 Good morning and I welcome everyone to the 29th meeting of the Justice Committee in 2014. Can I ask everyone to switch off mobile phones and other electronic devices, is completely, as the interview has broadcasted even when their switch is silent. No apologies have been received. Item 1 I'm inviting the committee to agree to consider an approach to the prisioner's control of release Scotland bill and to the draft public services reform inspection and monitoring a prison. Scotland ordered 2014 under items 3 and 4 in private. Are you agreed? Thank you very much. Item 2 is a further evidence session. This is the first day of scrutiny of the court's budget. We will hear from three panels of witnesses. I welcome to the meeting our first panel, Andrew Alexander, Head of Access to Justice Law Society of Scotland and Alan McCloskey, director of operations, Victim Support Scotland. We have your written submissions, which I thank you. I will go straight to questions from members. In case you have not given evidence here before, if you just indicate to me that you wish to answer a question or questions being directed at you specifically, your light will automatically come on as mine has here and tell you that you're live and be careful what you say. Questions? Are we awake? Questions? Ah, John, you are. John. Good morning, panel. The additional remote facilities for vulnerable witnesses. Are you able to comment and state where they are, a sufficient resource being put to that from the budget? Mr McCloskey. Thank you. Our experience thus far of some of the remote sites has been, I think it's fair to say, disappointing in terms of the technology. I think the principle of having remote sites is sound. It is right and proper that vulnerable witnesses have the opportunity to give their evidence, perhaps a remote site facility, particularly for children, but often it's the case that the links go down and the technology is ineffective. That's our experience, and a lot of court time can be lost in getting the links back working again and the operation of it. It sounds good, and in principle we absolutely support it, but we would like to see better technology in place rather than what we currently have, which is the best sometimes hit and miss. Sir Mr Alexander, given the connection with the provision of these facilities and court closures, is this a run-out of previous models that had these difficulties? Is it to do with the infrastructure? I mean, I'm not technical, but is it to do with the broadband or absence thereof or inefficiency thereof? Well, I think the court closures perhaps put more pressure on the use of remote sites, but I think the issues in terms of remote sites and the technology has been an issue for a number of years. It's not a recent issue, and we have raised that with Scottish Courts on a number of occasions about the fact that the infrastructure needs to be better, unlike you. I'm not technically minded to know, but I know there are resourcing issues perhaps from a branch of Scottish Courts, Esdw, who actually operate and are in charge of making ESDU. I think it's the electronic department. It doesn't matter. We've got the acronym and we can put it to them. They're responsible for making sure that the arrangements are in place for the operation, the time the operation of the remote sites and the TV links, and that has been an issue for a number of years, so it's nothing new in our TTA question. Okay, thank you. Yes, Mr Alexander. Thank you very much, and thank you very much for inviting us to give oral evidence today. Just to agree with Alan, we've heard similar feedback from our members, and also we agree with the broad principle that the use of these remote sites can be very effective. We believe that, particularly with court closures, having taken place and continuing to take place until next year, that it's important that these facilities exist, and also with the concentration, with the introduction of summary sheriffs of sheriff and jury work into 16 locations out of the remaining estate, around 50 per cent, we think that it will be important to utilise this technology effectively. Do you feel there's sufficient resource in the budget directed to that, the provision of this equipment? We have questioned, overall, with the draft budget around the justice digital strategy, and whether there are additional resources earmarked for videoconferencing and for other uses of technology, or whether this is intended to come out of existing budgets. We're very keen to see this technology in place being used effectively and ensuring effective court proceedings, so we're certainly keeping a weather eye on this. Maybe just to add to that, we did note that the Scottish Court service budget has an increase in 15, 16 or 4 million, and if I remember from the notes correctly, they've allocated 1.9 million to ICT, which I think is welcome, but we would be very interested to know when their timescale and timetable for actually implementing that will actually be. So it sounds very good to actually say they've allocated the money, but in relation to, as I said, some of the earlier issues about remote sites, if there's going to be that provision, then we would certainly like to see that timetable made public. As a matter of supplementary, Mr Alexander, would there be savings—I know legal aid, there will be issues about legal aid—to the legal aid budget if we used remote accessing more frequently? Certainly. The Scottish Government's white paper, A Sustainable Future for Legal Aid, published in 2011, thought that videoconferencing overall could save around £1.5 million out of the legal aid budget. One of the principle ways in which this would save money is through cutting down travel time to prisons to allow solicitors to have consultations with their clients remotely while held at prison. There has been a pilot of this. It's been broadly successful. There have been some technical issues around some firms, firewalls and the like, but that pilot will be extended early next year. We think that it's an effective way that client consultations can take place. It has the capacity to save. It also has the capacity to deal with things efficiently. Obviously, there will be questions about bandwidth overall in that we can't have too many connections taking place to prisons at the same time. We would want to ensure that there still exist payment structures under legal aid to allow face-to-face attendances at a prison, particularly for vulnerable accused. However, in principle, we think that increased use of videoconferencing is a very good idea. The pilot was taking place with a limited number of firms across a number of prisons, including Barlinnie, Edinburgh and others. I turn to the court reform agenda. Obviously, the expectation was that this would result in more effective and efficient courts. Do you think that that is the case? Do you have any emerging concerns about how court reform is currently progressing? I think what we're seeing is with the court closures and the court reforms in general, there are more people coming into courts. That is fact. There is pressure on some of the existing courts in terms literally of the availability of rooms in courts for all the things that need to happen in a court. There's JP courts, the sheriff's business, the civil business, and there are more and more people turning up in courts. That is a fact. From our perspective, one of the issues that all our concerns is around when victims and witnesses turn up the separate facilities that may or may not be in place, and also the fact that for many accused people the only space that they can actually meet with their lawyers tends to be in the public areas, the atrium in Aberdeen, for example. Victims and witnesses will come into contact with the accused and their supporters. Some of the court locations and also the layout of courts because they're historical buildings makes it perhaps challenging to just suddenly say, we need a new court in place, but where people are coming into contact victims and witnesses with the accused and their supporters can be very intimidating either at the court entrance or in and around the public areas of the courts because there aren't necessarily designated areas for victims accused and actual separation of that. That is a particular issue, and that perhaps causes issues about victims and witnesses maybe not turning up at court, and obviously the administration of justice then perhaps isn't as effective as it should be, so there is a concern about that. That's not new. Even when I was in practice, it was a nightmare in certain very old courts. It's not new, but is it more acute now? It's more acute because of the number of the courts. I'm happy to develop that. It's just to make playing that I know from my own experience, I was quite surprised in several old courts that you were all stuck together in one room, quite difficult circumstances, and it's not a good thing, I agree. No, it's not a good thing, and if there's further pressure in it, this is becoming a more pressing problem then. Would you support the suggestion that the court service needs to go back through an iterative process about the reforms to pick up on those pressure points and to start to address them? I think there's some mileage in that. We've worked with Scottish Courts. We went on a tour with them last year in some of the bigger courts and actually walked them through the victim and witness journey of actually coming into a court, the experience of that, and simple things that don't necessarily cost money. Adequate signage that points people in the right direction. Having a desk that's operated and tells people where they go and that customer experience doesn't necessarily cost money, but it's just a good thing and that encourages people to come back and say, well actually that was okay, far less the court experience, but actually coming into a court can be far more welcoming. And having water provision, some of the courts don't have water. So we took the court staff around them and said, these are the facilities that people have to be in where they don't get a glass of water or in a waiting room where you're there for maybe six, seven hours and there's no TV or there's a lack of reader material or a lack of facilities for kids that come into court. There's some very basic things that don't, they just need a bit of imagination. So we continue to work with Scottish Courts service to help identify where some of those areas are. I mean, do you feel that, if I might convener, do you feel there are the correct formal channels for that sort of improvement to be fed into the courts or does it depend on you just having that informal link with them? We have formal channels and links with the Scottish Courts service and because we've identified it in fairness they've recognised that they agreed to do a tour of the eight or nine largest courts with us last year and I think we will continue to revisit that because it was a very practical way of demonstrating the things and the experiences that victims and witnesses tell us on a regular basis. And do you then, after your visit and after your walkthrough, have you seen improvements in that area? Have you been advised that improvements have been made? Yes, we have seen that and again it's making a difference. And certainly when monitoring the situation around court reform at the moment, we've obviously had the first two tranches of sheriff courts close and we'll see the third taking place early next year. We've also seen the Courts Reform Act pass and we'll be looking at a system of summary sheriffs being introduced across the courts of Scotland and the introduction of a specialist personal injury court. With the introduction of summary sheriffs, it's something that's taking place over possibly a decade so it won't be a big bang. There will be the opportunity to snag issues as they crop up and we've already seen that there have been some concerns around the way in which court business is being dealt with. We have obviously noted sheriff Liddl's concerns around criminal cases in Edinburgh. We've had reports of commissary delays taking place across certain courts and we've also noted from Scottish Women's Aid's evidence the increasing time that it's taking for summary cases to be concluded. It may just be that with courts it's a complex system of having gone through one set of transitions and on the cusp of another rather than many fundamental issues around resourcing. It may also be that some of those issues can be resolved through discussions between court users, the court service and others, but it's certainly an issue that we're monitoring. You've touched a little bit on some of the legislation that's been introduced, whether it's court reform or the Victims and Witnesses Scotland Act 2004. In general, this legislation and the two that I've mentioned in particular, do you think that there's a need for additional resources to adequately meet the kind of demands that this legislation is putting on the court services at every single level, whether it's defenced, whether it's estate, whether it's unprocurated fiscal service? I certainly think that there are areas around the court reform bill that we had highlighted in our evidence previously. One of the areas in particular was around judicial training in that we will be developing a summary sheriff as a role and specialist sheriff as a role, and we thought that the provision that was provided for training of the judiciary might not be sufficient to allow these roles to flourish. That was certainly a concern. Around the Victims and Witnesses Bill, we had looked at some of the costs around legal aid, and I think that we're happy that those costs have been adequately expressed and are being met. Could I just touch on legal aid? I know that the legal aid reform, the Scottish Civil Justice Council on Criminal Legal Assistance Scotland Act 2003, seemed to raise quite a lot of concerns from the Law Society in particular in connection with the contributions from clients and the Law Society's role in having to collect that. How is that panning out? Is that having the impact that the feared might occur in terms of solicitors not carrying out pretrial preparation solicitors withdrawing from representing clients, accused people representing them, causing delays? Any of that? We thought that that would be a particular concern. We believed in the overall principle that the Government set out, which is that those who can afford to pay towards the cost of their defence should do so. We thought that the most practical way for these contributions to be collected, as with civil legal aid currently, was for the legal aid board to collect contributions from clients rather than from individual arrangements being made with individual solicitors across the country. The legislation was passed and it still remains to be implemented. Obviously, our concerns remain as to what should take place if a client doesn't pay the contribution, which it has been determined that it can afford to do. We will see what plans the Government has for contributions overall when it publishes its refreshed legal aid strategy, which we are anticipating this autumn. We have also published our own discussion paper around legal aid reform to start a debate about what a sustainable future for legal aid might look like. That is still to be implemented and that is a potential concern in the pipeline. I think that there are certainly concerns there around overall rates of collection and what to do with clients who aren't able to pay those contributions. That remains an active concern. You mentioned some delays. What is causing this? Where is this coming from? What is not working properly? You mentioned Sheriff Lidl talking about. We are obviously seeing a number of issues being raised around the way in which businesses are scheduled at courts overall. It may simply be that these are just teething problems in a complex system. The Sheriff courts in the Edinburgh area where Sheriff Lidl's comments related to those are scheduled for closure next year. Closures don't appear to have had an impact there. It is something that we are monitoring. As I mentioned, as we will be introducing summary sheriffs through the justice system over the course of a significant period, it will allow for any issues, hopefully, to be resolved over time. Are you actually in the courts on a day-to-day basis or at all? No, I work at the law society. Do you reflect the views of your members with the comments you've made? Yes, I do. You said about access to justice. I certainly hope so. You've got the wrong title. Yes, Margaret. Your question at the start was around the legislation coming in and impact on victims and witnesses. We recognise that there is a need 2014 to balance budgets for agencies and organisations, but also to deliver services. There is a requirement to have effective and efficient justice, and that's what we would be very keen to make sure is maintained and actually improved. We would have concerns if any reduction in justice budget or allocation of any of the agencies has a negative impact on the services to victims and witnesses, particularly in light of the victims and witnesses bill and other legislation, because we know that victims and witnesses need to have confidence in the system and it needs to be effective. It needs to meet their needs and they need to have a positive experience of the justice system. That has to be crucial moving forward, both today and tomorrow. As the committee is well aware of, some of the experiences that victims and witnesses have had and their negative way of having