 Rwy'n gilym chi gydag ein bod chi'n gilym y cyffredin nhw'n ei fodw y sefydliadau a'u ddigon yn Dydd Donald Rydym yn cymermellu'r clín, 잘 yw Donald Rydym a bod y goleinadau yn ddigon yn ddifuig newid o'i ddweud o dd attractio a'i beidio'r gyfan, ondrwydd i ddychgynnu g yn ei ddigon yn ddigon, os ymlaen angered i ddigon i ddigon i ddigon i ddigon yn ddif wedi eun iawn mwyllt o'r ddigon yn ddigon, ddigon i ddigon i ddigon i ddigon i ddigon to�io i yn ddymaewch ar y cymayeithaeth, Ministeriaeth Cymru? Thank you, business officer. I begin by apologising for my late arrival, which was entirely my fault and responsibility. I welcome the opportunity to speak in this debate at stage one for the prisoner control of release, Scotland Bill. I would like to begin by offering my thanks to the justice committee, the clerks of the committee and those that gave evidence during stage one Llywodraeth Cymru. I welcome at the support for the general principles of the bill given in the stage 1 committee report. The system of prisoner early release has been raised within this parliament frequently since the current system was introduced nearly 20 years ago. Section 1 of the bill will fundamentally change the system of automatic early release for long-term prisoners. A long-term prisoner is anyone serving a sentence of four years or more. Currently, such a prisoner is entitled to automatic early release if they are still in custody at the two thirds point of sentence. The system operates so that there is absolutely no discretion to keep dangerous prisoners in custody beyond the two thirds point. That is, in our view, not the right system. The operation of the system has regularly brought criticism for the reasons that it is very difficult to explain why dangerous prisoners have to be released in this way when they still have one third of their sentence left. The alternative to automatic early release is discretionary early release. That is where the independent parole board considers the case of an individual prisoner and takes a decision about whether to authorise early release on the basis of an assessment of the risk that individuals pose to public safety. The evidence, Presiding Officer, is clear. The rate at which prisoners breach their licence conditions when granted automatic early release is seven times higher than the breach rate for prisoners granted parole board discretionary early release. The rate at which prisoners are recalled to custody when granted automatic early release is five times higher than the recall rate for prisoners granted parole board discretionary early release. The independent parole board does a challenging and a difficult job well, and this bill will give them further power to carry on their good work and consider more individual cases in the future rather than in discriminate automatic early release taking place at the two thirds point of sentence. We think that it is right to trust the judgment of the parole board by giving them this enhanced role. This will help to keep our communities safer while allowing parole release for an individual prisoner to aid their reintegration into the community where the risk to public safety is manageable in the community. In early February, we announced that we would expand the bill's reach to end the current system of automatic early release for all long-term prisoners. We think that this is the right approach so that the benefits of our policy apply to a wider group of prisoners. If Parliament approves the bill introducing our proposals at stage 2, this will mean that our prisoners receiving a sentence of four years or more will be entitled to automatic early release at the two thirds point of sentence. Decisions about early release will be left to our trusted independent parole board. Dangerous prisoners will no longer be entitled to leave custody two thirds of the way through their sentence. If a prisoner is assessed as posing at an unacceptable risk to public safety, they will serve their sentence for a longer period in prison. That will help to reassure communities, reduce reoffending and protect public safety. Concerns were expressed during stage 1 that some long-term prisoners may be left in a position following their reforms where they would be subject to what is called cold release. That would be release without any specific controls being able to be applied over the prisoner through supervision of them in the community. We have listened and responded to those concerns by committing to ensuring that there will be supervision through a mandatory period of control that will apply to all long-term prisoners leaving custody. This mandatory control period will help to ensure effective assistance for prisoners to be reintegrated into their communities and robust steps can be taken to bring prisoners back into custody if breaches of the conditions of release take place. It is important to stress that the need for a mandatory control period will apply for a relatively small portion of long-term prisoners. That is because many long-term prisoners will continue to receive parole board early release or have an extended sentence in place. For those prisoners, a period of mandatory control will always be in place upon release from custody through licence conditions. However, where a prisoner does not receive parole board early release and does not have an extended sentence, a mandatory control period on release needs to be put in place with the conditions set by the parole board. The stage 1 report raises two important issues about this mandatory control period. First, the committee explored whether it would be part of the sentence. It is clear that a mandatory control period after a sentence has ended would be very problematic given that the sentence has already been imposed by the court and has ended. It is difficult to see how such a period of mandatory control could be effectively enforced if it is post-sentence end. In line with the evidence received by the committee, we therefore consider that the mandatory control period in the community should be part of the sentence. Second, the committee explored how long this mandatory control period in the community should last. It is the case that any prisoner requiring supervision through a mandatory control period will have, as a minimum, spent close to four years in custody. Our view is that the specific necessary period of control over a prisoner having served close to four years as compared to a prisoner leaving after, say, 10 years in custody is likely to be similar given that both are extremely long periods of time to be incarcerated. Members will be aware from the evidence that they heard that it is the initial weeks and months following release that are generally the most crucial for individual prisoners. During this period, when prisoners leaving custody have to re-establish themselves into their communities and when challenges such as assessing for how accessing housing work opportunities can be at their most acute and when the mandatory control period would be most appropriate. At this stage, I am minded for the period of a minimum mandatory control period of six months. Such a period would seem a good balance so that mandatory control is in place in the crucial few weeks and months following a long period of incarceration, but it does not extend too far into the future. However, this is an area where I would welcome further views in the course of this debate as to the appropriate length that the mandatory control period should be. Reducing re-offending is a key justice priority for the Scottish Government. Earlier this week, we announced that the reconviction rate had fallen by nearly 6 per cent between 2011-12 and 2012-13 and is now at its lowest level in 16 years. This is welcome news. Coupled with recorded crime being at its lowest in 40 years, this is testament to the commitment of the police, prosecutors or courts, education, social services and other justice partners such as the Scottish Prison Service, who are working hard to address the offending and the underlying causes of offending. However, despite the significant improvements in recent years, re-offending has significant implications