 Good morning and welcome everyone to the Justice Committee's 23rd meeting of 2015. Can I ask everyone to switch off mobile phones and other electronic devices as they interfere with broadcasting even when they're switched to silent and I've received apologies from Alison McInnes. Item 1, decision to making business in private. I'm inviting the committee to agree to consider item 6 in relation to witnesses for community justice Scotland Bill and item 7, our draft report on the inquiries into death Scotland Bill in private. Are you agreed? Thank you. Item 2, we're now going back on to a new bill, the Community Justice Scotland Bill. This is our main item of business today and it's our first evidence session on the bill. We'll hear from one panel of witnesses today. I've got Dame Eilish, who was chair of the Commission on Women Offenders, Mark Roberts, senior manager at Audit Scotland and Clelland Sneddon, representing the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives and Senior Manager Scotland and your executive director of community services at Gail and Bute Council. That's a very long title and it's woken me up. This is our first session back after recess. I say it's not a holiday by the way, put that for the record, we'll be working in our break. I wanted to ask you a general question just to kick it off, which is to say what's wrong with the current system, what's right with the current system and is this bill an improvement? Thank you, convener. We published our report on reducing re-offending nearly three years ago and what that highlighted was that while there was quite a good understanding of the services that helped to reduce re-offending, there was a mismatch in terms of what was delivered across the whole country in terms of that. While there was good knowledge of what worked, that wasn't available everywhere. What we were recommending was that there was a much more strategic approach to the delivery of community justice services at a national and local level, both in terms of the planning, the designing and delivery of those services. That was the issue at that point nearly three years ago when we reported on that. We also highlighted, as Dame Eilish's report did, the complexity of the community justice landscape in terms of the number of bodies involved and, in some cases, the lack of clarity over governance and accountability arrangements. We think that some of the proposals, while potentially improving the situation in terms of governance and accountability, still mean that there may be some complexities in the system. There are many, many bodies both within the public sector and the third sector in particular involved, and those systems of accountability are very complex. I'll let members pick up on some of the issues that you've raised there. Mr Sneddon? I suppose from our perspective that both reports, the findings were important for us and we accept those. The existing system, I think the analogy that we've used is looking at the NHS but only looking at the treatment end of the NHS. We became very effective about managing offenders, very effective about discharging orders, but we were less successful in having a strategic overview of the work that we undertook and an absence around prevention and early intervention. That's an area that, again, the committee might want to return to further on in this questioning. The only other reflection that I think the two reports stand in real clarity, but I think the only other point is around the criminal justice authorities. I think that for a long time we've looked at the authorities and questioned the additional value that we have received from the authorities. Were they giving the appropriate strategic direction to the work that was undertaken in their areas? Did they add value? I think that the question was answered quite clearly in both reports that they didn't add value. That then left a question about how do you redesign community justice services? We are enthused by the extensive consultation and the proposals that are coming forward. We have obviously got some comments on how they are operationalised, but it was the right time for some review and for a restructure. The report that I chaired for the commission was looking at women offenders, so it was a specific aspect of offending only. We looked at it from the perspective of how women came into the system, how they were dealt with and their custodial status as well as community service and what happened thereafter. The overall conclusion was that there was a significant proportion of women in Scotland who were going to prison who shouldn't be there. Many of them have a significant percentage. We are serving very short sentences of imprisonment and many of them are suffering from significant mental health difficulties. Prison wasn't doing anything whatsoever to reduce their behaviour thereafter. Many of them went out many weeks later and came back in as soon as they had hit the closest dealer or off licence. There was a cycle that was not being dealt with by the context of imprisonment. We also looked at the framework and the structures around the prison because one of the very important issues that was brought to our attention by those in the prison service was that they were dealing with so many different authorities in terms of what happened for through care for prisoners afterwards that it was utterly fragmented. When we looked at the community service structure at that time and why judges were not using that more extensively or giving that a greater opportunity, there seemed to be a lack of faith in the efficacy of community justice. Prison was to some extent a very tempting default position because it meant that someone would go away and at least be off drugs for a period of time. It was tempting to do that, but it was a very significant flaw in our justice system that so many were in prison. The impetus of our report was that we needed to have a very strong structure for community justice and robust alternatives. What we saw in community justice at that time was that it was not being measured in terms of its effectiveness. You could not convince judges that it was actually making a difference. There was no extensive research and a very short term provision of projects that would be there for 18 months and the personnel would disappear or they would metamorphise into another project in order to gain funding from the Government. That short term meant that the whole system was very bitty and it was not cohesive. What we recommended was a structure of a very strong leadership that would be on a par with the prison service, the police service and the prosecution service and the justice system so that it had a stronger voice and was as accountable for what it does in terms of its effectiveness. There were some examples of very good work being done and we asked why it was not being taken forward extensively throughout Scotland, given that it was there. People were not looking at it and it was not being taken forward. That is what we looked at at that stage. The bill does not look at all of that. It does not look at custody clearly. The measure has been taken regarding custody and the women's prison. It does not deal with diversion, which is a significant aspect of keeping people out of the system. It may well be that diversion is being dealt with elsewhere. I think that the bill goes some way towards achieving a stronger structure, but I am not convinced that it will be strong enough or cohesive enough to perhaps deliver what we would have hoped in our report. I would like to ask about two things—early intervention and prevention. That has already been mentioned in what we have heard from ourselves. It is mentioned repeatedly in the statements. What role do they have? People tend to think that it is the post-custody rather than the preventative in early intervention. What role do they play at the moment and to what extent of any does that proposal improve? I am happy if you say early and preventative, but you are not talking about children. I take it that you are talking about those who are coming into the system or coming to the attention of the authorities such as the police. Clearly, there is a role there at different levels, and it might be the extent to which you would involve education people in your criminal justice. Our report made very clear that the real solution to much of the offending behaviour lies in what happens when people are very young. That is where the difficulties are arising. By the time people get to 1617, so many problems have been set and it is much more difficult to deal with them. Therefore, if you could, in some form of fantasy land transfer, all the money to education, nursery and support for families etc, and just shut down, you would probably be able to shut down many prisons if that happened. We are where we are and we have to deal with what we have. People coming into the system at 16 or 17 or even before then into the children's hearing system are needing very intensive