opinion, to identify any particular failings beyond, largely, the systemic and procedural problems that were initially identified by the Law Society in which the Law Society would be keen to have addressed. Covid has meant that various things have had to be prioritised and various things therefore shelved. I understand that the consultation that was to be proposed in relation to the Roberton recommendations is now in prospect for publication and for action. The Law Society welcomes that. Okay, thank you. Ms Stevenson, and then I'll bring in Mr Greene. Okay, thanks, convener. Good morning to each and every one of you. First of all, can I just say thank you to each of the public agencies for all the work that you have done in all the staff, who have absolutely stepped up to the mark and what is unprecedented times. It is absolutely commendable to see this range of work that you have done to keep our community safe here in Scotland. My line of questioning is going to be focused on the prison service. I am going to ask Theresa and Tom about purposeful activity in rehabilitation programmes. It is outlined in your submissions about how that was suspended during Covid. I really just want to find out if you could outline what plans are to roll out the key areas in terms of purposeful activity. Is there any lessons being learned in how we go forward? Is there anything that you have got as well in terms of transformational ideas about how we can do things differently to ensure that the key to that is that the prison service is delivering within the human rights purposeful activity in education and also delivering the programmes for rehabilitation as well? Good morning, Ms Stevenson, the committee and the convener, as well as colleagues. Thank you very much for giving me the opportunity to speak this morning. Thank you for your question around purposeful activity in particular. At the start of the pandemic, the prison service, I am sure that you will understand, recognised the particular vulnerabilities in our prisons and therefore had to take quite insidiable action and made significant change to our operating arrangements in order to comply with Scottish Government guidance and changes to legislation, as well as ensuring that we were keeping everyone in our care safe. That includes our staff and our partner agencies as well. Over the full period of the pandemic, we have developed a route map that reflected Scottish Government guidelines in order to ensure that there was legitimacy around the action that we were taking. That meant that we received very commendable co-operation from those in our care who have been subjected to quite significant restrictions during this time, as I am sure you will understand. We all experience that in communities. It has been, I suppose, even more restricted for those in our prisons. As a consequence of that, at the very start of the pandemic and the very start of lockdown, we had to change the shape of our operating day. That was partly due to the staff profile at that time and partly due to our ability to focus on those things that would be important. So, access to fresh air, access to means to contact family, access to showers, meals, etc. Because we had to reflect the Scottish Government guidance, we focused and concentrated on those activities for people where we had to provide a service. That was the laundry service, industrial cleaning and arcatering services, as well as ensuring that we still had supplies coming into our prisons. We have applied the guidance in relation to social distancing. That has meant cohorting our population into smaller households, and that has demanded greater staff time. What that has also resulted in is closer working relationships. Relationships and prisons have always been positive. If we look at the inspection reports, that is reflected across the board in our prisons. However, during the pandemic, those relationships have become closer and the communication and engagement has been really positive. We have to put down the majority of our activity, including the learning service from Fife College, our prisoner programmes. It was only when we started stepping out of lockdown with the rest of the country that we were able to look at the arrangements that we could put in place in order to reinstate some of those services. I am sure that you will understand that that has limitations because of the restrictions. So, whilst we reinstated prisoner programmes in September of last year, we are restricted in terms of the size of the room, the number of people who can be located in that room in order to be able to ensure that people are kept safe, the same with other activities. So, we have basically stepped through, as Government has stepped through, our route map in order to ensure that activity has been reinstated as and when it has been safe to do so. However, during all this time, I would have to say that our colleagues in Fife College, our psychology teams and our NHS colleagues have provided a lot of materials and support for those in our care to ensure that they had access to learning packs, materials for meditation and self-help, gymnasium activity, if you like, so helping people to understand how they can keep themselves well whilst there were limitations and restrictions on their activities. We are still working through that reinstatement with the next phase being reinstating the longer day. Establishments are working incredibly hard at the moment to ensure that we have sufficient programmes of work for people across a longer day and that we have the staff profile to be able to support that, not just ourselves but for our partner organisations as well. We aim to have that in place over the next few weeks. The other thing that I should make reference to is lessons learned. What has been interesting is that the smaller cohorts of our population have presented people with a feeling of greater safety, and that has been reported back consistently throughout that time period. Certainly, when we are looking to reinstate activities, although we need to be mindful of the public health guidance, we are also factoring in how people have fed back to us what they have felt during that period in terms of feeling safer in those smaller cohorts. With regard to transformational ideas, a couple of areas. There has been the opportunity, and that was accelerated last year through considerable agility of our teams to put in place more access for families of those who are in prison to have contact, because we had to step visits down at the initial start of the pandemic and the lockdown period. We have introduced a variety of means, so we have a voice meal service now, which was introduced where families can leave voice messages on the phone system. We also introduced virtual visits, and that not only has that enabled families to make contact directly into the prison, but it has also enabled those in prison to see family members in their home. That has had some positives and negatives—some people have found that really difficult to deal with—but others have found it positive. For example, being able to see their children on the first day of school in their school uniforms, which would not have been possible previously. It has opened new opportunities and the opportunity for people to be family out with Scotland and certainly in other countries. The final one would be the introduction of mobile phones, which has given another means of contact, not just for people with their families, but there are other numbers that they are able to call for support as well. All of that has enabled us to fully appreciate and realise the opportunities that can be achieved through technology. Certainly, it would be our intention and we are exploring how we can make better use of that technology to support more learning and self-help opportunities, particularly in relation to health. I know that our health colleagues, our NHS colleagues, have found the benefits of using more virtual technology and have significantly supported their ability to continue to deliver services during this difficult time. Can I just come in, Ms Methurst? This is extremely important and very interesting. Just in the spirit of timekeeping, I wonder if we can just keep our answers as concise as possible. I just quickly, obviously in light of the fact that we are time restricted as well, is really just you touched upon staff shortages and the impact that that has had. Has that improved at all? The position of staff shortages, as I'm sure you'll understand, is not a constant because we have had