for public services and taxpayers' money. Reducing re-offending requires more effective and closer links between the criminal justice system and other wider public and third sector partners. A Scottish Government ministerial group on offending or offender reintegration was established in October 2013 in order to address the demand for better integration between the criminal justice system and wider public services to facilitate a reduction in re-offending. Individuals rely on key public and third sector services to address a range of basic and practical requirements upon release from prison. Failure to do so in a timely and an effective manner can hinder the ability of prisoners to turn their lives around and to live a life free of crime. Section 2 of the bill will help in this important area. In 2011-12 there were approximately 10,500 liberations of convicted prisoners of which a large proportion, approximately 40 per cent, were released on Friday or the first day preceding a public holiday weekend. Release on the days preceding weekends and public holidays is consistently raised as a key barrier to plugging the gap between receipt of support and custody and access to wider services in the community. The ability of prisoners to be able to access key public services such as housing, welfare and addiction services on the day they are released can be crucial in helping people to break their pattern of re-offending. That problem can become even more acute when release happens immediately before a weekend or public holiday. Where there is evidence that suitable arrangements are required to address a prisoner's reintegration needs and these cannot be addressed immediately upon release, section 2 of the bill will allow prisoners released to be brought forward by up to two days. I welcome the strong support from the committee on this particular part of the bill. This bill will improve the system of early release by allowing decisions about how and when long-term prisoners are released from custody to be informed by individual consideration of a prisoner, the risk to public safety, the prisoner poses and the need for effective supervision. That is the best of both worlds, ensuring dangerous prisoners do not get released automatically while ensuring all long-term prisoners receive a minimum mandatory control period in the community when they leave custody. That is the best way to protect communities and to reassure the public. I move the general principles of the bill to be agreed. I welcome the opportunity to speak in this debate. As you have rightly said, I speak as convener on behalf of the Justice Committee. I speak to the bill as introduced and therefore will not comment on the items mentioned as a result of our report, particularly matters that might be raised at stage 2 in amendment. At the outset, however, I want to thank all those who provided written submissions and gave oral evidence to the committee on the bill. In total, we received 27 written responses to the call for evidence and initially took oral evidence over three meetings in January. I also thank the Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee for its report, which we endorse whole heartedly. Finally, not the least, I want to thank my colleagues on the Justice Committee who are a delight to chair. I look forward to that continuing. Provisions to end autumn at least for certain categories of prisoner were previously due to have been taken forward by means of stage 2 amendment to the Criminal Justice Scotland Bill. However, the then Cabinet Secretary for Justice wrote to the committee 27 May 2014 advising that those provisions would be brought forward as a separate piece of legislation, and so the bill was introduced in 14 August 2014. Some of what I say will undoubtedly repeat what the cabinet secretary has said, but there we go. Section 2, the early lease referred to by the cabinet secretary for community reintegration. That is the lesser talked about part of the bill, but it is actually a very important practical part. You cannot say that about every nook and cranny of every bit of legislation that we pass in here. As well as seeking to end automatic early lease, I think that the committee felt that those measures at giving flexibility for the date of release will have a real impact on stopping recidivism. In practical terms, as the cabinet secretary has said, those that might be due for release on a Friday or sometimes even a Thursday when key services were about to close, which was ridiculous. The benefits office, housing, even the GP practice can be let out when they get access to those crucial services. Those early hours, not just days, but early hours of release are crucial when things can go wrong practically when the prisoner steps straight out of the prison gates into what I might call a services vacuum and re-offending recommences. Having timely access to those services will, we think, help the reintegration and ultimately reduce the chances of the re-offending, which is on everybody's interest. That is a positive progressive measure. While much of the focus of today's debate will be on doubtless being section 1, the restriction of automatic early release, I do not think that we should lose sight of this very important practical move. I wish to put on record at the outset the committee's whole-heartedly endorsement of section 2. I turn to section 1, the restriction of automatic early release. I use the word restriction and I refer again to the bill as introduced, which was just going to end automatic early release for sex offenders receiving determinate custodial sentences of four years or more and other offenders receiving determinate, that is, other than life sentences, custodial sentences of 10 years or more. The evidence that we received in this section was generally skeptical of the provisions of the bill as introduced. With witnesses such as the risk management authority, questioning the focus on sex offenders, given, despite tabloid headlines, that this category of prisoner is statistically less likely to re-offend, notwithstanding that there have been some very, very serious and horrible exceptions. The committee was therefore pleased to receive on 3 February a letter from the cabinet secretary committing to bring forward at stage 2 amendments to extendable provisions to all prisoners serving four years or more, thereby addressing the concerns expressed about the focus on sex offenders. Witnesses also questioned other aspects of the bill as introduced, such as whether they would actually achieve the objective of improving public protection. Academics such as Professor Cyrus Tatter from the University of Strathclyde argued that the provisions would simply lead to an increase in cold release. That is because, if released at the completion of the full sentence, then there is no requirement for compulsory supervision, but I know that the cabinet secretary has addressed that. Hence cold as I suspect in doing cold turkey. Professor Fergus McNeill from the University of Glasgow described it as an act of quotes, storing the risk. As the types of prisoners who will be kept inside under the provisions of the bill are by definition those who have not engaged with the parole board and who pose the greatest risk to the public, they worried that the provisions of the bill as introduced would simply kick the can down the road and soar up bigger problems for later years. It might also have a perverse effect in that some prisoners might opt to do the full whack and thus avoid any supervision on release. Again, the committee was pleased to receive the cabinet secretary's letter, which committed to bringing forward amendments to provide a minimum period of compulsory supervision, which you have expanded further, in the community for each long-term prisoner at the end of their sentence. I welcome the cabinet secretary's willingness to listen to evidence heard at stage 1 and act accordingly. That said, the committee still has remaining questions, and they are rehearsed in detail in our report. We are still unclear as to how that compulsory supervision will be imported into the sentencing process, what the compulsory supervision