 Welcome to the Justice Committee's second meeting of 2019. There are no apologies. Agenda item 1 is our final evidence session on the management of offenders bill. I refer members to paper 1, which is not by a clerk, but by the clerk and paper 2, which is a private paper. I welcome Hums of Youself, Cabinet Secretary for Justice, Graham Robertson, team leader, Sandra Wallace, parole policy team leader, Stephen Jackson, Solister and Craig MacGuffey, Solister with the legal services directorate. I thank the cabinet secretary for the various submissions to the committee. I believe that he wishes to make a brief opening this evening. Yes, thank you for inviting me this morning. I also thank you for the flexibility and being able to give this evidence session this week, as opposed to last week. You have already heard from my predecessor in relation to the management of offenders bill. Since then, as we know, the committee requests understandably so on extension to stage 1 to allow them consideration of two independent reports in the operation of home detention curfew, which was published on 25 October. Again, of course, I would like to take this opportunity to put on the record. My condolence is to the family of Craig McClelland. Following the publication of the independent reports works, all 37 recommendations were accepted by the Scottish Government, the Scottish Prison Service and Police Scotland. Work has been on-going to ensure that all the recommendations are taken forward, some of which may be by way of this bill. I am open, of course, to feedback from the committee on that process. I would like to briefly restate for you the purposes and principles of the three parts of the bill. One of the bills is designed to provide a single overarching set of rules governing the use of electronic monitoring, applicable across the breadth of the justice system, be that pre-conviction, at the point of sentence or release from imprisonment. As such, the provisions of the bill are intended to be read alongside those relating to the underlying orders, which remain very much in force. Those provisions support the more extensive, more consistent, more strategic use of electronic monitoring, envisioned by the report of the working group on electronic monitoring in Scotland. Part two of the bill is about the basic disclosure of convictions. When someone wants to gain general employment, for example on a shop or an office, or when they apply for home insurance, we want to reform the general disclosure system. As the evidence is clear that a system that involves too much disclosure can have negative impact on people's lives, we propose to reduce the period of disclosure for the majority of sentences, bring more people within the scope of the protections under the 1974 act and increase the clarity and accessibility of the legislation and improve the terminology used within the legislation to reduce any confusion about the purpose of disclosure. That legislation, coupled with cultural change, will amount to progressive reform that will unlock the massive potential of people with convictions and help to reduce reoffending. Part three of the bill finally convenes changes the term of appointment and re-appointment of parole board members to bring them in line with other tribunals, the intention being to maintain the expertise of members and build on their experience. It also removes the statutory requirement for there to be a psychiatrist and judicial member of the board relying on the particular expertise of the wider membership to fill those gaps. The bill also reinforces the continued independence of the parole board in its decision making and allows the Scottish ministers to set out the board's governance and arrangements in secondary legislation. As you may be aware, on 19 December last year, the Government launched the consultation paper, Transforming Parole in Scotland. That is part of our commitment to improve openness and transparency in the parole system. The consultation will seek to seek people's views on how to strengthen the voice of victims and their families. We are also consulting on supervision, review and recall arrangements for people who are released on parole and how to further enhance the independence of the parole board. The consultation covers the issues raised in Michelle's law proposal as they relate to parole. If issues requiring legislative change are raised through that process, we will consider whether the bill can provide an appropriate vehicle to take those forward. John Finnie Cabinet Secretary, if someone is to be considered for transfer to the open estate within the Scottish Prison Service, that requires an assessment to be made by a multidisciplinary risk management team, whereas decisions on home detention curfew are made by a single individual, is there any conflict there? I understand the thread of John Finnie's question. I would say that, since the inspectorate's reports, which I reiterate, all the recommendations have been accepted, there will be a more robust risk management assessment and process. At the moment, other partners—under the previous regime, in fact—did feed in, such as criminal justice social work. Clearly, the working group that will take forward the recommendations will look at that risk assessment, whether it should be multidisciplinary, what other partners should be invited to give feedback. What I would say in relation to the analogy—the hypothetical that John Finnie puts forward—is, of course, the difference between short-time prisoners and long-time prisoners. It may be that, for all of the resource and the time that is required to put together a multidisciplinary team similar to that, somebody would assess going into the open estate for somebody on a six-month sentence, for example, only serving half of that. Going on to HDC might not be entirely appropriate, but his general point that John Finnie makes, certainly the working group is looking at risk assessment, whether that can be done better, involve more partners, and how that can be improved. That is certainly one of the recommendations going forward. The present situation with home detention curfew, which dropped in 75 per cent, that surely suggests that there was something wrong with the previous system, or there is a risk aversion on the part of the Scottish Prison Service. That is a valuable tool. I, for one, would like to see as much use made of it as possible. It suggests that there is a knee-jerk reaction and risk aversed. I think that John Finnie is correct. We absolutely live in a world where organisations, be they private or public, when there is a lot of media scrutiny on them, there is almost a natural instinct to be risk aversed. My hope, because I agree with John Finnie, is that HDC is a useful tool for reintegration. My hope is that it is a temporary risk aversion. That is quite a dramatic decline. In fact, I am answering a question that was thrown from Liam McArthur in the Parliament around