to repeat their story so many times has been articulated. I accept that we are very well aware of all that. Apart from having done the victims and witnesses bill, our own experience is well aware and that the committee would very much support, as much support can be given to victims and witnesses in court and before that, in the early stages when interviewed by the police and so on. Margaret, do you want to say something? Thank you. Christian Fallby, Sandra Fallby, John Pentland. Good morning. Thank you very much. Some of the answers I've been given already. Sorry about my voice. I've got a little bit of a cold. I still have difficulties. Sometimes I understand you, Monsieur Rarlane, whether without or cold. And it doesn't help with the cold. You talked about, Mr Alexander, you talked about some teathing problems and you said that there will be some concern how the cold reforms, the cold closures, happen. But do you think if we'd resist that medium term and a long term and a more effective and efficient cold system, and do you think that what impact he will have on the budget, do you think there is a possibility that the savings will really happen in real terms? Obviously, the intention of the court reform bill and now act was to introduce a hub and spoke model for the courts with summary sheriffs dealing with a range of summary cause matters in civil, the small claims actions, summary crime and other areas with specialist sheriffs dealing with ordinary cause for civil and sheriff and jury cases in criminal. The idea being to concentrate the higher value civil cases and the more complex criminal cases in the 16 sheriff and jury hubs and then, consequently, to take the capital resource to make sure that there were facilities there that supported this more complex generally business. We support the broad principle of that. I think the concerns that we had around access to justice were around the small number of cases that would take place, which would require significant amounts of travel. So taking a sheriff and jury case where accused and witnesses were based in WIC, customarily, under the hub and spoke model that the court service have suggested this would be heard in Inverness, and the travel distances are very significant with public transport, or indeed a car can be about a nine-hour round trip, we just didn't think that that was particularly practical. It might open witnesses or the victim to intimidation of taking the same transport as other parties, and we thought that it might not, although it may allow the court service to consolidate, it may create costs for the various other parties to the case. So, on that basis, we thought that there were significant concerns around access to justice. We understand that there may remain some flexibility to have cases heard locally, where otherwise they would be concentrated into these 16 hubs, and we think that, in principle, trying to concentrate resources into these areas on that model is a sensible idea. As we have suggested in our written evidence to the committee, there remains a significant maintenance backlog across the court estate, and we believe that trying to prioritise particular areas to make sure that there is fit for purposes for complex business as possible is the way forward. I am pleased to see that both witnesses have mentioned the support broadly and the changes in the 16 hubs. Obviously, there are issues with ICT and video links, so we will obviously be looking at that. I just wanted to touch on a couple of things in regard to victim witnesses. My experience of going round the various courts is that the job that they do, I commend them, has done a fantastic job. I just wanted to touch on the part where we are talking about perhaps even the churn or victims and the accused meeting together. I certainly did not see that in the courts that I visited, but there were bigger courts. It was more prevalent in the smaller courts, and I would go on to say that perhaps some of those courts were not fit for purpose in the way that you would like to see them. If I give you a couple of examples of courts, Aberdeen is one where it is quite a new court, but the atrium there is a choke point. In Hamilton Court, there is a choke point at the entrance in Tain, although there is a separate victim in the witness area. They are next to each other, so there is confrontation in and around the waiting areas and the waiting rooms. Where else have I got? Kilmarnock can be an issue. Livingston, there is inadequate signage, or has been in the past, and other areas. Dundee, there can be issues because of the nature of the court itself. Typically, when we are looking to develop new courts, I do recognise and welcome the principle of new facilities, better facilities in the courts. I think it has to be, as Scottish Courts have acknowledged, a collaborative approach so that all agencies work together to design properly what all the needs of all the court users is going to be. We would fully support the development of that. I do know from experience last year we were involved in the pilot in the borders of the Justice Hub, and we were quite rightly asked to come to the table to give our views about what would work. Identifying a location was actually one of the biggest challenges that the Scottish Courts services had about where this hub would be based. Is it gallousheels? Is it peables? Duns? There were some logistical challenges, so it sounds really good to have, let's have a justice hub and people can come, but the transport difficulties can be really challenging getting to wherever location you choose. That all needs to be factored in in terms of where the justice hubs are going to be. I am sure that there will be a wide public consultation to make sure that all the needs are taken into account in terms of identifying where the new facilities are going to be. As you touched on, I think it is really important that the information technology is there to supplement that. It is not just about the locations, it is also the back end of it where the remote sites and other facilities are going to be that is really crucial to making it much more modern, much more effective and much more customer-friendly. I broadly agree with that. There are a number of courts because of the age of the buildings or other factors that currently have the facilities that we would like to see. However, if we understand that the court service is working on this, there are plans. As has been mentioned around feasibility studies for justice centres and the borders was one where, rather than considering a central hub on the Livingston model with integrated services in the building, the current configuration following court closures of Selkirk and Jedbur will be retained. We believe that information technology may alleviate some of the pressures around physical resources at court buildings, but equally it is a human rights requirement that criminal hearings take place in public. It is important that people are able to see and participate in the justice system. For all its benefits, information technology may not be the answer in all situations that I mentioned earlier. If it were, we probably could have been replaced with video screens and have been patched in by video conference today instead. I am just very disappointed with the decision not to have one at Gala because you have mentioned transport links. I cannot think of how easy it is to get from people's or other areas to Selkirk because the bus hub and the train station hub will all be in Gala but I am still fighting that one. I was interested in your being there. It was a mystery to me why that was rejected, but there you go, politics, dear boy politics, probably. Thank you very much. As you said yourself, Mr Alexander, it depends on individual cases and the video links in certain areas. Perhaps in Gala, there would be an improvement in what they have at the moment, but I wanted to talk about the service and victims and witnesses and obviously accuse. When I visited the courts and indeed was a witness, a called witness in a particular case, the churn and the waiting around was mostly caused—you mentioned the fact that all agencies should work together—was mostly caused at the last minute by lawyers advising their clients either to plead guilty or not guilty. You mentioned that all agencies must work together. There must be a role for lawyers to fit in in that particular issue. It is an issue of mine that I have raised on a number of occasions, but that has been in my experience and others' experiences where witnesses turn up. We have a very good service for the victim witnesses. They talk to everyone and explain what is going on. You can be there for hours and at the last minute the trial is abandoned. Surely lawyers must have an input as well. They must recognise that some of the churn—maybe most of the churn—I do not know—there are all responses. I have a short question in Sandra, where there is a whole story in there. Would you say that all agencies—and that includes lawyers as well—have to play their part? Most certainly. I think that a collaborative approach to some of the challenges that there are in the justice system is ultimately the only way forward. Around summary justice reform, where we had looked to incentivise early resolution of cases, work that took place at the end of the kind of naughties and at the start of this decade, significant inroads were met—made, rather—and we believed that there is further work that can be done there. We had read the Audit Scotland report on efficiencies in the criminal justice system in 2011 with some interest. Obviously, some churn is by intention. For instance, at first hearing, there is the option to continue without plea rather than to enter a not guilty because it is not clear how the evidence has worked, and then essentially to repeat the first stage rather than to proceed to an intermediate diet. That has actually proved an effective measure. We are looking at the issues around early resolution. That is certainly one of the themes in our current discussion paper around legal aid, which we have circulated to our members and to organisations across the justice sector to get their views. We participate in a number of projects that are working across the justice sector. For instance, we are discussing with Audit Scotland the current work on revising the 2011 project that it completed to see how things have progressed around efficiency in the criminal justice system. We believe that there is an active part that we can play, experience that we have, and we are keen to work together with other agencies to do so. Thank you very much. I look forward to the report coming forward again from Audit Scotland. We include that with regard to accelerating cases and being able to plead more appropriately at the first calling that the Crown or the Procurator Fiscal Service has more time to show the defence than the nature of the evidence that they have and the complaint against the accused. It was quite often one seldom in court just looking at stream of defence lawyers leaning over the Procurator Fiscal shoulder to have a look and see what the paperwork was, what kind of evidence they had, and discussing there and then just before the court was called. Do we not need more time for that so that the crime case can be before it comes into the pleading diet? Or have things changed? There are certainly improvements being made and significant inroads that have been made, for instance, by summary justice reform. There are clearly ways in which cases are being dealt with differently now. For instance, one key element is the fact that significant numbers of people are now requesting legal advice at the police station, so solicitors are being involved at a very early stage in proceedings. As has been mentioned a number of times, the trial almost starts at the police station. We have in excess of, I think, 70 people a day at the moment who are requesting advice and solicitors providing that. It does give you an opportunity to hear the evidence and be present for police interviews, so it may be that that is helping us on the defence side. I wonder whether you know about being more informed before you put it in a plea or continue. Sorry. That is the technical term, yes. John Pentland, followed by Roderick. Thank you, convener. Obviously, victim support is dependent on its funding from other agencies. None more so than SPA. SPA is in the process of having to make some difficult decisions to make efficiencies. What kind of area do you find that would be under pressure if some of those efficiencies are cuts were put down yourself? What areas would you perceive that you would have to cut? Probably just as a follow-up to that, what input do you have to the budget process with SPA? Can I just clarify? We have funded 80 per cent of our monies that come from Scottish Government, not SPA at all. They do not fund us in any way, shape or form. We get monies from some local authorities and we fundraise for our money because we are a charity. I am probably reading from your submission here. No, we work closely with Police Scotland, but in terms of referrals, we do not get any direct funding. I am just reading from your submission here. If there is a real-term decrease to the SPA budget, we would welcome further information from Police Scotland as to how they would intend to fulfil the financial commitment with relation to domestic violence, sexual crimes and human trafficking. In terms of how they deal with cases, they do not fund us. Sorry if that has confused you. You are totally funded by the Scottish Government. About 80 per cent of our funding is funded by the Scottish Government. That is okay. Mr Alexander, you mentioned the court closures and the lack of funding or the no-committed funding to the digital strategy. You were seeking some clarity as to what kind of resource would be there. If that clarity does not come soon, could you maybe advise the committee to see the real difficulties that could happen in the future? Of course, yes. Certainly, some of the projects that we know are coming out of existing funding, so for instance, video conferencing with solicitors and clients at prisons, but there are other elements around a justice digital strategy that we would be very keen to see as to what they funded. We see that there are significant efficiencies that can be made, so we would be quite happy to report back to the committee if needs be. Can I just maybe come back to the question that I was missing my question? Yes, of course. Again, I am reading from your submission. If you go to the submission in front of you, and if you go to the first, second and third paragraph where we welcome Police Scotland's continuing commitment to provide funding to areas, so my question to you is, also with the SPA and the Police Budget under pressure, what would be the impact if they reduced, if they would help funding from these areas that you have identified? Right. I am missing it now. What we were trying to say in our submission is that that is how the police fund those particular areas. As I said, they do not fund us to do that. Robert, the funding has an impact on what your role is. I think that is John's point. I am sorry, I get that. That could be a concern for us if SPA funding does reduce and is altered in the fact that the areas that they do fund, which is domestic violence, sexual crimes and human trafficking, so we welcome the creation of those specific units, but we would be concerned if the SPA budget altered in the future and identified other priority areas, whereas we firmly support the fact that they have identified those areas as being in need of support. Does that answer your question? Yes. Now that we have agreed that you did see it in your submission, I was missing reading it. However, my next question is, what dialogue do you have with Police Scotland about the continued funding from these areas? We will meet SPA and Police Scotland on a range of issues at national level and identify areas of priorities for us and dialogue. We have dialogue with Police Scotland on a regular basis to press home what we believe are the priorities for victims and witnesses of those particular crimes in particular, so we have dialogue with them on that basis. If Police Scotland are to reduce your funding on any specific areas, what area would you think would be the most likely that you would give up? Again, I can only say that it is not our funding. I think that, as I understand John's point, what he is saying is that, if they decrease the funding to the areas of domestic violence and human trafficking, what impact would that have on victim support? Without saying that you get the direct funding, it might have an impact on the people you represent. It could let victims and witnesses down on these particular crimes. These are very serious crimes. If there is a reduction in the service by the fact that funding is reduced, then we would have concerns over that. We have Police Scotland next week, so we can raise this issue. It is an important issue. I agree. It is a very important issue. I am mindful of time, Roderick. I shall be brief. I just want to come back a bit on the proposals for purpose-built justice centres. In the discussion so far, we will perhaps raise the negatives in terms of transport difficulties and location. If we are to have modern facilities and proper facilities for victims and witnesses, would you not agree that the exploration of these purpose-built justice centres is a good idea, Mr McLoeskey? Absolutely. We are fully committed to exploring and working with Scottish Court Service and other court users