 F describing the discussion of the debate in the morning. The issue of the debate is that the first item of business is the pre-budget scrutiny of the Scottish Government's forthcoming budget for the 2020 to 2024 issue. I refer members to Papers 1 and 2. I refer members to papers 1 and 2. We will hear this morning from two panels of witnesses. I welcome our first panel to the meeting, Mr Eric McQueen, chief executive of the Scottish courts and tribunal service, and Mr John Loog, interim crown agent with the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service. I warm welcome to you both. We will move straight to questions, if we may. I will kick off with a very general opening question. Perhaps I will come to you first, Mr McQueen and then Mr Loog. Before we get into more detailed questioning around the specific implications of the indicative flat cash settlement, I am interested in your initial reaction to the Scottish Government's proposal that there may be a flat cash resource settlement for the next few financial years. I will come to you first, Mr McQueen. The flat cash settlement, from my point, is not really a viable position in terms of how we operate the courts, we have serious concerns. It is not just about efficiencies, which have been a big part of our business over the past number of years, but, by going down to the flat cash route, that would cut into our core service delivery, and it would seriously jeopardise where we want to go in terms of reform. During the pandemic, the funding from the Scottish Government has been first class, so we have been incredibly well supported through loss of income of about £15 million, digital investment of about £10 million and Covid planning of about £5 million. We have had a good level of funding again this year, which has helped us through some of the challenges of pay, particularly with the cost of living, and increased funding just to help us to put a pay deal in place. Up until now, the funding has been very, very positive, and particularly the funding that is in place for the recovery programme, the overall package, of £50 million, which is included within the resource spending review for future years, which again is something that gives us some comfort. The fundamental issue is that, where we are going with the cost of living and inflation, we see potential gaps of about £30 million over the four-year period, and that £30 million would be nigh on impossible to realise without its impact on core service delivery. It is primarily because of the inflation impact, where we would see an annual inflation increase of about £3 million, part of that inflation on services, but also the increased energy cost, but particularly around about the expectation on future pay settlements. I hope that we have tried to set out in the submission as the areas where we think it would most impact, but also trying to say that there are real opportunities for how we could actually provide a more effective service with the continued investment. Some of the ideas that are round about the forum, particularly in relation to Wavy Dorn's review of sexual offences, the work that has now been undertaken in terms of the summary case management pilot, and here at other areas we are looking at round about virtual custodies, the potential of a different way of dealing with domestic abuse cases are all ways that will provide not just a more effective service and hopefully a more efficient service, but actually a better system for complainers, for witnesses and for accused we take part in it. So we are keen to make sure that this is not an opportunity that is lost and set us back. Obviously the court recovery programme has been a major part of our work over the course of the last 18 months and as we reported I think just last week we have taken 10,000 cases of the backlog in the space of the first year of the recovery programme. We now want to extend that programme to the next stage where somebody business now is largely coming back on to track and we expect will be back there by March 24. We want to move and expand the programme now and add further courts into the solemn business, both in the High Court and Sheriff Injury. That will be challenging for the system as a whole, it's not just about capacity, it's very much about people in that staff, judiciary, the legal profession and the Crown John staff, because essentially there will be significant strain. So we are pretty much now pushing to a place where we are at a maximum capacity level, but I think it's something if we go into with our eyes open, if we keep it under regular review, if we listen to the feedback I think we can get through it, and it will make sure that we recover the solemn programme back to a more acceptable level by March 2025 for the High Court and March 2026 for Sheriff Injury. Those areas are within the spending review which is positive, but equally if our core budget is being reduced and it compromises our ability to deliver on that programme. So we are having these discussions today in terms of a spending review that's produced some more four or five months now. At the same time we're having discussions with the Cabinet Secretary for Justice and Scottish Government officials about the type of funding we will require for future years, so in a sense it's almost like two slightly different discussions that are taking place. My hope and expectation is that we don't end up in the flat cash situation, that we do find a way of putting in place an affordable budget that allows us to carry on with recovery and also carry on with the transformation that we all want to see across justice. Thank you very much, Mr McQueen, and I'll just move straight to you, Mr Loog. Thank you, convener. The best way I can answer that question is to recognise how we have come to this point in the physical service, and that starts with a number of years of what was recognised by the Scottish Government as significant underfunding in our budget allocations. Within the last few years that has been addressed, and that has been done by working with the Government to be transparent and share with them detailed evidence about what the challenges were, our commitment to reform, our ability to make savings where we could do so, and the committee will obviously be aware that the consequence of that is that the budget for the physical service increased from just under £110 million a few years ago to this year a budget of £175 million approximately. Our position in terms of considering the RSR is to start from that point to recognise the achievements, the things that we've been able to do with that increased investment, and I'll be happy to talk in more detail about those this morning. To affirm that our ambition is to keep going with that work, because we don't pretend for a moment that the job is done in relation to that increased investment, there are still things that we want to do, there are still things that need to improve, and it's important that we recognise that. And so we need to continue in that direction, and so our position in relation to flat cash and the RSR would be that without the continued investment and the recognition by the Government of the breadth, the detail and the importance of the work that the physical service does, that the progress that has been made in the last few years would be at risk, and we would not be able to fulfil that ambition to keep going. In general terms, the consequences for the system as a whole rather than for the physical services and organisation I think would be that the system would be slower than anyone would like it to be. Our ambition is to keep through reform trying to improve the way in which the system operates, but flat cash undoubtedly would result in the system being slower. It would be a system that would not be as informed about trauma and the impact of trauma as we would like it to be, and it would be a system that would not be able to focus on the victim and provide the services that victims need in the way that we would like to do. So those are the things in very general terms and I'd be very happy to discuss them in any more detail this morning. Thanks very much indeed Mr Loggs. I'm just going to move from straight over to members now, and I'm going to bring in Jamie Greene. A similar vein to what you were discussing, the predicted shortfall in funding for the crime office out to 26-27 places a significant pressure on meeting your key objectives such as the five-year commitment to clear the Covid backlog, delivery of your staff pay parity award and delivery of the work of the Covid deaths investigation team. How difficult will it be to deliver these commitments? It would be very difficult because a number of the things that you've mentioned are things that have been specifically recognised as requiring additional funding. For example, the Scottish Government has provided funding for additional staff to deal from our perspective as the prosecutors with the additional courts required to clear the backlog. That is something that specific funding has been provided for. Specific funding has been provided for the establishment and expansion of our Covid death investigation team. Specific funding has been provided for the three-year pay parity deal that was negotiated with the unions and we are in year two of that so there is another year of that to go. Those are all things that very specific lines of funding were identified for. In the absence of that funding, it becomes very difficult and that is part of the recognition that the Government provided in responding to our business case for each of those items that these things required additional funding. We would like to comment on that as well. I think that what we tried to say in our submission is that if we ended up in a position where we would have a flat cash budget and particularly if that is what was projected over a sort of four-year period then we would have to plan on the basis that we were going to have a funding shortfall of somewhere in the region of £30 million. Quite clearly if that is where you want to be over a four-year period then there are different steps that you might take there rather than just trying to deal with a particular in-year deficit. Our problem is that the vast majority of our funding is actually already pre-committed, so over 70% of our funding is about staff and buildings. Other parts of funding are depending on specific court requirements. So there's very little areas of our funding where we've got flexibility to turn things down or to release further savings. Without starting to eat into the court programme without reducing the court programme has indicated that potentially reducing summary and civil business by up to 25%, cutting back on £3 million that goes into the budget to pay for part-time judiciary and looking at the very unpalable option of reducing staff numbers. These are the very hard things that we would be faced to consider. These are not things that we are planning for at the moment. Our work and assumption is that we will work through the budget considerations with Scottish Government and we will achieve a settlement somehow that is both affordable and sustainable in terms of our business. Those are very difficult issues that we would have to consider. Our primary rationale would be to try to protect as far as we could the most serious cases, so trying to protect the jury business and the sheriff courts and the high court, but we would have to look very seriously at what resources we could then devote to areas such as summary criminal business, civil business, tribunial business and just accept that they would have to be extended delays, which would have a significant impact. I mean, 95% of domestic abuse cases are prosecuted in the sheriff courts. Extending timescales reducing the support that is going to be available would have a significant impact on a large number of complainers and witnesses across the country, so it's not somewhere remotely we would want to go, but being realistic given the fact that we don't have flexibility within the budget, then actually eating in areas of core business are some of the only options that we would have to consider. I'm going to start with the Scottish Courts and Tribunal Service just following on from what you've just said. Reading your evidence paper to us, you go into some detail on some of the scenario planning that you are doing at the moment on flat cash settlement. I wonder if you might elaborate on some of those potential scenarios particularly looking at the reduction in sheriff court sittings by 25%, sounds like quite a lot, reduction in tribunals of 10%, and a closure of potentially three or four court buildings themselves. I'm quite concerned about the effect that that may have on the backlog that we already know is immense. Could you talk me through what the implications of those reductions would mean to the backlog? I'm equally concerned and probably more so concerned if those were things that actually came to reality. What we've had to do is to look at our business in terms of the areas where it would have the least impact, but any least impact is still a significant impact. By reducing the, say for example, the Summary Criminal Court programme by 25%, it would allow us to release staff that we put into there. It would allow us to reduce judiciary, not in terms of permanent judiciary but part-time judiciary we're bringing, somewhere in the region of about £3 million a year. But effectively what that would do is it would extend quite significantly the timescale for cases. We reckon that it would add to the existing trial backlog somewhere in the region of about 4,000 cases per year. We reckon that in a very short period of time, probably over the space of about three years, it would return us to the level of the backlog that we were at the start of the pandemic. So essentially it would be a reversal of all the good work that has gone in over the course of the last two or three years. I say it's not a scenario that we are actively planning for, but it is something that we're setting out as being the options that would need to be considered. Similarly, because our budgets are so tight and constrained, one option might be to look at court buildings. Now we carried out a major review 10 years ago of the court estate and we've got in place what we believe is a court estate that's now fit for purpose for the 21st century. There's no evidence to suggest that we should change from the court estate we have at the moment but if we were truly in a position where we had to find efficiencies in the region of £30 million, then we may have to revisit some of that and change some of the assumptions. We may need to come back to Parliament to ask Parliament's agreement to close court buildings. I say it's not something that's part of our planning, we're not actively working up scenarios, we've not identified courts, but that's the sort of thing we would need to start looking at. The really important thing about all of these things, even if these were going to be taken forward, they are relatively long term. So these are not savings that you could just turn round in the space of a few months and simply realise savings. Going down or restructuring of the court estate or reconfiguration of staff would take a significant time to achieve. Even achieving the £10 million savings or gap that's anticipated in the first year, I've got to say today I'm not sure how we could achieve that within one year. Just to clarify it, so at the moment the expectation is that the backlog of court cases will return to normal levels by what, 2025, 2026? So for somebody criminal business at the moment, our projections are that it will return back to the pre-pandemic levels by March 2024. In some cases, we think that will be a little bit earlier, so that's one area where we have made really good progress. The bulk of the 10,000 cases that have came off the backlog have been largely in relation to somebody business. So at the moment that's heading and we're very comfortable that we will be at that point in March 2024. The solemn business both in the sheriff court and the high court is more challenging. Business levels have been increasing. So in the high court we used to have an average about 85 indictments coming through a month. The expectation is that that will now go up to 100 and I think last month was the first time it hit 100. And in the sheriff's solemn we normally had about 450 indictments per month. That's going to increase to around about 600 and probably for a three year period. So the level of business in the most serious nature of crime is now being reflected within the courts. So our plan now is to move the resources from the summary programme