concentration on diverting them away from criminality. That requires a lot of energy, ingenuity and innovation to do that. That is not reflected in this. This is very much about post-conviction community justice, whereas our report was about a much more holistic approach to the centres that we looked at. I think that one has been established in Glasgow where you are looking at it from the beginning of the offending behaviour to when people are coming out of custody so that they do not simply come out of custody and they are simply exposed again to the same people, the same peers, the same struggles that they had before, which leads them back into very often self-medication through drugs and theft just behaviour to be able to accommodate that. Andy Hill wants to comment on early intervention. If there is any member who wants to do a supplementary on this particular aspect, just let me know. Perhaps I could deal with the early intervention in the round. I am fortunate enough to have early years in education except as part of my portfolio as well as social work. There is the platform now in legislation for a great many true beneficial initiatives around the early years collaborative. It is a tremendous focus. It is absolutely fantastic. If I do nothing else in my career but work towards the outcomes of the early years collaborative, we will generationally have improved the life chances. The generationally have improved nothing wrong with that. If you get it right at that early stage and you support young people and their parents all the way through that process, some of the adverse life chances, including offending behaviour, will reduce significantly over time, but it is a generational change. I think that one of the key comments in our opening remarks is about the short termism around some of the kind of funding or people calling things change funds or innovation funds, etc. To get through generational change, we need to have stickability and I am saying what Harry Burns and it is absolutely correct. If we know what works, we need to put the foot down on those preventative and early interventions and that will reap benefits, but you might not get the benefits for 10 or 15 years or longer. One of the other aspects around the early intervention, we quite often see through the youth justice system the opportunity to intervene with a child or a young person when they have entered that process. Part of the early intervention work that we need to do is to get in on a pre-crisis basis to support families who are at pre-crisis stage, but we can see the trajectories of families struggling to cope, etc. We need that little bit of additional help to avoid children becoming looked after, because we know that once they become looked after, again, their life chances are deteriorated. I do not want to turn this into an early intervention discussion, but I think that your point... I want to cover that area first, because that has been raised by several of the submissions that we have. I could not agree more. The concern that we have articulated in the COSLA responses and a whole number of other responses is that we feel that there could be a better clarity about not just managing offenders and managing the orders that they are on, but actually providing duties to undertake preventative work right across the partnership. That includes partners who are part of the wider community planning partnership, who would not naturally associate themselves with community justice services. That, for me, is one of the key aspects that the bill could be strengthened upon. What is the traditional failure for want of a better term? Is that collaborative work taking place? Some of that collaborative work... Again, just in terms of clarifying what I mean, there are a whole range of policy initiatives around the Children and Young Persons Act, around things like through care and after care for looked-after young people, for the earlier clarity, etc. I suppose that, for my mind, those need to be stitched together. I do not want to turn this into a discussion around resourcing, either. However, the resources that are, for example, for local authorities in the work that they are doing in community justice services are pretty well fully assigned to managing the business, to managing offender behaviour, etc. It leaves very little flexibility to redirect resources within that strict financial envelope. I must admit that you will see the responses from various organisations. We will look with a bit of puzzlement around the allocation of £2.2 million to community justice Scotland. There is a role for community justice Scotland, etc. However, there is no additional resource for local authorities, or any of its community justice service partners, to invest in that preventative work. We know the financial envelope that we are working on. I move to... Christian, do you want an early intervention? That is all that you are going to ask about, so I will be cool. On the early intervention and on the diversion as well, because I think it was what it was said early on. I just want to clarify. We seem to all agree on the submission. We are all saying that it is not in the bill. No, it is not in the bill. It is not there. Now, the thinking is that you did say it, but it may be somewhere else. It may be dealt somewhere else. I just want to have a little bit more input from yourself, knowing if it has been treated somewhere else already and we can identify with it, or have you got any indication that it is going to be treated in other bills or in different ways. I am sure that the justice minister would be able to explain what the plans are for diversion. I am sure that there will be plans in place, but diversion is not something that is governed generally by legislation. Diversion grew out of the practice of prosecutors back in the 70s to exercise a more humane approach informally to prosecution. The procurator fiscal version introduced a system of diverting for social work intervention or drink-related offenders programmes, which might assist. It has grown from that. It may well be the reason for diversion not being in here from prosecution, because it is the role of the prosecutor. The prosecutor is constitutionally independent of others, and the idea of a partnership with the prosecution therefore is, in a sense, anathema, because that independence must be there. I assume that that might be the reason that the Government has not specified it. However, it does require to have some cognisance in this bill. The recognition of what goes before is vital, because I think that the importance of keeping them out. Once you are in the structure, it is like once you have been to prison, it loses all deterrent effect. People have talked about the short, sharp shock. That is a myth. It is like a form of inoculation. You agree that you become part of that establishment. Sometimes it is a great security blanket for people that feel better off there. It is an issue that could perhaps be raised with Cabinet Secretary or the Minister as to whether, in the definition section, it is possible to put in if it is not possible or even why it is not there. It might not be possible within the bill to bring in early interventions, diversions from prosecution and intervention into this. I have got Elaine Rodd followed by Margaret Rodd, please. I would like to address the issue as to whether this bill has made an impact on what is described as the cluttered strategic landscape and its impact on the delivery services, or whether it is still going to look like a cluttered landscape under these proposals, and how that is going to impact on what Damail has described as the judge taking community justice or paying attention to the issue of community justice. I think that the answer is, I don't know. If you look at the bill, it will depend on how it is executed, like many other things. Anything on paper can look as if it has a capacity to do something. Much will depend on the strength of leadership. The role of the chief executive is to establish a strategic direction and thereafter to hold 32 authorities to account. That, in itself, could have, in bog down, reading reports all year and assessing performance indicators. How much that individual has the power to influence change to make sure that the third sector, who have a very important role in this and traditionally have been a huge support to local authorities in their partnerships, but are not put on the constant starvation motivation to survive, which means that staff have employed for 18 months or three years who cannot see themselves having a career in this and who disappear. The local sheriff may say that he has got this great project and then finds out that it has gone. Another one is renamed. The sheriff is moving around the country, so what is available in one area may not be available in the other. How we ensure that that is made much, much more robust and that you know that this is something that is going to continue, it is not necessarily going to be there always if it