who all legitimately have a right to be in the court to say, how can we make this better than it has been in the past? We have no issue with saying, let's work together to see what can be done in a positive way because we know some of the courts are not fit for purpose. We would very much be part of and want to be part of a process that actually finds a better way of having justice done in the future. Just to add that it is a useful process to go through to look locally at how justice can be provided. Obviously, there was the feasibility study in the borders. There may be other areas that might be suitable for examination in the future, for instance, the north-east of Scotland. I think that we are broadly supportive of people looking to discuss and collaborate on how physically justice might be delivered in local areas in the future. Just a small question for Mr McLoeskey in relation to criminal injuries compensation. You commented on that in your submission. Any further comments you want to share with the committee on that aspect? From our experience, certainly the changes that came in in 2012 to the criminal injuries scheme has affected a number of people who previously would have been eligible to receive awards. It is not necessarily the monetary award that makes a difference to victims and witnesses. It is often the closure of the acknowledgement by the state that something has happened. We would certainly welcome further dialogue with the Scottish Government about improvements and changes to the criminal injuries scheme in Scotland. The CICA criminal injuries compensation authority is based in Glasgow, and the UK covers the whole of the UK with that. We would certainly look to develop, if we could, a scot-ified version of that in the future. Obviously, that is dependent on dialogue with the Scottish Government. Mr Alexander, obviously, the committee's focus is not primarily on examining legal aid, but in your submission, you spend quite a lot of time on legal aid. Obviously, you have the discussion document. You point out that, in Scotland, we have a system that is demand-led for legal aid and not cash-limited. What lessons can we learn from the approach to legal aid south of the border? Certainly having a demand-led budget can be a helpful way to look at legal aid. Taking as one example, we had the Supreme Court case in 2010 around CADDA, which introduced, for the first time in a widespread way, access to a solicitor at a police station. Clearly, that needed to be funded. Through the mechanism of advice and assistance, we were able to accommodate that through the legal aid system and allow people to receive advice. At levels that were significantly higher than we had anticipated, it appeared to be significantly higher than south of the border. Legal aid south of the border has seen significant pressure, a budget of around £2 billion a year, and they have looked to cut that through a series of flat rate cuts to criminal provision. The contracting of duty slots at police stations and at court for criminal legal aid and through reexamination of the scope of legal aid in civil matters, and in particular removing areas in which there was not, effectively, a human rights protection, including family law, unless there was any suggestion of domestic abuse, in which case it could be dealt with separately, housing, education, consumer debt and other areas. Although retaining an exceptional case status to allow any case that might otherwise fall outside the scope of legal aid to be brought forward, although, as I understand it, the rate at which that has been allocated has been around less than 5 per cent of any applications for exceptional case status. Obviously, they have taken these approaches to a significant set of financial pressures that the Ministry of Justice and the Legal Aid Agency face. We have not dissimilar pressures here in Scotland and have published a discussion paper that, as I mentioned, we have shared with members and justice stakeholders overall. One of the suggestions in that paper is to consider scope, so that is a suggestion in common with the situation in England and Wales, although with a different emphasis, rather than the blanket removals from scope that have taken place in England and Wales. I know that you asked it, so I do not really get into your discussion paper about legal aid. You are moving really away from what we are talking about as the court's budget. Apologies. No, it is not your fault. It is not your fault. It is not your fault. Well, just take the blame. It would be nice. It is a good chunk of what all society's submission is about legal aid, so I thought it had to just try it. There is another time and other place for that. I do not want to go back down your legal aid discussion paper. Is there anything else? I will leave it there. Right, thank you. I am going to stop right there. If you feel there is something that we should have asked and we did not ask budget-related, please write and let us know. We have a very tight timetable today, so just let us know if there is anything that you want to say additionally to your submission following on questions from members. Thank you very much. I will suspend for two minutes to allow witnesses to change over. I welcome our second panel of witnesses, and now we have a rather large gallery. I could remind everyone to switch off mobile phones and other electronic devices, even if they are switched to silent in the interview with broadcasting. I welcome Catherine Dyer, Crown Agent and Chief Executive Crown Office and Procurator of Fiscal Service. Fiona Eadie, Secretary of Procurator of Fiscal Society, Section FDA Union. Brian Carroll, branch secretary in the Scottish Court Service, Public and Commercial Services Union. I know that you were in for the evidence of the previous panel of witnesses, so I go straight to questions from members. Both the Crown Office and Procurator of Fiscal Service and the FDA's submissions suggest that there has been a significant increase in reports of certain types of serious crime. Although the number of cases is falling altogether, the complexity of cases is increasing. COP says that this is very challenging, and we are looking to realise savings from people and process reviews. In the FDA submission, you also indicate that the staffing budget is being cut in real terms. Presumably, that means a decrease in staffing. Can you give some indication of how those sorts of challenges can be reconciled? I meant to see your microphone come automatically if I call you, Ms Eadie. Are you Lucas, if you are on the starting block there? Yes, no, that is fine. Give me that look, you see, and I take the hint. First of all, I would like to thank the committee for inviting us to come and give evidence today. It has been some time since the Procurator of Fiscal Society has been asked to come along, so the FDA welcomes the opportunity to do that. In relation to the point about the number of cases falling, in fact, overall case reports since 2010-11 have gone up by about 10 per cent. The point that we were making specifically in our submission was about the types and nature of those cases and the complexity in the resource demands in dealing with them. You are absolutely right that although there is a real-terms increase in the budget for the organisation, there is a £1.1 million cut in the staffing budget for the organisation, and that will undoubtedly result in fewer jobs. The letter that we submitted in relation to information for the committee was to point out that we agree that that is very challenging. What we are trying to do is—we have not agreed necessarily what our budgets were, but we are just going through our budgets for our different federations and units just now—what we are looking to do is to protect the staffing and take money from other areas where we are looking to have savings. I think that we explained some of it in terms of the technology that we are using so that we can make sure that, as an organisation, it is very important to us to have sufficient lawyers to do the type of work that we are talking about. In recent years, we have moved into specialised units because that gives us better quality outcomes and people are used to what they are doing and they can do it more quickly. We are doing a variety of things in terms of technology and the movement of staff to try and make sure that, although we have challenging times, we make sure that we have enough people to do the work that is required in terms of the legal complement. The FDA pointed out that, since December 2009, there has been overall 12 per cent reduction in permanent staffing levels. Is that a pressure that you have not got the permanent staff available to take on those complex cases? What we have tried to move to is certainly part of it. Our business is split into several parts, so there are still some less complicated cases. I think that what we have tried to do is to move the permanent staff who are the most experienced into dealing, and they are especially trained now for the different types of things in terms of sexual offending and domestic abuse. I think that the committee may have heard some of that before. We do have a number of what we call fixed-term staff in terms of legal staff and also administrative staff, and those are people that we can take on to try and relieve when we have pressure that we cannot meet with the permanent staffing figures. At the moment, the position is that the vast majority of staff with us are permanent, and it is difficult. I think that we have agreed that in terms of staffing numbers, you can take a snapshot at any one time and talk about percentages. I think that what we have all realised in the public sector now, especially in the justice system, is that it is a kind of—I think that I have used the phrase before—a movable feast. It is what comes in through the door, and therefore you have to try and match your resource, and it is going to be flexible up and down a bit. Certainly, when we look at the graphs of work coming in, it is not predictable to say that you will get X amount every month. That is not how it works. It is about what kind of cases, and there have been some big cases that I think the committee will have seen in the news recently, where we have had to move specific resource to deal with them. That means that we have a responsibility to make sure that the day-to-day work is also covered. What sort of pressures are staff under at the moment? We have already heard from other parts of the police service about pressures on staff, about concerns about stress and workload. Last year, both of the unions in the Crown Office and Procuratorate Fiscal Service conducted a stress audit. At that time, around 80 per cent of our members said that they had concerns about workload reducing staff levels and about the lack of preparation time. About a quarter of those who responded said that those concerns were a cause of stress to them. We have significant concerns about the health and wellbeing of our members in operating in circumstances in which they find that their workload is increasing. That is one of the points that we wanted to make in our submission, that it is not just about looking at the numbers of cases that we receive, because those numbers can go up and down. It is about the type of cases that we are dealing with and, in fact, of their very nature—the complexity of them and the serious nature of them—and the personal impact that they can have on dealing with cases involving serious sexual offences, for example, offences against children. A wide variety of that type of work is very demanding on individuals, so it is those combined pressures that cause us concern. If I can recognise what the FDA is saying about the pressures on staff, obviously I can only speak for the members within the Scottish Court Service, but a lot of what has been said by the FDA is reflected by our members within the Scottish Court Service as well. For example, we are getting feedback from the ground consistently that our members are in court more than they ever have been. For example, clerks of court do not have any real time to concentrate on the people management aspects of their job because of the pressures that are there in having to resource the courts that are necessary to deal with the cases. Again, it is not all about the numbers, it is about the complexity of the cases, and that is something that we as a branch have been raising with Scottish Court Service management for some time. Some of the figures look as if they are easily managed, but they have to look behind the figures to see in actual fact what is happening there. For example, due to the budget cuts previously, within Scottish Court Service there was a reduction over the piece of 120-odd staff, but because of the increase in the criminal business coming through the courts in some aspects in some areas, the increase has been as much as 25 per cent because of a change in policy by the police and the prosecutors in the way that they were marking cases and looking at cases. An additional £1 million had to be provided to Scottish Court Service for additional staff and judicial resource, which had just been cut four or five years ago. Now, that was something that we raised at the Justice Committee at the time of the court closures, that that was a concern for our branch, that the resilience indeed possibly wasn't there in terms of the number of cases that may come through if a change in marking policy or a change in policing actually occurred. I think that this has borne fruit. The one million was reallocated back in. I think that it's in the Scottish Court Service evidence, page 3, £1 million to provide additional staff and judicial resource to support the increase in road traffic, domestic abuse and sexual offence cases, reflecting a proactive approach taken by the police and prosecutors. If I can certainly assist the committee with that, I think that that's evidence of the flexibility that we're trying to have around the justice system because really quite frankly, as Fiona said, I think that everybody is trying to deal with a huge upsurge in terms of the sexual offending reporting and domestic abuse reporting. Now, it's very important obviously for the victims of these crimes that both the police and ourselves and the courts are able to process that work properly, but in some senses it came out of the blue almost, if you like. I think that we've talked before about the Savile effect. Certainly, the publicity around various convictions has encouraged victims to come forward and I don't think, to be perfectly frank, that anybody in the justice system really anticipated that. That is something that came to all of us as a surprise. We've had several years where before we've had spikes in that type of reporting but nothing quite so sustained and long. I mean, over the past two and a half years it's almost doubled in certain areas. To give you an example, in the High Court at the moment, we think that roughly 70% of the cases are sexual offending cases. Now, when I was in the High Court unit in Crown Office in the mid-1990s, you could easily say that it was less than a quarter of the cases. For everybody that's in the judicial system, the court system, working in the system or procreators' fiscal, there's a huge, now mainstream work for us whereas, before, it was a smaller portion and quite often domestic abuse is also connected with sexual violence and we're getting cases where there are many more charges and many more victims. Fiona is quite right to point out that that does obviously have, I think, on judges and prosecutors and police and the court staff. Everybody, but we're well, has an impact. In Crown Office and the Procurator Fiscal Service, we have a vicarious trauma project where people who feel affected by dealing with the cases can go in contact to try and get some counselling and resilience through that. But, as a matter of fact, I suppose, as the prosecution service and the justice system, that's our job, is to sort of deal with the victims and make sure that they're accused or brought to justice in this. But I don't think anybody's underestimating that it's been a huge upsurge and the justice director that provided extra money to Crown Office and Fiscal Service and to Scottish Courts to deal with the cases that we've got currently going through. I mean, do you need additional resources? Is that really the answer? I mean, you mentioned the development of innovative technology solutions, but I don't really see how innovative technology solutions can help you to deal with these types of cases. Is it just additional resources that we needed? Our concern has been that we know that there is work under way within the organisation to streamline work processes and to try and make benefit from information technology, for example. Our anxiety, however, is that those benefits may well be felt some months or weeks or years down the line. For our members, they're struggling with the situation as it is now, and they really need a solution to it sooner than that. Our view is that we don't see how we can continue to provide the same or improved levels of service based on the current trajectory with reducing staff numbers. We don't see that that's possible. If I can say, I think that the position is that we are also very mindful. I mean, I think that the point was that we went to the Government directorate, the justice directorate, and explained that we had some big cases just now that, in years past, we would have absorbed into our budget. That just was not possible. Again, we were given money last year and, for this coming