and add that into the solemn programme. So effectively we will be increasing the capacity in the high court by around about 40% from pre-pandemic and in the sheriff court solemn by around about 50%. So really maxing out the capacities available to make sure that within the high court we can return it to a reasonable baseline level by March 2025 and in sheriff and jury cases return it to that baseline in March 2026. That's on the current funding scenario but on a flat cash settlement that would be what, 2026, 2027, 2028? On the flat cash settlement there's two things it would depend on. So one there's a flash cash settlement but also within the resource spending review there's a commitment to continue with the 50 million pound funding for the recovery programme. If that was the case we would still prioritise the resource towards the sheriff and jury in high court to make sure that we maintain that programme as far as possible. The area that would see the biggest impact would be somebody criminal business where what we would see is an escalation in terms of the outstanding trials potentially taking us back to where we were at the start of the pandemic. So we would look to maximise the priorities in the solemn business while taking the risk on the summary business and essentially allowing timescales and trials to gain trees. Pauline McNeill, you'd like to come in and then I'll bring in Russell Finlay. Thank you very much, good morning. Whichever way you look at it is extremely bleak which is what I think you're telling the committee and that's clear in the paper. The closure of three or four courts if it came to still only going to save about four million and even in a realistic, the best scenario if you like, 22 million by 26, 27, shut in quarters is not really going to hit you that far. Absolutely and I think that's the point we're making the submission that there is a limit on how far we can go to deliver these savings. Even by taking some of the very unpalatable measures it would only take us a certain distance. We don't have a set of savings on the table at the moment that we deliver 30 million pound by the end of four years. It would take quite a seismic change in our structure and our estate to try to deliver that. That's why we're trying to look at this through a different lens of where's the real possibilities of what can be achieved. So there's two major things that have come along. One, the Lady Dorian review of sexual offending which could quite dramatically change the way that sexual offences cases are dealt with. But really importantly the work that John's been heavily involved in leading is the somebody case management pilot where fundamentally this is about trying to address the significant churn that exists within the system. So we are still in the position where in the last year there was something in the region about 33,000 guilty pleas in terms of summary cases which resulted in intermediate dynasties being set, trials being set, witnesses being set for only 5,000 trials to proceed. So there's 31,000 cases which have caused an enormous amount of work where eventually the case actually played guilty. So the whole point of the somebody case management pilot is to identify how we can exchange information and disclosure at a very early stage. How we can have active case management and make sure that cases are only being set or trials are only being set for cases that need to be resolved. So there's a tremendous amount of work going on at the moment to actually drive out efficiencies and we need to make sure in terms of budget settlement that we don't end up in a position where we can't take forward some of the things that are going to have real long-term benefit. Now this could quite have enormous savings but on an annual basis there's something in the region of about 400,000 witnesses cited for cases. Very few of those actually end up giving evidence. Only one in 10 police officers cited to give evidence on a summary trial is required to give evidence. So there's an enormous scope here to make real savings and change quite significantly the whole system costs in terms of the way that somebody case management is managed. I say that's why we're keen that we keep a very strong focus on the good things we can do to change and reform the system and try to avoid getting up in a position where it's just simply about budget cutting and doing things which are not in the interests of the system or of the interests and justice like closing courts or like reducing courts it in days or can't stop. That's not where we want to end up. So would it be fair to say based on what you've said that quite often when you make reforms you need to spend money at the beginning in order to save money at the end? Would it be your position that that's something that the Government should consider? I know there's the 50 million for recovery but even at funding the reforms at the beginning even if the savings you could demonstrate that savings could come towards 26-27 would that be fair? Absolutely, that's the whole premise of our approach in discussion with the Government at the moment is that let's try to avoid getting just simply some of that semi-solusional budgets but getting into a position where we're making investment which will make a tangible difference not just for the efficiency of the system but for the benefit of all the participants within the court system and the somebody case manager pie I think is an excellent example of that. I wanted to ask you about you said for example reforms around the Lady Dorian review single judges etc and there's a number of innovations that you've mentioned what can you say to the committee about my concern around that would be that particular proposal was in order to try and reduce the delay and recover as Lord Advocate's position so many women and children are waiting as victims cases of the beherding court so that would allow to make some progress but how is the committee could we judge whether or not the decision to reform such as that wasn't simply being done for financial savings and you can see we're coming from here it's over well innovating the system to make it more efficient I would be deeply concerned if we were making reforms just to save money that wasn't in the interests of justice that's kind of where I would exactly share those exact same concerns and I don't think that's the that's the intention at all the view of sexual offending was not at all to do with financial constraints but it was about changing the whole experience for complainers and victims and raping sexual offends cases and that's been the whole drive behind it I think the by-product if we end up with a system that's more efficient and more effective then there's a benefit in terms of the overall funding situation but that, as you say, shouldn't be a driver the driver is exactly the driver that we did already set out at the start reviews and similarly in terms of the driver here is not about saving money the driver here is about efficiency and effectiveness of the system making sure that we make the best use of resources available to us we limit the number of cases that get set for trial to those that genuinely need a trial to resolve them we limit the impact on sight in a vast amount of civilian and police witnesses who will never be required to give evidence to court so this is, again, the by-product is it may be more effective and it may be cheaper to operate but the fundamental thing is actually about improving the efficiency of the system it's about reducing timescales for cases to be settled and making sure we can use the most expensive resources to deal with the cases that genuinely do need a trial in a much shorter time thing so I'm absolutely on all fours we shouldn't be doing things just simply because it's driving efficiency we should be doing things at improving the system while the by-product is it some more effective and efficient way of operating and I think that some members have some more questions specifically about the Lady Dorian review later on but just on the back of Jamie's earlier question I'm going to bring in Russell Finlay and then I think Fulton MacGregor you'd like to pick up as well supplementary on Pauline McNeill's question but I think it was actually partly covered there but I would still like to ask it then but I can come in OK In the letter from the court services see there's projections around the proposed settlement with a realistic funding gap totaling about 60 million over four years with a pessimistic projection of over 81 million and we know that inflation is running both in Scotland and the EU and the US at around 9-10% hopefully this will not come to pass and will be more like the optimistic projection rather than these two other scenarios just to clarify those are not individual years but that's a cumulative effect yes that's a four year total so the 30 million is the total of the four years yes indeed now given the financial pressures even the most optimistic projection and given the backlog that already exists has there been any discussion between the court service and the Crown about dealing with the summary cases more efficiently in terms of non-court disposals which is a direction of travel on the justice system anyway but specifically in light of the budget pressures has that been talked about and I suppose both of you could answer that certainly it's something that we've put in this a measure that's certainly worthy of looking at so are there more opportunities for diversion initially from even from police so in terms of initial report and other opportunities for the police to divert cases without going through prosecution and in terms of alternative courts are there options in terms of different work orders or fiscal fines that could be considered quite clearly during the pandemic the opportunities for these were much more limited but I think it's certainly something that's fair to consider I think that John can speak from the Crown's perspective I think part of the issue is there has been probably a quite significant reduction in the types of cases at the very lowest level that normally would have attracted these types of disposals there does seem to be a while there's less cases coming through the summary side they do seem to be of a more serious nature and I say that the biggest predominant factor in terms of summary business is domestic abuse John I think it's it's probably more apt for you to answer that one Thank you I think Mr Finlay the way I would answer that question is to provide the committee with reassurance and I think you should have had this from correspondence throughout the course of the pandemic that the change in the emergency legislation which introduced a higher rate of fiscal fine has been used proportionately in a relatively small number of cases and I think the committee receives regular updates in relation to the data that demonstrates the way in which those increased powers have been used by prosecutors I think it would be wrong to imagine that the answer to the backlog is to suddenly transfer cases out of court that should be in court and they're there because it's right that they're in court it would be wrong as prosecutors to start doing different things with those cases just because there is a backlog there are other ways in which you can address the backlog but I think with the exception of the additional powers which Parliament gave to prosecutors in relation to fiscal fines the changes that the committee could see in relation to the use of direct measures by prosecutors are driven primarily by changes in the nature of offending and reporting of cases by the police to procure the fiscal I mean the basis of that answer it sounds like there's not really an active discussion about policies at no point during the pandemic have we as prosecutors sought to put forward a position that the answer to the backlog is to take cases out of court that should be in court and do something else with them and I think the Lord Advocate gave an assurance to the committee this time last year that there is no proposal on the part of prosecutors to take no action in cases as a result of the pandemic that has been dealt with in the way that we judge to be right according to the public interest come back to the focus in some of the cases you've spoken already Mr McQueen about one in ten police officers cited for some of the cases don't give evidence it's a monumental waste of their time it takes them away from communities at a time when police budgets are as we heard last week under extraordinary pressure used the word churn and with tens of thousands of some of the cases where work is done and then a guilty plea is ultimately reached and all that work has not been needed why on earth has there not been a better grip on this until now what can be done is it a question of too many organisations all blaming one another does it blame why with the crown with the judiciary with defence lawyers and why are these figures so appalling and these delays so built into the system what can really be done apart from continually recognising it and talking about it I don't think it's a case of blame I think it's a case of that's how the systems evolved over the years but I think what there is now is a real concerted effort in place that's chaired by Sheriff Principle it now involves the crown, the police SCTS and the legal profession there's now three pilots up and running in Paisley in Hamilton and D where the whole emphasis is about much earlier disclosure about actually trying to case management and drive these cases out at a very early stage the very early results just based on the first few months of the pilot are shown quite a positive income in terms of increased guilty pleas coming through in all of those courts by increased the first month of between 8 and 13 percentage points John sits on the project board for it John I don't know if there's anything else you want to say about some of the early progress we're starting to see Yes, very happy to expand on Eric's answer I think the answer to your question Mr Finlay is that there have been attempts for a number of years in the justice system to deal with the very issues you're talking about this is not something that's been ignored by any means the issues you've described have been properly recognised and action has been taken things that have helped with that in recent years have been better use of digital technology and I'll say a little bit about that in relation to the particular pilot courts in a moment I've been recognised that the pilots which started in September of this year are actually an update and a modification of a reform which started in January of 2020 and you don't need me to explain to you in any detail why that had to come to a sudden stop in February of 2020 but the time during the pandemic was not wasted I became involved in the project and Eric is right to indicate that one of the significant changes this time is that the project is led by the judiciary and I think that's made a very significant difference to this because I think not only does it give the judiciary a role in relation to the shaping of the reforms and how they're to be implemented I think it also going back to Pauline McNeill's question should give the committee confidence that these are not reforms designed to save money I am confident that the judiciary in Scotland would not be interested in reforms to save money they are interested as the law officers are in reforms which make the system work better and these pilots undoubtedly are indicating even after only now two months September and October very very encouraging signs of progress and so for example in relation to the number of police witnesses cited which I think was one of the issues of concern you highlighted Mr Findlay in one of the pilot courts the number of police witnesses that we as prosecutors had to cite to come to give evidence and trial dropped by 50% in one month now my challenge I think to is to imagine that type of benefit scaled up in every court across the country every month of the year this is a pilot a reform which offers I think one of the most significant opportunities for really improving the way in which the courts work in my experience of almost 29 years as a procurator fiscal and I think it's right even though they're not represented today last week I think it's right I think to pay tribute to the role of the police in those reforms because the way in which this reform is being introduced and again I'm going back to a point that Pauline McNeill was making this particular reform is not one that is being driven by increased investment by the Government this is not a reform that requires additional money to