outbreaks in prisons over the course of the full pandemic. At the moment, our absence levels related to Covid are sitting around 3 per cent, which is not necessarily insignificant, but it's certainly not giving us any cause for concern. However, where there are outbreaks in particular sites and there are wider implications, we can and have Lloyd Staff from other establishments to be able to support them and we can continue to do so. Thank you very much. I'll now bring in Mr Greene and then followed by Ms McNeill. Thank you, convener, and good morning to the panel. I've got three separate questions and lines of questions and I'll just throw it out and I would ask that we try and keep our responses as condensed as possible so that we can get through the three topics. The first is on the temporary Covid measures that were introduced by Government, which, of course, we all appreciate and understand were a reaction to the circumstance that we were in and we know how unprecedented that was to use that overused phrase. However, having read the submissions specifically from the Faculty of Advocates and the Law Society of Scotland, you seem to raise specific issues around modifications that you believe should end when the public health emergency ends specifically in relation to virtual hearings and the so-called use of virtual or digital justice. To quote the Faculty of Advocates, digital justice is only justified if we continue to prioritise justice ahead of convenience. You go on to say that the boldness of the plan to double high court trial frequency will expose further the depleted defence resources. I just wondered if I could give you the opportunity to comment on what concerns you have about some of the temporary measures that you think may end up permanent and what you would call on the Government to cease as soon as is practically possible. In return, perhaps, the Scottish Courts and Tribunal Service may wish to respond to any criticisms or concerns that are raised. I direct that first to Mr Lennon and then to Mr Dolling. First of all, I have to doff my bonnet to this SCTS delivery team for putting in place the electronic system. I am not sure if you have any given the chance to look at it, but the fact that such a complicated system works so well is extraordinary. The reality is that the words that are set down in our submissions are heartfelt. Nothing is improved in terms of communication by using screens the way that we are using screens today. There is no doubt that each of us would respond better to the nuances of other people's interventions and arguments if we could all be in the same room and speak to each other and see each other. It really does come down to the fact that, whilst there are conveniences built into the virtual scheme, there is no improvement in communication and there is a measurable reduction in the ability to communicate. Decision makers, whether they be juries or judges or sheriffs or whatever, need the best information in order to take the best decisions. If those who have the information—whether they be witnesses, lawyers or accused people—the ability to communicate is diminished, then the eventual decisions are reduced. I also make the other point. When you come to the High Court, the High Court is a grand structure that strikes fear into the heart of those who are here to do evil. When we reduce it to TV screens—I see myself and I am not the size of a postage stamp on this—you lose the sense of awe-inspiring grandeur that either melts the resolve of the guilty to take him either to trial or stiffens the resolve of those who are scared to tell the truth. We lose all of that. We have a situation now where, if you are in custody for an offence, the preliminary hearings in the High Court—which are substantial hearings—are hearings where you argue about excluding evidence, admitting evidence, whether things are fair or not. The default position is that that takes place not even just with a virtual link, but with no link at all to the prisoner. As prisoners, it is just not simply present. Everything that has happened has reduced the ability of the accused person and the user of the High Court—whether that be a witness, whether that be a complainer or a family or whatever—to have the full value of their involvement in it. The sooner we step back from this, the better from the point of view of justice. Really, my argument is based on the fact that, in the High Court, it has to be about justice first and foremost. All the matters of convenience in shepherding people to court and keeping people from travelling on the road and all that sort of thing—I understand that there are benefits there, but those benefits do not measure up to the benefits of having the most accurate and fair justice, and virtual contact produces all of that. Thank you for that. I think that you have made your point eloquently and that your submission speaks for itself. Mr Dolan, do you have any comment? I know that, for example, you say that now is not the time to fundamentally change the Scottish criminal justice system without robust consultation and research. Are you aligned with the Faculty of Advocates' view on the temporary measures and their permanency? I am indeed, Mr Greene, good morning. Although the convener told us not simply to agree with somebody else, I do agree entirely with what Tony has had to tell you today, I am conscious that, in your discussion with the Cabinet Secretary for Justice a week ago, Ms Clark indicated that, in her view, there were very good reasons for doing things the way we used to do them. Some of those systems perhaps did not take account of the technology that we have, the remote and paneling of jurors. That is a no-brainer. Why have we not been doing that for years? That certainly should stay. The electronic submission of documents is just exactly the same, but I noted in the submissions by the Scottish Police Federation a comment that absolute fairness should not be compromised for convenience. I think that it goes beyond that. Mr Greene, you said last week that you spoke about best evidence in court, and Tony has highlighted how the arena of the criminal court in particular has a very specific and a very beneficial effect on those who find themselves within that arena. Now, I do accept that there is a need to allow witnesses to give evidence in a supported fashion and to allow them to give evidence in a way that they feel comfortable with, but there is a real risk if we go too far in relation to those measures, that the weight of a witness's evidence will be diluted because, as Tony points out, there needs to be that contact between the decision maker and the person who is evidence they have to weigh. There are concerns about maintaining measures for too long. There are certainly benefits that have been learned over the course of the pandemic. There is a fear, perhaps, that changes could be trojan-horsed in. If I can use that term on the back of the Covid pandemic, I am entirely aligned with the Lord President when he says that, just because it is the way we used to do things does not mean that we have got to continue to do them, but we have to value those things that are of value within our system and get back to those to make sure that the absolute fairness of the system is again guaranteed. It is probably only right and fair, convener, that Mr McQueen has offered the opportunity to respond. I think that I asked that in the context of—there clearly are concerns that, whilst there is a drive to address the backlog, that is something that there is a lot of concern about, that we do not do that in a way that dilutes the sanctity, if you like, of putting justice ahead of convenience. Absolutely. First of all, I do not disagree with some of the things that either Tony or Ken were saying. I do not take it as criticism either. This is a debate about what justice is going to look like at a part of time in the future. Absolutely, we should not be doing anything simply for convenience. It has got to be about best evidence and it has got to be about protecting the right to fair trial, and no-one would disagree with that at all. Some of the areas that we have brought in in recent years, I think, to a certain extent demonstrate that. For a long number of years now, we have taken evidence remotely from vulnerable witnesses in a whole range of cases, which has worked very well on something that we want to look to extend. We have brought in evidence by commission, where we have now a full pre-recording and cross-examination recorded live and brought back into court at