year, to allow us to deal with these particular big cases. There's three very big cases that we've got, and that allowed us to backfill with staff further down the organisation so that those cases, that money, was really allocated to deal with those big cases. In terms of the extra sexual offending to basic abuse cases that we've got just now, again, we went to the justice board. We had a very comprehensive discussion between all the people that sit around the justice board, which includes the police, Scottish courts, the children's reporter and legal aid, and said that what we were seeing were cases that, if we didn't get additional funding at this stage, it would be difficult to put them through the system and that funding was made available. I think that the position that we're in just now is that there is a recognition that the justice system needs to be flexible in terms of what it's dealing with, because it's obviously going to be unacceptable to say to victims of crime that we're not able to deal with your case at the moment. However, I think that what has happened is that the justice directorate and ourselves sitting around the justice board table have recognised that and are working very hard to make sure that we're predicting properly what comes in the future and flexing our resource in the justice system as a whole to allow us to deal with those cases. However, I certainly agree with Fiona that you can't underplay that for everybody, and I wouldn't just include our staff. I think that it also affects the judiciary here, and police officers are dealing with it. It is very difficult areas of work, challenging areas of work, and we have to make sure that people's health and welfare are taken care of as well. However, at the bottom line of it is that we are here to serve the public and to serve victims, and our job is to try and do that while still looking after our staff at the same time. I'll ask you this as well, Mr Carroll. The justice directorate, you have set meetings with them or ad hoc meetings. I'm not talking about the systemic pressures, but also the blips that go up and down due to certain demands and certain cases or certain things that become policy to be prosecuted. How does it actually work in practice? Are you meeting the justice directorate? Are the public commercial services union represented at those meetings as well? You're not. I'll come to you, but I just want you to know how that actually works. What happens is that for the past few years we've had a justice board before, as we've talked about, all the elements of justice have to be somewhat separate. Clearly the police have to be separate from the prosecutor. The prosecutor acts independently as separate from the courts, but what we're trying to do is to say that it's a joint endeavour in terms of how we manage work through the system, and so we have monthly meetings of the justice board where we highlight things, and we've got a number of working groups underneath that, and one of them in particular is looking at what business is coming in. We've got much more sophisticated about understanding that in terms of, as Fiona said, it's not case numbers per se, it's about the type of case. So if you have a thousand speeding cases that's very easily dealt with, it doesn't take a lot of time of anybody involved in the system, but if it's a thousand sexual abuse cases then clearly it's a different matter. Yes, it was just on the point about victims and witnesses and obviously jurors, and I don't think that we should forget the accused as well, that for justice to be delivered timeously, efficiently and effectively, then all aspects of the justice system need to be catered for. At the moment, for example, the waiting period or the average waiting period for a summary criminal trial in Glasgow and Strathkelven is 19 weeks, it's 18 weeks in Grampian Highlands and Islands, and it's 23 weeks in Lothian and Borders, the target is 16 weeks. Now, in Lothian and Borders especially, we're expecting that target to increase in the waiting times from about 23 weeks to maybe 30 weeks, and that's due to the closure of Haddington. I'll let others follow up on that in a minute. John Finnie followed by Alison, followed by Margaret, followed by Sandra. Good morning, panel. Elaine's asked many of the questions that I was going to ask about the FDA submission. A question to you, Ms Dyer, picking up on Mr Carroll's point and one alluded to in Ms Eadie's submission, and that is, in the part of our submission about the budget, the comment that financial consciousness will have on it, a detrimental effect on our member's professional ability to prosecate cases in a timely and effective manner. Following on from the timescales that have to be complied with, is that something that we'll see any redirection within your budget to address that, or is that...? I mean, again, I credit to the staff that actually, in terms of making the decisions in cases, we actually are still exceeding our own self-imposed target. We work again across the justice system that the police have 28 days, is the target that they try to aspire to report cases to us from caution and charge. We then try to take a maximum of 28 days to make the decision, and thereafter, if it's going to court, it goes into the court system. There's an overarching target that, from caution and charge, to disposal of a summary case, it should take 26 weeks is really what we're aspiring to do. Now we're still meeting that across the justice system just now, but I think we're just all very much aware that we have to keep an eye on all these things and to move the resource about so that we do make sure that we're not causing by our resource allocation any delays in things. However, some of the cases that we have to be frank, I think I explained in my submission about the pre-petition, the sexual cases that come in and other big, serious crime cases, where it's not immediately clear that we will have enough evidence and we have to do more investigation, and certainly that is a hidden part of the mountain, if you like, that's under the sea. That's a big amount of work, and I think we've given you figures for that. Can I commend the comments that you've made about the staff? I think it's very important that they are valued and treated that way. Can I also ask about your own submission and the annex that was put in? Yes. And the second page of that, we are here to scrutinise the budget. At the bottom of that page where you talk about non-court disposals, is there ever a budgetary consideration to disposing of something? I think the thing is that all public authorities in the Crown is included in that, and they have to look at best value. We are looking for optimum outcomes, and it's got to be proportionate. I think that reference was made in the last session to summary justice reform, and I think that members will be familiar with that, that that allowed Procacius Fiscal to issue fiscal fines and fiscal compensation orders. We've now also got fiscal work orders, where we can ask that the accused person does up to 50 hours of work in the community. What we're looking to do is to recalibrate some of the actions that we've got. At the end of the day, we want to put things into court that have to be dealt with by court, but if there are things that can be dealt with by a direct measure, we really want to put them down to direct measure, and that's been quite successful. We've got a lot of people who get one direct measure and don't come back into the system. That's good to hear, and I'm very supportive of that approach. Are you able to assign any figure to any of those particular disposals, if you like, a consequential saving from a non-appearance at court? I mean, again, I can provide that to the committee. We've got costings that are sort of their average type costing, and obviously it's clearly from the public first point of view if somebody can be dealt with proportionally by a direct measure, then that's a lot cheaper than them going to court. What we've got to balance out is that, you know, we're balancing out, that really we want to try to end up that what we've got in court are things that have to have a court disposal. Okay, well, if you could provide that, that would be very helpful. Thank you very much, Nid. Following up on a couple of things that Ms Dyer said earlier, I mean, you talked about the difficulty of understanding where your workload was coming from and called it a movable feast, and obviously you couldn't anticipate the results of the savable effect sort of thing, but you could have, I believe, unanticipated that if Police Scotland was focusing on domestic abuse in the way that it had done, you would have an upsurge in the cases. Do you think that, with hindsight, you reacted quickly enough to reallocate resources within the organisation to deal with that? I think we have, but I think it's a bit like turning tankers. We've been talking about, in some senses, there's a flotilla of justice ships, if you like, because there's the police ship, there's us, there's the courts, there's the social, criminal justice social work, there's assist, and all the other organisations in Victim Support Scotland, all of whom have to adjust to changes in the workload. In hindsight, I think that we have dealt with it. I think that what we've learned is how long it takes for us all to join up together. I think that Crown Office and the Fiscal Service and the staff in the service were almost the first to flag up. We were looking at what numbers we were getting from the police, the numbers that we were able to proceed with, which was considerably increased, and that was because of the better detection and the attention that they were giving to those cases. Really, the proof of the puddings in the eating, so until they had started doing that for a sustained length of time, you can't say that it's a trend. As soon as we saw that we thought that it was a trend, we went back to our criminal justice partners and spoke to the police and to the courts and to the justice board to say, we think that this is a trend that's not going to diminish in the next few years, it's probably going to increase, and then plateau we're kind of at the stage that we think that it might have plateaued. We hope, obviously, in terms of that at the end of the day, there can only be a limited number of people that are carrying out offences of that sort in the community and because the police have been so efficient at detecting this and encouraging victims to come forward, we are hopeful that we are seeing that this is at the top of the plateau of this, but what we've learned is that it does take time and I suppose now we've got more of the institutional discussions in place to allow us to react more quickly. To please Scotland now understand that the scale of the challenge when they introduce these new initiatives and perhaps there should be more dialogue in advance? I think that we're finding now, that's almost two years now that they've been enforced and certainly at the beginning it obviously took time for everything to settle down, but actually relatively quickly we've got to the point where we have meetings outwith the justice board of ourselves, Police Scotland and the courts just to have a check on what's coming up and what changes in policy there might be and to talk through the consequences. So none of us would wish to interfere, I mean I want to interfere with the sort of operational independence of the police, the courts don't wish to interfere with our independence or that of the police, but we do need to work together to be sure that we've got you, we understand what we're trying to manage. I think that there is an issue about the domestic abuse cases that you're referring to which is not just about an increased number of cases being reported, it's also the type of cases that are being reported because I think we made reference to the domestic abuse task force and so the nature of those cases, you're not just talking about one complainer and one accused person, you may be talking about multiple complainers perhaps spanning a period of years and so they are also again more complex and more resource intensive to prepare. We've provided some examples about the comparison of how long it takes to prepare a normal, if you like, high court case and one of the domestic abuse type task force cases. It's roughly about three times as long in our experience so there is a factor there to be aware of. It was just to add to that, that might be reflected in some of the figures. I recognise the 26-week target and I don't have any figures for that but, for example, we have in Scottish court service a 20-week target and it's percentage of somebody accused disposed of within 20 weeks and I think that's from first calling to a disposal. For example, April to September last year Glasgow Sheriff Court, the percentage is in dealing with those cases. Bearing in mind if we're in the green zone it's 85 per cent and above, Glasgow Sheriff Court was 50, 48, 51, 51, 51 and 48. This year, for the same period, it's 46, 46, 42, 48, 48 and 37. The performance has significantly dropped and that's reflected in a lot of the courts across the piece. I was just very quickly looking at trials evidently led and this is where the pressures for both the FDAs and our members come in and for the court service and procurator fiscal staff in general. 29 out of the 47 courts, that's a vast majority of courts, have seen an increase in trials led. I'm not arguing with the fact that we want to get to a position whereby the trials that are going ahead are the ones that are necessary to go ahead but there is obviously pressures there within the system that have to be dealt with and I think that's reflected in the fact that that extra £1 million was given to Scottish Court Service to fund additional staff to man the courts. I just want to make one other point. What I mentioned previously about the people management aspect conflicting with staff going into court, that's actually now at the behest of Scottish Court Service director on the risk register for Scottish Court Service. They are recognising indeed that there are pressures on staff not being able to possibly focus as much as they would like on the people management side of things, which is part of their everyday job and a big part of their everyday job because they have to nurture and encourage and train and learn and develop the staff that are coming through and they're not getting the time to do that properly because they're having to go into court and we're getting out those reports on a regular basis. Ms Nair, you spoke about having to go to the justice board for extra resources in you. You described that as a flexible way. Perhaps the other sounds like firefighting. Do you think that the budget needs to be increased for you in order to be able to properly manage this sort of workload that we've heard about? I think that what we need to do is to be able to respond to what it is that comes through the door. We're making sort of choices in terms of being as sensible as we can, that it's proportionate. If we can deal with it without it going to court, then that's what we'll do. For me, the justice board way of working is a flexible approach. As we say, it's very difficult to predict how long we can sort of look and really till somebody is arrested and is questioned and charged, we don't know that they're coming into the system and it does very much to, you know, it's what crime is committed and what crime is reported and what crime is detected and the proportion of that that then has sufficient evidence while we still have the rule of corroboration for us to deal with it. So, you've got quite a big expanse of things. Narrow is down as it's coming through and I just think that we've got better at understanding what it is and better at working together and certainly the justice board and the organisations that sit round it are very committed to making sure that we make it work for the cases that come before us that have to go into court. So, at the moment, what we have is we identified that we had additional work that would not fit within the current programme that we had at the beginning of the year. That was a justice board decision to sort of allow funding to be flexible across the justice system and to assist Scottish courts in ourselves in putting extra courts on and having extra staff and that's what's happened. I haven't been able to do, you know, allocate those resources towards any of what would have happened. It would have been a slowing down of the system. Now, I take the point that in some senses, obviously, the system did, and again, this is the point about how long it takes to get things through. But again, credit to the staff, both in Scottish Courts and our staff, that the figures that I gave in the submission to the committee, I think you'll see that the point that we're trying to make was that more cases in all courts, except sheriff and jury, had more cases disposed of, in other words, more conclusions come to in the past year than before. So there was quite significant increases, a 10 per cent increase in the JP Court number concluded a 2 per cent increase in sheriff and jury and a 1 per cent increase in high court. But at the same time, within that workload, there were far more cases had gone to trial in that period and that's partly a reflection of the kind of work that is going through because people accused of domestic abuse or sexual offending in our experience tend not to plead guilty quite as readily as people who are accused of what we would have thought was old fashioned crime that came before courts such as theft or whatever. So I think it's a credit to the people that work in the system that, in actual fact, what we've had here is an overall increase in the number of cases that have come to a conclusion at the same time as more of them are actually going to trial. Yeah, I mean it clearly is a system under quite a lot of pressure at the moment, but if it slows down very much more surely you're at risk of what I think the FDA points out of starting to hit time bars and things like that. I don't think, I mean I think the thing is, I think we're far far from that, I have to say. We have self-imposed targets that we sort of set in the sort of late 1990s and have adjusted as we've gone through depending on what level of business we've got, but we are not in danger of missing any statutory time targets for cases. What we are doing is sort of reallocating and that's part of what we were trying to do was to move to have extra courts from September to the end of this financial year so that we go into the next financial year trying to get reduced times for it to take from caution and charge to sort of being disposed of and I think that that was a good reaction, I think that that's what people would expect us to have done. Mr Carroll. Yeah, it was just on that last point. I can't remember exactly when it was, but it was certainly within the last six months. Paisley Sheriff Court had 42 first diets calling on a one day for a sitting of two weeks in length beyond beyond that date. Edinburgh very recently had a similar experience. In a two week sitting, you're probably looking at getting through maybe between one and five sheriff and jury trials within that two week sitting depending on what happens. 