be spent this is something about changing the way the courts work and the people within the courts work that's about doing things differently so from the point of view of the fiscal service we have not received any additional funding to make this reform work we are finding ways of reallocating our attention and our people in order to make this happen but Police Scotland have also done the same I'm coming back to the point that I made earlier about digital improvements and one of the reasons why these reforms as time progresses become more powerful is Police Scotland have been able to put in place new ways of working with us as prosecutors and they are giving us key evidence in the case and for a domestic abuse custody case that could for example include the statement of the victim perhaps photographs of any injuries that the victim had suffered of the place where the assault took place any video evidence that the police have secured at an earlier opportunity we are now getting that on the morning of the custody case with the report from the police now those of you who have experience and an understanding of the criminal justice system will know instantly what a difference that makes to have that that's being done digitally that wasn't available in January 2020 it certainly wasn't available before that so it's an interesting example of why I think time has not been wasted but we have been able to take advantage of unexpected developments and interruptions use that time well opportunities that come through better use of digital technology the consequence of that is in September we received just over 300 pieces of digital evidence from the police through a digital secure website now that previously would have been evidence the police would have to have burned on to a disc or on to a pen drive that's 300 pen drives and discs that have to be moved around they have to be brought to us we get them at the time of the report we don't have them for the case calling in court we then have to copy them we have to then hand over to the defence that's all gone in these pilots that potential is hugely significant and becomes an important part of how not only we can improve the system but actually we can demonstrate to you and to the Government and to the public that actually it is still possible at the moment to make real improvements in the way that the courts work and finally going back to the point that Pauline McNeill made about how do you demonstrate how do you as a committee have confidence that it's working I think you can have confidence not only from that early reduction in the number of police officers being cited but more cases being resolved at the beginning that's fewer cases having to be prepared for trial fewer witnesses being cited that's an immediate outcome for weeks of the case starting that has to be better for the victim that has to be better for the accused themselves and the court when they're sentencing the accused to be able to do that at a point that is proximate to the offence having taken place must be a more effective way of dealing with it so all of that is an attempt I think to answer your question that this is not something that's been ignored it's not something that's been left a lot of work has been done I'm sure that we're all looking forward to seeing the statistics around the pilots and seeing how it works out just very quickly coming back to the point that Pauline McNeill raised about the 7000 Covid deaths being subject to investigation that there's a unit that's been set up to deal with that it's not presumably the same as a full FAI for each death is that correct and if so is there any sort of public outcome in relation to these deaths the work of the unit which is still being set up and what I mean by that is it's being expanded the Scottish Government provided additional funding in the current year of about £2 million to allow us to expand it to the point where we feel confident that it will be of the right size to deal with the scale of the increased reporting of deaths that team will as we would with any other death investigation the conclusion of the investigation could result in one of a number of outcomes one of which may be that there is no further investigation required and the role of the team and the investigators is then to communicate that to the nearest relatives of the deceased it may be that there could be a fatal accident inquiry and again there would be communication with the nearest relatives and interested parties in relation to the fatal accident inquiry we will ensure that there is transparency in relation to the work of that team over the coming two years we indicated to the Government that we thought the work of this team would carry into the next financial year 23-24 and the following year the funding has been provided for this year and it remains part of the budget discussions for next year for us to have that discussion with the Government about the need for that work to continue to give you an idea of the scale of the work we are aiming to build a team that will have between 90 and 100 members of staff in it not all of them are lawyers but many of them are and the Lord Advocate has appointed two senior counsel to provide direction to some of the more complex investigations which are being carried out so I think your question about the outcomes being public we will insofar as we can respect obviously the privacy of individuals and families we will be transparent about the work that that team does sure thank you before we move on to other areas of question I wonder if I can just stay with you Mr Loog and just pick up on a point that Mr McQueen made earlier in relation to the bulk of budget being taken up with staff costs and I assume that that is a similar position in the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal and I suppose I am interested in what the kind of options or scenarios might be that you are looking at going forward in terms of budget however difficult they may be and whether there are implications in maintaining staff costs but having to adjust things like perhaps recruitment pay freeze that type of scenario so I am just interested to bring you in on that particular question yes thank you the position is very similar for the Fiscal Service as it is to the Court Service I think the latest figure is that about 76 to 77% of our budget is spent on the staff that we have now I think it's important linking into the point I made at the beginning to recognise that our staffing complement has grown from just under 1,600 of members of staff to I think in April of this year 2,200 members of staff these are full time equivalents that's a very simple demonstration of the consequence of the investment that's required a lot of recruitment effort on our part a lot of training and investment bringing people into the organisation and equipping them the remaining 23 to 24% of our budget is taken up with the costs of providing forensic pathology and toxicology the cost of running our estates there are roughly 5 to 6% each of our budget those are the two largest non-staffing expenditure items and beyond that you are then looking at contractual spend for example in relation to all of the costs that go with running an organisation spread around the entire country plus the costs of operating our operational case work the costs for witnesses and the cost of preparing and investigating cases it will be obvious I think from that that if we find ourselves in a situation where our budget does not allow us to continue operating in the way that we have been for the last two or three years the only control that we have over our costs is to reduce our recruitment and that as a consequence of there being no compulsory redundancies means that you are responding to staff who choose to leave for a number of different reasons and they don't all leave from one place or at one time so you end up with gaps opening up in different places it's a very, very poor way to respond to a change in the shape of your workforce you're not doing it in a planned way in the way that we've been able to plan our increase and so that inability to recruit would be the most significant implication I think of a funding level that doesn't meet the very particular needs that we've discussed so just picking that point up then what would be potentially the impact of that recruitment freeze in what sense do you mean impact? I suppose on service delivery essentially so if the consequence of that is we can't change the work we deal with if we have fewer staff that means fewer staff having to handle the work that previously was dealt with by a larger group of people that has obvious consequences in terms of the speed with which cases can be progressed the speed with which investigations can be carried out frankly it would inhibit us and prevent us probably from doing the sort of things that we would like to be able to do in the next few years around expanding our contact with victims one of the, as an example of that I always spent quite a bit of time this morning talking about the summary case management pilots in the three courts but one of the reforms we have introduced in addition to that is prosecutors in each of those courts are now calling by telephone the victim in every domestic abuse case that calls in court within two weeks of the case calling and that's to build on and supplement the contact that our via staff provide so now in those three courts because and this is an example of us having to in a sense reallocate our resource and front load at this stage but we hope that the benefits will mean that we can do this in many many more cases but prosecutors are now able to have a conversation with the victim in the domestic abuse case at a very early stage of the case introduce themselves, explain what's happening give them an indication of what to expect and sometimes that has turned into an opportunity to gather more evidence and information that's been helpful to the case that's a very clear example of how we think we can continue to improve having fewer staff potentially an increasing workload as it has been for a number of years if that continues I think the committee can well understand that we just will not be able to provide that service in the way that we hope to that's very much ok, I'm going to bring in Rona Mackay now and then I'll bring in Pauline McNeill after Rona thank you, convener good morning can I come first to Mr Loog please it's just a couple of things I want to to ask you first of all good news on the success of the pilots that you were describing and how that's helped a lot etc if I'm understanding what you said correctly you said that a lot of the things that have happened did not require extra funding and were seemed to me like they were operational matters that have been successful so I'm struggling to understand why they would be compromised in that sense that's kind of my first question sorry if it's naive but I just want you to clarify that also in your earlier statement you talked about things still needing to improve and I think you've probably covered that and what you've been saying to my colleague Russell but you did say that one of that would be that your practitioners would not be informed by trauma and again I'm struggling to understand why that would be the case if your current staff have had trauma training and how would that implicate on trauma is that for training or incoming staff is that what you mean so again if you could just clarify that on the first point although the reforms in the summary case management pilots haven't required additional funding from the Government it has required us as an organisation to change the things that people do so for example prosecutors who are taking the initial decisions in a report as to whether or not to prosecute there is now more evidence for them to consider they're not just reading a report which contains a summary from the police they're now having to also read the victim's statement perhaps look at photographs, consider videos now all of that is a good thing to do because that produces a better considered decision by the prosecutor at the beginning and we're all in favour of that but that's extra time and capacity that has to for that work to be done to that cost more but that's not something that we went to the Government and said to redirect resource within the organisation to allow that to be done the consequence of unwinding the benefits and the benefits of the increased investment and that increase in staffing that I talked about is we were able to do that because we had benefited from that increased investment and we had additional staff investigating deaths investigating sexual offences communicating with victims we had extra staff dealing with the recovery courts and because we had that that made it possible for us then to redirect resource my fear would be that if the organisation has to in an uncontrolled way reduce its size because of reduced funding it makes it much more difficult to do now the success of these pilots is so apparent after the first month we will be doing everything we can to make sure that we can continue delivering that success because I think it's obvious to all of us the potential of what could be achieved so I'm not offering up the pilots today as an example of something that would have to stop I'm offering it to you as an example of how despite the difficulties that we are facing and it has correctly in terms of the backlog being described as the professional challenge of our lifetimes I completely agree with that but despite that there still is the potential for reform there still is the potential for investment and training on your second point about trauma I perhaps need to clarify where we are as an organisation a lot of work has been done within the justice system and is still being done a framework is being developed in relation to trauma and how to understand the impact of trauma and how to respond to trauma appropriately we are launching a mandatory training programme for all of our staff that's the first stage in a programme of work which we have planned because going back to the increased investment we have been able to expand our training capacity in the organisation that's one of the things that's benefited from that so we have this programme in relation to trauma but that as you can imagine requires staff to have the time and the capability to themselves become more informed before they can train others to the time to develop the training plus the operational impact of rolling that training out all of that has a cost and I think my general point is that's not a challenge that the fiscal service faces on its own there's a need for the system as a whole to be better trauma informed but it seems to me that as a perfectly legitimate ambition for the system to have it's the sort of thing that becomes much more difficult to do if there is uncontrolled reduction in resource across different parts of the system so I hope I've explained why it makes it more difficult I hope I've also been able to give you a little bit of an understanding where the fiscal service is on that that process is not an immediate thing it's a long term it's a long term I'm no expert on the matter but my understanding is this is going to take some time for everyone in the system to be better informed and to understand how they then respond with the knowledge of trauma in relation to an individual ok, thank you if I could ask Mr McQueen just going back to Pauline McNeill's point about the key reforms and Lady Dorian's review I'm keen just to explore a bit on how that would and why that should be impacted and to ask you do you have a separate budget for those reforms and has it been evaluated and did you receive money to implement those reforms have you already received that and are you now saying you couldn't use that money for that I know it's a very basic question I think it's fair to say that the implementation of Lady Dorian's reforms is still in the fairly early stages Scottish Government are now trying to look at the overall implementation so there is now an implementation group that they had there there are initial meetings over the last few months so what they're trying to do now is to set out the program of change that is now required not all of the change requires legislation so there's some parts of Lady Dorian's reforms which can be taken forward with some operational changes so that's now being looked at the aim then is to look at what aspects require the legislation and bringing that forward before Parliament at that stage they'll be looking at the overall cost and allocating budget that hasn't yet been allocated for the implementation of it so that would be