is not producing the results. I think that that is the other side of this equation. What difference some projects look very attractive superficially but are not actually changing behaviours? I think that that is what this has a capacity for someone to look at that and focus on that and this chief executive and this structure. I cannot tell you whether he will have the resources to do that or she will have the resources to do that, but there is a capacity in this bill, certainly, to be able to improve what is there before. We described the landscape around community justice three years ago as complex and that sort of thing. I think that how I interpret what is proposed here is that it will remain complex. The relationship between the proposed community justice Scotland and the individual community justice partners, local authorities, Mr Sneddon may wish to comment on the role of integrated joint boards for health and social care integration as well who will also have responsibilities for criminal justice social work in some local authorities means that, while the CJAs will no longer be present, additional and different complexities are being built into the system. That comes back to the point that I made originally about the complexity of governance and accountability arrangements and who is accountable to whom within those arrangements and the position of community justice Scotland as a national body. If it is helpful to give some illustration, I think that the first point is yes. It has the potential to remain a difficult and cluttered landscape. My own authority has a three authority shared service. It has taken the decision to transfer its entire social work functions into an integration joint board. The integration joint board has connected closely with the community planning partnership because the original intent of the redesign of community justice services was to firmly embed the new services into the community planning partnerships. We have the complexity of community justice Scotland exercising a role around performance monitoring, making recommendations and reporting. One of the concerns that we would have is exactly what community justice Scotland is at Fisherfile. We know that there is tremendous value that we could get from community justice Scotland providing a cultural and professional leadership, almost similar to the joint improvement team arrangements that we have in health and social care, so that they would engage with a range of partnerships, undertake unique research and spread good practice. If they are spending their time reviewing performance reports that are locally produced and locally accountable, what additional value would we get from that arrangement? Although the arrangements might be quite clunky, it is not without the will of any partnership to map that and make sure that local arrangements are in place. Where our nervousness comes in is should community justice Scotland be spending their time duplicating the accountability arrangements at a local level against a national framework of outcomes, or should they actually be taking that professional and cultural leadership, I think that we would get more value from the latter. In your ideal scenario, what would be the relationship between a national body such as community justice Scotland and local? I give the illustration of the joint improvement team quite readily. That is a very effective and welcome support to local partnerships. They are populated with people of high capacity and great subject knowledge, and they undertake an exceptional role in spreading good practice and undertaking research. If community justice Scotland would be able to undertake those roles, in addition to some key strategic commissioning work that sits out with the local commissioning arrangements, I think that we would get good value from community justice Scotland. I do not see the value in them replicating the performance monitoring arrangements and making recommendations, potentially overlapping with some of the areas of some of the inspectors for different partners. The last point that I would reinforce is to look at how well embedded the community justice partnerships are within the community planning partnerships. Again, I think that we would get better value if it is firmly embedded and one might even argue that it is a different body, because that brings a much wider range of partners to the table with their contributions, which goes back to the point that was made earlier about that we need to harness all the contributions of the public sector to do the early intervention and preventative work. On that point, you are saying that what the commission wanted is a quite different model, which was a national service, so that the chief executive would have the power to measure performance, accountability and to be a spokesperson for community justice. At the moment, our perception was that that is quite weak. If anything, it tends to be the bad story. Two-boy smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee for two hours was the example that was given before, and it was always the apocryphal tales of community justice, when in fact it has undergone a significant transformation since then, I think that it is much more effective generally than it ever was. Someone should go out there and lead on that to convince the community to show the community that this is much better than sitting on their BTMs in a cell, watching television or not doing something productive or learning skills or addressing that. My concern is that I am pleased that the criminal justice authorities have been disbanded, because I do think that they were hovering above those who were doing the work but not having a role. My concern is that I think that I would differ from Clelland on what he says about the role of the chief executive. The difficulty and the current structure is that he will have a suspect accountability, certainly to the press in the Parliament, that will not have the power to do anything. He can direct certain things for the future, which could be helpful, but he does have to look at how they are performing, because he is looking at many different authorities who could all be reporting to their own individual performance indicators. It is important that it is meaningful for the public to know what differences it is making, not that it is simply preventing re-offending altogether. It may be reducing re-offending. Someone who would have re-offended five or six times a year is now only offending once every two years, and looking at that takes a lot of work. We need to ensure that the chief executive's role can be that he can really look at what difference it is making. I hope that the outcome of that will be that we know the outcomes of community justice and that we reduce the proportion of those people who are going to prison, which is costing us a huge amount of money. The taxpayers are playing a fortune for that, and it is not working. I think that there is a job to get the public to understand what is meant by community justice, and so much in the explanatory notes is jargon. We are just talking about people A, not going to prison in the first place, and if they do go, they do not just go backwards through the revolving door, and that is money well spent. It may look as if, why are you helping these people when they are bad people to some people in the public? The fact is that A, there may not be very well-being bad people, but it is costing you, and Armin, I like to do this, and it is not helping. Sometimes the Parliament puts out stuff here that is not—I do not think that the public would understand—talk about landscapes and outcomes, and it is actually quite a simple thing about stopping people going into prison or going backwards and forwards into prison in the first place. The other objective is to reduce crime. I make communities safer, and I think that there is an important submission that is made by the victim support Scotland and by others. It is sacro about the role of victims in this, so that victims know that the outcomes are that someone is likely to reduce—that is something that they want to know. It is not something that is separate. This is not a focus on offenders. This is a focus on the community more generally to make sure that it is a safer, more peaceful place for people to live. It is not a focus on families and so on, of course. Roddie, do you— I can slightly labour the point possibly as to whether or not it is possible to amend this bill to make structures look slightly less complex, to hone in on a structure that would more effectively reach the girls that you have been talking about. What was the subject of extensive consultation? The consultation was that they wanted to have local delivery and local authorities involved in it. That is a decision, obviously, for the people of Scotland to make. Only time will tell whether or not those structures can ensure that community justice becomes as robust as it requires to be. The wider approach is taking that it is