42 indictments are never ever going to be continued to that two week sitting. I can't say how widespread that is, but that's two examples of where there was certainly pressure on the system and on the staff of both Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service and the Scottish Court Service. A lot of the time bars, which was the point that was being made there, had to be extended to keep the indictments alive. Time bars extended? Yeah, if someone's in custody, the 110 day rule kicks in where their trial has to be heard within that 110 days, so some of those time bars would have been extended to allow that to happen, but also in some statutory cases there may be time bars as well as to when the offence has to come into court. I'll finish just to press my CD on our evidence. You've said that you've been told by our members increasing number of these serious cases at sheriff and high court level are being indicted on the last day of service before the time bar. The admission that we have, that's correct. Thank you very much. Margaret, followed by Sandra, followed by Roderick. There seems to be a bit of a disconnect, Miss Dyer, between what you're saying, indictments aren't in danger clearly that last bit. I think that it's quite complicated. Most of the work in the high court is custody work. From the Crown's point of view, what we have to do is we have to be ready to serve the indictment on the accused person 80 days after they first appeared for full committal in terms of the court. It's not 80 working days, it's 80 days, and our staff work very hard to make sure that the indictments are ready for that. It wouldn't be uncommon. It's quite a complicated system. You've got a date when it's fixed for a preliminary hearing for the court, and that's got to be within a certain time span. To have indictments being served on the last day is not necessarily an indication that we're not able to cope with what we're doing equally well with some of the custody, the bail cases. By the time we do the very thorough investigation that we've got to do, and I've talked about the number of cases that we don't even put on petition, but can take up to a year or more to investigate equally with ones that we do think we've got enough to put that on, there can be. Again, it's the nature of victims and all the rest of it. We have to really be very careful. We are now having conversations with all the victims and sexual cases to make sure that they understand what's likely to happen in the process. Again, what I think we can guarantee is at the end of the day we are not concerned that we're going to be missing time bars in cases. There will always be a proportion of the cases that are served on the last day that's possible for service, but that's always been the case. I had asked our High Court unit, we were looking at that, and we think that there are other things that we could do to try and make sure that we're definitely not going to be in the system of making victims not have their cases go to trial. That's just not what we'll do. We would move resource to make sure that that didn't happen. Notwithstanding that very long explanation, do you think it's acceptable that, increasingly, your staff is being put in that position, where it is the very last date before they're looking at that and they're complaining about... I don't think they're looking at the case. What this is is about the technical serving of papers. Do you think that's acceptable? Do you think it's acceptable? Yes. That will be something that we'll continue to understand. I think that's something that we've always done. I can understand the position like Fiona is trying to indicate that, because the cases are more complex and we've got more of them and there's more in custody, then more of them are in that position that they're being served on what is the technical last day, but I have to say that the people are in custody, they're in prison and what happens is the indictments go up to prison and they're served on them in prison, so there's not a danger of us missing. But it's the complexity of the case, maybe a number of witnesses, maybe expert witnesses, doesn't this point to resource? Aren't you doing, as chief executive of the service, your members a great disservice to talk about constantly flexing on resource, optimising on resource, the cumsa point, where you just can't do that anymore, you need a core increase in resources, in staffing? Well, that may come, but what I'm saying is at the moment, again, if I can explain, you know, if we've got a sudden increase fair for the past two years, there's a huge uplift and if you look at the figures, we're talking about 50 per cent increases in very technically difficult cases, then we obviously have to say what do we do to deal with that, we've dealt with it, we need to keep working, looking forward with the other bits of the justice system to say, is this a permanent state of affairs or is it, as we expect, that it will return back down? And obviously if you look at the crime figures and I think we're agreed now that it's not sufficient to look at figures, if you look at the crime figures but the amount of different types of work within it, which we're very good at doing now, you can see there's been a huge increase in these cases and we've dealt with it and we've additional resources that we've got to deal with that, I think the point is we need to keep looking forward to say what is the resource that we're going to need as we're going forward, that's the position. Fairly predictable to say that the domestic abuse task force is there and these serious sexual assaults and cases are going to come forward and you know already that these are more complex, you've already said there's constant change in the system within a background of budgetary constraints, it seems to me if I were in your shoes I'd be asking for more resources to cope for this, for your members to compete doing the very excellent service we all acknowledge that they are doing, but I have to tell you Ms Dar, this isn't just the evidence here, I say it at my local court, the morale of crime and procurator ffiscals, the lack of preparation time, sometimes very serious cases, laundering that's gone on for ages, going and being abandoned because the fiscal was under such pressure, that's not sustainable is it? I think if, as I said to the committee, we have been back and asked for the money for the big cases, we have been back and explained the position that was jointly with the Scottish Court service about what was happening for the mainstream sexual offending and domestic abuse cases we're dealing with and we did get additional resource for that, so it's not firefighting, I really have to object to that, I have to say as a public servant responsible for public expenditure I wouldn't expect that you would think that I should be asking for things when I don't have work for it to be carried out with, what we've done here is said we've had an increase in this kind of work, we need an increase in resource and we got an increase in resource, now you can talk about firefighting or you can talk about planning for expenditure on work that has arisen which is what I would say that was and the position is that in terms of these cases they are well prepared, we also expect that because of previous experience for example if I can say when there was a concentration at the beginning of the hate crime work that we were doing in terms of cases with racial abuse or whatever, we had a similar upsurge where people were confident about reporting so we had more of that coming out but at the same time what the prosecution service is doing as part of the justice system is to educate the public to say behaviour like this is not acceptable and so when you look at the trajectory we had low reporting when people weren't confident, the more that we made clear from the police and ourselves that people were to come forward and we would deal with them within the court system the reporting went up and at the same time as the reporting went up it began to be that there was publicity about these cases and the offending rate of these went down and we are hoping that there has now been such a focus on the fact that victims of sexual abuse if they come forward immediately it prevents somebody else becoming a victim of the same perpetrator and equally with domestic abuse what we're seeing is that in years past people were not confident about reporting it and we had perpetrators as Fiona's explaining with the domestic abuse cases who went on to serial relationships with people where they dealt very badly and assaulted their partners and that's all coming out in the wash if you like now but we've asked for additional resource and got additional resource and I don't think that's firefighting I think that's appropriately forwarding that's additional resource because it may not happen next year but you know you've got other changes in the system constantly whether that's from the right of victims to question some of the crime and procurative fiscal's decision whether that's new legislation coming through as it is constantly and meantime you've got a report here and we've evidence here of 81% of the legal staff respondents saying they've serious concerns about preparation time my goodness it doesn't get much more basic than that about workload and staffing levels so I'll ask you again isn't there a case for an increase in your core funding maybe your staffing budget has actually decreased? No I have to say my staffing budget that's Fiona's interpretation and I explained that at this stage what we're doing is setting budgets and what we intend to do is and I think our mantra has always been that when we've got money available we move it to having staffing resources as much as possible and the way that the finances of Crown Office and the fiscal service are set out we have a resource budget that is far bigger than any capital budget that we have and the bulk of that we move to work with staff and that's why it's important when we're talking about the technological changes that we're making because what we're doing with that we've been working on this assumption for several years now it was very obvious what was going to happen with public finances so I'm afraid we're ready with some of the technological things we have a website instead of people having to phone up and talk that we can give witnesses for instance in particular cases access to a piece of the website that's purely dedicated for them where they can email us about their particular case and they can get information about what's happening and that saves people resource if you like that we can then move on to working in cases behind the scenes and we're about to go forward with our iPad and Court project which we tried out I think two years ago now and left in a number of offices so that the staff could have a good go at that and tell us what they wanted improved we've taken that back and we're ready to go back out with the finalised version of that into the proof of concept offices despite all of that mr we're hearing about targets still being missed well targets being missed on a regular basis and mr carol has as already said with respect I don't think I'm going to get too much further well I think it depends what target I mean it depends what target that's internal target of scottish court service that mr carol is talking about which is a matter for scottish court service I'm concerned about our targets and I can tell you that sometimes that's because the fiscal hasn't been prepared or not ready and hasn't got enough time to do the job that they were employed to do well I think that our staff do very well under very suppressing conditions it's a question in why it should be pressed to this extent and why there shouldn't be an increase in core funding and I must have clarification figures that we took were from the level 3 breakdown of the amount that was set aside in the COPFS budget for the different terminology that there's Dell funding and resource funding and staffing and the breakdown in terms of the analysis as to whether it amounted to a £1.1 million cut was taken from the SPICE briefing and that was how we came up with the the figure for £1.1 million cut in the in the amount set aside within the overall budget for staffing but I think just on a general point it is you know we represent senior civil servants when we represent procurators fiscal in court at all grades and it is the job of senior civil servants to manage the budget that they are provided with so we make no criticism of our senior management in doing in managing the the budget that they are given our concern and it's what we were talking about earlier is about that sort of the snapshot we're looking at what the position is now what we're saying is that we do not believe that with the the the increase in the types of cases the complexity of cases and with reducing staff budget which we are we would be concerned to see reducing staff numbers for our members the the consequences for that we do not think are sustainable. I agree with Catherine Dyer that you know I'm obviously here speaking on behalf of members within Scottish Court Service so my focus is on the Scottish Court Service budget and members although the justice system does work with one another and I was just going to say that you know there is a lot of for example forward planning an organisation goes into court programming for example and again like the FDA I certainly wouldn't be sitting here criticizing my members or the staff of Scottish Court Service or the management of Scottish Court Service for all the planning that does go into managing the caseload that they have against the resources that they have got in terms of staff and obviously the estate and the state of that estate and from our point of view you know having seen the the budget cuts that came in previously with the 120 staff and then the court closures but we're going towards a very significant court reforms in the future and probably not the two distant future which I was hearing that were referred to earlier by members of the Law Society and Victim Support. We certainly do have the same general concerns as the FDA, the Law Society Victim Support. I see women's aid about the access to justice aspects and the pressure of the complexity of the cases that are being done and as I said you know there is that conflict for our staff and it's probably the same for the Crown Office and Procurator fiscal staff where if you're in court you can't manage the people and that's on the risk register for Scottish Court Service. Can I move on please yes I mean I'm conscious of time I know it's important but we'll ought to get through Sandra followed by Roderick. Thank you very much given in good morning our previous panel when asked the question in regard of the modernisation or that you know the reforms they did agree they supported the broad principles of the reforms added on to the video links ICT etc etc would you consider that you broadly welcome the reforms that's going ahead? I think from a PCS perspective we would broadly welcome the reforms that are going ahead apart from the fact that we still see that there are access to justice issues in terms of the system being able to cope with the cases going through the court and for example there is plans in place to reduce the sheriff and jury cases being heard in all sheriff courts to 16 centres for example now the courts that I quoted earlier Edinburgh and Paisley are due to be two of those 16 justice centres and they have that level of business at the moment now I have to accept that might have been a spike in the business at that particular time but these courts will have to deal with the cases that are not being heard elsewhere and with the court reforms we certainly do have concerns in that regard although I do accept that Scottish Court Service is planning