will look like in practice, when it will apply, but I think that we will be told now for how long. We also still have questions about the cost of the proposals and the impact they will have on the likes of the parole board and criminal justice social workers to name two. We have therefore recommended that the Government bring forward supplementary financial and policy information at stage 2. During stage 1, we also received evidence about the availability of prison rehabilitation programmes, with some witnesses claiming that there was a supply problem with certain programmes, as opposed to a lack of demand. The Scottish Prison Service acknowledged that some of those concerns, but countered that issues around supply may relate to prisoners' wants rather than their needs. We would however welcome updates from the cabinet secretary and the SPS on the development and resourcing of programmes. Given that the bill's policy memorandum envisages that the provisions of the bill will incentivise prisoners to engage with programmes and connect to that. On the bill's human rights statements, we were told by Professor Alan Miller of the Scottish Human Rights Commission that the statement was inadequate. That concerned us, and we have called on the Scottish Government to revisit the statement. For example, if there are not access to rehabilitation programmes and this imperils a prisoner's release, they might have a claim under ECHR. The impact of the bill on the parole board. In evidence, Professor Tata argued the parole board was being set up for failure. That comment was disputed by the convener of the board. The board, however, subsequently wrote to the committee, stating that it might need support from the Scottish Government to manage the impact of its forms on it. We have therefore called on the Government to ensure that the parole board is sufficiently resourced. Clarity and sentencing is very important to the victims. Some witnesses told us that the bill muddied the waters in respect of sentencing. That was disputed by the cabinet secretary. He argued that the bill gives victims the certainty that their offender will not be released automatically two thirds into their sentence. However, there were alternative approaches suggested to the bill. Some witnesses suggested that the alternative approach would be to commence already existing statute, namely the custodial sentences and weapons Scotland Act 2007, as amended by the Criminal Justice and Licensing Act 2010. While other witnesses believed that the bill should be delayed until the Scottish Sentencing Council is set up in the autumn of this year, on balance, committee members were not persuaded of the merits of delaying the bill. We do, however, call on the Government to review legislation in this area to establish what wider reforms should be taken forward. In conclusion, the overwhelming majority of the committee welcomes the general principles of the bill. There is no doubt from the evidence that we heard that the reform of the court service is long overdue. However, in certain areas, as I have indicated, we remain to be convinced that some of the measures will achieve what they set out to achieve. On behalf of the committee, I encourage the Parliament to support the general principles of the bill at decision time tonight. Thank you very much. I thank the clerks and witnesses for their efforts in bringing a lot of issues to our attention during the stage 1 process. The SNP manifesto in 2011 stated that they remain committed to ending automatic early release once the criteria that is set by the McLeish commission are met. However, let us be clear that section 1 of the bill does not end automatic early release. As introduced, it would have affected only 1 per cent of offenders. If amended, as suggested, it will affect 3 per cent. The vast majority of offenders and the perceptions of sentencing of the vast majority of victims of crime will not be affected by the bill, even in its amended form. Of the people receiving a custodial sentence in 2012-13, 317 offenders were serving sentences of over four years, 47 were serving life for indeterminate sentences and 14,084 were given short-term sentences of under four years. Those offenders serving short-term sentences will still be released after serving one half of the sentence. Other than six offenders serving six months or more, they will not be subject to supervision by criminal justice social work. In 2011-12, the reconviction rate for offenders serving between three and six months was 53 per cent, whereas that of prisoners serving over four years was 13 per cent. The Scottish Government is not making much progress in achieving the reduction in prison population, recommended by the McLeish committee. The cabinet secretary cited some figures today. However, the prison population statistics go up and down in 2011-12. For example, there was an increase in the average prison population of 4 per cent over the previous year, a 9 per cent increase in remand and 3 per cent in the sentence population. With a projection—this is the Scottish Government's own figures—that the average prison population would increase to 9,500 by 2020-21, so it does not look as if automatic early release is going to be ended in the near future or even in the medium term. The policy memorandum to the bill states that its provisions will improve public safety. It is debatable to what extent it does so when it legislates for a cohort of prisoners with the lowest reconviction rates. Obviously, those offenders have been convicted for much more serious crimes, and therefore their re-offending could be much more dangerous. However, Dr Monica Barry of the University of Strath Clyde told the committee when giving evidence on the original bill that sex offenders are the most compliant of ex-prisoners that you will find. The risk management authority agreed, based on the parole board's statistics, and suggested that the bill should refocus on serious harm rather than on offence type. Dr Monica Barry also advised the committee that, if the Government is piloting this with high-risk violent offenders and sex offenders, it is probably piloting it with the wrong people. If it is going to abolish early release, it should be going for the lower end, such as dangerous driving, which is probably a higher risk to the public than sex offenders, or common street crimes such as shoplifting, theft or breach of the peace. One of the major concerns over the bill as drafted was that violent offenders, who did not qualify for early release, would be released into the community cold, with no supervision. Sex offenders are subject to the multi-agency public protection arrangements, or mappers are known with regard to the risk that they pose in release. Although legislation permits that to be extended to violent offenders, the provisions have not yet been commenced. There was not much to recommend the bill as drafted. Rather than improving public safety, it could have jeopardised public safety by releasing dangerous, unreformed violent offenders into the community without supervision, and it is singling out sex offenders, serving long-term sentences whom the committee was advised are less likely to re-offend. The justice secretary therefore is to be commended for listening to the evidence of witnesses and, subsequently, proposing amendments that extend the ending of automatic early release to all long-term prisoners, and, importantly, to ensure that all such prisoners are subject to supervision on release, including when they have served the full term of their sentence. However, without seeing the amendment, it is difficult to comment much further other than to welcome his recognition that the original bill was seriously flawed. To what extent will the amended bill equate to a partial introduction, for example, of the provisions of the custodial sentences in the Weapons Scotland Act 2007, as amended by the Criminal Justice and Licensing Scotland Act 2010, introducing for long-term prisoners sentences that are composed of a part that must be served in custody and a part that will be served under supervision in the community? Witnesses at the final evidence