the moment for children, but we are looking to extend that further to adults. There are already developments that are underway in terms of extending digital access to courts that have been very beneficial, and I think that they will widely recognise that. I think that it would be unfair just to categorise everything as being a step backward. There are some really positive examples of where we are starting to see the benefits. In relation to queues being in court, there is a growing sense that moving back to have a queues, particularly employment hearings and first diets in sovereign business, when the pandemic allows us to, would be a sensible way to go. Equally, having a hybrid-type option where we can allow different people to join hearings in different ways is beneficial, whether that is for the defense or for the prosecution, but particularly looking to extend that to police and expert witnesses. We have some 20,000 policemen a year giving evidence to courts across the country. Is there a model that we could introduce that would allow police to give evidence? We have pivoted that now in about six I court trials, and so far it has been fairly successful. Rather than just putting up barriers to everything, we need to test, look at where the benefits are and look at where the opportunities are, and try to determine what is best for the system going forward. Obviously, there are a range of issues. The electronic submission of documents and electronic signatures has been in regard to the success across the whole system, and that was certainly something that we would like to keep in place and look to expand in the future. We are piloting digital summary trials, fully virtual summary trials in Aberdeen for domestic abuse cases. Again, there will be an evaluation carried out, so we can have proper and full discussion about the merits and where those things have a place of. It is not a case at all that the court is trying to force us through, as some sort of a trojan horse was describing, but it is trying to have a very open discussion about how we can improve the justice system where we take advantages of digital technology, but absolutely making sure that we protect access to justice and rights to a fair trial. One area that was explored during the Covid period was dealing with custody cases by virtual means. We now see that as being an opportunity to move to a model where the vast majority of casteries are dealt with virtually. Rather than moving people around in vans on a daily basis and having them sit in court buildings for eight or ten hours a day waiting on a hearing, could we do that in a fully virtual environment while fully taking account of people's vulnerabilities and where they may have issues that would not allow them to take part in that? I think that we have got to just be open to the opportunities that exist, but at the same time we worry about where there may be concerns about where it does impact on the court justice, but certainly doing it for convenience is not something that we support at all. Thank you for that feedback. Although I refer you to the previous comments that were made about virtual hearings and the lack of communication and the importance of appearing in the High Court itself and the gravity of doing so, I think that all of that must be taken into account on a completely separate issue. I think that discussion around changes to the justice system will rumble on, but can I ask Police Scotland to respond to the submission if you have read it from the... Mr Greene, can I maybe just bring in a supplementary? I am actually just in relation to remote justice and the issues and challenges there. I am quite keen to bring in Ms Wallace from Victim Support Scotland and just give you an opportunity to maybe say a few words from your organisation's perspective just around the rights of victims in the context of remote justice and also perhaps the issues and challenges around court delays, Ms Wallace? Thank you, convener, and thanks, members and other colleagues. I just wanted to come in on that issue around the discussion around remote trials and potentially hybrid models. Tony Lennon described himself the intimidating environment that a court can be in. It is worthwhile remembering that many victim support organisations across the board hear victims and witnesses describing exactly how traumatising that environment is and often will describe the court process as being more traumatising than the actual climate itself. We need to remember that in the context of the provisions that already existed as Mr McQueen laid out for vulnerable witnesses in particular to be able to give evidence remotely, and my organisation and others would be asking for an extension of that. We have seen some really good work coming out of the Covid pandemic around that. There have been some really good opportunities. We have supported victims to give evidence remotely and have been continuing to do that. Many of them are describing how better their evidence is because they have been able to provide that remotely. Obviously, it is not a convenient model, but it requires a lot more resource and a lot more planning. However, if witnesses and victims' mental health and making sure that a justice system in Scotland is not in and of itself traumatising is important to us, we need to hold on to that. When we are talking about a hybrid model, I would like to say that we need to remember about victims and witnesses within that, rather than just going down a route of potentially professional witnesses, police witnesses, for example, giving evidence remotely. We would like to see that extended to other witnesses and perhaps not just vulnerable ones. That was what I wanted to say on that issue. On your question about convener the impact of the pandemic on victims and third sector organisations, we have seen a significant impact on people's mental health. As you know, I have discussed that elsewhere on other roundtables. Our organisation saw a 400 per cent increase at the start of the pandemic on people who were reporting suicidal ideation. The delay in trials is having a massive impact on victims and witnesses' mental health. I was just checking the figures there. Normally, we would see the numbers of figures that we would see about safeguarding incidents that include suicidal ideation. In a month, we are now seeing every single week a standard. In July 2019, we had five incidents of people who were reporting suicidal thoughts. In July 2021, that was up to 20. That was much higher than that on the Conservative side in August. There has been a massive impact on victims and witnesses. There has also been an impact on support services. The normal NHS routes have often not been available, so a lot of third sector organisations have seen themselves having to provide longer-term support and more enhanced support for people who have been really struggling during that period. They are also trying to do that in a safe environment. Many are providing support over the phone rather than face-to-face, and that in itself has been a challenge. As you know, the delays to trials have had a massive impact on us in terms of capacity across the whole of the third sector, because we are supporting people for a longer period, because trials are so much delayed. That is having an impact, and the depth of support that people are needing is a lot more. The big takeaway from me is that involving third sector organisations is equal partners in any planning process that we have and making sure that we are involved early enough so that we can be prepared and gear ourselves up for first support and whatever models we are going to take forward. I hope that answers your question. Thank you very much, Ms Wallace. That was helpful. I hand back to Mr Greene. Have you got some additional questions? That was a very helpful intervention. Thank you, Ms Wallace. I commend the work of Victim Sports Scotland. We have all dealt with case work, where you have been an integral part of supporting constituents. I know that it has been an incredibly difficult time. Those statistics are very worrying about interventions that you have had to deal with. I am sure that we will hear from Mr Mayby about some of that as well, hopefully today. I have a entirely separate question. We had a submission in our papers to today's session from the Scottish Police Federation. I am not going to comment on its content, agree nor disagree, but I would like to give Police Scotland the opportunity to respond. It contains quite, I would say, relatively harsh critique of