not just looking at a slice. It is a focus on this to the extent of neglecting diversion, which could be even more powerful. What happens when people are in prison and what happens when people come out of prison needs to be looked at in the round. They are not separate entities. That is important. I find local authority structures quite complex, because I was back in the central government as well. The MAPAs are there, you have the community partnerships and now we will have these community justice partnerships as well. I am not quite sure what the relationship is between those two who have authority over the other or if there is. That appears to be slightly ambiguous, and that needs to be clarified. It may well be that some form of streamlining of that relationship might be helpful in declunking it, if we are saying that it is a clunky structure. Mr Sten, do you want to comment on that? It does seem... I mean it, I'll go back. It's not actually that complicated, but we could make it simpler. I looked at the clarity around the original consultations and the central role for community planning partnerships. There will always be local variation, so if the bill is permissive to allow a particular partnership to say, well, actually it's easier if we vest the responsibilities initially with the integration joint board, then they will report to a community planning partnership and onwards back to ministers. That puts an extra layer in, but I go back to the centrality of the community planning partnership. The community planning partnership brings a wider range of partners to the table with their contributions, to strengthen the bill, to go back to the member's original point. Having a clarity around the duties to all partners, not just, and there's often a default to local authorities, and we almost use local authorities as a default for local, and it shouldn't be, but to have a clarity about the contribution of all partners to the community justice work. That should be about their local contribution as well as their national, because it's easier for some organisations to say, well, we contribute at a national level in the following ways. If that is a local partnership, the activities and priorities that reflect the local context and the local priorities, the focus should be on what they are doing locally. I think that the bill would be strengthened by reinforcing the central role of community planning partnerships and a greater clarity on the duties for all partners to contribute at a local level. Should somebody take the lead in a local authority area for what's happening in community justice? At the moment, you've got community planning partnerships that may not be effective. Different local authorities have different ways of doing things, rurality and urban ones. Should somebody be taking some organisation and taking the lead? Could it be different in each local authority depending on the way that they are set up? Is somebody at the end of the day in charge of what's happening, not just everybody's round the table together and nobody's in charge? It's easier to have a lead agency model, so you've got one lead agency. Does it need to be a local authority? No, it doesn't. Does it need to be the police? No, it doesn't. Does it need to be health? No. It could be for the local partnership to determine, but it's always easier to have a lead agency. The lead agency works best if there's a complete clarity about the duties and responsibilities that all partners contribute. You don't have the lead agent trying to go around all the other partners to get them to contribute. There is a clear expectation of their contribution and they have to account for that contribution. The community planning partnership, in your view, might be the one that would say, in this particular local authority, the lead agency, we agree, will be by agreement. Yes, underpinned by a statutory set of duties for all partners. I think that the difficulty there will be the point that we made in the report, which is that if you have different set-ups all over, something goes wrong in a community service. Let's see someone breaks into someone's house that they've been fixing the garden of, that's an example. Who is responsible for it? A community partnership, a justice partnership, is a rather vague concept to the public. How will the press deal with that, who's responsible? The temptation will be to come to the new chief executive of community justice Scotland to explain that. That's got to be ironed out, because if it's different agencies, again, accountability is going to be quite difficult. Some agencies, from what I can see from some of these committee meetings in the past, don't send the people who are there. I'm not suggesting it's fault. You get another representative of the person and they're not in a position to commit or make a decision. Having real accountability for not working and not going well in a committee set-up is really quite tough. That's why you need to have a strong discernible. If you have this community justice in Scotland and it's going to be a voice for community justice, it has to have powers that can direct where there is poor performance. It must be able to measure performance and it must be meaningful, because if each area is setting up its own performance indicators, that's a very easy world to live in. I'll just develop my own performance indicators and then assess myself against those. I think that there has to be some form of link in order that the community in Scotland is getting good value for money and that they are working their effective orders that have been carried out. We've got a different perspective on this. I look at the national outcomes for Scotland. You've got national outcomes for a whole range of areas that can be absorbed and reflected in local priorities. We report on them from alcohol and drug partnerships all the way through to a range of education outcomes. I hope that we will have a new national outcomes framework soon. That model applies right across local authority services. I'm sure that it goes into other areas of the public sector. I absolutely understand the need to articulate a clear view at a national level so that the public are given assurance about community justice services. It doesn't necessarily involve community justice Scotland's chief executive or the organisation itself duplicating the accountability arrangements that could be delivered at a local level. Those are local services and local communities are accountable to them. The challenges that we've found in looking at community planning partnerships by way of an example is a degree of ambiguity about the need to reconcile national priorities and local priorities. That problem for community planning partnerships in some cases may be replicated at the local level for community justice partners in terms of what's needed at the local level versus what's needed at the national level in terms of the outcomes that ministers wish to see. Well, I'm not any further forward but I'll have to read it later. That's fine. I'll now take Elaine Fall by Margaret. I'll first ask about something that's not in the bill. Dame Eilish, your commission proposed a joint community justice prison service board. Do you think that the bill has missed an opportunity because presumably that facilitated the sense of our resource, for example, from the prison service into community justice? I think that a lot has been done to improve the structures for the prisons for women and I think that there's a champion, which was very important, that chief executive himself took on that role in dealing with that. There was a great nervousness when we did the commission from social work about any form of integration with the prison service, which as an entity so that you have a probation service where you would have all of these things under that, and clearly there's a very strong move away from that form. Nonetheless, culturally, I think that they're very different and that has to be overcome. I think that much of the social work that has to go on in prisons was quite separate and distinct. I hope that it's moved on. If someone was going into prison, they would lose contact with their social work in the local area. They would have different people looking after them in prison and they would go back out somewhere that was a complete disjunction of care. I think that that's why that board was necessary to look at what was happening there and to look at the types of activities that are taking place in prison, because if you have a great community justice set up and very effective community justice projects taking place that are working, then the prisons need to learn from it, because a lot of what's going on in skills building, the potential to transform what happens in prisons now is there with the new prison that has been developed in the new community justice or community facing prisons that are being suggested. They have to be very closely tied into what's happening there. It doesn't necessarily have