session, taken after the cabinet secretary had written to the committee regarding his intentions to amend the bill, were unclear whether he was proposing adding compulsory supervision on to sentences that were already completed in custody or providing compulsory supervision in the community as part of the original sentence. According to Dr Barry and Professor Fergus McNeill, the former would amount to a type of new sentence. Scottish Labour agree that there should be clarity in sentencing and that victims, community and offenders should understand what the sentence imposed means in practice. Unfortunately, as things stand at the current time, it is not clear how this is going to be achieved. Moreover, it will only be achieved for victims of a small number of albeit serious offences. Several witnesses expressed concerns that the bill only addresses backdoor sentencing, the release arrangements, but does not consider what they termed frontdoor sentencing or sending people to prison in the first place. It was suggested by the Howard League and Professor McNeill and Tata that the work of the Scottish Sentencing Council, which we understand will at long last be set up in October this year, is being preempted by the legislation. Professor Tata told the committee, one of the beauties of such a body is that it can be a buffer between the judiciary, the parol board, the SPS, social work and other parts of the system that are trying to do their job, and, if you like, penal populism. It can take the heat out of the situation. If a case is given to the sentencing council to be looked at, that immediately takes it away from the control of ministers and the political pressures that they are under. Of course, we are all under those pressures too. There are also significant human rights concerns, as Christine Graham has already said. Professor Miller described the human rights impact statement as not adequate, and he had particular concerns about offenders' rights if they are refused early released by the parol board under circumstances where rehabilitation programmes, which may have made them eligible, have not been available. An answer received by my colleague Graham Pearson last month revealed that, of the 900 sex offenders currently in custody, 120 had completed or were undergoing the sex offender programme moving forward making changes. 150 of the offenders had been assessed as potentially benefiting from the programme and, to quote the answer provided by the chief executive of the prison service, that may proceed to do so according to their case management plan continued motivation and, importantly, as resources allow. He said that 100 offenders had refused treatment. The chief executive of the Scottish prison service, Colin McConnell, spoke to the committee about the difference between wants and needs, but, in that answer, there are 156 offenders who have been assessed as potentially benefiting from the programme but may only get it if resources allow. If any of those offenders is refused early release because they have not been able to access the MFMC programme because of a lack of resource, that offender may well have a human rights challenge, and that is something that really needs to be looked at. As both the cabinet secretary and Christine Grahame said, section 2 of the bill, which introduces early release for the community reintegration, was welcomed by all witnesses and indeed by all members of the committee, as it was seen to be of benefit to those prisoners who may be released at the weekend without adequate services being in place for them after release. The decision to substantially amend the bill at stage 2 means that neither the policy memorandum nor the financial memorandum are now accurate. Once the cabinet secretary has decided in the exact form of his amendments at stage 2, we would believe that it will be necessary to issue supplementary memorandums reflecting the significant changes in the bill. Had the cabinet secretary not indicated that he was prepared to amend the bill at stage 2, Scottish Labour would have voted against the bill as drafted tonight. It would have ended automatic early release for only a very small number of offenders—only 1 per cent—while having the unintended consequence of releasing dangerous unreformed offenders cold into the community without supervision at the end of their sentence. Their automatic early release would have been withdrawn, but potentially they could have been of greater danger to the public at the point of release. The original plan, of course, was to introduce those provisions as stage 2 amendments to the criminal justice bill, which we know was suspended pending the bonomy review of any safeguards that are required by the abolition of the requirement for corroboration. Thankfully, that did not happen, and it did not come in as a stage 2 amendment to that bill. Under those circumstances, the proposals would not have been subject to the degree of scrutiny that has been applied to the bill, scrutiny that has resulted in the current cabinet secretary listening to the concerns of witnesses and indicating that he was prepared to substantially amend the bill. As he has done so, we will support the bill at stage 1. We do not yet know what the amendments will be or how, or whether they will adequately address the points made to the committee by witnesses, and those discussions are a matter for stages 2 and 3, and we will come to our conclusion at those stages. Scottish Labour wants to go further than this bill on sentencing policy and on the transparency of sentencing, but even with the amendments proposed, this bill will not be enough, but we are prepared to give the Government the benefit of the doubt and to support the bill tonight in the hope that, after amendment at stage 2, it will achieve, albeit to a limited extent, a better outcome than the current situation. Many thanks to now calling Mark Mitchell. Six minutes to show, please. Thank you, Presiding Officer. This stage 1 debate on the prisoner's control of release Scotland Bill is an important one. I thank the Justice Committee clerks, the convener and fellow committee members for all their hard work and pay a tribute to all the witnesses who gave such invaluable evidence. The bill has two main sections. The second section seeks to provide the prison service with the power to release prisoners up to two days early to facilitate community reintegration. This is a sensible provision and seeks to create the flexibility to ensure that the appropriate through-care, including housing etc., is in place for those prisoners in an effort to deal with some of the problems that we know lead to re-offending when they are released. Turning now to section 1, while I sympathise with the predicament that the new cabinet secretary has inherited, it does not alter the fact that the bill, as drafted and now with the proposed stage 2 amendments, has been introduced in such a way that it is fair to say that it is nothing short of a dog's breakfast. The aim of the bill, as drafted, is to reduce re-offending and increase public safety, which was the supposed rationale behind targeting offenders with sentences of over 10 years and sex offenders serving sentences of four years or more. In terms of re-offending, as witnesses pointed out, there is no logic in then targeting this particular group, given that evidence shows that sex offenders have the lowest re-offending rates of all the categories of prisoners, and in addition to that, the bill is introduced would apply to less than 1 per cent of the offenders across Scotland. The cabinet secretary clearly recognised that the original proposals fell well short of the mark. It was an improvement that the Scottish Conservatives welcomed when the cabinet secretary indicated that he intended to extend abolishing automatic early release to all prisoners serving long-term sentences of four years or more, meaning that at least we have moved from the bill covering 1 per cent of prisoners to now 3 per cent. However, it does not alter the fact that 97 per cent will still be automatically released early. According to the cabinet secretary himself, when giving evidence, it is worth keeping