a prison population and the increase in that 75 per cent reduction in HDC has earned outally contributed. There are other factors, too, but it certainly contributes to prison numbers. My belief is that it will be a short-term risk aversion. On the previous regime, there is no doubt at all that when two inspectors come forward with a report with 37 recommendations, there are clearly improvements that can be made. It is important that we learn those lessons. It is also important to say that, as a Parliament, we have collectively agreed on much when it comes to HDC and approved various guidance and legislation previously. I would hope that, wherever changes we can make, we can take the majority, if not all, of the Parliament with us. I know that colleagues have a number of questions. That is one brief question, if I may. That is the role of G4S on this. It is them that produce the statistics for the briefings that we have here. Do you have a commercial organisation involved in the process when you have statutory bodies such as Police Scotland, Criminal Justice Social Work and the Scottish Prison Service involved? Is that helpful, or is the entire regime should rest within the public sector, as I would? It did not come up in the reports from the inspectorate as being one of the major issues of concern. I visited the G4S control centre myself to have a look at the regime in a little bit more detail. I was exceptionally pleased at the professionalism of the organisation and the people working in that control centre and how diligently they did their job. At this stage, I would not say that the commercial operation of it gives me a huge concern. John Finnie's line of questioning. There was a suggestion that the dramatic reduction in use of HDC was a reflection of risk aversion within the Scottish Prison Service. To some extent, with the new presumptions against HDC, it is less about risk aversion and it is more about the more limited range of situations where HDC, or certainly the presumption, may be applicable. Is there any likelihood of that changing for as long as those restrictions on use of HDC? That is a very fair point. We would have to drill down further into the figures in relation to that 75 per cent reduction. I think that all of us would be able to recognise me in the political field and ourselves under media or scrutiny. We have all been in a position undoubtedly where we are ourselves individually or our political parties or other institutions we belong to. When there is that level of scrutiny, there is almost an automatic risk aversion. I think that we could all recognise that. Notwithstanding that, the point that Lee MacArthur makes is absolutely correct. We have limited scope. It is important to say that it is not a ban, it is a presumption against those who have an index of events for violence, carrying offensive weapon, a bladed article or, indeed, links to serious organised crime. That does undoubtedly range the scope. It does not mean that the numbers of HDC cannot potentially increase in the future. We may not see them to the level that we saw under the previous regime before the presumptions were brought into place, but there is scope for HDC to increase, of course, with the legislation coming forward. If I take electronic monitoring in the round, not just the HDC, then we would want the Government's stated goal is to continue to see the expansion of electronic monitoring. In fact, the committee has produced reports to that effect around bail supervision and other parts of the criminal justice system. I take Lee MacArthur's point and it is something that we are looking at carefully. That is helpful. I am struggling to understand what will encourage those numbers to go back up, albeit to an appropriate level. I think that what we are struggling to understand is whether the previous level was exorbitantly high and the current level is unsustainably low in terms of managing that process of reintegration of prisoners back into the community. However, it seems to me to not only have an impact on the overall size of the prison population, but it also increased the risk to communities from the return of prisoners back into the community without any opportunity to manage that process in the way that HDC has enabled the process to be managed up until now. I think that the fair points that Lee MacArthur makes—I will drill down into the figures in more detail, but my understanding is that that 75 per cent reduction is not necessarily all down to the presumption. My belief is that there is an element there of risk aversion. There is some work obviously being done by the Governors in terms of further guidance and so on and so forth. It may be that we see those numbers keep up, but it is right if there is a presumption there, which is now very much in place. Having accepted the inspectorate's recommendations, it would be difficult to see the numbers rise dramatically up to the point before the presumptions were in place, so I accept that point utterly and fully. Therefore, when it comes, excuse me, to prison numbers and how we, hopefully, collectively agree to lower those prison numbers, HDCE will be a part of that, but we will have to look at other options as well, but I will obviously address that later in parliamentary proceedings. His second point is also one that I fully agree with and gives me cause for concern as well. The evidence, and there has been a number of bits of research on the HDCE, the Ministry of Justice, for example, doing pieces that I have found quite helpful, that HDCE helps with the reintegration back into communities. If there are less people going through HDCE, they are less involved in the reintegration process. Does that cause potential harm? There is absolute potential for that. That is why I have asked my Jan Justice Analytical Services to give me more qualitative research into the effects, positive effects—indeed, if there are negative effects—of the home detention curfew. I think that that is hugely important. When I was at the G4S control centre, those people told me about stories of how being on home detention curfew after a period of imprisonment allowed people to reconnect with their family and that, in itself, some of the support that they then accessed voluntarily, that they accessed but were guided to by others, really helped in terms of their reduction and desire to re-offend, I should say—desire not to re-offend. There is absolutely merit in what Dean MacArthur says, and it is something that we have to very seriously consider as a justice system. From what you are saying, we heard from the risk management authority in earlier evidence, you said that the recent introduction of the presumptions against HDCE has inadvertently or on purpose raised the question of the purpose of HDCE, its intention and what it is in place to achieve. What you are saying is that the Scottish Government's intention is not to move away from HDCE, providing that ability to smooth