additional funding that would be on top of the budgets that we're already talking about today would that not be a sort of operational priority decision for you to make once you get your lump sum it would be an absolute priority and it's certainly one of our top priorities our funding works in the way that part of our funding comes from Government part of the budget bill we get in terms of resource we get the best part of a 100 million a year comes through as part of our funding we also retain civil income and a certain amount of criminal fines which is about another 46 million a big part of our funding and potentially anywhere in a given year between 20 and perhaps 50 million comes from Government in terms of in-year funding so that's funding to support specific legislative changes to support reforms so on top of the budget there's an on-going discussion with Government about when additional funding is required for further changes so for example we're in discussion with Government at the moment about extending evidence by commission suites across the whole of Scotland so we've got four new centres now where we have suites in place we want to expand that so there's evidence by commission suites available in each of the sheriffdoms so on top of the budget discussions at the moment we are discussing with Government about funding coming through at some stage next year that would allow us to expand that evidence by commission capacity which is a key part of Lady Dorian's review so no budgets have been allocated as yet part of the big change would come when legislation change comes through but we are discussing incremental funding elements come through to take forward the parts that can be achieved without legislation and would it be fair to say and it sounds like you know where you want to go and what you want to do would it be fair to say then that your concerns lie really around the budgetary concerns lie around staff I know that it's an overview staff and inflation are our two major worries so most of the issues in terms of the funding gap are driven by cost of having paying increases for staff and the concerns about inflation and energy costs so these are issues which in recent years have been funded by Government as part of the settlement so in terms of the budget for 2223 we were given an extra £4.2 million by Government which offset the pay cost and offset the inflation cost essentially what we need for the remainder of the period is for that same process to continue where we are probably funded for inflation and on top of that we are probably funded for the reform programmes and the changes that come through such as Lady Dorian's review I'll bring in Pauline McNeill and then I'll bring in Russell Finlay with some more questions Pauline Thank you very much so I think you've answered all the questions in relation to trying to understand the innovations and reforms and obviously some required legislation some of those proposals are controversial and may not see the light of day but anyway that's for another day I'll be honest I'm slightly clutching at straws here when I ask you this question but it's in my mind it seems to me that obvious that if the Government put a bit more money up front now then if some of these changes at least can bring savings or potential staff reduction or no compulsory redundancies is there any modelling being done for example on figures so let's say you said to the Government give us x million in order to front load some change but we can deliver savings in future years is that kind of discussion on going and the reason I'm asking that question is because our job we choose to try and suggest something to the Government is to say we are concerned about this and therefore we would propose we are required to see where then money would come from that's the trick in the question that we have to answer but I just wondered can you provide any modelling around savings in future years? I think we can through time and probably grasp them with the same straws that you were grasping in terms of the question a lot of work that's been done through the criminal justice board that brings the key organisations together in terms of what that future reform programme looks like where the benefits are to the system the rationale between why we want to take those forward I think the stage that we're now trying to get into is understanding properly what the cost benefits are so I think this is the whole point you're talking about in terms of modelling so why would you take forward a certain thing fundamentally you'll take it forward to access the justice and delivery justice but also recognising where are the financial benefits and financial advantages of making investment in one area over another at this particular time so I say that's part of the thinking now that will be taking place within the criminal justice board to help us look at what that long-term investment is going to be needed from Government Thank you I'll bring in Russell Findlay now Thank you very much I've got two separate questions one for each of you and not connected to one another the first one is for the court service now in your letter you referred to the income that's generated in the region of £46.5 million in the current year from civil court business and you may recall that I wrote to you earlier this year about a court press agency which accesses certain information for an annual fee this was a fairly nominal fee of £350 per annum they have been informed that this is rising to £34,000 which is an increase of over 4,000 you're kind enough to reply and you said that this would be looked at as part of a broader review beginning last month and I'm just curious as to whether there's been any progress in that front and whether there's been any sort of sympathy given to how extreme and frankly unworkable such an increase would be I mean I think I can certainly say that the sympathy being given so certainly we don't want to be in the position that we are preventing an access to information simply because of cost so that review is under way and as soon as it's completed we'll come back to you on it great thank you very much and for the current office the rangers malicious prosecution scandal can you tell us how much now the total bill for compensation is at? Yes as of yesterday the stage at which the litigation had reached has now reached the point where the costs have increased to just under £51 million Okay it was reported in the media that it was over 60 million is that incorrect? I I'm advising you of what the cost is how the media choose to portray things I'm afraid I have no control over but the cost Or it may be there's further costs expected or have been agreed to but the money's not going out the door There's always a degree of speculation about such matters and I recognise that but I'm afraid the general position remains as it was explained to you before by the Lord Advocate that you'll understand that it's still on-going litigation and therefore that limits what I'm afraid I can say but as of yesterday the litigation had reached the stage where I'm now publicly able to confirm and one very important point of clarity given the budgetary pressures in the Crown Office the Government's commitment to meet the cost of all compensation is it all compensation or is it only up until this point and the rest of it is up for discussion or is it an open ended? So the position remains as confirmed to you last year by the Lord Advocate that the costs associated with the litigation will not be met from the fiscal service budget and that includes any additional compensation that may arise from the same matters I'm not saying there will be more compensation paid but my understanding is that there are none of the limits that you were describing in terms of that arrangement So therefore it won't impact on Crown budgets in any way? That's correct Okay, thank you Okay, thanks very much I'm now going to bring in Fulton MacGregor Thanks, convener and good morning to the panel thanks very much for your evidence so far I had looked to come in as a supplementary earlier on Lady Dorian's work which of course the committee is very interested in and very supportive of but I think it's been covered and I'm glad actually convener that he didn't bring me in so thanks very much for that I just wanted to clarify that point I've got two broad questions not really related to first I was looking for a wee comment on if you've got any idea what you might see as the impact of the revenue raised through fees in civil court cases if the current inflationary cycle continued beyond 2023 what impact do you think that could have overall could see an increase in civil cases normally when there are financial challenges where things are tightened it can tend to increase litigation I think that's been seen in previous times where there was financial crisis at the moment we're not seeing that because obviously it's still at the very early stages civil business at the moment is it's probably slightly behind where it was at the pre-pandemic level but equally that has been a continuing trend for quite a number of years now it does seem to have bottomed out at a level over the last sort of four or five years yes I think there is the potential depending on where the financial crisis goes and how that drives litigation I guess the question I've got there was something that you mentioned earlier about the service would continue to prioritise the criminal cases in particular the most serious and I think everybody would agree without you having any argument but it does the sort of it does imply that civil stuff might then take more of a backseat if you like for one of a better expression but of course the civil cases are a revenue stream for you as well so that's the stuff that would take the backseat but that's also a revenue in an already constrained budget so has that been thought how that could actually play out? At the moment what we've put at the table is the options that we'd have to consider in detail in terms of what the impact would be how we would take those forward it's quite clear that if we had to restrict some of the capacity we put the civil business then it would elongate some of the time scales the time scales in civil business are pretty good at the moment so it could be that there could be an accepted position where some civil cases might go longer but at the same time it's the the point John was making earlier in relation to civil business that in criminal business we are continuing to drive change in innovation in the way we're doing civil business more and more civil business now is moving online the expectation is that over the course of the next 12 or 18 months all civil actions raised in Scotland will now be able to be raised online we'll be taking paper largely of the system there's new case management process coming in to actually improve the system so we'd actually hope that where we're arriving at a point that a civil business is a system that is modernised that is more efficient that actually taking some of that capacity out in future years might not impact on the same way that it would do in some way criminal business so it is about the modelling we need to do to look at these two things as a whole The other area I wanted to ask about is something that I've asked the other witnesses who have had on previous panels and that's about how I suppose it's the play between the whole justice sector obviously we're going to be hearing from the prison service a wee bit later another key player in that but when you're taking into account budget decisions and ideas do you take into account some of the stuff that you might have heard from the police and the fire service for example last week you might hear later from the prison service if they're all getting affected how does that impact on your side? I think in all honesty that's the probably the biggest beneficial change that I think we've seen from the pandemic particularly about the interaction about the collaboration about the openness so the criminal justice board formed in the very early stage of the pandemic that brings together the key the key organisations and we continually now almost on a fortnight basis share the challenges we're being faced share the impact of reform and innovation look at it from different perspectives and fully take into account the impact of different organisations on things that we're driving forward I mean just a really simple example of a result of that we've now put in place a process in the High Court where police and expert witnesses can give their evidence remotely now there's no significant benefit obviously there's a significant benefit to police and expert witnesses so hearing from the police about their pressures their constraints on managing of our time the impact on it on we've been able to put in place quite a straightforward solution which has immediately benefited the police so that's a very low level example but I think it's a good example of the way we are sharing listening and reflecting on what we can achieve but equally I would extend that to the legal profession I think in the past relationship with the legal profession probably wasn't the best to be quite honest I think during the pandemic that has changed quite significantly so the types of things that we have discussed in here are the same discussions now that we have with the faculty and the law society about the impact of the pandemic about the reform about how we try to take things forward it's been key in terms of the discussions about where we go with the recovery programme future really whisting to the concerns of the faculty and the law society about the available of council and solicitors about the impact it has on them I think if anything that whole collaboration has really improved dramatically over the last two or three years and something we absolutely want to hang on to for the future just as a comment on that you referred to it as a low level change but I think it's the same I think it's a really good one because I even remember back to my own days seven years ago when I was working down at Haymouth courts and police officers were often there the whole day and they would actually say to you that this is the third time in a month that I've been doing this so I think that's a really good one that started now in the High Court and we want to expand that next year into the Sheriff's Court because the impact of the police although it's a low level change for last the impact of the police is enormous I'm going to come back to Jamie Greene for the purpose of our evidence session pre-budget scrutiny I'd like to refer our witnesses to the papers and evidence given on their forecasting and modelling I'm going to start with the crown In your evidence you state that the budget resources needed to deliver justice tackle case backlogs investigate Covid deaths and maintain pay parity which I'll come on to in a second are as follows I estimate to accumulate £766 million required to perform those duties a flat cash settlement would deliver £680 million that's a shortfall of £87 million you then state that that would affect your ability to meet your statutory obligations what are your statutory obligations and what will an £87 million shortfall actually look like in terms of your ability to deliver services I think what you're doing there is providing a cumulative figure across the years I'm quoting in the numbers you gave us back so year 1 you'd require 190 million year 2, 195, 192, 190 and so on so that's obviously way above what is on offer on the flat cash settlement I'm just being very clear that the figure you're quoting ended up a number of years and that's just so that I understand what it is that you're saying our statutory obligations are to investigate deaths and to investigate and prosecute criminal offences and what I've tried to do this morning is to give an illustration of the ways in which that would be impacted by the flat cash funding looking at the table then the way you've presented it is that a flat cash settlement of £170 million per year for four years over on top of that you then detail the cost of different functions the first one for example being the Covid death investigation team which is on top of the 170 so is it safe to assume that if the Government when it comes to budget time actually presents you more than 170 I guess my question is in between that 170 and 190 those of you be able to deliver in which those of you not be able to deliver refer to page 19 so you will understand that obviously the discussions with the Government about next year's budget are still to take place and the difficulty I have in answering your question precisely I think is that