in mind that we are talking about a very small number of prisoners and it will be several years into the future before any of this will start to have an impact. It is a real concern, therefore, as the law society stated that the most radical change in custodial sentencing policy for 22 years is to be introduced by way of government amendments at stage 2 if you do not mind or make some progress. This is not a precedent that the Scottish Parliament should set or encourage, nor is the cabinet secretary's piecemeal filtering down of more information as recently as yesterday in order to attempt to address the numerous unanswered questions that this change has prompted any more acceptable. Furthermore, evidence from witnesses such as Strathfide University's Professor Cyrus Tata highlighted the fact that the proposals could result in a prisoner being released without supervision and what has been termed cold release. He confirmed that, in those cases, they are more likely to re-offend. Moreover, instead of clarifying already complicated sentencing policy to quote Dr Monica Barry from Strathclyde University, the bill merely muddies the waters. Victims support Scotland once greater clarity and transparency in the system, so victims and the community are better able to understand sentencing, which is why they support the Scottish Conservatives' call for the ending of automatic early release for all prisoners, which would provide that clarity and honesty in sentencing. Witnesses have also raised issues regarding the shortage of places on rehabilitation programmes in prison. With demand outstripping supply, there is, as confirmed by Professor Miller, an issue about the human rights impact statement being inadequate. The committee therefore recommended an independent assessment to be carried out on the provision and availability of rehabilitation programmes in prison. I look forward to the cabinet secretary's response to that particular point. The justice committee's task was to scrutinise the bill. In addition to all the flaws identified above, it is now being asked to form a view on a policy change announced at the final hour without sight of a revised policy memorandum, financial memorandum or explanatory notes on the bill. That is hardly conducive to effective scrutiny, and stakeholders across the board have echoed the statement, with many witnesses calling for the bill to be withdrawn. It is for those reasons that I dissented from agreeing the general principles of the bill and committee, and it is why the Scottish Conservatives will be abstaining at stage 1 this afternoon. We now turn to the open debate speeches of six minutes, please. I call on Nigel Dawn, who is speaking on behalf of the Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee, to be followed by Roderick Campbell. I speak today on the bill in my capacity as the convener of the Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee. Although the bill contains only one delegated power, the committee has concerns as to how that power might be exercised. Indeed, the strength of the committee's concerns is such that the committee agreed that I should take the unusual step of contributing to today's debate from the committee's perspective. Section 3-2 of the bill provides that Scottish ministers may by order bring sections 1 and 2 of the bill into force on an appointed day. Section 3-3 provides that such a commencement order may include transitional, transitory or saving provision. In considering the bill, the committee noted that a commencement order made under section 3 will not be subject to any form of parliamentary procedure irrespective of whether or not such an order includes transitional provisions. It is that provision for attachment of such transitional provisions to a commencement order combined with the lack of opportunity for parliamentary scrutiny to be afforded to such provisions that prompts me to speak today. I should say that the committee has accepted in principle that transitional, transitory and saving provisions may be required in a commencement order under the bill, but it considers that the use of such provisions could have a significant effect on certain persons affected by the bill. The committee noted, for example, that a commencement order made under section 3 could contraint transitional provisions relating to the adjustment of prison release dates and that it may be possible for the powers to be exercised in such a way as to have a different effect on different prisoners. The possibility of differential effects on prisoners could, depending upon the provisions, raise consideration of rights that are protected by the European Convention on Human Rights. The committee wrote to the Scottish Government to ask whether it would consider bringing forward an amendment to make the power at section 3.2 subject to parliamentary scrutiny in the form of either a negative or a formative procedure. The Government's response explained that powers in sections 3.2 and 3.3 will be used to make a straightforward commencement order, which will relate specifically to the commencement of the bill. The Scottish Government, therefore, did not consider it necessary for the power to be subject to any form of parliamentary scrutiny. When considering the response, however, the committee remained of the view that when a commencement order includes transitional, transitory or saving provision in terms of section 3 of the bill, it should be subject to parliamentary scrutiny. The committee therefore recommended in its report that the Scottish Government bring forward an appropriate amendment to make a commencement order made under section 3.2 subject to a negative procedure where it contains transitional, transitory or saving provisions. The Government's response to the report, however, reiterated its view that it would not be appropriate for the power at section 3.2 to be subject to any form of parliamentary procedure other than being laid before Parliament. The Government also pointed out that Parliament will be given an opportunity to express its views on the commencement order made under section 3 when it is laid before Parliament. We are not persuaded by that response. The committee remains of the view that where a commencement order includes transitional, transitory or saving provision of the potential significance that is contained within the bill, then such a power should be subject to parliamentary scrutiny. Is the committee's view that this is not simply a matter in relation to the bill, but one that we would wish to see apply in similar circumstances and similar bills in future? I think the member makes an absolutely fair point. As a member of that committee, I think he will recognise that this is our concern. We do try to bring principled arguments to this bill as to every other. The point that I am making now is actually one that I would make about any other bill in similar circumstances. Merely providing it for it to be laid does not in the view of the committee allow the Parliament sufficient opportunity to scrutinise such an order, nor does it offer the Parliament any sanction should it have any concern about that order. I would therefore welcome an assurance today that the Scottish Government would reflect on this matter further with a view to amending the bill at stage 2. In historical terms, Perol is quite recent. The Perol board was set up only in 1968, and Perol itself was subject to an important review by Lord King Craig in 1989. In that report, Lord King Craig stated quote, the proper objective of Perol is to ensure that the release of all long-term prisoners takes place under such conditions and at such a time within the overall sentence of the court that the risk to the public may be minimised and that decisions on the conditions and timing of release take into account amongst other things of any changes in the offender or his circumstances and any increased knowledge of the offender since the passing of the original sentence. That was the position then, and in my view remains true today. Of course, the Conservative Government of the day implemented the changes proposed by Lord King Craig in the 1993 act, and it is interesting