to be a board at a very senior level. That's what we're talking about. It's a good way of looking at what's happening regarding this whole area of care. It would be an opportunity. It's entirely a matter for those who are responsible to know whether or not they feel that they agree with that. I'm not sure that they have said that they're not going to do it, but I think that it's something that could be helpful. It's so complex, and that's part of the area that you're dealing with. It's very complex lives and very different types of offenders. They're all entirely different with very different needs. It's that software that's required and that's why those two agencies of prison and social work and those who are responsible for community justice as well need to come together much more closely. They are involved in the partnership, certainly in prisons at that local level. If we could move on to the definition of the community justice partners in section 12, there's been some criticism of the content of that section from a number of the written submissions. There's no mention, for example, of the third sector. Some witnesses have suggested that the Crown Office should be part of that list and some have suggested the judiciary, although I think that there are people who are concerned about the independence of the judiciary as well. I wonder whether you felt that the list of partners in section 12 was adequate or whether other partners should be added to that, in particular the third sector. I think that at least two of us have already referenced some comments around that. Having a wider representation, certainly service users' voice within the local partnerships is really important. That's kind of sometimes hard to harness and to ensure that it's not tokenistic. To give them an appropriate voice, we have a tremendous number of very high capacity third sector organisations operating in Scotland and having an appropriate voice at the table is really important. The prison service, I think, has been referenced. I know that some of the submissions referenced having the PF represented locally as well. From our perspective, we think that having that breadth of representation, but again, I'll go back to that to repeat, having a clarity around what's expected of them and what their duties are. To go back to the point that I made about community planning partners, the focus tends to be in on the post-offence work. If we are genuinely going to make a transitional change, we need to ensure that we are harnessing the earlier services, education services and housing services, a whole range of people who are addressing social justice issues. I certainly noticed that housing associations weren't on the list and some local authorities have no, they don't have housing other than housing associations. It's pretty key to people when they come out of prison that they're somewhere to go to almost immediately or they retain their tenancy while they're in, as was raised with us. Do you think that the sufficient representation of victims and offenders and the families of victims and so on, are they sufficiently represented in that culture? I don't think that that, well, I would hope that all of the organisations there will obviously have a real interest in victims and I suspect that they all do, so it's not suggesting that that's in the gift of one particular organisation. I do think that there is a problem if you have such a large, these committees are so large that they become unwieldy and different people turn up every meeting. Then again, how do you actually manage these services by a committee? How do you really make sure that they're working and you have different people coming in? I think that what you want is a very lean and very effective partnership, core partnership, which consults very heavily those who have got real interest in a meaningful way, such as the prosecutor, because the prosecutor will be the people who decide if someone's going to go into the court or is going to be diverted out of the system to a project. Therefore, the prosecutor's got to have faith and understand it and there's got to be good relations there, so that type of relationship is the same with the third sector. The third sector is a major player in this and I would think that a representative of those who are actually doing the work very often would be probably very important on these partnerships. I was surprised not to see them there. The judiciary, of course, has to be independent, but again, ensuring that there's heavy consultation with the judicial institute of Scotland and judicial training organisations so that they understand what is happening and so that they can then again consult with judges as to what their experiences are in dealing with sentencing and their frustrations. That is where they feel that a community justice sentence doesn't cover what they need and which could keep someone out of prison if it did. I don't think that the answer is to expand it to have it. I think that it then becomes almost like a town hall event and what you're looking at is something that's going to have a very slick ability to move forward and change and address any difficulties that there are. Shouldn't there be a requirement for consultation, therefore, other than having a huge body of people but actually have on the bill? I think that there's a provision for consultation in the bill, from what I can see. Again, that's quite to place how well that's taking place. Again, that's up to the effectiveness of these partnerships and whoever's chaining them to make sure that that takes place. It's a supplementary, Gil. Have you finished, Elaine? It's actually in the voluntary sector and I often wonder, having been involved in the voluntary sector for quite a while, is it actually possible to put in statute enforcement obligations and responsibilities on the voluntary sector in the same way you can in the public sector? Is that not the real problem on boats and such? Well, you can't compel any of their charities. Most of them are charities that are registered and they can register a function as being part of. I think that even if they weren't substantive members, attendance at them would be helpful. The Lord Advocate would attend Cabinet, not as a member of Cabinet, but to give advice in a view because they are so central to the organisation of government, so you could have that type of status in that event. Charities are capable of being legislated for, there's no prohibition on doing that, but they then dissolve, there's nothing that you can do. Charity changes its name, changes its charitable, then there's nothing that the Government can do to do that. There's very significant enabling powers in this bill. I did notice that, which gives it a lot of scope to either beef up various roles or to change those. I notice that it's quite high up in the bill. That does tend to suggest that this is a bill for growth or a piece of legislation which may grow with the passage of time. I mean, looking at the submissions we've got, the public sector is well catered for, the voluntary sector is less so, but they seem very keen to be at the centre of it and I thought maybe the way to get around that was when it came to the nitty-gritty awarding contracts which you can clearly look at and measure. That's maybe the element in this bill that would work or the operation of it. Our permissive provision doesn't require to oblige, it can't see me. A number of the third sector partners are providers of services, so they're not only representing a body of interest, they are effectively small businesses, not-for-profit businesses, and there is a need to protect those organisations from any accusation that they're inappropriately involved. I don't think that it's possible to apply the same set of duties to individual third sector organisations or charities in the same way that we've been talking about for the statutory sector. Having them available in the discussions, helping to formulate strategy at both national and local level is wholly appropriate. If I can make a comment just on the consultation expectations, there is a world of difference between having an expectation that you will consult with an organisation and the ability to actually expect that organisation to contribute something. In terms of the public sector agencies, I would prefer to see a clarity around what's expected of them in terms of contribution rather than the partnerships having to go to them, hoping that they will contribute. A small follow-up to Mr Sneddon. You've largely answered the question that I was going to ask, because it was about the balance of contracts and sometimes the unfair dependence that the third sector has on relying on contracts for survival and the income that they get from those contracts. I think that it puts pressure on them sometimes in terms of their ability to be perceived as objective. Do you think that the balance is right in the bill about the importance of local voluntary projects and their rootedness in local