without knowing if the figure I think what you're asking is if the figure is between 170 and 180 for next year for example which choices would we make that would really depend on the figure and the issues at this stage we set them out in that way because we thought it was helpful for you to understand the basis in which we will be approaching it with the Government which is to say as I indicated earlier we want there to be complete transparency not just with the Government but with the committee about the costs that we anticipate next year now we've set it out in this way over a number of years not to be able to add it up and arrive at another figure but to demonstrate that some of those costs are applied for certain rates of time not necessarily on going permanent costs and that's why for example the cost of the Covid death investigations is shown as two years within that the items listed there we can't choose for example not to investigate the Covid deaths so we're not in a position of saying to you or to the Government well if we don't get the funding there are things here that can't be done it's about the consequences of having to do those within the flat cash settlement alongside everything else that I talked about this morning those things become more challenging in the sense of more work for fewer people things will take longer the extent to which we can support victims and witnesses will suffer so I hope that answers the question it's not a it's not a list of things which we would choose to select from it's a list of our best view at this stage of the modelling of where we think the costs will arise and the choices will have to be made and we'd be happy to share that with you as a committee at the time that's interesting in confirmation because if for example you say that certain costs will have to be met then presumably they would be deducted from any £170 million cash settlement so for example because you have to deliver an obligation on Covid deaths then that £4.5 million would come out of the £170 million you'd have £165 left if for example the Government gave you £175 take away the Covid investigation costs you'd still be back to £170 again that's what I'm getting to I think I understand what the point you're making and that's a perfectly acceptable way of viewing those figures that if we have to do the Covid death investigation work and we do have to do it but we have to do it with £170 million then that has an impact but we're not going to choose not to do the work because we receive the flat cash settlement of £170 I'd like to move on to the final service last year in your submission in terms of budget requirements you made a request for £145.7 million the final budget delivered was £133.5 so that was a £12 million shortfall in what was requested can I ask if that had any effect on the work that you did last year as we look back so we get a feel for what that might look like moving forward if you see a similar shortfall I think as I explained earlier part of our funding comes in different ways so part of it comes through the budget settlement in terms of the budget bill then there is subsequent in-year funding which then comes through so the vast majority of that gap that was made up was achieved through the in-year funding so there are some things which can't be agreed at the time of the budget bill and that funding discussion carries on throughout the year so there's two opportunities at the autumn budget revision and the spring budget revision where we can return to government to explain why those demands are still in place and make sure we secure the appropriate funding for them so I say our core funding from government in terms of resource is £100 million for this year and we have additional funding of somewhere around about £40 million which is coming in through the in-year budget revisions and just to clarify your projections again I have modelled three scenarios that my colleague Russell Finlay highlighted that some of this are realistic, optimistic and pessimistic I think initially I get the impression that you had modelled on a realistic outcome but the commentary in your submission tends to lean more to a pessimistic outcome where do you sit on that scale at the moment because either way whether it's realistic, optimistic or pessimistic each one of them still has a funding gap the way things are looking at the moment the pessimistic is probably the best possible we don't think that either the optimistic or realistic are possible this modelling was done at the time that the resource spending view was published since then we've had the explosion of the cost of living crisis and we all know the direction that relations can't be heading in at the moment so this is probably the best case scenario as we see it at the moment but obviously that will be very dependent on where the economy goes over the next couple of years in terms of what that impact is going to be but certainly our modelling projections now are based on the pessimistic scenario Okay, that doesn't sound very positive I want to ask you briefly about one other issue and that's maintenance using your capital budget because obviously we've talked a lot about the large chunk of people's budgets being on resource and pay and indeed future pay increases which is a whole other ballgame we haven't discussed yet and the complications around the effect that has on your budgets but capital budgets are also important can you talk me through for example you say that no increase in your core capital funding would for example run the risk of safety related incidents when you could elaborate on that and also make it virtually impossible to meet your carbon reduction ambitions as well could you elaborate on those? Our fixed capital budget from government at the moment is currently £8 million a year in recent years again through end-year funding that's been increased to a minimum of £15 million and we see that really as being almost the minimal level that we can operate on so discussions are going on at the moment our capital budget provides mainly for our estate side but also for our digital investment which has been enormous particularly over the course of the last couple of years has completely changed our whole digital infrastructure on the backlog maintenance we try to invest somewhere around about £5 million a year to deal with backlog maintenance every organisation has backlog maintenance at one stage we had £40 million that we are currently just now the right side of £30 million so our backlog maintenance has come down quite significantly and again that's been through the end-year funding that's allowed us to get into that position so at the moment we're in a reasonably good position where our backlog maintenance is manageable the level we're able to invest in each year is sufficient there is a risk that if we had to make real cutbacks and we eat further into that budget then what we find is the backlog maintenance starts to increase at the moment I say it's in a manageable position we've never had any significant issues there's never been any building failures but quite clearly it's something if you don't provide a level investment then very quickly it can turn the other way and we certainly don't want to end up in the position we were 8-9 years ago where we had backlog maintenance at 40-50 million so we see that as being an absolute priority to continue to invest in in terms of carbon emissions we've made incredible progress over about the last 10 years so between 2010 and 2020 our carbon emissions reduced by half that was about installation of solar panels in a large amount of our courts looking at the insulation replacing boilers, changing controls so we've had a good level investment that's got us to a really good place that's been more challenging over the pandemic period so all our air conditions have been running 100% fresh air continuously so it's really impacted our energy uses so our level of reductions we've dropped in slightly we want to get back on track we've got a number of courts at the moment where we are now configuring those courts with new levels of insulation new controls, new boilers to really test the theory as far as possible is how could we move those courts to a net zero type environment that will come with a sizable sum I would imagine of investment that's needed over the next 10 or 20 years but what we're trying to set out is what would be the sensible second stones of what would be the sensible level investment our current budget would not allow us to make that investment and that's not a criticism yet of government because we've not actually presented the case in terms of what that investment be but we are flagging up, we do anticipate it will be sizable if we want to make sure that we can realistically stay on that journey towards net zero but certainly as a starting point our core capital budget of £8 million for our requirements our views that that would need to move to at least £15 million which has been the level funding that we have seen in recent years I'm sure that that will be noted by the Government and you'll make your case diligently the final point I wanted to make was just more of a general theme and that's an important one is that what a lot of the work we do in the committee is centred around outcomes for the general public including victims of crime that I've read notwithstanding the evidence we took last week but the written evidence you've given is really the warnings about the risk to the victim-centered approach that both of your organisations currently take and that any loss of skills, expertise, staffing resource would put massive pressures on that and perhaps they undermine much of the efforts you're making to move towards a more trauma-informed practice of working what reassurances can you give the public that even if you do stare down the barrel of difficult budgets over the next couple of years or indeed any real-terms cuts if that transpires that no matter what happens that victims will still remain at the heart of the justice system because I'm sure many people watching these sessions would be quite worried and concerned about the direction of travel I see that's qualifying from a courts perspective we want to try to limit the likelihood of that occurrence as far as we possibly can so our priority will be on the more serious crimes if we end up in that situation but I see equally some of the things we referred to in the submission about some of the approaches that we want to try to bring in terms of domestic abuse I say domestic abuse, 95% of cases are prosecuted in the share of court and we genuinely believe that there's an opportunity to try to find a very different way of dealing with these cases using virtual technology using virtual summary trials to completely transform that whole experience in that whole journey that's not something that would come at a significant cost but that's something we would want to bring in to make sure that we can keep those benefits and make sure that we can maximise the experience for complainers and witnesses that are coming through in those cases From the perspective of the fiscal service the sort of difficulties you're describing and imagining would not change the priority that we would give in the place that victims would have in our work it may make it more difficult to do but the priority and the place that they have would remain the same Thank you very much Okay, that brings us nicely up to our time allocations so I just want to thank you both for attending this morning and if any members have follow-up questions we'll send them over to you in writing many thanks indeed and we'll just have a short suspension to allow for a changer of witnesses Thank you very much and welcome back everybody I welcome our second panel of witnesses this morning to our meeting Mr Theresa Methurst, chief executive and Gerry O'Donnell interim director of finance with the Scottish Prison Service welcome to you both and I invite you Ms Methurst to make an opening statement Thank you very much good morning, convener and members of the committee my colleague and I, Gerry O'Donnell also met with you last year to discuss the Scottish Prison Service budget but welcome the opportunity to obviously respond to your request for evidence around the implications of the resource spending review so I would like to start by recognising the significant fiscal pressures facing Scottish Government and the implications for all public sector bodies who are facing difficult choices and decisions around scale and shape of service delivery given the financial constraints The SPS is similar to other justice sector organisations in that we operate 24-7 over 365 days a year However as I outlined in our written submission there is a difference in our context as we are very much demand led and are not in a position to scale back on service delivery without there being consequences to the effectiveness and impact on those in our care and on our staff The role of SPS is to keep in secure custody all those committed by the courts whether it be on remand in a period up to and including a life sentence We operate 15 prisons two of which are private sector contracts and provide care for around 7,400 individuals In addition we support all activity both in and out of establishments whether it be new admissions into our care, a scores tune from court or those being liberated back to communities and last year this resulted in excess of 1,000 movements alone The turnover of population is a notable difference between SPS and other justice colleagues It is essential for officers to create rapport and build relationships with those they care for without this we run a real risk of potentially hostile working environments or worse operational instability These relationships were never more critical than during the pandemic when officers remained a constant protective factor and supported those in our care through restrictions changing guidelines and uncertainty Whilst the turnover of our population does make our role as custodians more challenging our biggest challenge has become the increasing complexity of the individuals who are placed in our care We have always cared for vulnerable individuals but specific needs are becoming more complex exacerbated by issues such as substance use trauma or adverse childhood experiences It should be noted that as well as caring for vulnerable individuals we also look after those who present extreme risks due to their involvement in serious and organised crime adding a further complexity to our area of expertise A multifaceted and sophisticated approach is therefore required in order to mitigate risk and navigate through the mire of complexity associated with such polar opposite groups whilst continuing to meet the needs of the main cohort As we continue to transition out of the pandemic and enter a stable period of recovery we have to be mindful of the fragility of all of our stakeholders Staff are indicating they are tired after a prolonged period of high alert and are concerned as we all are with the cost of living crisis Those in our care are likely to be feeling the same concerns for themselves and their families Since the resource spending review announcement we have been working closely with the Scottish Government to monitor variables that may have an impact on our service delivery such as inflation and their eyes in energy costs Despite those uncertainties we remain committed to remaining within the regulatory and inspection framework that governs our service delivery as well as meeting the basic decency obligations that are supported by human rights legislation As Mr Finlay quite rightly pointed out last year our officers do an incredible job and that is why we must remain fully focused in meeting their needs as well as the needs of those in our care by exploiting all opportunities to rationalise our delivery in a way that can drive down our cost base Thank you very much, convener I look forward to taking questions Thank you very much, Ms Meadows I am going to bring in initially Jamie Greene followed by Rona Mackay Thank you and good morning I want to start just by looking at some of the budgetary pressures and the scenario planning that you have done You are quite clear in your submission to us that due to the and quoting you, due to the nature of our functions there is no or at most very limited opportunity to track our operations without significant risk to health and welfare Reputational damage and loss of services and operational stability across the estate Could you just elaborate what you mean by that? Each prison operates on the basis of obviously a defined population mix and size and population number although that can