the transition back into the community. Is that a fair reflection of the Government's position? My position is that, because of the research and evidence that exists, we think that HDCE can be a helpful tool for reintegration back into the community. In fact, I want to bolster that with some additional quality of research, and I will be happy to provide that to the committee once that is done. I still believe that it is a tool that can be helpful. When we look at the wider and bigger picture around prison population reduction of reducing re-offending recidivism and trying to look at alternative disposals to custody, then that is just one part of the puzzle to help us to achieve that. From what you are saying, it seems to chime with, again, evidence that we heard from previous witnesses about the need for these presumptions and the change of approach to be reviewed. Certain time frames were offered up, but there was a feeling that this absolutely needs to be kept under review so that the implications for the process of reintroducing ex-prisoners back into the community is assessed on a qualitative basis. Do you have any—can you make any commitment at this stage to a time frame for coming back to Parliament to this committee with that assessment? I read very carefully the evidence that was given in previous sessions, particularly the last two evidence sessions on that particular issue. I noticed that time frame some ranging from three years to five years. I will look at that and get interested in it. No, I cannot give you a commitment right here right now. I will wait for, of course, the stage 1 report from committee and reflect on that. I reflect on HDC quite a lot and looking at the history of HDC, it is clear that it has evolved in terms of its structure, governance and, most recently, the inspectorate reports have provided 37 recommendations, which we all accept. We always have to be open-minded to potential improvements or adjustments or revolutions of HDC and, as a Government, we will continue to do that, but we have to let the current regime embedding most certainly for a period of time before making any fundamental changes. There is a danger that public protection could be compromised by that in order to promote rehabilitation and reduce the prison population. Can you guide the committee on what priority is public protection given when assessing HDC as against other considerations? How is the balance strong? I will answer that question in just a second. What I would encourage the member not to do is to say that it has to be a choice between one or the other between public protection or, indeed, reducing re-offending behaviour within the perpetrator or the offender, because the two are somewhat linked, although they are undoubtedly linked. If we can reduce re-offending in an individual, then that clearly is a great benefit to potential victims if we didn't. It is just an important distinction or nuance to make. On a more substantial point, public protection is absolutely key. It has to be the key consideration. There are a number of considerations protecting the public, protecting and preventing re-offending and securing successful reintegration. It is clear from the inspectorate's supports that, frankly, to paraphrase, did not think that there was enough weight put on the public protection side of it, although it acknowledges a key consideration. Therefore, we have accepted, as I keep saying, the 37 recommendations between SPS and Police Scotland. However, there is certainly more that we can do to understand how best to weigh those elements. The risk management authority is now working with SPS to develop a risk assessment tool for short-term prisoners, but I do have to say that, ultimately, even with the best risk assessment tools in the world, we can only take us so far in predicting how an individual will behave and what they are capable of doing. Once that work is done to develop that risk assessment tool to help to weigh those elements, it would be helpful if we shared that with the committee, and it would be helpful to hear your thoughts on that. I was going to ask you about the risk assessment tool. Do you have any indication briefly, cabinet secretary, on when that might be ready? I mean, they are working on that now, and my direction to all the partners involved has been that it should be done right, as opposed to rushed. I have not pushed them, I have to say, on a timescale, but they have got the direction and they understand from the inspector its very thorough reports that protecting the public is right at the top in terms of the key assessments that have to be made. But understanding the weight is going to be important. I am sorry, I do not have a timescale that I can tell you definitively, but my direction has been to get it right, as opposed to get it rushed. On a specific point, just before we move on, can you give any indication if the committee will see the risk assessment tool before we complete the bill as stage 3? I think that that is fairly important. I can absolutely see the logic of why that would want to be the case, so if you do not mind, I will take that back to partners and press them on that. Again, if we can get it done that time, I can see the sensibility of doing that. Let us see if we can try to aim for before stage 3. That is helpful for me. A slight change of topic, but can you elaborate, cabinet secretary, on what was the thinking behind tasking prison governors was taking decisions on HDC rather than giving the role to a multidisciplinary risk management team as happens elsewhere in the system. On reflection, does that remain your preferred course of action? It goes back somewhat to the question that John Finnie asked in the beginning. It is important that others feed in to the decision that is made so currently, the criminal justice social work being won, but certainly others will feed in. The work of the working group that is on-going is to explore and examine who else can make a useful contribution to some of that. Again, we have to be realistic on that. If somebody has a particularly short sentence, it might not be as much background on the individual. There is only a limited amount that an agency could feed in, so it might be very limited. In fact, it might be costly to bring a multidisciplinary team when they have nothing to add value to, in certain cases. All those things have to be absolutely weighed up. Governors are highly trained. Prison governors are highly trained. They have a great amount of expertise in what they are doing. I have to say that I have real confidence in governors being tasked with making the decision, but they will not make it in isolation. They will make it with others feeding in. Taking that a little bit further in terms of the risk assessment and management of risk, which I think that you should have pointed out yourself, you can never eliminate risk entirely. You have mentioned the working group. Is it the working group