Police Scotland therein, using a phrase that the internal bureaucracy and turgid decision making meant that Police Scotland was on the back foot during the pandemic. It said that the command and control structure was found to have little or no control, and it finally says that, throughout the pandemic, it feels that police officers felt neglected and unsupported by government and that abandonment should not be underestimated. Do you have any response to those concerns? I do not recognise and would strongly disagree with much of the content of that submission. What I do agree with in that submission is that our officers and our staff have really stepped up during this pandemic to have done so in a balanced and proportionate manner and maintained public trust and confidence. What I also agree with is the issue of the volume of citations that will come with the expansion of the court numbers, which are taking place at the moment. We are working closely with our colleagues in Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service and COPFS to minimise the impact on the withdrawal of officers for court purposes from our communities. I would also highlight that the number of increasing number of people who are going on bail goes back to Wallace's point about the length of time that cases are coming to fruition. We have individuals who are on bail and continue to be within our communities for that longer period. Those are issues that I would concur with, but I certainly do not. We might be lost to Mr MacDonald momentarily. Can you still hear us, Mr MacDonald? I can. Will you be able to hear my comments? We did thank you and I think that your feedback has noted that there is no need for further commentary. I have a question on prisons, but I think that it might be better served as a supplementary to allow other members to come in. Thank you very much, Mr Greene. I am just conscious of time and we are having a very comprehensive session. If members and witnesses are agreeable, we will look to extend the session in order to let everybody speak until around midday. I hope that that will not be inconvenient for witnesses in particular, just so that everybody can get a reasonable time allocation. I remind members and witnesses of possible to keep your questions and answers as succinct as possible. We will move on to Ms McNeill now and then followed by Ms Mackay. Thank you, convener. Good morning. I want to put on record, as my colleagues have, commendation to all the services and organisations so that it has been incredible hard work to get through the crisis. I want to begin with the Faculty of Advocates submission. I find it really helpful in the way that it was set out in identifying what practitioners thought was helpful to keep and what was not helpful to keep, because it is going to be an essential issue for the committee in examining how we go forward. My first question is to Tony Lennon. In the paragraph about the backlog of trials, I identified to talk quite a lot about the role of the defence and the depression of talent and how that might impact on what seems to be a good progress on trying to deal with the backlog of trials. I wonder if you would like to expand on that. Thank you very much. To a certain extent, I tread on the toes of Kent Alling, because a lot of that is to do with solicitors as they make their way up through the ranks. Both play their part in high-core trials, but they also come to the bar in due course. It might very well be that Kent is better placed, but it is something that I have observed. I was in private practice for many years, but I left private practice 17 years ago. I do not have anything recent enough to be of particular benefit to you, except when I observe from my current standpoint. To my mind, there is no question that there is such a low ebb of spirit, such a low ebb in terms of the motivation to come into the career of criminal defence, that it is definitely having an impact. People speak to me about the difficulty that they have retaining staff. A lot of positives flow from the recent extra investment in the Procurator Fiscal Service and Crown Office, but that has an impact in that people who have criminal defence firms cannot now retain staff because they cannot make a financial case for matching the offers that the Crown can make. It is going to come home to Roost in that, if we are going to approximately double the capacity, the throughput of the High Court, to place stresses on a system that has been weakened year on year for certainly the last decade, and it will expose the cracks in it, I have no doubt. There is not a quick fix to that, but, as I say, I really do not want to step on Kent's toes any more than I did in my submissions. We know that it is at our side. It has an impact on us because our membership is drawn almost entirely from experience criminal solicitors, and we notice the things that we set out in the submissions and they are not positive. In that case, could I put that question to Ken Dowling about the role of the defence and the depletion of talent? Thank you very much. The private practice business model has delivered for the people of Scotland, and it has delivered for the Government, since ever I have been a solicitor. It has provided the most efficient way to deliver defence in a legal aid environment, but it is underfunded, and it has been now for more than a generation. It was on the back of that that the immediately preceding Cabinet Secretary for Justice agreed a support package, which included, yes, an increasing fees this year and next year, albeit a modest one, including a further resilience package to help the solicitors who were unable to get through the work because simply the courts were not operating over the initial period of the lockdown. Those supports have been appreciated, but my concern is that it may well be too little, too late. As we said in response to the offer of support from the Cabinet Secretary, it was only a start. At the moment, solicitors in private practice have a court payment rate of £45 an hour, which reduces to £22.50 an hour when they leave the office to drive from their office to a court that is not within their own town. If they are going to a court within their own town, they do not pay anything for travel. The advocacy rate is now £59 an hour. That just does not compare with the levels of charge that can be made on a private basis. Many firms like mine support the legal aid side of our practice because of the fact that we can charge properly, I would say, on a legal aid basis. On a private basis, there is no way that we are going to get parity or anything like that. We accept that. The certainty of payment was always the reason why there was a discount in the legal aid sphere and it did to degree a public service element, but the message has got through now to young solicitors and to those who would be solicitors that there is no money in criminal defence and so they simply do not want to do it. My daughter recently started a traineeship, not a legal aid firm. She knows of no one, either in her LLB year or in her diploma year, who is going into criminal defence. There were some going into the crown and, of course, the much-needed and well-received extra investment in the crown has only further harmed the position of the defence bar because, with that funding, there has been a further departure of young defence solicitors from the defence bar into the crown. When the Government is funding more sheriffs and more prosecutors, the question from the defence side is where are the defenders going to come from, because we are just not seeing people keen to join. Frankly, my fear is that although I have a plea for extra funding, please, my fear is that it may yet be too late because the demographics are just not there. I think that Mr Greene made that point to the cabinet secretary last year. It is old folk like me and Tony, who are doing this job. Tony sees it now from the sidelines. I am seeing it, perhaps, more remotely. It is also worse than that because we are seeing firms who are simply saying, we do not want to do criminal legal aid any more and they want to do something else, whether that involves pulling in their horns. When there are the calls for extra funding, I would urge you please to take them very seriously, indeed, because we have to make sure that all parts of the system are funded to pull together. Our part is currently chronically underfunded in that scene across the board. I want to follow on. I would probably best address to Tony Lennon and perhaps Erin McQueen whether