to read the comments of Ian Lang at that time on the prisoners and criminal proceedings Scotland Act as it became known. He argued in support of the then new early release provisions and in opposition to those who argued that the sentence of the court should mean precisely what it says. Times have moved on, of course. The modern Conservative Party would appear to take a different view, although I have to say that I still find it rather difficult to accept that a party that is opposed to, in beliefs, an ending automatic release across the board can descend from the general principles of this bill. Turning to the committee's report itself, I think it's fair to say that in the course of our evidence sessions there was disquiet over the fact that sex offenders serving four years or more were particularly highlighted in the bill, as opposed to all offenders serving sentences of four years or more. And it's certainly far more appropriate, in my view, to concentrate on the length of the sentence rather than the type of offender. So I warmly welcome the proposed amendments at stage two. But we also need to bear in mind that this bill is in addition to the existing powers available to the courts in relation to extended sentences, where at the time of sentencing offenders are thought likely to pose a continuing risk. So what we're talking about with this bill is something that, even under the likely amendments at stage two, will apply to a small cohort of prisoners, approximately 3 per cent of offenders receiving a determinate sentence in any one year. Of course its full impact will be measured over several years, and that has been pointed out on numerous occasions since the McLeish commission reported, until overall prison numbers are significantly reduced. It will not be possible to extend provisions in relation to the ending of automatic early release more widely. But it is a start, as the cabinet secretary has already said this afternoon, particularly when we recognise that someone released automatically at present is approximately seven times more likely to breach their licence conditions than someone released after a decision by the parole board. As the cabinet secretary said in evidence to us, the rate at which non-parole release prisoners breached their licensing conditions was 37 per cent compared with 5.5 per cent for parole release prisoners in 2012-13. I hope that it will enable proper focus on rehabilitative programmes that go hand in hand with the ending of automatic early release itself. As the policy memorandum makes clear, the absence of automatic release may encourage greater interest in participation in those programmes. How great an incentive remains to be seen, but I am encouraged that Professor Alan Miller of the Scottish Human Rights Commission accepted that it was something that would certainly provide an incentive to participate. The important thing in terms of rehabilitation must surely be to ensure that we have resources available. As Colin McConnell of the Scottish Prison Service said in evidence, quote, we need to prioritise and centre ties the opportunities that best match the needs of the individual, recognising he said, quote, we do not always match their wants. As a Government pointed out in their response, however, the Scottish Prison Service is shortly to put in hand a review of SPS programmes to be conducted by an external expert, and clearly that should be a priority. Protection of the public has to remain paramount. We heard concerns and evidence about what was described as cold release, and I think that the Government has been wise to respond to those concerns. Sacro and the written submission suggested a period of compulsory supervision of three months before the end of the sentence. Colin McConnell in evidence said it was his experience that the first six to 12 weeks after release can be extremely risky. The Government in their response indicated that they are minded to provide for a mandatory control period of six months as a minimum, to provide sufficient time to balance the need for any necessary protective conditions with work by the criminal justice social work department in assisting the prisoner with their reintegration and rehabilitation in the community. I believe that this is a very considered response to the concerns we heard in evidence, and I warmly welcome that. We, of course, heard evidence about the need for clarity in sentencing, which was a particular concern of victim support Scotland. It is quite clear, however, from the bill itself that that is not the purpose of this legislation. However, I think that we should wish the new Scottish Sentencing Council well in their task, particularly in promoting greater awareness and understanding of sentencing policy and practice. In relation to section 2, the date of release, I simply echo what has already been said and, like the committee in general, fully support this. In conclusion, Presiding Officer, this bill will change significantly at stage 2. The Government, in my view, has seized the initiative and signalled its intentions in that respect already, and it is to be welcomed. I believe that we ought to consider taking further evidence at stage 2, however. However, I do not share the views of those that we should seek to abandon this bill. This is a matter best left to others such as the new Sentencing Council. I do believe that we need to continue to respond to public concerns and not to delay further a significant change in response to those concerns. Many thanks. I now call on Jane Baxter to be followed by Christian Allard, a generous six minutes. Thank you. There is little doubt that the criminal justice system in Scotland is in desperate need of reform. The aspect of that system that the bill seeks to address sentencing is obviously a contentious issue, but I think that we will find near unanimous support in this chamber for the ending of the automatic release of the sorts of offenders covered by the bill's provisions. That, however, does not mean that this legislation and the Scottish Government's overall approach to sentencing has been a straightforward process. That the Scottish Government attempted to squeeze the content of this important bill into a previous bill is regrettable, but we should be grateful that it listened to the recommendations of the Justice Committee to place it in a freestanding piece of legislation. We should first perhaps examine the recent past. Scottish Labour introduced an innovative form of judicial disposal in 2007. The introduction of sentences in which we comprise a custodial plus a community part in the Custodial Sentences and Weapons Act 2007 was a move welcomed by many in the criminal justice community as a sound and well-thought-through measure. The Scottish Government chose not to put those proposals into practice. In fact, it chose to heavily amend the disposals in the Criminal Justice and Licensing Scotland Act 2010. Those new proposals have never been enacted by the Scottish Government, but nevertheless we are now where we are with this bill under consideration. The bill fails to address what we could regard as the other end of the conversation—sentencing. Scottish Labour agrees entirely with victims' support groups that there needs to be clarity in sentencing. Victims, community and offenders need to understand what a sentence passed by the judge or sheriff means in practice. It is not good enough that victims of crime and the families hear that someone is sentenced to X number of years in prison but have no idea what that means in reality. Victims and their families should be at the centre of the criminal justice system, and the current system of sentencing fails to put them there. The bill may increase the confusion of that sentencing, however, as Victim Support Scotland noted in its submission. Ending automatic early release for only some categories of prisoners would work to further complicate an already confusing system. The proposals would, in fact, create another rule that needs to be taken into account when calculating the release date of an offender. The introduction of the Scottish Sentencing Council was an important development in this