that is working on the risk assessment tool? Is it the same or are those two different things? The HDC guidance and governance working group is considering how additional information that is available is best weighted in those assessments of risk. It is the HDC guidance and governance working group that is doing that, but the SPS and the risk management authority are the ones that are working together to develop a formal risk assessment tool for short-term centres. Drawing from the experience of the working group, I guess that the two pieces of work are interlinked in terms of the guidance. It would be helpful for those to be shared with the committee because in looking at what that will look like in practice and being able to understand what that will mean in terms of those who are then using that guidance to judge whether that level of risk is acceptable or not. Can you say a little bit about the working group and whether there are a variety of interests in that working group? Are, for example, the views of the public reflected in that working group? Are they able to have a voice within those deliberations? I guess that I am thinking about those who represent victims, for example. How will they be able to influence the work of that working group? My understanding is that there are organisations that I have been feeding in that represent victims. Before the inspectorate reports, a lot of the work that previous working groups have done in and around that bill has included, for example, Scottish Women's Aid, which is an obvious interest in some of that. If you do not mind, I will hand to Graham to give a little bit more details about what is more involved in the elements of the working group. In the first instance, there is a number of justice partners that are involved in the working group, police, prisons, criminal justice, social work and risk management authority. Given the nature of some of the discussions, because they are looking at things such as intelligence information, that is a tighter group initially, but we would absolutely like to widen it out to wider partners, including certainly the third sector, and academics have also expressed interest in being part of that and our intention is to take the work out to them as well, not at their stages. Looking at the guidance that might emerge from that working group, clearly, as you have identified earlier, we have the two elements of presumption against in certain cases, understandably. On the other hand, we have the recognition of the role that HDC plays to integrate someone back into society. In terms of that person's history, would they be able to look at, for example, someone who might have an index offence for violence but it is 20 years ago when they were perhaps a young person in a different place in their life compared to where they are now? How much discretion would they have? Presumably, a presumption is not absolute, so would that guidance give the scope to look at the length of time that that index offence occurred? Is that the kind of areas that the working group would look at, or is that an absolute, if the index offence has a violent component to it? It is an important question to answer and to give you some clarification and reassurance around that. Although I will ask my officials to elaborate, we do talk about the index offence being for violence or for the kind of offensive weapon or a bladed article on links to use and organised crime, if they can be established also. However, it is important that we mention the index offences as opposed to looking at the past offences. All that being said, one of the measures that we have taken forward as a result of the inspectorate reports is that police intelligence will now feed into a decision around home detention and curfew. Police intelligence could be around links to use or organised crimes or, indeed, any history that the police might have with individuals, but we always have to be careful in those areas. However, I do not know if my officials want to add or elaborate anything in particular. As you said, the decisions are difficult. Decisions are complex. There is a lot of work going into making sure that richer information is going into them. Some of the inspectorate recommendations were that, in longer-term pieces of work, we should look at what has been done to correctly weigh those. That is the work that the working group is taking forward. You gave a commitment that the committee would be kept informed of the outcomes of the working group as it goes forward. Good morning, cabinet secretary. I would like to pick up on Shona Robison's point with regard to the working group. Women's Aid written submission calls for criminal justice, social work and the Scottish Prison Service personnel to receive training on the dynamics of domestic abuse, particularly in light of the 2018 Domestic Abuse Act. Do you think that the HDC is problematic in terms of domestic abuse, where re-offending and controlling behaviours might be more difficult to monitor and to see? Our engagement with Scottish Women's Aid and a number of others, particularly Scottish Women's Aid, is so important in that field. When we look at the bill in its entirety and potentially extending electronic monitoring using, for example, GPS technology, there is completely an understandable concern from the likes of Scottish Women's Aid to say that we might be able to tell where that person is on Google Maps or whatever, but it does not mean that they are not contacting the victim by telephone or social media or some other way. We would have some either serious reservations to paraphrase, but we would also need to see the safeguards in place. Obviously, when it comes to not just home detention curfew, but the wider electronic monitoring discussion, our partners like Scottish Women's Aid are so important. In terms of the training aspect, I believe that in some regards to the SPS, they are well aware of the training needs of their staff. I could not tell you from the top of my head whether or not they receive specific training. Of course, with the new act, the Scottish Government is funding training for, for example, police officers and others, so I would have to look into that specific aspect of it, but it is a good point for you to raise and for us to take away and reflect on. The written submission from Engender also asked for further explanation in terms of the impact of electronic monitoring on women, which I alluded to. They cite evidence of electronic monitoring bringing with it a number of problems that negatively impact on mother-child relations. The fact that 74 per cent of female prisoners—this was from a 2015 survey—had suffered from anxiety and depression. Again, I do not know if you can go into the specifics of the remit of the working group on that issue, but will they look specifically at female offenders in terms of monitoring risk? It is hugely important that they do it. We will feed that back. We have obviously