you have any concerns about the extension to time bars to account for the Covid period. I put on record my concerns about that. I appreciate that in the crisis that was necessary, but it has meant significant delays in trials while people under remand figures in Scotland have been commented on internationally, has been unacceptably high. Kate Wallace from Victim Support Scotland, I am sure, would point out that that has an added effect for victims. I wonder whether you had any concerns or not about further extension to the time first of all, Tony Lennon. I am not sure that I could see how Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service could have done a better job in that. It is fair to say that Scotland led the way in solving the crisis of how it continues to have jury trials and social distancing and all the problems that Covid brought. I think that this is an inescapable evil of this particular crisis. I cannot think of a way in the real world of improving on the situation that we currently have. With the bold plan to roll out 20 high courts running each day, that is to be applauded rather than be criticised, because that is a bold undertaking and it will stress every us. Sorry, I just wanted to be clear. I would like to put on record that I appreciate that, up until this point, that is necessary. However, going forward, the extensions may still exist and we may put that into permanent legislation to allow that. The faculty of advocates do not have any concerns about the remand figures or the impact on witnesses, if there is to be a further extension of the time limits. You do not have concerns. No, no. The position that we are in just now has a backlog. What is happening just now is that great steps are being taken to diminish the backlog. That is already in place and moving forward. That will be the secret to reducing the backlog. The backlog means that people have to wait longer for trials, whether they be accused people or otherwise. Sometimes people have a record of offending or the allegation in its whole circumstances such that it is so better that they remain in custody. It is difficult to see how—I cannot propose a situation in which you just stop remanding people in custody where the overall circumstances suggest that they should not be at liberty during this time. Courts aren't approaching it that way, so people who are remandered in custody and it has been decided, both when they first appear before a sheriff and then subsequently when they appear in the High Court, that they need to remain in custody. Those cases are going to take longer and they are going to be in custody for longer. It is not a case that I am happy with that situation, but that is just the reality of the situation, because Scottish Courts Service is doing things as quickly as reasonably could be done. Let's say, for example, that they said, why don't we roll out to 40 High Court trials a day? You don't have anything like the staff and the personnel necessary to have that in place. It just simply wouldn't be possible. Within the realms of what is possible, it seems to me that moving up to 20 trials a day, which is pretty close to double what we were doing before, represents the best way forward and the best way forward will result in trials as soon as they can reasonably be brought. The truth is that you can't do any better than that. I wish it was—like so many things in life, I wish we were closer to perfection, but the reality is that I think that the situation just now, in the practicable sense, is being handled well by Scottish Courts and Tribunal Service and it will be reacted to by members of my profession, members of the Solicitor Advocates profession and the Crown, and we'll just simply cope with it. It simply won't be possible for example to say, let's just have all the trials within the time limits, because we don't have the courtrooms, we don't have the staff, we don't have anything. We lost months and months and months of trials last year and then trials were slower for a bit as we built back up. All of those time delays are—they have taken place and it cannot be fixed, which is simply with the waving of a magic wand. I think that Scottish Courts and Tribunal Service are doing the best they can and I recognise that and so I'm not criticising them for that. I imagine tens of thousands of people who are waiting a lot longer for important surgery and the lights as well. Every aspect of life in Scotland, as far as I can tell, has been impacted adversely by this and all I can say is that Scottish Courts and Tribunal Service seem to me to be trying very hard and boldly to fix that. There have been consequences for all of us and I wish there hadn't been, but I can only fix or acknowledge the fixing of things that are realistic. I just come in, Ms McNeill. Mr Dailing, would you like to make a comment to follow up on that? I would if you don't mind, because it's following up on Ms McNeill's concern last week of the scandal of remand, because this is something that perhaps I can give the committee somebody assurance on, because although it is a responsibility that again falls largely on the defence solicitor, the question of remand and bail is a dynamic process, because just as the crown can apply to someone's grant of bail reconsidered, so too, the defence and far more so over the period of Covid can go back to the court in different scenarios on a change of circumstances to say simply that a remand is no longer proportionate. There is authority from the Lord President in relation to cases that were cited early on in the lockdown in relation to the tests that should be applied, and whilst, yes, it is unfortunate if people are in custody longer than they would otherwise have been required to be, there will come a stage where that remand may no longer be proportionate. In particular, where we're looking again at things like electronically monitor movement restriction condition bail, which we looked at some time ago and rejected, then the question of reducing the remand population and doing so proportionately to the circumstances of the case becomes a reality. So it's not just a single decision to remand and then that period extends and extends and extends, it can be looked at and in appropriate circumstances a prisoner who was remandied can be released. Of course, that brings other tensions. I, too, would commend the work of Victim Support Scotland in relation to their side of things. However, I am conscious that this is a new committee and I was conscious of the use of the word victim in last week's session and the use of the word victim today. I don't want to make your job any more complicated, but can I make this observation that pre-conviction victim can be a very difficult word to use? I know that Mr Finlay has been the victim of crime. I've been the victim of crime. Other members of this committee and the participants are likely to have been the victims of crime, but we have a presumption of innocence which requires the crown to prove both that an offence occurred and that there's been an offender who committed that offence. I would commend to the committee the report of Sir Richard and Nuka as in relation to the failings of Operation Midland. Principally, and the starting point of that report is institutional presumptions that tag on to the idea of victim. I'm making that point, if you don't mind, at this stage, just to ask you to be careful as you embark on some very difficult work. However, please be reassured in relation to Romand that, generally speaking, subject to the question of statutory reconsideration of the test of substantial risk, it is a dynamic process. As Romand terms increase, it's not merely a question of throwing away the key, as it were. For that response, Mr Dallyn, if you followed my lines of questioning through the period, you'll know that I've always been clear that I'm interested in fairness to the accused, which is why I was interested in this question about the role of the defence. I have a few other questions on prisons and police, but given the time, I'll wait to see if there's time at the end if that's helpful. Thank you very much, Ms McNeill. I'll now hand over to Ms Mackay, and then I'll bring in Ms Clark after that. Good morning, everyone. I'd like to ask Kate Wallace, please, if she could comment about the effect of the backlog on victims of domestic abuse. I've had constituents contact me that are extremely stressed about the situation. This is a crime that victims have to live every day, so it's probably quite unique in that sense. Could you give