communities and their credibility and their ability to actually be connected to communities? Do you think that there's enough recognition of the need to negotiate that and how it's going to work out in practice? I'm going to say something probably controversial and not everyone will agree with that. If I can reflect, first of all, on a comment that Dame Elish made, I couldn't agree more about the short-term nature of funding. Organisations, even when they alight upon a fantastic service model, half the time they've got an eye to what's going to happen in 18 months time, are a ridiculous situation that what works can't be sustained because the short-term cyclic approach for funding. It's absolutely depressing in 16 years in here. I've been hearing this for 16 years, and also that different revenue and funding sources don't match up. An organisation and a chat with three different ones, they all end at different times. They spend half their time bidding and trying to get money and so on, and then changing slightly their purpose and the name so they can keep going. I hope that somebody is listening because some of us have been here a long time and this has not been resolved. Jane, I know that it's the case that we raised this in committee years ago, so different governments in here. Let's hope that something changes in the coming short-term. Sorry, I had to get it off my chest because it's just terrible that the same issues are rising over and over and over again and it's counter to the funding and it's counter to the services. Sorry, Jane, I'm fine now. No, no, no. The controversial bit around this is, for me, this is about outcomes for families, for service users, for communities. I would far rather have irrespective of whether they're local, regional or national, I would far rather have the organisation that can best support communities, families and service users. I am not wedded to having, as a point of principle, a support in place for a local, small organisation if they are not the best place to provide the best quality support and care for local communities. That's an unpopular view and it sometimes brings me into a bit of dispute with organisations that are unsuccessful in tender exercises, because they are effectively small not-for-profit businesses, but for me it's all about the outcomes and not about the organisation that delivers. Do you think that there needs to be a bit of consultation about how those outcomes are developed and worded and how they are framed so that the value of operating locally and those esoteric values can be reflected in the outcomes? I think that the outcomes will flow from the national strategy and the national outcomes framework. It will be customised within different areas to reflect a local context, so the outcomes may be not the issue. How do you then commission services to deliver on those? Yes, absolutely. You need to consult about what criteria you are applying, what supports do you put in place to allow small organisations who are not used to tender processes or don't do it terribly regularly to compete in a level playing field with some of the big national organisations who are pretty big in meeting and get high capacity. Give them the best chance to deliver locally, but not at all costs. That is about outcomes for communities. From that particular issue, Orkney and the Outer Hebris community planning ship voiced that concern similarly in relation to procurement, commissioning and services, as you call it. If I just read you the phrase, the concern of any island community planning partnership will be for the potential of a national board focusing on areas of higher population without geographic challenges facing this area. They cite the example of a programme moving forward making changes that require group work, which may be practical in an urban area but is not in a rural or remote island area. Does the proposal allay those changes or should it? I think that both Soss and Kozla have made that there is a role for national level commissioning, but it should be there to bridge gaps that cannot be fulfilled locally or where there is a particular benefit in getting a national or regional contract in place. I'll trade Orkney with Argyll and Bute. Quite often, for example, we have singleton offenders on an island and we have an unpaid work order to discharge, so we have a one-to-one supervision and it's very visible and very local and it has to be something that we deliver that suits our context and wouldn't be exactly how that would be discharged in central Paisley or an urban area. In terms of the commissioning for me, it's important that your services that you commission are reflective of your local context. I take the point that Dame Eilish said that there has to be an expectation of at least a consistent standard of service. It might not look exactly alike from urban to rural or from one area to another. However, there has to be a clear expectation that people have a standardised level of service and that gives confidence to the judiciary and others. In terms of the national level commissioning, it shouldn't be the meat of it, in my view. The balance should be localised. We'd taken the decision to put three authorities together because it gave us mass, capacity and we could reflect a service that was local to us. If there were national contracts that did that, that's fine. However, the further away you get from local, the less that contract understands what's needed in a local context. I think that that confirms the concerns. How would those concerns be addressed? You gave the example of your local authority area where the delivery and we've heard—in fact, another committee has heard—that it's a per-head cost that's done. That's fine if you're getting a bus and going for a melldown leaf walk. It's different if you're getting two ferries and it's taking you 10 hours to go and meet that individual. Are those concerns a-laid? Where are your day job hacks? Would they be a-laid by what you see here? Not in the current format for the bill. The comments that we've made today and what we've made in writing in terms of how the bill could be strengthened, the introduction of this bill is an absolutely critical and positive development. What we want to do is to ensure that it's robust enough to embed it into local partnerships and be able to deliver flexibly according to local context and be supported by community justice to Scotland. Does the bill prevent what I've described taking place? No, but it could be clarified in terms of a clearer language around the bill or a clearer language around the statutory guidance. Is that something that Solace might come back to the committee with, particularly with regard to the financial implications of any central procurement? Solace has endorsed the COSLA submission, which reflects on some of the commentary around commissioning and the balance between local and national. That's set into the written submission. Thank you very much. I have a bit of clarification about your views on the implementation of this bill and the preparation for new arrangement. I see that what Scotland said welcomes the proposal that community justice to Scotland will operate in shadow form for six months prior to starting the full operation on 1st of April 2017. The six months, is it too long period? Is it too short period? I'll wait a minute, that's not a supplementary. Sorry, I've put it to the question. No, no, I didn't. Park that. Margaret's been waiting inches. Keep Margaret on side if I were you, Christian Margaret. Probably most of the issues have been covered, but just to go back to the commission on women offenders comments and some of the ones from Audit Scotland, then we started with a cluttered criminal justice landscape. Short-term funding concerns, lack of accountability leadership and inconsistent service provision. I'm not convinced that the bill actually does address these very valid issues. Would it help, for example, if CPPs and the third sector were mentioned on the face of the bill and very much part of it? There seems to be a huge ambiguity about how much local autonomy there is going to be here, how much leeway local authorities and local partnerships are going to have to deal with the specific problems in their area. Is there a problem about setting national outcomes and the conflict between them and potential local ones that address, as Dame Eilish has said, the very diverse, whether it's releasing through care from prison or trying to defer from going to prison in the first place through community justice disposals? There was a lot of comment on that, so it's already said some of it, but never mind. Let's hear some. I know it is, Margaret, but you just get your hand up quicker next time. I think that the points that you make about the cluttered landscape are still the capacity for that still to persist. There's nothing in this that says that this is going to be much more streamlined delivery of this. I think that the point that John Finnie makes about understanding