put it on the record, but we will feed that back in. We know from all the research, and there has been some really good research, on the female offending population in Scotland, that there are vastly different complexities when it comes to the females in our prison estate. Of course, we are taking forward a radically different way of doing things in terms of our community custody units, our CCUs, to which we have been granted permission in Dundee and Glasgow. I think that we are doing a lot of good things. Clearly, when it comes to this agenda, there are some additional nuances for the female population, and they would be for the male population, and that should absolutely be part of the consideration. If it is not, I will ensure that it is. One thing that I have said to colleagues, reflecting on where we have got to, is that, with hindsight following the tragic case of Craig McClelland, when we were examining the bill, we overlooked a couple of key matters. Essentially, we were looking at how electronic monitoring might be applied going forward using the bill. We also looked at what would happen if a person breached following the bill. What we did not ask was how those decisions were being arrived at currently and what happens right now when people breach those conditions. I was wondering if the cabinet secretary would reflect that perhaps, in bringing forward this bill, there was not sufficient examination in terms of the assessment that was made, and then how electronic monitoring was currently monitored with the existing legislation? I appreciate the member's frank insight, but also his candour in terms of his own perspective on it, and also the committee's perspective. I think that it is helpful. My own perspective is somewhat difficult, because you will know that I was in a different ministerial position when the bill was making its progress. I came in in June last year, so it is difficult for me to say what the considerations were of my predecessor on the bill team, but I think that it would be fair to say that when we see a tragedy, like we witnessed in the Craig McClelland case, there is no doubt that it sharply focuses all of our minds and does of government. The inspectorate of reports coming forward collectively with 37 recommendations clearly means that the system could be improved from the previous regime and will be improved, but clearly there was room for improvement there. In terms of whether the risk management assessment was considered carefully enough or not previous to that tragic incident, it is difficult for me to say because, again, I was not in the position that I am in. Currently, what I can do is just give the member assurances that we are better for those inspectorate reports and there is a lot of wisdom in the committee having waited until those reports were completed to re-examine the evidence of stage 1, but I think that we will all be better and the regime will be better and the public will be safer for those recommendations. The cabinet secretary is absolutely right in terms of his emphasis on the safety element. We have already had a number of committee members asking about the risk management regime. I think that, clearly, that is central. Essentially, enabling prisoners to have a degree of liberty requires a robust risk management regime. Does the cabinet secretary think that that should be on the face of the bill? Certainly, in terms of clarity, in terms of the responsibility of who is responsible for arriving at that assessment and, more importantly, who is responsible for monitoring it once it has been made, given some of the comments that have been made both by HMI, PSNA and HMICS in their reports? I suppose that there are a couple of things that I would say. I have come in front of this committee a few times. On a number of occasions, when looking at legislation, I have always been somewhat wary of putting too much on the face of a bill because of the rigidity and difficulty involved in changing primary legislation, which is particularly rigid and flexible, whereas doing things through secondary legislation or through guidance can keep you more flexible. I suppose that this goes back to Lee MacArthur's question around the need to be constantly reviewing and constantly and consistently keeping an open mind to HTC as it may evolve over the years. If we accept that we have to do that, I do accept that. Putting our risk management assessment procedure or risk management assessment tool on the face of primary legislation might create a degree of inflexibility for the future. That was not what I was suggesting, cabinet secretary. Critically, in my view, what legislation should do is identify who is responsible and what they are responsible for. I think that the issue that I have when you look at the reports, and I'm going to give me a moment to quote. The HMIPS report stated that, although an assessment process clearly existed, it may not be regarded by some to meet the definition of robust. Likewise, another observation was that, given that additional HDC licence conditions were not monitored, it is doubtful that it served a purpose. At the same time, when we heard from Colin McConnell, he was adamant that he was upholding the guidelines and the policy as stood before. My concern is that, if we have a report saying that those conditions were not being monitored, we have the prison service saying that they were doing everything that they should. The bill does not identify anything new in particular in terms of what is to be assessed and who is to do it. Most importantly, who is to monitor it. My concern is that it is not going to be capable of satisfying what I believe are key issues that are identified by the two reports in terms of monitoring. I agree that the tool should not be on the face of the bill, but the high-level principles of what it should be doing and who is responsible for it should be, surely. I apologise that I misunderstood his original question. In terms of who should be, I will look carefully at the report that the committee produces in relation to stage 1. I will try to be as much as I can and, of course, as open-minded as possible to suggestions that come forward from the committee, especially on the issue where, although we have differences and nuances between us all, we ultimately want to get to the same place, where I think that most of us believe—if not all of us—that the HDC can play an important part. It can be an important tool within the criminal justice system, but appropriate safeguards for public confidence and public safety have to be there. Therefore, if there are sensible suggestions around that, I will look at that. In terms of who makes that decision potentially being on the face of the bill, I will go back to my previous answer. On the face of the bill, we always have to keep it in our mind, which I am sure that we do, but we always have to keep it in the front of our mind that, if we do that, changing that can be incredibly