me your thoughts on it, and any preferred route that you would like to go down to try to address it? Thank you, Ms Mackay. Obviously, what we saw during the pandemic was an increase in reports around domestic abuse and a real plea from victims for support, who were trapped in the home often with a perpetrator, which was a really distressing situation. Obviously, what we're also seeing, as I pointed out earlier, was the delays in the backlog, having a huge compounding impact on people in terms of their mental health. I know that the comments have been made about trying to reduce the backlog. There are questions around capacity and resource issues around that, and I'm well aware and supportive of everything that SCTS and others have been doing to reduce that backlog. However, I'm not using the legal term victim, but I'm using it in the term that that's what people prefer to be called. They very much do not like the term complainer, if asked. In the spirit, Mr Dilling, of why I'm using that terminology, it's not meant as a legal phrase, but the delay in the backlog means for victims who are expected to give evidence they have to hold that in their mind all the time. They're really preparing themselves to give evidence. They're exceptionally nervous and worried about the legal proceedings, particularly around going to court, particularly around potentially having to come face-to-face with the accused again. There are some measures that we can put in place around that, but from a victims perspective it's a hugely distressing time. Many people say that they feel they can't move on from it because they've got to keep it up almost in their mind. They don't want to forget anything that's crucial, so they've got all of that going on. The other thing that I wanted to say about the backlog is that that is one problem, and the delay is a problem, but so is some of the issues that Tony Lennon talked about earlier on, which is that uncertainty, adjournments, trial dates, moving, areal—you think you're going to court, you think you're giving your evidence, or you think you're giving it remotely—and then the rug gets pulled out from under you and the trial's not going ahead that day. That has a hugely negative impact on victims and witnesses, too, and it really has a further impact on their mental health. From my point of view, what I would be asking for, as well as the continuing measures around increasing capacity, is to couple that with planning across the systems because it is not working efficiently at the moment. We know that the adjournment level is huge. As I said, Tony Lennon talked earlier on about accused persons and others who are using Covid symptoms as a way of delaying and delaying trials, and certainly we've seen that, too. I want to see real focus defer on—and Mr McQueen and I have had several discussions about that—making the system more efficient, working together, so that we can reduce both the delay but also the uncertainty for victims and witnesses. Thank you. That's very helpful. I just wanted to add that, last session, we did pass groundbreaking legislation for domestic abuse protection orders, which are not enacted yet, as far as I understand, but that will be of comfort in the future to some. I ask Theresa Medhurst, please. It relates back to a question that my colleague Collette Stevenson was asking about contact with families in prison. I was going to ask if there are plans to keep the current methods that have been used during Covid and also to ask families outside—the organisation families outside—to have suggested that possible virtual contact could be made for a parent, for instance, teachers' nights and things that they should be involved with their child. Is there any scope—are you planning to widen the scope—of the virtual contact for families? Good morning, Ms McKayan. Thank you very much for your question. You've raised a valid point that there is a potential to broaden out the range of opportunities to have the parent involved with the child, particularly where the child wishes that to be the case, and we are actively pursuing that. Thank you very much for your question. Thank you. That's really encouraging to hear. One final quick question, please, if I may, to Tom Fox. Good morning, Tom. I wonder if I could ask you about the new women's estate that's been built, and if Covid has affected or delayed the construction or implementation of that, if you could comment on that, please. Good morning, yes. Unfortunately, we've had some construction delays, as I would imagine, some of the committee may be well aware, but we're still on target for the three new facilities, the one that's on the site of Cormoran Vale, or part of the site of Cormoran Vale, and the community custody units in Glasgow, and indeed, coming on stream next year, by hopefully by the beginning of the summer. It's an exciting opportunity, as I'm sure you know, and I had the opportunity to discuss it with you at the cross-party working group last year. The facilities are well advanced, and I'm sure we would welcome the committee coming to have a look to see the work that's in progress and to see the range of facilities that are going to be in place, for what we believe will be a really groundbreaking and game changer for helping in-power women in custody back into constructive and positive roles in the community. I'm sure we'd welcome the committee, if they felt that they would like to visit, to come and see for themselves what's in tree. Thank you, thank you very much, that's helpful, thanks, convener. Thank you very much, Mr Mackay. Ms Clark, would you like to ask your questions, and then I'll bring in Mr McGregor, who is joining us online, final members' questions. Thank you, thank you very much. If I could pick up on some of the points that were raised earlier in relation to emergency Covid regulations, because in the programme for government yesterday it was clear that we should expect legislation, both in custody and bail, but also legislation to make some of the emergency Covid practices permanent. Pauli McNeill has already specifically raised the issue of time limits. We've heard very powerfully about the experience of witnesses, but there's been a success with the electronic use of documents and taking more evidence on commission. The suggestion is that that should be extended and perhaps have witness evidence by remote means. We obviously have an adversarial system in Scotland rather than an acquisitorial system, whether that's right or wrong. That is the system that we have. In terms of the detail of what would be acceptable in your opinion and what wouldn't be acceptable, to what extent do you think that those kinds of methods, particularly the hybrid model, should be by agreement of both parties? Or what do you think the detail of the legislation that you think this place would be able to pass and that would seem to you to be reasonable? What would that look like? Could you give us a bit more detail on that? I think that this is going to be quite a big issue going forward. Perhaps if I could ask Tony Lennon and Ken Dallin to come in on that. The detail of what you feel would work. I would say that beyond my submission, the submissions deal with two positive suggestions, one in relation to electronic signatures. It seems as if that won't meet any opposition. The question of remote balancing of jurors is the same, but that's not a huge step in itself. I salute the value of increasing the scope for commission evidence, capturing the evidence early on from vulnerable people. That seems to me to have taken a step forward during the lockdown. There's very much an emphasis on that. It used to just speak for children, but it's now broader than that. Whether that requires any further legislation or not, I'm not sure. I think that it's simply increasing the estate within the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service to allow more of that. The question that was raised earlier on by Erin McQueen about moving police and expert witnesses remote in giving their evidence is that there's a working group in relation to that, which I'm presently on. The view is that where witnesses are identified as being suitable for that, let's move forward with that, but it shouldn't be the case that we move towards all police witnesses giving evidence remotely, because very often police witnesses have evidence that is a critical focus of dispute, and that needs them in the courtroom, I think. Our membership is content if we move towards removing people from the courtroom where both parties, or more than