local needs can be done within a national context. Your local procurator fiscal in an area—I'm just trying to think of it like Arboroth—is a very different creature from a deputy fiscal in the middle of Glasgow City Centre. They're not just because, apart from an international organisation, they're somehow divorced from the local. They're very much involved in meetings and committees in the local context. They understand the issues around their community because they're seeing it. They're dealing with the police and the court. They know those individuals quite intimately. I don't think that it's necessarily one or the other, but the partnerships are there and that structures are there. What it does is that it's quite permissive for this bill. It says that it will have regard to the guidance that is issued by the Scottish ministers. That means that you look at it. It doesn't mean that you follow it. That means that there's still going to be variation. You can reject it and determine to go your own way. If a report is made that they're failing in some way by the chief executive and he makes such a report then they're obliged to give an explanation as to why they're not following it. There's more directory powers regarding that, but the outcome is still one where there could be that great variation. I don't think that there's any criminal justice authority around our local that doesn't want this to work and that's going to be thrown. They want to find out what's working best. It's a mechanism for giving them that information. What we said in our report, and I think that it was possibly one of the most important aspects of the report that wasn't really picked up on, was that we measure a lot of activity. We're not measuring the success of the activity. That falls on the part of the whole justice system. We've not really ever looked at how prison works. Researchers have done that in the past, but it's not just that the community justice system has been neglected. The whole system has never truly looked at how we change behaviours, because it's not just about changing behaviours. It's also about keeping people safe. It's not about the individual offenders, it's about the victim that is restoring equilibrium to the community, so it's much wider than that. Measuring that in a way that's somehow going to be meaningful, because if I'm the chief executive of this organisation, I'm reading 32 different accounts. That could keep me going for a few months. If they're going to be bogged down in that, there's an ability to rise above it and to look at what's happening. I mean, there's no inspector suggested for this, and Clarell and Indicator will each of these agencies have their own inspectorates, but this is a function which is a collaborative function. If it is a collaborative function, then it may well be either you have to have joint inspectors or maybe there needs to be an inspector, there's an inspector for police, there's an inspector for prosecution, there's an inspector for prisons. Why is there not an inspector who could report to this Parliament regarding the effectiveness of community justice so that it's not just everyone telling everybody that it's doing well, it looks good, it looks superficially very attractive, who can actually see what's actually going on regarding it. I think that that might strengthen this bill to have that, but that would be an additional cost, and that's for the Parliament to determine whether it would be worthwhile. Absolutely correct approach. We have integrated children services inspections that involve the inspectorate constabulary, the care inspectorate, et cetera, and we have the same for now for adult services. It would seem appropriate to have an integrated inspection for community justice services, it would seem sensible, and it would free up community justice Scotland. That's a capacity for doing all the positive activity that we've mentioned. He or she could read the 32 reports, but I see what you see about the leadership that you see for community justice. The point about the complexity is that complexity will remain but change. I think that our experience of partnership working at local level is, to a certain extent, it's necessarily messy to have all the partners involved around the table and that sort of thing. While we are very keen to produce nice, neat diagrams of accountabilities, sometimes those become very complex just because of the range of accountabilities. Health boards are accountable to ministers, councils are accountable to the local electorate. We've talked about the third sector being involved as well. The complexity, to a certain extent, is almost necessary. We said in the report that there are over 1,300 different services for community justice by different providers across Scotland. That means that there's an awful lot of players involved and need to be involved and undengaged. That is almost an inevitability of work in this area. The question from the inspectorate starts to make a lot of the provisions come together and look workable. The balance of national and local ensuring that there's proper assessment, that the various leadership roles are performed the way they should be and that people are heard accountable at the end of the day. That could be germane to really making this work well because I do have a slight concern that local authorities are playing a huge lead in this. Given the constraints and funding, sometimes there isn't the willingness sometimes to use the third sector who can be much more effective in some situations and to retain the funds. I think again that the inspectorate would solve that problem. That's an interesting suggestion at the late in the day but it's a good one. Christian, you may now ask your question. I made it clear that it was not a supplementary question. My fault, I should have read out the list of those still waiting. Yes, if you remember it, it was about particularly this timetable to implement as a new arrangement. We read a lot of the submission talking about this piece of legislation. It's an enabling piece of legislation. It's very important that we have that timetable clearly defined to know that we get that leadership, that local leadership and that maybe a decluttering a little bit of the services at a earlier time before it's really enforced. That's six months. Do you think that six months, a lot of things can happen into it? Should it be shorter? Should it be longer? Is there really an opportunity to maybe address a lot of the problem that we heard from you this morning to be addressed at local level during that period before it's implemented on the 1st of April? Of that six months we were mentioning, it came from the findings that we had in a report that we did at looking at the formation of various new public bodies and where it had been quite successful is when there was an operation in advance of the formal start date of the new organisation. We've put out a guidance for setting up new public bodies and one of the things within that is having a board operating in a shadow form in advance of that. We've recently done a piece of work on the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service and one of the things that we identified within that was that there were some people in place at a senior level before the formal start of operations. That assisted certainly in that merger happening quite well. The only caveat on that is that you can have the timetable in place to get people in post. You then have to be able to make appointments. We're aware of some situations where there have been some challenges in making early appointments. Although the intention may be there to have people in post, it's not been possible to appoint in advance. To a certain extent it's how long is a piece of string. You could go longer but then it becomes a more drawn out process. We settled on six months as an appropriate balance for that. The other thing that I would mention is that there's quite a lot of work going on at the moment amongst the community justice community for want of a better word in terms of preparing for the transition for what's going on. The Government and its partners are doing that at the moment. The starting of thinking is going on and I believe that the Government has asked CPPs to prepare a transition plan for how they would think about going forward. The only reflection that I would give is that there's a great deal of statutory guidance still to be produced. It's six months sufficiently longer lead-in time. Once I have full clarity as to what we need to do in conjunction with that statutory guidance, it will be clearer. Certainly our community planning, people are indicating their well and their way in terms of the planning of the transition. There's been a lot of discussion, a lot of engagement with the wider community around community justice. I'm not hearing anybody saying that we are not going to make the implementation date, but it will depend on the final outcome of the bill, what it looks like, what it requires