difficult in a process that has already gone through some change in its formative years. Therefore, we have already seen quite a bit of change around the regime over the years and recent years. We just have to be careful that we do not box ourselves into a corner, but all that—notwithstanding all of that—any suggestions that come forward, I will keep an open mind on them. I think that the committee has an issue in that the central issues that have been identified by the reports in terms of the monitoring of conditions and information sharing, we do not really seem to have any key proposals in front of us to address those points. I am just wondering how you think that we can really assess the bill without any additional proposals to address those key points. Quite a lot of work has been done in relation to information sharing. In fact, we did not have to wait for the inspectorate's reports for there to be an improvement in information sharing between, for example, SPS and Police Scotland in terms of potential breaches and people going on lawfully at large. In fact, there was quite a dramatic reduction of those that went on lawfully at large once some of those information protocols were improved. I can perhaps write to committee around some of the information sharing. I think that it goes back to the convener's point around whether the work that is being done around the risk assessment can be concluded before stage 3. I am giving an undertaking to speak to partners around whether we think that that is possible and to try to push them hard, because I can see the logic in that and the sensible suggestion that that should try to be concluded before stage 3 is built. I do not know if it is possible or not, but I will certainly push them on that. Cabinet Secretary, you will know that the committee heard evidence about a breach of an HDC following on from Daniel Johnson's line of questioning, not being a specific offence. Could you elaborate or expand on the Scottish Government's thinking about making HDC an offence and increasing police powers of arrest when they suspect a person is in breach? If the member is talking about going on lawfully at large, one of the recommendations of the inspectorate of reports was for the Government to give that consideration that would reflect somewhat the position in England and Wales. We know in the tragic case of Craig McClelland that there was some discussion and certainly some dubiety around whether or not there would be appropriate powers to enter a premises without a lawfully at large being an offence. There is a very different kind of legal thought on that, but what we will reflect on and what we are reflecting on is that stage 2 is potentially just removing that dubiety that might exist by making a lawfully at large an offence and therefore giving officers potentially the power to enter premises. That is something that we will consider at the time of my ministerial statement in relation to the inspectorate of reports. I note from the evidence that you have taken from Police Scotland that there is calls from them to explore other areas that potentially give police additional powers on a suspected breach as opposed to a confirmed breach. We will look at the evidence carefully. I would have to say that some concerns that I would have to discuss both with legal teams and obviously with Police Scotland and others around that, but we will certainly look at all those suggestions and reflect on them. I would like to ask you what you think the wider implications of the two reports might be and whether they would have a bearing on the release of a prisoner due for parole or of an accused on bail. Is that going to alter the process or the thinking behind someone who is due to come up for parole? Obviously, as the member knows, there are all very different processes. Parole at the moment, as I said in my opening statement, has a consultation on going around it. The committee has made many suggestions on bail, which we will look at as well. There may be some cross-cutting lessons to learn around risk management in particular and potentially, as some members have already alluded to, multidisciplinary approaches. I looked at the evidence from the probe and I thought that John Watts was quite direct in saying that, from his perspective, parole is a separate process that is going through a consultation. What has been learned from HDC would not necessarily be applicable to parole. There may be some overlap that might be limited, but we are always looking at bail, HDC, electronic monitoring and things like parole with the consultation under way at the moment. Should there be no significant bearing on that aspect? I do not see it currently having any major bearing. There could be some overlap, but, as John Watt of the Pro-Board said, I do not think that it would have a major impact. There is a separate consultation on parole and that is important. We should always make sure that we are constantly reviewing the processes that we have in place, but I do not think that there would be a major impact. It would be my assessment, certainly. Can I ask you to clarify the position that the two reports might have on the Government's plans for expanding electronic monitoring? I know that you mentioned this earlier. If you could maybe clarify whether or not there will be any effect on the plans that are to expand the process. It goes back to the earlier question of John Finnie and Liam McArthur. Is there a risk a version? What I hope is a frank answer from me is that you will get an element of that when you have understandably high-profile cases. I, as the Cabinet Secretary for Justice, absolutely want us to make sure that we have the appropriate safeguards, we learn the appropriate lessons and we accept the appropriate recommendations. However, I have to say that, as a Government and as a Cabinet Secretary, I still see electronic monitoring as a really useful tool and a really important tool in the various orders that they are used in. Therefore, the further use of it, the expansion of electronic monitoring is still absolutely the Government's intention. I suppose that the risk assessment of re-evaluation and scrutiny will affect that as well, in the sense that it will allow you to move forward with confidence, because that is all part of the risk assessment. Yes, for sure. I think that the safeguards are really, really important. A tragedy, like the one that we witnessed involving Craig McClelland, will also do a lot to shake public confidence. It is important that we do everything that we can to restore that public confidence. I think that we are with the inspected out reports in a good place, and the work that is being done by the various working groups and, indeed, between partners will only help to strengthen that and, hopefully, boost public confidence in this measure. Before we move back to the new offence, Cabinet Secretary, just to confirm, on the parole board, there will be access