flux and change In addition to that we have staffing compliments which are agreed with our trade unions which provide not only safety but the range of facilities, services and supports in order to support rehabilitation and ensure that people transition back to their communities as quickly as possible where was a position that we had to scale that back in any way what would require to happen is that we would retract our services in the way so we would look at our core functions those that we are legislatively required to deliver so for example we have a minimum threshold for example access to meals access to exercise in the fresh air and from there you expand out the way to provide additional services so that would be things like purposeful activity which would include work rehabilitative programs and then in addition to that there would be other types of service that we could provide which would help support people in their social endeavors during association etc so what would happen is that we would have to retract from those those activities that were not seen as being essential retract from those in a phased way back into those that were deemed to be essential in order to meet our legislative requirements and in doing so what that means is that you are restricting the time that people have in association or time out of cell you are restricting the nature of engagement in purposeful activities you are also moving staff from positions where they have applied for roles and responsibilities and you are having to flex them into other roles to support just the daily operation of the establishments and therefore they can become disaffected and essential to look at other options so what it creates is a fluctuating position which potentially would then really only put us in a position whereby we were delivering what was essential under prison rules and therefore have significant implications around progression which would also come with legal implications as well those are things that we actually had to do during Covid because of the nature of the pandemic and the implications of infection control but as we are moving out of the pandemic phase and into more stable operating environments clearly we can use lessons that we learned there to improve our position where we put in that position again but there would be significant implications, broader implications that would come from providing an environment in any of our prisons where those restrictions became the norm again I mean that all sounds quite concerning what you are saying to me it sounds like that our settlement would lead to Covid-like conditions within the prison estate and the services that you offer and specifically of concern would be loss of rehabilitation services purposeful activity interaction with other services to deal with things like mental health and addiction problems would all of that be scaled back just simply to allow you to maintain basic safety within the prison estate and that would be done in a phased and a planned way which we obviously didn't have the opportunity to do during Covid and would be very much dependent on what the actual budget figures were so when we get a budget settlement there are options that we would need to consider but using some of the learning from Covid to look at where the highest priorities are I suppose that the area of increasing concern would be around the complexity of the population where there is likely to be more investment required so elements that we are experiencing just now so increasing social care costs for example we are also serious in organised crime again really positive outcomes from other parts of the justice sector have resulted in around 8% of our population now being involved in serious organised crime which means that we need to develop a strategy and having a strategy within a custodial environment will come potentially with additional costs so there are things that require some investment which will also then have an implication on any disinvestment across the estate I was struggling in the years submission to find a forecast for the next couple of years but reading between the lines you say that for the year 2023-24 you require an uplift of £40 million to your budget to maintain existing services that's just one year what does that figure look like for the next couple of years over the period of the RSR and how does that equate to what you're forecasting at the moment in terms of your requirements of budget in other words what is your total ask of government reverses what the RSR actually says will be delivered if it comes to pass As with others who have presented evidence I think the issue for us is that and particularly for us in prisons even since the RSR has been published the position has fluctuated and changed because of the changing nature of the pressures around energy pay and inflationary costs so we have been monitoring it very closely and it has shifted in this year alone but I'll ask Jerry to come in on the overall impact over the four years Yes please The £40.8 million in the paper for next year is based on an assessment of a cost pressure this year rolling into next year since our budget last year obviously had significant increases in costs inflation etc cost of living and what that has done is we are a net cost pressure 14.5 million this year so that's being addressed in the spring budget revision but that will roll into next year we have challenges in the next year with our over 21% of our costs are private sector contracts where contractually obliged with these contracts to and price increases based on RPI, CPI numbers and at the moment they're quite high so that's kind of pushing that number next year up as well and we've got modest increases in for PA assumptions and things like that so that's the number for next year following years are based on an average assumption of about a 3% uplift overall in our cost base which will be challenging if the current market economic factors continue so the year following would be 40 million plus 3% it goes from 40 million and then we're looking for a further 15 million following year I'll let others come in that's okay collect Stevenson you've got a supplementary on this you touched upon the increased costs on utilities and I think Theresa you mentioned as well this morning that it's gone up by was it 47% this year can I ask just about a fixed rate where he's tied in there's a precure in a fixed rate with utility companies and is that something obviously everybody's having to deal with the impact of increased energy costs but I'm not sure from a public service point of view if that ended that framework ended if you could touch upon that initially if you don't mind and then I'll hand over to Derek I think with all of these cost pressures around inflation as well what we have to understand is even where we have procured contracts for things like for example food our contractors are experiencing real pressures and therefore there have got to be revisions made in order to ensure that we can continue with those contracts and procure the services that we need so that there are contextual elements to it where we obviously require to continue services and particularly the food one gives me most cause for concern but where our contractors are still able to provide those services we obviously need to be able to at least meet their needs in part because of the nature of the inflationary pressures and how it's impacting on them as well as service providers on utilities we procure our utilities through a Scottish Government contract as many other public sector bodies do as well we do have forecasts it will become clearer as we go into the early next year what the figures are going to be for the following year but we understand that it will be not as high as this year but it will still be an increase our net position increase was 47 per cent that's a net and that's combined electricity and gas unfortunately for SPS we are heavy users of gas it's throughout all our establishments that's our primary heating system thank you can I just follow up on that and you know within your own submission as well you're talking about the estates as well and one of the things is obviously the Berlin replacement and trying to obviously meet net zero as well have yous or even considered maybe using that estate because it's a brand new estate that's getting built as a district heating system whereby yous would be supplier and provider and it would generate income for yous as well I don't know the exact detail of that in terms of a district heating system I know it has been discussed but Berlin is still in its early stages it's a contract we've just awarded this year in terms of a a development, the design of an establishment but one of the points I will make in relation to net zero is replacing Berlin will give will reduce 21 per cent of our scope co2 emissions so it's for moving towards net zero a project that's going to be very substantial I think Ms Stevenson, you're right to raise the point and it's something that we would consider and we did consider for Highland as well because that's obviously an under way so for all of our projects and major builds in Highland I think will be the first net zero prison and that's certainly what we intend to achieve with regards to Glasgow which is a much bigger build as well OK, thank you It's a continuation of the questions around energy cost and usage I mean it's something that we don't really think about that's a equivalent of heating and providing light for 10,500 family homes so it's clearly a huge amount of the budget in your submission in the letter it says that this has risen 2223 from the previous year Coincidentally, the Crown Office's submission also refers to energy costs and they say for 2223 this was largely offset not suffering to the same extent because of Scottish Government securing advanced purchase Do you know if that's a separate scheme is that something that you are not part of to be particular Government buildings or am I misunderstanding that and indeed you were part of it but that still resulted in a 47% increase I believe that we are part of the same procurement contract Again probably I don't know the detail of the other body it's your baseline it's where your budgets were and I can only say that for us it was a 47% increase in our spend from last year to this year Going back to the same issue is there an optimal temperature that is required either by guidance or by law within the prisons It's not a it's health and safety legislation so we have to comply with health and safety legislation in relation to heating for offices then we would comply with the law we have I suppose arrangements the difficulty for us is that particularly in our older buildings when the heating is turned off and turned on it takes quite a time before the heating is mobilised so if you go through a cold spell you turn the heating on and you have that minimum threshold then if the milder weather comes do you turn it off again or do you keep it on because clearly you don't want to waste fuel so we try and be as fuel efficient as we can but the systems do take time to restart and decommission at the start Is there a temperature that is required for prisoners? I don't know the answer to that of the top of my head something that we have raised and first of all their old establishments and having zoning will be very difficult to have different temperatures at different parts of the building but we also have situations where for the clothing that prisoners may be wearing for anti-ligature reasons etc might be lighter etc so there are some areas that we have to keep a higher temperature than would probably be normal because just for health and safety reasons My answer would be I honestly don't know I've not come across a temperature Mr Finlay certainly for staff offices there is a temperature but the thresholds I'm aware of are more around self size etc but certainly I can have a look at that I'm just giving the massive cost increase whether that was something that has been looked at but thank you Thanks very much I'm going to bring in Rona shortly but before I do so I wonder if I can just come back to a comment that you made in your opening remarks with Ned Hurston it relates to the growing proportion of the prison population who are vulnerable in terms of age complex medical personal care needs and so on and I'm interested to hear a little bit more about what might be the likely impact on this group of prisoners in terms of resourcing the necessary staff, training case management trauma informed approaches so if that was to come under pressure I'm just interested in a little bit more commentary around what the implications of that might be So in respect of the increasing health complexities I think the increasing health complexities are very broad in the range and don't solely relate to age there are social care needs for some of our younger population we're seeing increasing people the number of people who are coming into custody an increasing number with neurodevelopmental issues so that complexity I think is where there are greater needs around not just support from our NHS colleagues in terms of case management and training much more intensive training for our staff group and clearly when you're asking staff to flex in and out that multiple range of different roles then the training demands are much greater so there is a requirement to invest in training for staff and ensure that they are equipped because we are seeing through some of that ageing population requirements for people who are suffering from early onset dementia et cetera so there are requirements for additional support in relation to training but in terms of how we would manage that and what the impact would be is that we would try and protect as possible those who are most vulnerable and ensure that we prioritise the support to them as far as we can depending on whatever resource constraints we face I'm just following on from that from a capital budget perspective and the committee visited a prison last year and saw for ourselves some of the challenges that exist around caring for that sort of cohort of prisoners as you've outlined perhaps with dementia and other physical medical conditions what might be the implications in terms of your ability to improve and reconfigure the actual prison estate to make sure that their needs are met going forward so we do have a maintenance budget and we prioritise within that budget how that is spent some of the equipment we obviously require to access through our NHS colleagues it's not solely for us it is an increasing challenge in terms of numbers and the complexity of care that people provide not just in relation to social care but palliative care as well and obviously prisons are built as secure facilities so it does require adaptation we have over a number of years adapted cells as funding has become available and the need has arisen but I can foresee that there will be more challenges around how we can deliver that over the next few years depending on what the actual budget position is likely to be I'll bring in Rona Bighi followed by Pauline McNeill I want to ask you about the impact on capital spending in the prison estate and how that could be impacted by potential shortfall in funding I was quite alarmed to see in your submission you talk about the women's estate and you say that I'm not saying you said you would do this but you say it could be possibly one of the measures you would have to take to be considered for immediate rationalisation so I wonder if you could expand on that and also just what impact it would have in relation to the new Berlinay etc etc but the women's estate question first please thank you very much I'm sorry for alarming you that was a positive statement so the consequence of opening the two community custody units this year and opening the new national facility next year means that not all of the current accommodation for women is being fully utilised so therefore it would be incumbent on us to rightly look at what kind of accommodation we require for women going forward across the whole estate bearing in mind that we currently have women in Grampian Greenock, Edinburgh and Pullmont so with the new facilities we can look at how best to utilise the facilities for women, how best to support them so it's not normalising women in custody it's actually just rationalising the accommodation that currently exists because we would have more than we actually required and therefore we can release some of that accommodation for use for men where there is a bit more pressure on our population we're looking confused I am a bit confused we visited the all the lilius facility for