both, if it's a multiple-acuse case, are content that that witness doesn't need to be in the courtroom. Then convenience does favour having them removed, and does favour having them remote and virtual. Beyond that, I don't want to raise the subject of Lady Dorian's report, because I know that we've only got a few minutes left. Within that, I had a very constructive meeting, along with the vice dean of faculty, with Sandy Brinley of Rate Crisis, to identify common ground. It might be that we can join heads and put forward some sort of proposals to you where there is common ground between the defence bar generally and rate crisis to improve the experience of all who are involved in courts, but also the efficiency of that. I would be content if you would welcome some sort of submission from ourselves and Rate Crisis to identify what we think is common ground coming out of Lady Dorian's report. There are still big issues. The notion of juridist trials for serious crimes is an emotive subject, and I'm entrenched, I'm afraid, in my opposition to that. The things that I've identified in my submissions at the moment would be the things that are straightforward and should be brought in. Ken Dallan, would you agree with that that it should be by agreement with us agreement, so there will be some police witnesses where the evidence is relatively uncontroversial, and it could be agreed, but other key witnesses, whereas Tony said that the evidence is critical, it's controversial. Would it be right for that evidence to be taken remotely where the accused and their representatives didn't agree, or do you feel that there would need to be agreement to that for the right to fair trial? I'm conscious of the extent to which I agree with Tony Lennon, or you'll just not invite me back, you'll just have him. The position is that some procedural matters can be dealt with remotely very, very efficiently. They don't need to engage the accused. Sometimes you have to engage the accused, and you can't get anywhere. You can't make any progress. The comment that was made by Eric in relation to virtual cesteries—I'm a relative convert to virtual cesteries—virtual cesteries are being piloted in Falkirk for the Stirling Falkirk in Alloa areas that are about to be rolled out with other testing courts within Tayside Central and Fife. The plan, ultimately, as I understand it, is to use virtual cesteries otherwise. They seem to, funnally enough, be well received by the accused who are appearing. They're not having to be bussed around that kind of thing works. As long as the solicitor can engage appropriately with their client, can engage with the prosecutor, can engage with the court, then I actually see no real difficulty for that subject to the need on the orication to press the red button and say, no, this person has to come to court, possibly to be seen by a community psychiatric nurse or possibly for some other communication issue. A summary trial, a criminal summary trial, no matter that it's perhaps in the current environment been waiting to call for perhaps a year or 18 months, and be over within an hour and an hour and a half, it can be a very efficient way of disclosing and allowing a decision maker, a sheriff usually, to get to the bottom of a criminal allegation. The minute you start to make that remote, the minute you start to involve technology, you have a control environment which can break down at so many turns and basically you're using a central body to try and control lots of individuals. And as we've heard and as we realise it's a people process, it only takes one part of that to go wrong. So I think you have to be careful that just because you have the technology you shouldn't necessarily use it, there's a summary trial project to be decided upon to be assessed in relation to Aberdeen. It's not been favourably received, I have to say, by the Aberdeen bar. No doubt they'll make their observations known. They may, like I have been, be a convert to the use of that type of technology. I very much doubt it. I think, lastly, to answer your question in particular Ms Clark, yes, agreement is far better to proceed by agreement rather than to impose. There's always the possibility that someone will be unreasonable in their opposition and in such circumstances decisions have to be made. But as you said last week, there were very good reasons for doing the things we used to do them and a lot of it we did incredibly well, especially by comparison with our very near neighbour south of the border. Okay, that's helpful. I've got one final question to the fire and rescue service. There was a doubling of fire fatalities last year, and Ms Clark, there's not a problem at all. There's not a problem at all. I can raise another time. Thank you very much. I can follow that up if you don't mind. Apologies for that. Can I just ask, just to follow up from your questions, Ms Clark? Mr Lennon, you mentioned some contact that you've had with Reap Crisis Scotland. That sounded very interesting. I think that on behalf of the committee, we would be very interested to hear a little bit more about that, perhaps down the line, as that contact progresses, if that would be possible. Okay, thank you very much. I'd like to just bring in, conscious of time, our final committee member, Mr McGregor. Would you like to pick up your questions? I know that you're linking with us online. Yes, thanks, convener. I'm not sure if I'm on you. Sorry, I think I am. I would like to direct my questions around the criminal justice social work area and to James, and I know that you've been waiting patiently for James to come in. I just wanted to say before that, first of all, thanks to all the other witnesses as well. I think that there's been a lot of ground covered in the other areas. I think that I believe that we might have lost the representatives from the fire service online, but I want to make a very quick comment, as opposed to a question, just to say thank you for the work that they've done locally. In terms of a very local issue relating to my constituency, the Copridge Fire Station, where they responded to a terrible blaze at a nearby Weedy's Res Jump, it was very big news locally and the service that they provided was second to none, just like all our emergency services. I would just like to have that on the record, since they've been here today. Moving on to my questions for James, I should probably declare an interest to refer members to my register of interests as a criminal justice register social worker with the SSC. My first question is very general, if you could outline the impact of the pandemic and the recovery period, if you like, on criminal justice social work services and around what sort of impact has the pandemic had on your services? Thank you, Mr McGregor. I welcome the opportunity to provide evidence to the committee on behalf of Social Work Scotland. The initial impact of the pandemic was profound because we went into lockdown and a number of services had to stop. For example, the delivery of physical unpaid work had to stop at a immediate effect. We had to cease to deliver in group work programmes and interventions around the Caledonian system, for example domestic abuse, moving forward making changes, sex offender programme. That clearly had a real impact on the work that we do with individuals on community orders and on prison licences. Staff were working from home for contact with individuals either by telephone or by using some form of video capability capacity, things like WhatsApp, for example, and moving into that sort of online territory. It has been commented upon in terms of the virtual world. I think that that is here to stay. It will be part of our business in the future, but we do need to get back to that face-to-face contact. As we moved through the various stages of Covid and the pandemic, we were able to resume aspects of the work that we do, such as unpaid work, whereas before, where the adviser would take out the five individuals that were reduced because of physical distancing rules and all the other restrictions and the similar impacts on bringing people back into the workplace to deliver interventions and programmes to meet face-to-face with individuals. One of the key challenges for us is what comes next and what is about to happen, because we are now below zero, but local authorities are very much moving at different speeds in terms of their removal of physical distancing, for example. Some are still being very cautious and retaining two metres distancing. That has an impact on how we do our work in offices