and what the statutory guidance would be. One other reference is what the arrangements are for the set-up of community justice Scotland. Who's going to be on it? Is it going to be a true collaboration? Is there going to be representation of local partnerships? Some form of representation is local government going to feature in some fashion on the board of community justice Scotland? Some of the detail around that is still down of clarity. I'm not throwing up my hands about the timescale, but I don't know all the implications until that's produced. Do you think that this few months are an opportunity to design a lot of locally of the leadership and the cluttering? A lot of things can be done on the sixth month. At the front line, the support for families, service users and so on will still be getting done from one day to the next. The continuation of business, as usual, will continue irrespective of governance structures and all the other stuff that's around about that. That will really start to have an impact as it will start to define the national strategy, the national outcomes framework, what that looks like at a local area, making strategic directional changes to do the preventative and ill anticipatory work. That will have the impact. Will the world grind to a halt from one day to the next, it won't? I'm not looking because if I say something about that and have no other members waiting, somebody put their hand up. Can I just say that that concludes this evidence session? Thank you very much for your evidence. It's extremely interesting and has led us nicely into considering it with other witnesses and ultimately with the community ministers. Thank you very much. I'll suspend for one minute to allow the witnesses to leave, but stay where you are. We're resuming again on item 3 in the agenda criminal justice. It's consideration of a motion in my name proposing a change to the order of consideration of amendments at stage 2 of that bill. This would move our consideration of amendments to part 1 of the bill from 8 September to 22 September to allow more time for members on the Scottish Government to consider possible amendments arising from the outcomes of the advisory group on stop and search. It was due to report to ministers yesterday that part 2 and 6 would then be taken on 8 September. Accordingly, I move motion S4M14094, which is that the Justice Committee considers that the Criminal Justice Scotland Bill at stage 2 in the following order, part 2 with schedule 2 being taken after section 61, part 3 to 5, part 6 with schedule 3 being taken after section 87, part 1 with schedule 1 being taken after section 52, part 7 and the long title with any amendments inserting a new part before or after an existing part being taken before or after the existing part in accordance with this order. This sounds like something I'm used to, but it's tough. Are we all agreed? Did I lose you there? You're all agreed. Are we going to be dealing with next to the first session then? How far? Everything except part 1. Perhaps that was easier. I felt like that was something that... Who was it that you used to advise? Sir Humphrey? Sir Humphrey? I thought that was a Sir Humphrey moment coming on there. Anyway, yes, we're all agreed, which is good. Item 4, subordinate legislation and next item of business consideration of two negative instruments. The first is the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service's administrative support specified order, persons order 2015, SSI 2015, 224. This adds the Scottish Sensing Council's list of persons that the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service must ensure that the administrative support is provided for. The Delhi, DuPowers and Law Reform Committee has not drawn the Parliament's attention to this instrument. Do members have any comments in relation to that instrument? Our members' content made no recommendation on this instrument. The second negative instrument for consideration today is the Scottish Sensing Council procedure for appointment of members regulations 2015, SSI 2015, 225. This instrument sets out the procedure for the selection and nomination of members of the Scottish Sensing Council. Again, the DPLR Committee has no concerns on this instrument. Do you have any comments in relation to it? Yes, I have a number of comments and it's about the selection for appointment. This is an area that we have discussed previously. I find it quite a strange arrangement where the regulations require that, before a person can be appointed as the advocate or solicitor, the Lord Justice General must consult with the Dean of Faculty of Advocates and the President of the Law Society of Scotland respectively. There seems to be a double check on some people getting there. The thing that I find strange is that, in the previous item that we discussed, the policy memorandum for the Community Justice Scotland Bill under the section Equal Opportunities said that, in appointing members of the Community Justice Scottish Government, the Scottish Ministers must act in a manner of which encourages equal opportunities. They went on to say that Scottish Ministers have recently launched a partnership for change pledge called 5050 by 2020 to challenge all private, public and third sector bodies to achieve gender balance in boards by 2020. It was expected that the point would comply with that. I would like to see a similar provision apply here. I am looking at the note from impact assessments on the same paper. The criminal justice division has said that we have considered the impact of policy on particular groups of people, that age, race, gender, sexual orientation, religion or belief, or whether to say whether we are not aware of any evidence that any of the equality strands will be affected by these regulations. That is the same bland statement that we get with every piece of legislation with respect. I do not mean to be bland. I have never been excused to be bland before, but there we go. Roderick. It is a bit difficult. It is slightly confused that there are three legal members, but it talks about one advocate and one member of the Law Society of Scotland. It is quite difficult to deal with that on a gender balance basis. Effectively, those representatives are coming representing the institutions themselves. I will take your point. If I may convene, we are never going to get out the bit here because the danger is that there can be self-selecting. I mean, I do know that the tension is here that people do self-nominate. From a finite pool, I would have thought that that is a general principle that applies to the previous matter that we were discussing. I would have thought that the Scottish ministers would have wanted it to similarly apply to this. Of course, we know from past experience in this committee that there is a marked reluctance to in any way appear to challenge the legal establishment. To be as representative of the wider community as we want every other public body to be. I would be guided by yourself whether we can go back and ask that to be applied to this particular series of appointments. My understanding must be reported by 7 September, which is next Monday. We can raise those concerns with the Lord President as well as the Government. I am not sure here. Bear with me a minute. I will suspend for a moment. I am clarifying processes. My proposal to the committee would be that we like the Lord Justice General that he takes cognisance of the policy commitment by the Government to move towards 50-50 gender balance by 2020 in terms of selections for appointment to the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service in terms of that order. Are you content with something along those lines, John? Thank you, convener. It just underlines it. Yes, indeed. Thank you very much. I beg your pardon. The Scottish Sentencing Council. Thank you. I would like to be reminded and thank you for that. We are now moving on. That is that one dealt with. You are content to make no recommendation in relation to this instrument given what we have already put out in writing. That will be reflected in the record. Thank you very much. Item 5. It is a modern-hood legislation that is a consideration of two instruments that is not subject to any parliamentary procedure. The act of sederant rules of the Court of Session 994 and Sheriff Court rules amendment number two, personal ranges and remits, SSI 2015 227, and act of sederant rules of the Court of Session 994, amendment number three, Courts and Reform, Scotland Act 2014, 2015, SSI 2015 228. The instruments amend rules, of course, mainly in courses coming into force of the Courts and Reform, Scotland Act 2014. The DPR Committee has drawn the Parliament's attention to the instruments as they contain minor drafting errors. The Lord President's private office has undertaken to lay amending instruments to correct those errors. Members are content to endorse the DPR Committee's comments on these instruments. Content. Thank you. We now move into private session.