ahead for that I would just like to say as well I heard someone mention about the justice centres earlier our understanding is that there's possibly three justice centres being considered and from our information because I heard that I think it was the delegate for the law society mentioned that there might be one for example plan for the northeast but our information is that there's three planned one for Inverness, one for Cercodi and possibly I think one for Airdrie and we are recognised from the Scottish Court Service evidence that was put in that there's maybe been 60 million of a budget set aside for that although Scottish Court Service will have to find money to fund other aspects of that so from our point of view those justice centres if they're built in those particular locations they will be replacing ageing estate which does need to be replaced and will enhance the service provided for victims, witnesses, jurors accused as well as provide better facilities for our staff hopefully. It has always taken a position that we don't take a position on matters of policy generally certainly we have no principled objection to the plans the focus for the union has always been on the impact and consequences for our members on any changes I mean I would make the observation though that it plays into some of the discussions about court closures and the discussion that we were having earlier about the number of cases which are proceeding to a full trial you know the underlying picture of more cases going to trial if you are reducing the number of courts in which those cases can be heard there will be consequences and additional pressures for the staff who are dealing with those. I think that in terms of the 16 centres we sort of welcome that we understand that obviously there is a change in the sort of dynamic and Scotland looks a lot different from when the courts that are in place were sort of set up in the sort of 1800s or whatever and certainly having been in the Livingston court where the High Court sat for the Angus Sinclair trial just last week and looking at the modern technology and the very good facilities for witnesses and the members of the public that wanted to come and see it compared with some of the court estate which is obviously very old I can sort of see and understand the attraction for that. From our point of view we'd be very interested in what it would allow us to do in enhancing service if we had staff that were particularly dealing with sheriff and jury instead of every sheriff court at the 16 centres what I would think the public would expect from us would be an increased level of service for victims and witnesses at these sort of locations so we will work with the Scottish courts as they sort of move to that but as far as I understand the position is that it's a gradual movement to that it's not going to be a sort of sudden sort of stop so again it'll be the planning about movement of work and you know where we do have like the High Courts and it's sort of dedicated High Court facility then the position for victims and witnesses and just members of the public coming into these buildings is a lot better than it is where you're trying to do it in a court that doesn't have the facilities. I'm just trying to move things along a little bit. You've got another panel as well. It's the budget because obviously I wanted to establish short questions with him. I'll try and be short questions. I think we have to welcome the fact that people are reporting more sexual violence and domestic abuse and with that obviously I think you said yourself Mr Carlaw it's not the cases it's the complexity of the cases so I was wondering if that had a knock-on effect on basically cases concluding and my final question would be probably from Ms Dyer. You mentioned it there as well talked about specialised training perhaps in certain areas and would you you'd mentioned before that you'd moved some of your budget to alleviate pressures on staff would that be something you would look towards when you talked about specialised training to alleviate the pressures on the staff from court services? If I can maybe start with the the end bit of that first I think yes in terms of specialisation I mean that is one of the things that we moved in and staff we have staff who are especially trained in domestic abuse especially trained in sexual offending and stalking and certainly again in terms of the quality of it and their understanding of what they're to do I think that has definitely increased and is a way of sort of dealing with it and because that we've moved into that kind of specialisation it allows us to say we need more staff at this particular point for dealing with things. I think also just the way that things are going technology is going to help us a lot I think the police there's a pilot in Aberdeen where the police have been wearing body worn cameras and for cases such as domestic abuse cases whatever most of the compelling evidence can be if you see on the night when the police are called out the distress of the victim and perhaps the really continuing bad behaviour of the perpetrator and there's a lot of discussion around the justice system as a whole judiciary involved in this as well of saying that actually we need to move more into the 21st century if we have things like that that's a quicker way perhaps of getting evidence that's compelling and then that would maybe be something I mean certainly I think in the Aberdeen experience if you've got that video it's pretty hard for the accused to say that you know it didn't happen whereas if you've got sort of statements that are sort of looked at months after the fact that's not quite as compelling for people so I think there's a whole combination of these things where it's generally moving to sort of thinking about how do we present cases how do we get it to the point where if it is actually the case that somebody should be pleading guilty they're doing that as quickly as possible. On the complexity aspect of it I would just reiterate probably what I referred to earlier was the 20 week target what you're saying there maybe reflected in that in that cases being disposed of within that time limit over the piece look as if they're not improving much or they're going down so for cases that are becoming more complex as was referred to earlier more cases are going to trial so therefore the disposal period is going out. I have to move on I'm afraid and we'll take Roderick's question and then I'm going to take if you've got a question to Christian why I take Roderick's question and John's question and Christian's questions and if they can't be dealt with collectively then obviously we'll tease them out but it's to try and move things along I'll let you back in it's simply we've got another panel and you'll obviously get supplementaries too if you require it so can I have your question please. Thank you convener can I just refer to my membership of interests as a member of the party of advocates I just like to focus again on domestic abuse and I'm wondering obviously in the climate in which we now operate in far more cases coming to trial whether there is a problem actually at the end of the day with the complainer not actually giving evidence finally or when she does give evidence predominantly she would imagine the quality of that evidence being so poor that it's being suggested that court time has been not properly utilised and really is there a might be helpful to know if there's a line of command in the fiscal service to decide which cases will actually go the full way. Right that's fun and it may not they may not be able to take the multi-care if I just get the questions first. Yes John what's yours? We'll have a couple of questions. The first one is to Mr Carlyam kind of congratulate you Mr Carlyam because it was good to hear that good old trade union saying it's budget cuts you know rather than efficiency savings but could you perhaps advise me that obviously with the budget and the way it's progress and do you anticipate there to be any jobs lost in Stingway and perhaps my other question is to Caryn Dyer it's with regards to like Margaret Mitchell I think you're trying to run your service in a false economy and the voice shall have been successful this time and receiving additional resource I think somewhere down the line that the pressure will come upon on the service but could you tell me that because of the increased pressures on workload has there been any serious cases time barred? That's a straightforward question and Christian what's yours? Yes it's on the same line of questioning on sexual offending and domestic abuse and the pressure on the on the budget thank you very much for your input this morning. Will you think that with this immense pressure if there were not this immense pressure on the court system will the court's reform will be a lot more straightforward if you didn't have that and second of all is I think Mr Dyer talk about it what do you think for the complexity of those cases what could we introduce to try to make them simpler and to to have less cost on the budget? I think I'll give Ms Dyer to answer the three questions which director about court time looking about I think the prospects I think it's what you were talking about in the line of command about cases that come forward particularly with the complainer and also whether reform repeat that again reform and the pressures on it whether that's making harder for reform to go through. No I'm just saying if you didn't have a complexity and whether any serious cases were time barred effort didn't proceed so there's you three and Mr Carroll directly on job losses so please do yes we're not expecting any job losses we were closely with Scottish court service management in that respect we have a what we would term a true partnership arrangement within Scottish court service they keep us up to date with anything that is planned in the future and we do not expect any job losses in the future at all in terms of your budget cuts yes efficiencies are doing things smarter and savings are made budget cuts are budget cuts now Mr Dyer in relation to people not speaking up at trial which i think was your point of victim's domestic abuse actually i think the reason that happens quite often is because of the dynamic that they find themselves in and obviously the position is that we look at the case at the start as is reported by the police in cases where there's a specialist domestic abuse court there's support from assist and victim support and other organisations which assists people to to actually get over the nervousness of being speaking out if they're reported to the police and it's coming to court but certainly it's an area of work where because of the damage that's really caused to the victims yes there is far more i would say of the cases where people are reluctant and frightened about what the consequence is going to be for them in the partnership now obviously we try and address some of that with bail conditions and trying to make sure that people get access we've got victim information advice with access to support but i just think again that indicates you know i don't think anybody would suggest that we shouldn't take the case up at the beginning it looks as if there's going to be enough evidence we're learning more about how we can make the in the system victims feel more comfortable so that they have got access to the services that they need support from but it is a particular feature i think of domestic abuse cases and that a number of them get to court and then there is reluctance from the witness but we do our best to serve support and help people give their evidence i've been suggested to me that there are too many cases which really shouldn't be in court and that the ffiscals are limited because there's a line of command in the crown office which prevents a decision being taken to dessert the case we've got a presumption in favour that's the policy that the lord advocate has we've got a presumption in favour if it looks as if there's enough evidence we will take it to court because these are serious cases and i think we see the impact on other areas you know health mental health education in terms of children not doing well out of families like that so i think it's a societal thing that we've got a policy saying that if there is enough evidence we'll take it to court now that doesn't always mean and we all know that going into court you can come out with a different result than you expected but i think we've still got a very high conviction rate in this country because of the work that's done by the police and what's happening is as Fiona was saying it's quite often that now we're going back and it's a much more compelling case and people feel the strength that there's two or three of them that they can speak up about what an individual has done to them in terms of the simplistic but if we hadn't had the spike would this all be going through with a lot less turbulence i think the answer to that is yes because obviously the planning was based on what it was but equally well i think the position is that we are now saying well we've got these additional cases so the planning is now going forward on the basis that we've got the additional cases and we are asking for additional resource to deal with the additional cases and in terms of a time bar case which i think is the other question a time bar case because of pressure and resource no and we really are very clear about that our target that we publish is about if we've got a time bar we are expecting that we got 100 percent of the cases dealt with within time bar so there can be the odd time where somebody has made a mistake but you know i'm not aware of one of these and again i can come back to you with detail of what's happened over the past year if you would wish but the answer to that is no i mean it's not about letting cases time bar because of resource we put resource to make sure that cases don't time bar if i make one final quick point just on the staff on the job losses point we don't expect there to be any job losses as such within our service either apart from the fact that as we indicated in our written evidence many of our staff are now employed on fixed-term contracts and so we do expect there to be a reduction in staff because you know some of them may not be kept on beyond the end of the fixed-term contracts and that's about what we consider to be a budget cut in our staffing budget right can i can i think i'm sorry it was a bit to what was done but we're run by quite substantial time now thank you very much your evidence can i say to roddy and john put your bid john if you can be in first next time so you're not cut short and roddy and john can win me your questions to the next panel first because i had to cut if you have anything you wish we'd asked me didn't ask me ought to know please write and let us know we're very helpful thank you very march us to spend for two minutes we cannot welcome our third panel of witnesses eric McQueen chief executive and cliff binning chief operations officer scottish court service and martin mackenna acting deputy director scottish tribunal service and parole unit scottish government and that's really because the scottish tribunal service will merge with the scottish court service in april 2015 to form the scottish courts and tribunal service so really it seemed appropriate to have you all together go straight to questions from members roddy john do you want to be in next you wait a bit roddy my morning gentlemen could i just start by referring to comments reported in the press by sheriff little which was also commented on in the first panel by the representative from the law society um who correctly pointed out that obviously there have been no court closures in the logians and borders to date would you mr mackenna just like to clarify your view on sheriff little's comments about the position in the logians i mean what i don't want to do is comment on the views of an individual server but i'm quite happy to comment on the the position in relation to edinburgh and there was actually a statement that i put out to the media on our website just shortly thereafter um and i would say it's a statement that was wholeheartedly agreed by the sheriff principal low theme borders and i think there's an injured here that we we start mixing up court closures i think some of the discussion that you've heard already about some of the challenges that have been experienced with the increase in volumes we have no doubt whatsoever that edinburgh has the capacity to comfortably deal with the edinburgh business and we have capacity to deal with more cases than at the combined impact of harrington and edinburgh and we are putting in place a court programme that will deal with that business the harrington trials that are already being assigned to anyone at the moment because quite clearly looking to that and causing in january those cases are being signed those are being assigned for 16 weeks at the moment the vast majority of cases in harrington are being assigned at the moment for 18 weeks and we expect by the time we come around to the end of january all cases in sorry in edinburgh will be assigned for 16 weeks which is the the optimum period between a plead of not guilty and a trial so we have absolute confidence that the capacity exists within edinburgh the extra resources have been deployed and i says catherine dire was talking earlier on about resources that have been added to the justice system a significant part of those resources have come to the scottish court service so we've