women which was great because the bella is open in Dundee they're quite small they don't take a lot so I'm not quite following how you could get more accommodation from them the current accommodation for women is not being fully utilised so we in having those two new facilities the national facility will give us slightly more spaces than we're currently using in Cortland that's not under threat between those new facilities the fact that the number of women in custody has come down over a number of years we're still sitting around 280 we can look at so where are the best facilities for women how can we then rationalise that and ensure that we can release some of that accommodation for use in the male estate where there is more pressure it's not a case of overcrowding the accommodation it's ensuring that we're using the facilities and maximising them and the roll-out of the new custody units will go ahead as planned the ones that are not you can tell me the wrong meaning from your word rationalisation apologise for that as far as Berlin and future planning so the funding capital funding obviously comes through the infrastructure investment plan the replacement for Berlin and for Inverness are both in the five-year plan the initial stages of that plan so this year's funding was used to award the contract for Glasgow but there is a potential gap in funding capital funding coming up in year years 24, 25 24, 25 25 Scottish Government are aware of that is that not the year that Berlin is supposed to be 26 26 so there are capital pressures in later years that would need to be resolved but the Scottish Government are well aware of that and they understand that we will require additional funding for Glasgow thank you I'm just going to bring in Russell Finlay to follow up on Rona's questions and then I'll bring in Pauline McNeill your answers have partly covered the ground that I was going to ask about but it relates to the estates in your submission the budget for the next four years amounts to about £40 million which is mostly about building prisons but it's also to do with the cost of providing cables for internet access and phone lines and so on we already know the Stirling prisons three years late the new Berlin is due to open 2026 with Highland due to be finished in 2024 given last week Police Scotland told us that inflation around building costs is much higher than general inflation I think they put a figure on it of around 30% you've already suggested that in the final two years of projections you're already expecting an overrun can you quantify that do you have any idea of what the figures will be and where the money comes from have government committed to meeting those costs or will the building have to stop to be made? I think a number of questions there I'll hopefully answer all of them so the committed funding that we have already commenced is in the budget and we have been given in this year's budget and obviously for next year as well there are funding pressures as we've experienced with the build for Stirling not sure if it's three years I need to check that but certainly for Stirling there were additional inflationary pressures we have inflationary pressures for Highland and we've shared that with government we don't have a cost we have a cost envelope for the replacement for Glasgow but that initial cost profile has yet to be finalised so until we've got that final position it's really difficult to see what the gap in funding is likely to be and we expect that in the next few weeks Does 30 per cent inflation sound reasonable? Certainly for Highland I think it was somewhere between 25 and 30 per cent was the additional cost pressure so that does seem reasonable yes I'll bring in Pauline McNeill followed by Fulton Brown Thank you very much Good morning I'm reading in the notes that you've provided for the committee that approximately 21 per cent of the SPS resort budgets for payments to the private sector for the provision of two private prisons that seems quite a high figure but you've gone to say that these contacts are contractual built and inflated mechanisms based on CPI and RPI so the two private prisons are getting 11.4 per cent it just seems so grossly unfair then that the public sector prisons are having to operate within a reduced minus 7.8 per cent but private prisons under the service are going to benefit from 11.4 per cent is that right? I can also comment at that point it's not just the two private prisons it's also the court custody in escort service as well so it's three contracts to prisons and the escort service The way that the contracts are set is clearly that there are inflationary the RPI the price and index and how it's used to have the contract arrangements at the start of the commencement of the contract and therefore the additional cost pressures that we will experience because of that will have to be found from within our budget and it does put pressure on obviously the amount of resource that then remains for public sector prisons for running a private prison If I just also come in the Adiwell contract was signed in 2008 and for a number of years the RPI was at a low percentage so it's just that it's an unfortunate time for us that it's a high percentage I think that's got to be acknowledged that no one thought in 2008 that they've reached double figures probably for inflation but now we have is there any scope for going back on those contracts given the extraordinary circumstances that we're all living in notwithstanding the line of questioning my colleague Russell Finlay has put to you about the cost of energy alone never mind running the estate is there any scope for going back to these contracts and saying we really want to put this level of extraordinary pressure on the public sector when you don't feel any pain on what the public sector does I think that there are different circumstances for each of the contracts so for the Kilmarnock contract that one is coming to an end anyway it's coming back into public sector operation in 2024 so we are moving into the last year and a half of that contract and that contract has run very well and is really at the moment it operates and functions well and we are content with the arrangements around Kilmarnock with regards to Du Amy we are experiencing some real pressures around contract delivery with Du Amy part of which means pressures around some of the changes in the way that justice is working now in relation to virtual courts etc and we are working really closely with them to try and manage their way through those pressures but it has been a really challenging time for them and because they are now having to diversify and deliver some aspects of the contract and anticipates for example hospital details have gone up and are much higher than they were previously so it is having an impact on the overall operation of the contract so we are working really closely with them because we understand that there are limitations around the contract budget and how that's been applied in relation to their performance so that I think again is a separate construct with regards to Addie Well as Jerry says that was awarded in 2008 I think that there is potential to have discussions with Addie Well around the cost pressures that we are experiencing and the implications on the contract and certainly it's something that I have raised internally that we probably do need to have discussions with them and get them to the table to better understand whether or not there is any room for movement Thank you very much You said that there's pressures on the contract with GOA is it? So if there's more virtual appearances does that mean that they are not moving those prisoners? Is there a cost saving there? It's quite complex because it's where they require to have people as much as the vehicles so the vehicles is only one element of it but it's also about how they cover with people so if you've got somebody covering virtual custodies and court and they're on vehicles it's created an added complexity that they are struggling with but as I say we are trying to work with them to help simplify where we can and we're working with Scottish Courts in particular to simplify where we can and resolve some of the tensions and ensure that it becomes much more effective in terms of performance again I understand, so I'm just trying to think of a scenario that I know about so we are on first appearance if prisoners are appearing in London Road police station where prisoners are having to go to share of court where as previously they were taking all the prisoners to the one place they're having to understand that's really helpful, thank you very much Thanks very much and I'll bring in Fulton McGregor now Good morning to the panel, thanks very much for the evidence so far, my question was actually on the same lines as Pauline McNeill around about Addie Well and Cymarnick so a lot of it has been covered but I was actually to 2016 and I found a question that I asked on this and it was saying that the PFI payments on Addie Well were going to cost tax payers nearly £1 billion I'm assuming that perhaps going in the back of your question it's heaving up on that to that an absolutely ridiculous amount you're sitting it just now that the RPI are currently at 12.6% then is this are you going to be liable for something approaching 14% of the cost of Addie Well and going on the back of your what you said there about Cymarnick is it time or what plans are afoot to bring Addie Well back into the public sector as well I'll answer the first part I mean that the contracts not a straight RPI uplift there's different elements of the contract the highest proportion of the contract is RPI plus 1% but there's elements that are at a fixed cost we've calculated that it's about a net 11% increase is figure out for next year the contract for Addie Well runs until 2033 and obviously if well as I understand it is a contract for 25 years therefore there wouldn't be the option to break into that any earlier that's what I was going to ask about you've already recorded but I was going to ask you to excuse me naive to take us you know what it doesn't know we'll be out of these contracts no is that basically it there would probably be significant penalties as well as reputational damage you know when you sign a contract 25 years then people anticipate that that contract will be fulfilled so I would imagine there would be significant penalties as a consequence I accept the penalties argument in terms of reputational damage I think if the public knew that we're talking about billions of taxpayers' money on these and that money perhaps that would negate that argument but I accept if the cost of coming out such a contract is going to end up outweighing any benefits you've done sorry Jenny I haven't interrupted you I was going to say our status is that an executive agency prevents us at the moment you know potentially of buying out the contract I know possibly if you have a non-public departmental body would have an opportunity to do something so there's also a different aspect to it as well is that our status okay thanks very much on that the final question I wanted to ask is basically a question I asked the last panel when I asked the previous panels last week it's about you're into a link with the other justice agencies you heard this morning's evidence I'm assuming you probably tuned into the police and fire service last week you're all kind of saying very similar thing as a very bleep picture there's no getting away from that have you thought about how impact when you say police or you know courts as you heard this morning fire service other criminal justice agencies a flat car settlement for them will impact the cells how do you take that into account when you're considering your own budget considerations so as my colleague Mr McQueen mentioned earlier we do have the criminal justice board which has been in operation since the start of the pandemic and we've used that as a really positive vehicle along with the justice board to have discussions about budget implications as well as the resource spending review and clearly as we are all facing very similar challenges the need for us to work more effectively, collectively together becomes increasingly pressing so I think the relationships and the understanding as was outlined earlier that has grown and developed over the last two and a half years in particular will stand us in good stead to help shape areas where we can collaborate more effectively and be more joined up as a justice sector going forward to meet the challenges that we're facing very much Collette Stevenson would like to come in and then I'll bring in Jamie OK, thanks convener and good morning In written submission to this committee Wendy Sinclair-Gibbon the inspectorate of prisons raised concerns that if there was a proposed flat rate cash settlement for the prison service then there may be insufficient to meet the minimum requirements and you touched upon it earlier with Jamie Greene in terms of rehabilitative programmes as well and also the fact that 28 per cent I believe who are currently in the prison population just now are on demand don't get that and some of them are locked up for like 22 hours and I know that that was a challenge during Covid but I just want to know what your views are on that because there's a potential there as well and we were contravening prisoners human rights as well Thanks very much Ms Stevenson I think I wrote to the committee a few weeks ago and outlined some of the changes that have been taken place during Covid including because of that shift in the remand population in particular establishments were now opening up much more activity space to those on demand because there was more capacity to do so so there is more engagement to be involved either in work or purposeful activity in one way shape or form so that is a much wider offer and certainly a much greater focus on health and health interventions including support for recovery from substance use etc so all of that in different shapes and different offers is something which is available across prisons obviously I've read the chief inspector's submission and I understand her concerns there are always real tensions and I think probably for me more so because of the restrictions of the last two and a half years because we have not been able to support people's rehabilitation in the way that we would have done previously because we were responding to the pandemic then it does mean that it makes it more critical that how we reinstate services how we shape them and how we support people is done in a way that will be as effective if not more effective than the shape of the service prior to the pandemic so there is learning that we are taken from the pandemic for example a lot of the feedback that we've had through some of the the contact arrangements in prisons has suggested that prisoners feel much safer in smaller cohorts they feel much more able to engage because they know the people around them they don't feel that they will be open to bullying and intimidation that they would have done previously so as we're reinstating services we are looking at how that can be done in much smaller groupings in a much more manageable way in order to affect greater change in people because they feel more comfortable more relaxed about that kind of engagement so whilst the descriptor that I provided for Mr Greene earlier about constricting services commensurate with your staff and profile and your budgets we would have to do and we would need to look at how best to manage that depending on where the highest risks lay nevertheless there are areas that I would absolutely want to protect and ensure that we could improve on taking that learning from the pandemic I mean the other thing for me around this is that in terms of our workforce and our workforce profile it's very welcome but we have far more women working in the service now than we ever did before and our working arrangements I think need to reflect a more modern approach as well as a workforce demand approach now I think people are looking for much more flexibility in their working arrangements so there are aspects and elements of our working practice whether that be in their prisons or whether it be in our support services that we are going to have to consider and look in reshape and change in order to ensure that we remain an attractive employer but also ensure that its supports may be a different operating model going forward Can I touch upon the way it is at the moment my understanding is as it stands that from a Friday to a Sunday prisoners are locked up they get locked up from 5 o'clock they're limited in terms of the purpose of the activity