regard. After a recommendation by the Scottish Sentencing Committee, which used to advise the Scottish Government on its approach to punishment in sentencing, the Scottish Sentencing Council was set up with the Criminal Justice and Licence in Scotland Act 2010. It stated the aim is to foster greater consistency and transparency in the decisions of the courts by the creation of an appropriate framework to promote fairness and justice in sentencing. Its statutory objectives are to promote consistency in sentencing practice, assist to develop a policy in relation to sentencing, promote greater awareness and understanding of sentencing policy and practice. Those are all laudable and sensible objectives. I welcome the position indicated by Lord Carlyway, the chair of the council, that it will seek to take an evidence-based approach to sentencing. I am also pleased that it will have reserved a position for Victim's representatives. It is important that the Scottish people have confidence in the court system and the punishments that are portions to offenders. It is also important that we commit ourselves to doing what works. The Sentencing Council will provide an opportunity for a wider range of voices to be heard in the sentencing process and make clear to the general public that the principles and policies that motivate our judges, sheriffs, statutory magistrates and justice of the peace when deciding on disposals. Those are all important tasks. It is surprising and worrying, therefore, that the Scottish Government has dragged its feet for almost five years on setting up the Sentencing Council. The clarity and certainty on sentencing that the Sentencing Council will provide is desirable and necessary now. The provisions in section 2 of the bill to allow prisons due to be released on Fridays to be at least two days earlier in order to increase the provision of support for them is a good one. It may appear to some as a small change, but according to the Scottish Prison Service, around 4,000 prisons are released every year on Fridays. They emerge at the weekends with limited support. We do too little to help offenders back into the community once they have served their time, and this modest proposal will at least make some provision to increase the support and guidance that they receive. At the heart of any structure surrounding the release of prisoners must be the calculation of risk to public safety. That is notoriously difficult to calculate and it would be wholly unreasonable for us to expect the relevant authorities to successfully calculate the risk of re-offending every time they are called up to do so, but we must ensure that each offender's risk profile is central to the debate as to whether they are released early or not. For those who commit serious offences, it should not be an automatic process. I agree with victim support Scotland and Police Scotland who have indicated that they support the essence of the proposals, as they will encourage relevant prisoners to engage with prison rehabilitation programmes and ensure that those prisoners assessed as still posing a high risk do not benefit from early release. I also agree with the Howard League and other experts who noted that an unintended consequence of the bill would be that prisoners are released cold into the community without a period of supervision from relevant authorities. As the Howard League put it in their submission, the current proposal fails to recognise the strong evidence that support and supervision in the community is more effective in reducing re-offending rates than time spent in custody. An unsupported transition of a prisoner from the structured environment of prison to non-parole release may, in many instances, result in a reversion to pre-sentence behaviour. To mitigate that problem, some have suggested the extension of the MAPR approach to violent offenders. That is an interesting proposal, but it is not good enough that we have no concrete plan on this. We are talking about some of the most serious offenders in Scotland's prisons. We need more specificity when discussing their rehabilitation. There is more vagueness in just the content of the supervision. How long will there need to be supervision? Will it be pre- or post-release? Moreover, why has the Scottish Government produced a human rights impact statement, accompanying this bill, that the Scottish Human Rights Commission has described as simply not adequate? That coupled with the aforementioned vagueness means that offenders who have been refused release could have a human rights challenge if they have not been offered the necessary rehabilitation programmes. I hope that the Scottish Government ensures that those comments are addressed as the bill is taking forward now. Many thanks. I now call on Chris Yew-Eillard to be followed by Alison McInnes. Thank you, Presiding Officer. First of all, I would like to thank all the committee members and all the organisations and individuals who came and gave evidence. It was a long session and it was a great work on the chair of our chair. It was very interesting to see how much the committee did influence what happened thereafter and different decisions of the cabinet secretary. In fact, it was the individuals and the organisation who came and gave evidence, who changed the report and made the report for what it is, more than us, the members maybe. The committee did support the general principle of the bill, of course, and you are at stage one. As the cabinet secretary said in his letter to the convener on the third of February this year, this bill provides a step towards achieving the aim to end the current system of automatic early release of prisoners brought in by the Venn UK Government in 1993. John Majors, Conservative Government brought in automatic early release to tackle concerns about prison overcrowding. Under Tory Government, criminals were let out of prison after serving only half of their sentence. No question asked. An admission of many failures if they were one, sending too many people to prison, failing to accommodate them, failing to release them under supervision. It is what this Government wants to address. Particularly the cold release that has been introduced under the Conservative Government in 1993, this SNP Government is taking the first step to an automatic early release because it is of course the first step. This is about the right of prisoners to be supported when coming out of prison. It is the right of families, of victims to know that offenders should be assessed before being released. This bill is about public safety. Public safety is not only as a co-op of section 1 of this bill but also in section 2. Section 2 will provide the Scottish Prison Service the power to release prisoners up to two days early to facilitate community reintegration. How important is this, Presiding Officer, we found that in the evidence that we receive, that is in fact very, very important. A couple of days can make a lot of difference. A prisoner is released over the weekend, cannot access services, can maybe not have a place to stay and it's so important that we make it as easy as possible for these prisoners. It's a lot of prisoners because it's all prisoners serving more than 15 days, so it's quite a huge remit and it will make a lot of difference. In fact, it's quite common sense and I wonder why we didn't introduce it before. Section 2 of the bills, there was the last few days before release, but section 1 leaves the last few weeks, the last few months in the same spirit of section 1. It's supporting prisoners when released, recognising the right of families, victims and improving public safety. In his letter again, in February, the Cabinet Secretary confirmed to our committee that it was the Scottish Government's intention to bring forward amendments at stage 2 of the bill to extend the provisions of section 1 of the bill and to end automatic release for all long-term prisoners regardless of category. Let's just be clear about this, the quality of the evidence we received had the approach of the Cabinet Secretary to amend this bill at stage 2. I know that Alan Murray commanded the Cabinet Secretary for his approach