to specialist psychiatric experience or to access these people, particularly looking at what I thought was a very powerful submission. I wonder if you have looked at that from the Royal College of Psychiatrists in Scotland, who made, I think, quite a powerful submission on the level of their expertise both in prison health care, psychiatric hospital, transfer from and that kind of thing. A range of things, which I will not go into now, but it seemed to me a very compelling submission. Is that something that could be looked at in terms of the membership of the parole board in the same way as, while it might not be necessary for the judicial representation to be there all the time, it would be available as and when necessary? Would that be the same with the specialist psychiatric? I have to say that I agree with you, convener, that I find the evidence to be quite compelling and quite strong evidence from society. I suppose that a couple of things I would say in relation to the potential removal of the statutory requirement for a psychiatrist. I thought that the evidence from the parole board made a lot of sense. There was a lot of logic to it. I mean, there are two and a half thousand cases that they consider that, once a psychiatrist can't possibly look at every single one of those cases. However, the secondary point that they made around the fact that, out of the parole board members, a number of them have experience with psychiatry are experienced in the field. Therefore, for them, the statutory requirement was not needed. I think that it might have been yourself, convener, though I am just recollecting from memory looking at the evidence session that pushed them to say, well, that may be the case, but why remove the statutory, why leave it to chance almost as opposed to have the statutory provision there? I can see the argument that is made by both sides. On this particular clause, I await your committee's report, but I have a very open mind to looking at this particular issue again. Okay, that's very helpful. Again, on new offence, moving back to Liam Kerr and Daniel. I wanted to follow up on the question from Greg Ross about the new offence. The new offence is something that I, in broad terms, support. In particular, in terms of giving the police the ability to enter a premises when a breach has occurred, which is one of the shortcomings. However, the Law Society has given us quite a detailed submission with some concerns and, indeed, areas where they feel that there may be shortcomings. Indeed, they state that creating an offence will not address the issues around information sharing, other than with a practical effect when caught that they fall to be sentenced to a further period of custody in addition to serving the remainder of their outstanding sentence. Given the concerns that they've set out, I was wondering whether the cabinet secretary had a view on how the Government was going to address the concerns that the Law Society has set out. He will forgive me, but I haven't seen the briefing, so I will undertake to look at the briefing after this committee session. I don't know if it's been sent on to me or not, but I'll get a hold of it and have a look at it in detail. What we would be aiming to do is creating that offence of unlawful at a large, as I said, to Fulton, to remove the legal dubiety that exists. That would be, in essence, mirroring the situation south of the border. The Law Society's concerns, as you have described them just now, I suppose would hold if you looked at it completely in isolation, but what we have is 37 recommendations of which consideration of unlawful at a large being an offence simply being one of them. However, information sharing, as we have discussed for quite a fair session of this committee, information sharing is a critical key part of some of the recommendations moving forward. That, hopefully, would address a bit. Again, I would have to look at a Law Society's briefing in detail to be able to comment in more fuller terms. Anything further on that? A supplementary from Fulton. Sorry, convener, I did not quite catch the quick enough. It is a supplementary back to the convener's line of questioning on psychiatrists on the parole board. My recollection from that particular evidence session was that I felt that there was a slight feeling that psychiatric involvement in the board would represent mental health involvement as a whole. I wondered if you could comment, cabinet secretary, if there is no need for a psychiatrist on a particular panel on what the role of mental health officers in the whole system and other mental health professionals might be in informing decisions. Is that really a topical discussion? Of course, because of the parole consultation. In my interactions with the parole board, John Watt in particular, but also other members of the parole board, the information that comes forward to them is of real paramount importance. That is largely, not exclusively, but largely the information that is provided to them in their dossier will help to determine them to make a decision one way or another on a person's release on parole or not. Therefore, it is utterly critical that they are getting the most comprehensive information possible now, much of that because we are looking at those on longer sentences. There is time to gather that information, which would include information about the individual's mental health as well. Clearly, part of the consultation that will focus our minds on will be on how that information can be bettered. How can we get better information to the parole board? What is the thinking about the other things that they need to consider that perhaps they are not getting information to the fullest extent at the moment? It is very topical and very much a part of the current considerations. Cabinet Secretary, you said that you have not looked at the lost society submission, but it is a very powerful submission and raises a lot of technical points, which I think that the committee has not taken evidence on and is not aware of, particularly the effect of notification of the breach, the recall notice, just the priority system for priority categories of cases. All of that is coupled with the no monitoring compliance of additional conditions to address specific concerns and identified risks all raised with us at the wise group when the committee went to visit them. Their conclusion was totally supportive of the electronic monitoring and the extension of it, but without the adequate resourcing of the monitoring, the GPS and the new technology, it is more or less doomed to fail. Can you give them some reassurance on that aspect? I mean, I would tend to agree with the broad thrust of that, the resourcing of that. Therefore, of course, the financial memorandum, the resourcing and the budget will be hugely, hugely important to that. It goes back to a wider point even that we will discuss in Parliament later at the topical question around