they do in the prison these days is that because they are reduced staff function and is that something you've touched upon on how looking at a more modern workforce be more flexible as well is that something you would look at in terms of the weekends from Friday right through to the Monday morning? The weekend regimes haven't really changed much over many, many years and there are some prisons that may lock up at tea time on a Friday but I would have to check that I think most don't so most prisons will be open until half past 8, 9 o'clock on a Friday evening Over a weekend the core day if you like will be between 8 and 5 in the evening but there will be a period during the day when people will be locked up say after lunchtime we normally have services gym activities there might be third sector groups such as AE or other types of groups that might come in at the weekend but the amount of activity at weekend has always reflected I suppose what society reflected which was weekends were downtime as opposed to activity time so the main bulk of activity has always been Monday to Friday and evenings were association time weekends were association time it's become very clear over the last two and a half years that prisoners and staff don't want that free association time so we are going to look at outcomes on a Monday to Friday but we will apply that to the weekend as well to look at how more productive we can be and the type of engagement because it's not just about I suppose the those harder edge elements like criminogenic need etc but there is that social aspect to people's rehabilitation their health that need to be improved and a lot of those kinds of activities could be hosted at a weekend so yes we would need to look at the full 70 operating okay thank you thanks very much and I'll move straight across to Jamie Greene thank you I'd just like to follow on from my previous line of questioning around scenario planning is there any concern within the prison service that due to the events of the last two and a half years which you admit involve a lack of the rehabilitation services you would like to have provided coupled with the real potential for reverting back to a Covid like clampdown on what happens in a prison that that might create a if you like a pressure pot that would lead to increased violence in prisons further attacks on prison staff or even the potential for rioting so reverting back to Covid would be very much dependent on budgets and clearly that's not somewhere where we would want to be and I don't think that would be somewhere Scottish Government would want us to be either because clearly protecting the public keeping people safe is not just about keeping people behind closed doors it's also about providing those types of supports through criminogenic need and rehabilitation what I would say is that the relationships between our staff and our population are positive and I think the chief inspector of prisons would reflect that and despite the two and a half years that we've had I've actually strengthened because of the way that the relationships have been able to grow because of those restrictions there has been more time for staff to spend with those in their care and therefore build much more meaningful relationships so I think for me that gives a really solid platform to move forward with any kind of restrictions that we might have to impose dependent on budget the only thing that I would add is that there is evidence from England and Wales through I think the national audit office produced a report and the chief inspector of prisons down there produced his reports around which to reflect that this investment can have an impact on things like violence and vulnerability but certainly for prisons and where we are at the moment that's not a concern that I would have just now and I think that's important because over the last four or so years there have been over 100,000 working days lost due to staff absences mostly around mental health although there are some physical attacks as well that's clearly already an issue talking about staff could you give me an indication of what staffing levels are like at the moment what's the scale of vacancies or understaffing in any particular custodial institution or right across the spectrum of the estate I can't give it a breakdown by establishment but I can certainly provide it across the operational side of the organisation at the moment we're running approximately 110 vacancies and that is around a 3% vacancy gap at the moment that is lower than we would normally carry I would have to say but as with other parts of the public sector we are experiencing challenges in recruitment both in relation to ensuring that we have sufficient people coming through and attracting sufficient people as well as having the capacity to support the on-going recruitment challenges but I do think that what we have learned from that already this year is that there has been much more bespoke recruitment activity so for particular sites who are experiencing greater vacancy gaps there have been a lot of recruitment a lot of reach into parts of the communities we probably wouldn't have reached into previously which I am hopeful will increase the diversity of our organisation and particularly our staff group and that is certainly paying dividends both in terms of developing more positive relationships a better understanding of prisons but also providing us with potential areas of improving our workforce we heard last week quite clearly from other justice partners that a flat cash settlement or a real terms cut in your budget would equate to either a reduction in head count or a pay freeze and it's a simpler choice in your scenario which of those is the most likely given that you have committed to what I believe to be an above public sector pay promise and what are the effects of any potential pay freeze or reduction staff of your scenarios played out so the pay negotiations are still on going at the current time so they have yet to conclude for this year pay obviously both for this year and for subsequent years is a concern the issue with regards to our reduction in staff given our population profile given the arrangements that we have in a complemented position would be very difficult to achieve equally I think the potential for a pay freeze would be incredibly difficult to achieve I think it would create significant challenges in our industrial relations environment and could result in some form of action by any one of the constituent trade unions what sort of action it could be up to and including in industrial action strike so that they're able to do that early in your submission you say that on the issue of pay which is 60% of your cost base that there are 4% and 2% respect to the overall budget pay is clear the lion's share of your costs a flat cash position would require restraint on pay increases and review of the current employee operating model I'm still trying to get to the bottom of whether you say that neither can take place but it sounds like both would have to take place so I still don't understand what a flat cash settlement will look like on pay and staffing numbers so any changes to our operating model any changes to our workforce model would require engagement with our trade union side that engagement is likely to take time and I have no doubt that there would be areas that we would agree on and areas that we wouldn't agree on but that's not something that I would envisage we could achieve within either the current year or the next financial year that would take in the short to medium term to achieve an agreement on both of those elements sounds like you might not have any choice though you get what you get in terms of finances for resource budgets so it's one or the other isn't it we don't know what we're going to get yet and at that point then I'll need to have a look and consider what are the implications what are the options that are likely to achieve a balanced budget and what are the options that would take longer to achieve thank you okay I think that brings us to the end of this session so many thanks for your attendance this morning obviously if there are any other issues that members want to raise we'll follow those up in writing so thank you again and we'll just have a short suspension to allow our witnesses to leave thank you thank you very much so our next item of business today is to discuss recent correspondence that the committee has received and I refer members to paper number 3 so you'll see that our clerks have suggested some ideas of how we may want to take forward the various issues however I'd like to open it up to members to raise any points or make any suggestions so I'll take the letters in turn first one is our correspondence from the Scottish Prison Service on the cost of the women's estate so does anybody have any points or questions that they want to raise Jamie thank you convener it's probably something that we should have asked to Theresa Meister talking about budget I guess there's a budget element to it but I think while she has answered the question I think we weren't just looking for the numbers one of the things that came up in our discussion was the ability to compare costs across the different estate so I have no idea if 5 million is good value or poor value for money given the nature of what those premises are doing having seen them I'm sure it's all very worthwhile but for example we know that there's a quite a substantial lower number of people that they can facilitate and therefore 5 million pounds is that for 10 people, 30 people 100 people, how does that compare to historic estates or other types of custody units so I think maybe some more detail around that would have been more helpful and to make that comparative analysis cos that really was the reason for the question not just the number itself OK, thanks very much I suppose what's coming into my mind on that point is perhaps I think when we visited the Lillias centre there was some an update on an evaluation process that was potentially going to be undertaken I suppose to monitor outcomes and look at the effectiveness of the unit but I think it's a good point to raise and I'd be certainly be keen to understand the cost benefits from the two new units so thanks for that any other points that anybody wants to raise Pauline? Pauline I'm just saying to Rona I mean it couldn't be it couldn't be any bleaker I mean she never had anything like it all the time I've been here I mean the I think on the evidence we had from the Crown Office fiscal service I think we're just on the point of discussing the letters our correspondence so if you don't mind just park and we'll come back to it we're very enthusiastic so we're just having a discussion about the correspondence that the committee has received the first piece of correspondence relates to the update on the women's estate so any other questions so are we happy just obviously picking up the suggestion that Jamie made are we content to to obviously write back to the prison service and thank them for their correspondence and we'll obviously monitor developments and around the sort of benefits and evaluation of the unit okay thanks very much okay and the second letter was from the wise group on the issue of medical prescriptions on liberation so again I'll just open it up to members if you've got any comments that you'd like to make on the correspondence Rona I mean at face value it would seem that they're saying things have got better you know it doesn't seem to be as so much of a problem as it was when we visited in May so I'm not really sure to be honest where we can go from there I mean the throughcare thing is another issue but so I don't really have any constructive thing to say about it really okay thanks very much anybody else just I think it's worth noting that it's well done to the committee and I think Pauline in particular who identified this during the visit and decided to push to raise it I think Rona as well and it just shows that simply by asking questions and intervening we can make a bit of a difference the letter itself towards the end talks about those former prisoners who don't have a fixed address can't register with a GP so I wonder what might be able to be done about that I'm sure it's not an easy fix but it's certainly a significant matter that probably requires a bit of attention Pauline back in the land when I read that I thought these days to get an appointment with a GP within five days is really going to be challenging but my concern would be if that's rigid then some people are going to fall by the wayside it also depends as well what day they're released and what system their GP has so I just wonder if there's some flexibility around the five days GP I wasn't going to comment but I'm dealing with a lot of case work at the moment of constituents who haven't been released to prison, who don't have addiction issues and aren't prescribed method on waiting three or four weeks for GP appointment, it's really hard to see what happens when that five day prescription runs out that's the crunch point it's not the day of release that plus five days point is when someone's in a state of possibly quite an emergency situation with regards to their medical issue at that point if they cannot be seen by someone and cannot get a prescription, where do they go it's at that point my fear is that they will revert back to illicit drug taking rather than prescribed programme that they've been on lost in custody I think we need more detail of that I actually think that's a question for because it's an NHS run service and as we know that these are no longer provided by the prison service this question has moved from justice to the health portfolio and I think that's a question that the health secretary needs to respond to okay thanks what they're saying is just fallen on from Jamie is once they get past that five days to pay appointment what they're doing is presenting themselves A&E and that's putting additional pressure on to A&E given what we've been hearing recently if possible unless it's an absolute urgent emergency not to appear at A&E and obviously but again I do know as well from a recent inquiry that a case work that is that there is a resilience from the health secretary saying that they are looking, they're sending out letters to all GPs to open up appropriate appointments again because I'm getting a lot of case work saying that they're not able to get GP appointments and that's not even people coming out of prisons Rona I mean all of us are able to get a prescription online quickly or a repeat prescription would there not be some sort of provision that could be made for released offenders to do that as well because as you say it's completely critical within five days and then the left high and dry but we don't have to do that we can get a repeat prescription by as I say going online or phoning so I wonder why they would be excluded from doing that okay thanks I was quite heartened to hear that it sounds as though in terms of the release process things seem to have improved however it's and as the wise group articulates in their letter it's the difficulties out with prison gates that seem to be the challenge and as you've all articulated access to GP contact is a real issue I'm aware through contact with NHS Grampian in my constituency role that there is a real endeavour to I suppose encourage the public the general public to embrace new ways of working in terms of not necessarily always trying to see a GP in relation to a health concern and rather there are other options practitioners that the public can can be signposted to and can access so I wonder if in the context of this issue if that's something that might be considered in order that people are vulnerable have addiction and are on release from prison can similarly be signposted elsewhere and on that note as per the recommendation in the paper I wonder if this is something that we again write back to NHS Scotland on just raising the copying the letter but also raising some of the concerns that we've discussed this morning Perhaps of the small addition of keeping the Parliament's health committee abreast of what we're doing with respect and maybe something they wish to consider quickly in their agenda Yeah, absolutely and perhaps also the Angela Constance, the drugs minister as well so members are agreeable that we share this with the relevant committees OK, thanks very much OK, thank you very much so that completes our public business for today, our next meeting will be on Wednesday the 9th of November when we'll continue taking evidence as part of our pre-budget scrutiny process and we'll now move into private session thank you