and in unpaid work, but the key challenge is what is coming through the courts. We are working on the assumption that we will face something like a 30-35 per cent increase in our normal business. To put that into some sort of context and figures, we would get something like 16,000 to 17,000 community paper quarters per year before the pandemic. If you add 30-35 per cent on to that, that is a significant increase in business over and above the normal business that we would expect to get through the courts. That will be hugely challenging, because we are not yet the other side of the pandemic, and court business will start to ramp up their address, their backlog this month and over the coming months. Just as social work is putting a lot of time and effort into planning for that, that is around recruiting staff, using the money that we received through the Covid consequentials, which was £12.8 million across Scotland for local authority justice social work, and another £2.5 million to direct specifically for third sector services. However, there are challenges there. We know that there is a very limited pool of justice social workers out there who have all their relevant skills and qualifications to do the job. We are often recruiting people who need to get that training. That will take time, and some areas of reporting difficulties in recruiting are something that is not getting people applying because there is that very limited pool to draw upon. There is a lot of competition between local authorities to draw on that very limited pool. There are significant challenges. Justice social work is rising to those challenges. We are being imaginative and creative, for example, by using online methods to deliver modules around mental health, for example, or employability skills. A lot of creative work is going on with the third sector, the wise group street cones, for example. That mix of blended working between staff continuing to work from home and in the office is going to continue long beyond the pandemic. There is a role for that on-going use of the virtual world to have contact with the people that we work with. However, we cannot get away from the fact that many people need to be seen face-to-face and pick up those nuances to understand and work with those individuals. Many of them have significant vulnerabilities in their life. We cannot move away from that, and that has been highlighted by other contributions this morning. Thank you very much, James. That was a very robust response. I want to pick up on one area that you mentioned. You said that we need to get back to the face-to-face work. I wonder whether you can expand on that a bit, because in your answer and also my own understanding is that there is a level of work across social work. Justice social work here, where face-to-face work has continued, if you are able to expand on where face-to-face work has not happened, what areas that would be and how you think that might be resolved moving forward? It is fair to say that, throughout the pandemic, criminal justice social work has continued to provide the range of services that we do. However, the face-to-face contact dropped dramatically because of lockdown and then moving through the various levels of the Scottish Government's route map through the crisis. The focus was very much on the high-risk individuals, those individuals who present risk of harm, where there is imminence around that risk and the impact that that would have on communities, ensuring that we do what we can to help to prevent victims being further traumatised in terms of re-offending. However, we cannot get the numbers of people back into offices even as we speak this morning. Whereas, if you have an office of 12 people with 12 social workers, each seeing individuals on a daily basis has still only got maybe four, five or six people in that office. Therefore, there is real pressure on interview space. Some of that interview space is not really fit for use in terms of the Covid sort of issues, in terms of ventilation, for example. There is still that impact on delivering group work. Whilst we have moved to deliver individual one-to-one sessions with people, that is very resource intensive. If you are running groups for up to eight people and then you are having to do that on a one-to-one basis, it is obvious that the impact is on resources. All those things are having a real tangible impact. Colleagues are working really hard to get back to where we were, but that is going to take some time. There is an impact on the workforce as well. That is mixed. Some areas would say that their staff have retained a resilience and good morale. Others are reporting staff who are really tired because of the way that they have had to work during the pandemic. I am sure that that is the case across all the organisations that are represented on all this morning. Those things will take time to work through. Absolutely, they will. Thanks very much for that. I think that it was useful for you to put on the record that, in terms of high-risk situations in individuals, that service has continued right through the pandemic-like emergency services that I have spoken about today. My final question is in relation to the announcement in the programme for government yesterday. You will probably be aware, James, that the First Minister announced plans for a new national community justice strategy. That is to invest in community justice services, diversion from prosecution and promoting alternatives to prison. What would be your expectations about that? There will now be a year of discussions around it. What would be your expectations to come out of that and how you think that that can come through any solutions or plans to help your services to recover from the pandemic? I think that my hope would be that. That is reflected in the programme for government yesterday—that real commitment to making that shift from prison to community. We have to invest in community justice in its broad sense, including justice social work. There is a commitment in the programme for government for £500 million over the next several years to invest in the prison estate. We need to see similar investment in the community. By comparison, justice social work is funded to the tune of just over £100 million per year. We need to invest in community justice services, including justice social work, if we really want to buy that high-quality range of service delivery. We need to do other things that there are commitments to fill in some of the gaps. For example, ensure that every local authority is able to deliver a domestic abuse perpetrator programme with the Caledonian system and welcome the commitment to roll that out. We are redesigning other programmes such as Moving Forward Making Changes, but we need to look at what else is out there in terms of interventions. We need to identify what is best practice, what is effective practice and seek to implement those consistently across Scotland, across justice social work services. There are huge opportunities. We have to be bold and imaginative. There are lots of good things that are going on before the pandemic, and we should not forget that. For example, the Aberdeen City Care Inspectorate report on community payback orders, which more or less finished before the pandemic struck and was published in February this year, spoke about the transformative impacts of the work that justice social work is doing in Aberdeen and the delivery of interventions. There is some really good practice out there. We need to build on that, but we need to look at other things that we can do, such as the range of interventions that I have referred to. Thank you very much, Mr MacGregor, and my thanks to Mr Maybe for those responses. I would like to thank all our witnesses this morning. It has been a long but very productive session. I would invite witnesses if you feel that there are outstanding points that you would like to share with the committee. I invite you to submit those to the committee in writing, and we will take that evidence into account. Similarly for members, I am aware that there are some outstanding points that you would have liked to have raised, and we will certainly afford members the opportunity to do that in due course. Again, my thanks to our witnesses. That concludes the public part of this meeting. Our next meeting will be on Wednesday, 15 September, when we will be holding two further round-table evidence sessions on prisons and youth offending. We will now move into a private session for the final items on our agenda.