been able to apply additional judicial members the staff and additional staff to use the capacity we have to deal with the volumes of business and we're absolutely confident in terms of edinburgh we can deal with the business coming in from harrington and we can deal within what is deemed to be a reasonable time within the justice system and at this stage in the court closure programme have there been any unanticipated problems to be honest no i mean it's actually gone surprisingly well i mean there were significant concerns being raised about access to justice witnesses not turning up intimidation public order increases in churn in those courts and what we have experienced is as far the reverse from that if anything in many courts it's allowed us to be more flexible in terms of how we use our resources and deploy judiciary and staff to help improve the business coming through could you also clarify the position of Scottish court service in relation to feasibility studies for justice centres that's been also being referred to in the last two panels absolutely i mean we have been quite clear with the justice committee and quite clear in our report on shaping scottland's court services that we see justice centres as being quite a key part of our vision in the future and certainly wasn't the last group there's a lot of concern about the quality of the accommodation about investment about backlog maintenance and our views to actually move to a position of justice centres to try to redress some of that so we have identified and we did identify in shaping scottland's court services three areas where we see justice centres as being our first priorities within Inverness, within Cercodian Fife and within the Airdrie and Lanarkshire those are areas that we will work up feasibility studies over the coming months and we will take our proposals back to government for funding from it. We were delighted to see that in the budget statement we were at least ear-macked as having access to the additional £60 million that's being created to invest in capital projects is being part of a justice bid for justice centres and we believe if we can carry out the feasibility studies, produce the right business cases then we can take these forward at some period within the next three to five years we think it's absolutely the right way to go to improve the services and improve the facilities and get the best benefit out of technology in the future. And finally just in relation to video technology can you update the committee on how that's going in the courts at present time? Yeah I mean we've had video technology in the court system for some time now we have video technology in virtually every court across scottland we have a range of remote sites in what we call ad hoc sites and quite clearly as we've recognised that there's been issues with it our technology has not been the best we have occasionally had issues I know there's some earlier evidence about failures and video links to be honest that they are at the exception rather than the norm but we did recognise it was in the area we had to make big investment in so we have channeled significant funds into ICT development both this year and next year in fact we've allocated another £1.9 million to ICT next year to bring our standards right up to what we call as being state of the art facilities so work is currently underway at the moment in terms of putting in the right configuration system the new bridges that we'll need to connect to our remote sites and arterial lines are a major upgrading of video confidence that will be taking place and will be completed by January so we expect to be in the position where we will have high quality state of the art video confidence and available across scottland that's reliable that's consistent and meets the needs and demands that we expect to see increasing through the implementation of the victims of witnesses act did you say a date to when you would have that in place yes we expect to have in place by the end of january january next year this year yes i mean the work's underway at the moment on it already thank you um allison you get a supplementary mr McQueen you just said there that that some of the concerns that were around at the time of the court closures were on the impact on victims and witnesses um I hadn't come through um you weren't present when mr mccluskey was given evidence earlier this morning but he said he was very clear that there was great pressure now um on the facilities that were left um and that victims and witnesses and and the problems for victims and witnesses were much more acute now in the courts that were still open um and that the pressure on meeting rooms uh lack of separate facilities and things were obviously greatly exacerbated I wondered what you were doing to review that um well I think there's a couple of things on that I mean one I think that's something about the language we've talked about the courts that are left it sounds like there's very few that's left actually the overall movement in business was five percent so any impact would be five percent on what was already there previously beforehand um we have done a lot of work with Victim Support Scotland and with what very much in partnership with them over the last year um go now visit our accommodation looking at the types of facilities we have in place and looking at where we can make improvements we recognise completely that some of our buildings we do have some physical limitations um you know the vast majority of buildings are still Victorian buildings they're limited in design we can't just change them overnight um so we do have restrictions in terms of public access in terms of space that's available inside but we do work very collaboratively with Victim Support Scotland to try to make changes that we can make and we can make quickly to give the best possible service to victims of witnesses having done that work I mean it's always easy to to work closely but are you actually flowing through from that are you allocating resources in your budget this year to deal with some of the issues? Absolutely and I would hope that and I didn't hear all the evidence but I would hope that some of that was reflected by Victim Support Scotland this morning that where we are carrying out the site visits we are following them up so we are making changes that can be made it and most of the time it's not necessary to do with funding I think it's more to do with physical restrictions that we actually have within the building so what we try to do is find ways of working around it how do we make accommodation more flexible how do we put a signage in place how do we actually try to use technology to deal with some of these problems so there's no reluctance in our part to try and make them the improvements I think it's just about trying to prioritise them and do what we can within what sometimes is a a restrictive estate. So where there are extra resources needed to deal with the issues can you perhaps write to the committee and show us where you're where you're planning to shift resources to pick that up? Sorry can I do what? Can you write to committee perhaps showing us how your budget over the forthcoming year is allocating resources to do that? I've got to say I'm not sure if that would be particularly helpful for the committee I'm just struggling what... So you're not shifting resources into improvements to access? Well I think what we're trying to do is shift resources into whole set of areas and that's what we're trying to set out in terms of early evidence about the work that we're currently planning to try to accommodate the Victim Witnesses Act, the investment that we're making in technology that we were trying to bring forward and improve the Court of Orms. I mean I'm not sure if you're looking something very specific or an individual Court. Can I ask a quick question? I'm actually I'm not trying to be helpful it's just I think of Selkirkshire of Courts, how you would make that accessible to people with disabilities, how you would make it sufficiently separating witnesses for and against in cases. I don't know if it's possible in I'm just it's the one I know it's not possible in an old building like that. So what do you do there where you're in a way you're stuck with these Victorian buildings? I'm not talking about Edinburgh Sheriff Court or the Livingston but with these old ones that we still have. How do you do it? Well what we're trying to do is to have minimum standards for all our courts. So minimum standards in terms of accessibility, minimum standards in terms of access to a courtroom and in the vast majority of our courts like it's about 98 or 99% we can create that access where disabled people can access the building and they can access the courtroom. I think if memory says we're right there's still one court where that's not possible and what we do in those cases is we use the accommodation immediately next door for the court if there's a disabled person that requires that access but I say that's very very much the exit. In the vast majority of courts we have separate witness and defence areas. I'm not sure if there's any courts where we don't have that actually, if there's a... I think that's what you were trying to... There. It's the missing McCluskey this morning about even modern courts Aberdeen where the public atrium is a choke point. Yeah, I mean I think what Alan's describing is not so much the facilities we prize. I mean Aberdeen's a very good example now where we have two separate complexes in Aberdeen. One that deals with the Sheriff Court criminal business and one that deals with the Sheriff Court civil business. So to a certain extent that's pretty much like how model of the justice centre where we're trying to separate off the different strands of building. Within the Sheriff Court in Aberdeen we absolutely have separate accommodation for county and defence witnesses and complete separation but like any old building there's one access to it, there's one main reception point and we can't change that physical configuration. So I think what Alan was more talking about is that are there more things we can do in terms of signpostage and direction to quickly get people through what you might describe as the communal areas and then moving them off into the separated areas. So it's not that we don't have the physical witness rooms that are separate but just that there's congestion at times in a public hall in one reception area where there's one access door and what we can't do is put two access doors. I realise I can come in later. I just look at me there, Elaine, followed by Sandra, please. Mr McQueen, when you came before us during court reform and then again today you seem to be very confident that everything is fine that you're going to be able to cope with all the issues that are in front of you. You paint a very different picture and it wasn't that it's difficult to reconcile with the previous panel where they were telling us about the court service being under stress about the workforce under pressures of workload and indeed Scottish courts targets in terms of cases coming from first calling to disposal just not being met. Are there current challenges? Are you suffering challenges in the court service at the moment? Do you agree that those might become worse as the new legislation comes through and are you absolutely confident that you can meet all those challenges within the current level of resources and offer to you? I think that first of all there's absolutely no doubt that we have challenges. Any organisation working within the public sector with the expectation of reform and the financial constraints we work in are challenging and that's something that we are absolutely open about. I think that there's two slightly different issues there which maybe if I can just address separately, one about the business volumes, I think the targets as you described it and then one about the perception of the staff. I think it's maybe helpful if I just separate those out. In terms of the business volumes and again from hearing a bit of the evidence I think Catherine Dyle had moved something into this that we have experienced a change in demand over the course of the last 12 or 18 months so there has been an upsurge in terms of domestic abuse and there has been an upsurge in terms of particularly sexual crimes. From our point of view that was very much unplanned and unforeseen but something that we can cope within the flexibility we have within the system. We're a demand driven organisation and when the demand changes we move to change out approach so we've had extensive discussion with the Justice Board for Scotland in terms of the level of demand, how long we expect to continue for and resources have been reallocated within the justice system and have now been deployed and are now bringing the waiting periods for trials back to where we would expect to see so we are very confident that it's moving to the early next part of next year then the vast majority of courts will be either at or as close as reasonable to the 16 weeks which are an acceptable period for trial diets. So it's not that we're not having challenges but I think we've developed them in a very collaborative way and I think we've put in place very good measures for actually how we contain them and move us back into the position that we want to be in. On the staffing side and I think it's quite interesting again for all staff in any organisation at the moment there are lots of pressures and lots of challenges. What I didn't necessarily recognise was the exact feedback that Brian Carr of our trade union representative gave us. Just as recently as last week we got the results back from our people survey that we carry out annually. It's a survey that's carried out by Cabinet Office. It's absolutely independent and it's carried out across every Government organisation across the UK. We got the high-level figures for the staff survey and this was completed by staff during October so it is incredibly recent. Some of the results there from my perspective are actually pretty impressive. We have an overall engagement score and that doesn't mean that a heck of a lot of 64 per cent which is in one of the top levels within the whole of the UK civil service. So in terms of sectors we're right at the very top of there. 92 per cent is that I fully understand the organisational objectives and purposes. 82 per cent of staff are comfortable with their workload levels and the resources that they have availed them. Our staff have scored very highly in terms of how we manage change in the organisation and scored very highly in terms of their own learning and development and career opportunities. In all of those segments we're at the top scores within the civil service. I've not seen that paper. Is it a public paper? We'll be putting it probably in about the next week or so. I think it'll be useful now that you're ready to put in the public more quickly so that we have it when we're considering our report to the finance committee if that could be put. We're reading from it now but you know we're at a disadvantage. No, I say these results are only just out so I mean I'm given them. No, I appreciate that. I don't think there's any jiggery pokery here. Now you've done it. If we could have it we can put it on our website and it'd be a public document. Absolutely, yeah because I mean I think it's a good reflection of staff and what has been a difficult and trying time. The one thing I would say is there was a comment also made about the fact that people and pressure issues are on a risk register and I think that's absolutely right. I mean I think we'd be incompetent if it wasn't on a risk register. To say things that are on a risk register doesn't mean to say that that's only a problem but we're recognising that there could be risks. So technologies on a risk register, people's on a risk register, our capacity for change and change management is on a risk register to make sure that we're aware of them, that we're taking the appropriate actions and we're trying to mitigate them as far as possible. I would find it quite a scary position as chief executive of saying that people issues and change issues were not on a risk register. I think that's a very positive thing rather than a negative thing. Maybe I don't know whether you heard the evidence from the FDA if you're an edif of FDA about. I didn't hear a lot of it now. A survey they'd done or FDA had done on staff indicated significant stress levels among staff, particularly concerns around preparation times and these sorts of things. Within the crown off of it. Yeah, within the crown off, obviously within the crown off, but Mr Cameron was saying similar, there were similar stresses within his sector. Yeah, I say I can only. We're not expecting you to answer the crown off. I can only feed back to what our staff have told us last month. Which we will have in public. Which we will have in public, yeah. And the one thing I would say to that is that we do actually spend a lot of time discussing this with our staff. So we have been round over the course of the summer speaking to every member of staff about the change, about the reforms, about the business volumes and about how we're planning on dealing with them. So it's certainly not something that's come as a surprise to any of our staff. Because also the figures that Mr Carroll gave us in terms of the targets, some of the courts were well off target, well off target at the moment. I mean, you think that's just because of the stress of certain types of cases coming through just now. It's