prison numbers. The wise group does some phenomenal work when it comes to the rehabilitation of offenders and reducing reoffending. Therefore, we have to be able to have, across the country, a more consistent approach to how we reduce reoffending to community payback orders. All of that requires funding. Of course, it does, and we will continue to invest in that. It is a valid point that, even if we look at our plans for presumption against short sentences of 12 months, that will go through a parliamentary discussion. However, if that passes, which I am hopeful of it passing, then clearly we will have to ensure that there is funding available to take forward those initiatives, which we have already budgeted for, but clearly for future years, as that accumulates, we will have to make sure that those organisations, local authorities and others are adequately resourced. I suppose that, just on that point, before I bring John Finnie in for a supplementary, if there is a satisfaction public safety is not an issue, then clearly rehabilitation using this legislation to that is where we would be going with that. That helps to make sure that those prisoners who are not subject to the early release or early release and monitoring have more access to rehabilitation. What we heard very clearly in our evidence when we first took the evidence was that there were so many remand prisoners there that should not be on remand, and electronic monitoring would seem to have been the most sensible, not high risk to the same extent as maybe looking at people who are already convicted. There may be a greater risk. Given that, do you think that there has been an opportunity lost that this bill does not cover remand? I have not seen an opportunity lost. I read the Justice Committee's report on remand and, of course, subsequent debate and discussion very carefully. There are always different considerations for the use of electronic monitoring in different circumstances, such as the protection of the public would be the primary concern when it comes to debate supervision. For example, the probability of the person appearing or not a non-appearance would be the risk that would potentially be weighed up. There can be different considerations for different applications of electronic monitoring depending on the type of order. However, I can give a real assurance to the convener that we continue to look at remand, but we are very much focused on a number of the recommendations that are made by the Justice Committee in this front. Perhaps more a point of clarification than necessarily a question that relates to your comments about the law society evidence and the fact that the cabinet secretary, the most recent evidence from the law society, is unsighted on that. The cabinet secretary said that you would look at it if there is a possibility that you could respond to, because it is quite detailed within a time frame in which we could therefore consider it as part of our stage 1 report, rather than because this will be printed on our website, presumably, and it would be good to just round that bit off so that we could consider factors. I appreciate the evidence on it. I thank John Finnie for giving me more bedtime reading to add to my accumulation of papers that I have every night. From everything that members are saying, it is an important briefing, so I do not see why. Excuse me, I cannot look at that law society briefing relatively quickly and try to give you a quick turnaround on that. Although my officials will have this information, I am not quite sure of your stage 1 timetable for your report, but I will double check that and try to give you as quickly as I possibly can. Yes, the clerks can send you that briefing. I think that there is liaison with the officials on the stage 1 timetable on a definitive date. I would just like to thank the convener for raising an inquiry into remand, and I think that there are some relevant points here. One is about recording the reasons why Bill is refused. There was some pushback when we raised that as to whether or not that would be useful. However, given the evidence that we have taken from among other social work, Scotland, about criminal justice social work, it is useful to have assessments made by courts in terms of their work. Given the relevance of public safety and making risk assessments, if a court has decided that someone should not be granted bail for public safety reasons, I think that it stands to reason that that is a useful bit of information if people are conducting a risk assessment assessing someone for HDC. I was just wondering if the cabinet secretary thinks that for those reasons that having the assessment made by the court regarding a refusal of bail might be useful and could form part of a risk assessment for electronic monitoring in HDC. Let me look at the issue again as the assurance that I can give the member. As I said, there can be different reasons for bail being refused, as he knows and alludes to. It could be for public safety. It could be, as I said before, for the risk of non-appearance in the future. Perhaps that information being shared, even if it is shared to limited partners, might be of use. I can certainly see the thread of his logic and his argument. I am happy to look at the issue again. There was just one final niche point that was raised with us at the WISE group. That is very often when they are trying to follow up. If there has been a breach and perhaps someone is in hospital, they try to make inquiries. The police sometimes try to make inquiries and they are told that they are not able to be provided with this information because of data protection. Obviously, there is a misunderstanding, I think, here somewhere about the data protection. Is that something that the cabinet secretary can take on board? I will certainly look at it. It has not been raised with me directly. I do not think I saw it in your evidence sessions, certainly from the transcripts that I read, but I have been more than happy. I hold the WISE group in the highest esteem knowing their work for a number of years. If they are suggesting that it is an issue that they have come across, I have no reason to doubt that. I will be happy to look into that and make direct contact with the WISE group. I have often, like many others around this table, been bewildered at how sometimes the most basic information is not shared, which could make a massive difference to the processes that we do. If we can nip this one in the bud, I will be happy to do so. The clerks can send you the evidence. The police confirmed that when we took evidence, so we are happy to supply that information. That concludes our evidence. I thank the cabinet secretary and his officials for attending. We will move into private session. Our next meeting will be on 22 January 2019, when we will seek to finalise two stage one reports. We will move into private session and suspend briefly to allow the public gallery to clear.