primarily because of the increase in cases we've had through and I say already what we're starting to see is those figures are coming down quite quickly as the recovery programmes are going in place. And we expect to say by the early part of next year that for the vast majority of courts, we will be pretty much back as close as we can expect to be within the 16 weeks has been that optimum period between a not guilty plea and a trial to happen. I'm just going to ask that the Scottish Tribunal service staff, they'll become part of the staffing of the Scottish courts service. Would you like to perhaps say something Mr McKinnon about them? Sure. Well, it's quite pleasing that we just can finish a similar survey, as Eric was saying, it's across our government departments. And they're also, it would seem, we've gone up in terms of our scores on that, so our staff seem to be well engaged and well aware of the impending merger. All aspects of the merger are actually going well at the moment. You know, we're quite comfortable that this is a good thing for us to be doing. Our staff are just next week actually, we kick off with a series of road shows to engage with our staff, and we've got Scottish Court Service HR people coming out as well, so we're doing a bit of a joined up event with the managers and tribunal service and the court service and HR people to speak to and support our staff through and to the new merged organisation. So I think we're putting a lot of time and effort into helping our staff, if you like, into the new organisation. I think when they get there, the types of opportunities that will be there for them I think will be better perhaps than the ones they have at the moment within the Scottish Government. It's a better fit for them, I think, in terms of their operational background. I'll come back, let other come back to the staff. I just wanted to pick up on a number of issues that perhaps the previous members had mentioned also, and Brian Carroll had also mentioned in the fact that we have seen unprecedented rise in reports of domestic violence and rape and sexual abuse. That can only be a good thing, but when we were asking about the timescale, I think that Elaine had raised it as well, a timescale of cases concluding. Mr Carroll himself said that it wasn't so much the cases but it was a complexity of the cases. Do you think that we perhaps should be a wee bit more flexible in this particular one about the, after all, surely its access to justice and not just 16 weeks that has to be carried through? Perhaps there should be, I'm not saying that you can name the cases, perhaps there should be asterisks in fact that certain cases are very complex and will take longer than 16 weeks? I think that's a very valid point and I think it's something that's worthy of consideration. One of the main drawings particularly in terms of domestic abuse is certainly being through both a combination of the specialist courts and the toolkit that's in place about trying to actually cost their cases and to try to bring them to court at an earlier stage. To be honest, my own personal view is that actually there's still a lot of strength in that argument. I think that in terms of domestic abuse, the quicker we can get to a position where evidence is given, I think that there's probably a greater probability of that particular case proceeding and concluding. I think that in terms of domestic abuse, I would certainly encourage any sort of input and resources to try to make sure that domestic abuse has dealt with within a short on timescales. One of the difficulties that we have with domestic abuse now and again it's because of the surge in the recent levels is that domestic abuse accounts for about a third of the cases that are coming through the Sheriff Court. It makes it very difficult when you've got that volume of cases about how do you apply a fast track specialised approach to something that is at such a significant level. I think that there's probably some thought and consideration that is being given and will need to be given in terms of is there some way that you can prioritise within that. So how do you identify, you used to maybe ask tricks up, some of the most complex, some of the most difficult. When I say serious, I don't mean that there's less serious cases, I think you get my message about how we can actually try to deal with those at a quicker space. I think in terms of some of the more serious cases, in particular the sexual cases where there's very intensive investigations, then arguably maybe writing some of those cases actually a longer timescale would help those to be properly prepared and brought through into court. So I think it's a bit of horses for courses for the type of case and the level of complexity. Just two quick questions, Chair, because it's coming from the Women's Aid submission. Just a quick point on planification. You mentioned in regards to the IT system, I think, you answered the Chair by saying it will be up and running by January 2015. This is one of the concerns that they raised in that, so that's definitely, it will be definitely, you know, they raised the fact at this point. I mean, we're making some, I don't know if you want to be to talk about IT, I mean, we're doing some significant investment in that grade to our IT systems, generally way beyond just video conferencing. I don't know if it's helpful at all just to touch on it at this particular case or do you want us to just stick purely to your questions? Yes, I think we'd like to know a little as it's very important to expediting cases and just assisting victims and witnesses. I mean, just to give you a quick overview, there's a number of things that we are working on this year and some of them will carry into next year and this is about the additional investment over the course of these two years. First of all, our big main priority has been putting it at a new state of the art infrastructure, so what's described as our wide area network connections between every court, given speeds of up to 100 megabit per seconds, are now in the process of being installed, so that will be a high-speed access across all of our courts across Scotland, and that should be in place by the end of this year. At the same time, as I was saying earlier, we're working in terms of upgrading our video link capacity and that will be in place by January. At the same time, we have brought in an electronic case management handling system for video conferencing bookings, so rather than things being done manually because we expect more bookings, we'll have an automatic system that staff can use to book video slots so that we can make sure that we've got resilience, that the expertise is there and that lines are working, and we'll have a much better way of managing things. During the course of between December and through to probably about September or October next year, we will be upgrading all what's called the local area networks within individual courts, which means that they can then take real advantage of the high-speed capability, and, importantly, that will allow us to provide wireless access. You're increasing high-speed capability, but all courts can't be able to do that until a period of time during next year up to September. No, no, there's two. Like all of these things, there's different parts of it. One, there's the infrastructure in terms of the wide area network, and that's the one that's being installed now. We also have a roll-out programme upgrading our internal capability within courts, and that will allow us to provide wireless access, so we'll have wireless access in courts by September or October next year. Some of it will come in earlier, some of it will be delivered by September or October time. By the time we move to next September, we'll have wireless access in all our courts, and we'll have all the high-speed connections in place and a very new infrastructure. The other big major development we're making, and this is one of the big areas of expenditure next year, is introducing what we describe as our new generation of case management systems. We're currently out to procurement at the moment, and that's almost finalised. The business case that we're going to the SAS board for sign-off in December, and we expect to get in the contract in January, and this will be our new case management system initially for civil business. It will be about full electronic access, electronic registration, case management, online production of documents and online presentation of evidence, and this is our first big step about significantly moving paper out of the system, and that is due to be delivered by October 2016. John Pentland, please. Mr McQueen, I think that last year I asked a summer question to that, which Elaine Moray asked you there, that you know you give this impression that everything's good within your service. But then I find out that when I'm reading your report that someone's into the financial year, you're asking for an additional £2.5 million to help you deliver that service through £1.2 million to cover the transitional costs for courts and tribunals service, and then there's an additional £1 million to provide staff, so I'm just, you know, the question is just how reassure can you, what assurance can you give committed that, you know, your budget this year you won't be coming along mid-term and asking for additional money. The second one is with regards to Euler, and I think it was a question again to either Roderick or to Sandra that you move resources to where they're needed and demand, so where do these resources then come from if you're allocating them to something else that needs that demand, and does that then tell me, and again tell me if I'm wrong, that you may have some sort of contingency within your budget that allows you to do that type of thing. And I think the third one is that with regards to your budget, what is your efficiency target every year for savings? And I'm using the efficiency this time, rather than budget cuts because you're not getting down to the, you know, losing jobs yet. So what's your efficiency target? Okay, on your first question about the £2.5 million in year, half of that was well planned, so in terms of the bill that came forward for the merger of the tribunials, then the planning for the transitional cost has been in place for some 12-18 months, so when the SES board agreed to move to the merger with the tribunial service last November, that agreement was already in place with the Scottish Government that to facilitate, there was £1.2 million worth of transitional cost to allow that to happen. So that was agreed and in place in November of December, sorry, October November last year, and it just took until this year before the budget transfer was affected into place, so that part of it was clearly planned. The other issue about the other part of the money, which was the million pound in terms of dealing with increased business volumes, was something that was taken forward through the justice board. So this is where there was difficult discussions taking place about the change in business volumes, about the change in complexity and about the need to move resources to deal with it. So a decision was taken with injustice to allocate additional money to both the Crown Office and the Scottish Court service to deal with his increased business volumes that we have seen during the last 12 months, so that was pretty much the rationale in terms of where that extra £2.5 million came from. In terms of our budgets for next year, are we assured that they are comfortable and that we think that we are going to go for any more increases? At the moment, absolutely yes. The one caveat that you will come back to is the increased business volumes. At the moment, we are confident that our budget is set at the right level. It will allow us to deliver. As any chief executive, nobody would ever turn away additional funding if it was the opportunity, but we also have to balance it with the realism of the pressures that exist on public sector funding. We have to make sure that we have plans in place that are affordable and deliverable. We are absolutely confident that that is the case. With the increase in business volumes, we have seen positive signs that some of those are starting to come back. Sheriff Court business volumes are down about 4 per cent already this year. That is looking to carry on. With movements that are being made in the justice of the peace cases, again, we are expecting to see the business volumes start to come back down. If we end up in the position that we are in the middle of next year and we are finding that there has been a change or that something else has happened in terms of demand, then that is a discussion that we would need to have with the justice board and the Scottish Government. That is something that will always be under discussion and will always be fluid about how we identify our resources. On efficiency targets, one of the things that we do not set is an absolute efficiency target. I am not a great fan of setting targets for the sake of setting targets, but what we have got is a three-year strategy in place for the organisation about how we remain financially stable. We put that in place initially about two years ago. It is part of our thinking about how to reduce initially the cost base of the organisation, where there was difficult decisions taken and that included issues about court structures to make sure that we had funding at the right level that would allow us to invest in our buildings and allow us to invest in our technology and allow us to deliver to court reforms. That is exactly what our corporate plan has set out for the next three years to achieve and that is exactly what we are going to deliver next year as the first part of that corporate plan. That has been about long-term planning to make sure that the justice reform is a reformer role and that we can deliver on them. I understand that you will have a responsibility to be making some sort of efficiency saving percentage. Is there a minimum percentage saving that you would make and is there a maximum? Absolutely not. I thought that I had covered that already. We do not set a target for efficiency savings. What we have set out is a long-term plan for the organisation of how we are going to deliver the change and how we are going to deliver the reforms and to make sure that we have the budget of part of that to achieve it. That is what is in our corporate plan, that is what is in our business plan for next year and that is what we will deliver on. So as a service, you do not have any responsibility to meeting any efficiency saving that your organisation has? No, I think that what I am saying is that I do not have a target yet because I do not set the organisation a target of 10 per cent and go off and just save it whatever way you can. What we have got is a very careful and a very worked out plan for the next three years. Part of that is about driving efficiency as we move toward technical delivery. One of our key things is about actually making sure that we do digital by design. There is a whole range of areas, which again, if you want me to talk about, I am quite happy to talk about where we are delivering efficiencies within the organisation by using technology. To me, I would much rather it was a part of our plan and it was a part of our thinking rather than employing arboretary targets on the organisation to achieve 3 per cent or 4 per cent. Just for my understanding, I am quite sure that the rest of the committee will understand what you are saying, but just for my understanding that during the reform of the court services where there was an identified amount had to be made through efficiency, you do not have any responsibility of meeting that efficiency. In effect, could you not deliver any efficiency savings whatsoever? I have got absolute responsibilities accountable officer for the funding, the efficiency and the delivery of the Scottish court service. What I put in place plans over the next three years is to deliver those reforms and deliver the efficiencies that are built in part of it. If you are saying to me, do I have a target that I impose on the organisation of x per cent, then no, I don't. Again, I think that that is a positive thing. I am just looking at your submission and it was paragraph 13. The majority of the SCS annual running costs are met by voted funds. Could you maybe explain voted funds to me? That is funds that are allocated from the Scottish Government as part of the budget bill. The budget bill allocates funds to the Scottish court service and we receive other income through retention of certain elements of criminal fines that are imposed in courts for civil fees that are recovered through our courts and for a much smaller amount of other income that we generate through leases and rental costs on our properties. Again, it is just that you do not put your hands up to say that I vote for x, y, or z. Is that just a word that is thrown in there that gives me the impression that you do, but your hands up whether you agree to voted funds or not? I am sort of confused by what we are going to do. Voted funds is a technical term to reflect— Is it not what the Parliament agrees? Perhaps Mr Winning will explain to us and then we can move on. Yes, voted funds is a technical term to reflect the fact that the awards of funds are voted for by Parliament and approved by Parliament as opposed to other income sources. It does not imply that it is an election or voting process. It is part of the parliamentary budget process. Good. I will understand that now, Mr Winning.