and I would like to add to it that the pragmatism of the Cabinet Secretary is to be uploaded. He recognised that this first step towards ending automatic release of prisoners was too small and he's acting upon it by extending the remit of this bill to all long-term prisoners. In paragraph 45 of the report, witnesses did tell us that prisoners might still be released in the community without monetary supervision, what is referred and what some members referred already as cold release. In paragraph 46, Professor Tata from the University of Strathclyde describes the issues in the foreign terms. He said we need to explain to members of the public that eventually prisoners have to come out and that if someone is released cold they are more likely to re-offend. This is an important point and let me thank Professor Tata for his contribution. He was one of the strong voices who I liked to committee members of the danger of the bill not eradicating all cases of cold release. Another point was made by Peter Johnson as well. Another point from Professor Tata when he talked about what the changes could be, he did say that effective reintegration is a prerequisite for public safety and I do more than agree with Professor Tata on this. Regarding Peter Johnson's contribution of the risk management authority, regarding the power of the power power board and how much the power board can make a difference, he said that the power board has huge expertise in looking at the risk that the least offenders present today. Because I'm delighted that stage 2 amendments will cover all this important concern because President Officer, we have been here before in the last brief the Law Society of Scotland who welcomed the publication of our report pointed out the shortcomings of previous legislation, the custody renewal sentences and Weapons Scotland Act 2007. The Law Society is right, the parts of the Act relating to sentencing have not yet come into force seven years after the Act was passed. The reason is simple President Officer, the expectation of the Act might have been too high and they were so high but it soon became apparent that it was not possible to implement them. Like Jane Baxter said, we are where we are and we've got to move on. I think we have learned our lessons, the lessons of the past, the pragmatism of this bill has to be commended. I'm sorry to interrupt the member but my reading of what the Law Society has said to members in briefings is not that there was an adequacy in the 2007 act but simply that if this act, if unamended were to go through and the 2007 act were to be enacted, there would then be contradiction. That's not the same as the minister that the member has just said. That was my interpretation of what I was saying. He sold down to implementation. If there is a problem for the Government to implement it, the act is not fit for purpose. However, as Jane Baxter said, we are not there yet and we've got to move on. And we learned from the past. The President's control of release cut on bill is dealing with the back end of our judicial system, dealing with the few days, the last few weeks and the last few months before release. This is where we should start. This is the first step when we can work on ending automatic release for all prisoners and on sentencing. Or we might decide that the second step should be to deal with the front end of our judicial system which is sentencing for all prisoners. I know we heard different views on the matters and we heard them this afternoon. But let me be clear, I think this bill is not what it's all about. But in future bills, I think we should see that sentencing should be definitely more transparent and we should make improvement on this. One thing I was very surprised at committee, it's the reaction of Margaret Mitchell who did dissent from supporting general principles of the bills. I didn't know today that she said that, and I didn't welcome the fact that the Scottish Conservatives were going to abstain. However, to conclude, President Officer, on the stage one report reflects that prisoners should be supported. We're coming out of prison. Families are victim of the right to know that often they should be assessed before being released. It's what the victim, suppose Scotland told us what they want. President Officer, visibility is about public safety, and I'm moving forward to stage 2. Thank you very much. I now call on Alison McInnes to be followed by Gil Pat. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer, and I apologise to members in advance. I have a sore throat. If automatic early release for long-term prisoners is to be abolished, the alternative must pass three tests, three key tests. One, the risk posed by an individual must determine the proportion of the sentence that they serve in prison. Two, it must prioritise public safety. Three, it must guarantee supervision and support upon release. The bill, as it lies before us today at stage 1, fails the last two of those tests, and it is fundamentally flawed. Once again, the justice secretary has had to pick up the pieces and promise an overhaul of his predecessors' ill-considered plans. As witnesses commented to us on committee, making significant Government amendments at stage 2 is hardly best practice. However, in this instance, I do agree that the cabinet secretary's proposals outlined to the committee are an improvement and allow us to support that at stage 1 today. Ending automatic early release for all those serving sentences in excess of four years is more coherent with the evidence on risk and re-offending rates. Windening the scope of the bill so that all long-term prisoners are subject to a period of compulsory supervision in the community is equally important. There was genuine concern that the current bill would fail those whom the parole board deemed necessary to serve their full sentences. The Parliament's independent information service, SPICE, concluded in a quote that the period of supervision in the community under licensed conditions could be reduced potentially to zero. Victims organisations, the Scottish Human Rights Commission and many more warned of the risks to the public and increased re-offending, defeating the objective of the policy. Some of the analysis was scathing. Dr Monica Bary feared the most potentially high-risk people leaving prison with no support. Howard League Scotland said that it would lead to prisoners being spat out of prison. It was even suggested that some prisoners would seek to max out their sentences so as to avoid restrictions upon release. As Jane Baxter said, mappa and extended sentencing arrangements, if used as fragmented workarounds, we would not sufficiently ensure that someone cannot walk free completely unsupervised. That is why a minimum guarantee needs to be on the face of the bill, and I welcome the cabinet secretary's assurance that it will be. Some people will legitimately ask whether post-sentence end controls, a mandatory to control period is automatic early release in all but name. It will be factored into sentencing decisions and perhaps the cabinet secretary will address this concern in closing. However, a minded to agree so-called end controls should last a minimum of six months, but I am also open to the possibility of their lasting nine months. I can also confirm Scottish Liberal Democrats wholeheartedly support section 2 of the bill. It is entirely sensible for prisoners to be released just a day or two early if it means that they get the support that they desperately need to successfully return to the community. Public and third sector services simply are not available 24-7 housing, social work and employment. In 2011-12, 40 per cent of prisoners, some 4,000 people were released on a Friday or just before a long public holiday weekend. That measure is a small change that could make a big difference during the transition. It is a small change that could dramatically reduce the likelihood of thousands of people re-offending and causing any further harm. In the short time that I have remaining, I would like to highlight some other outstanding issues. The revised proposals will, of course, have resource implications for the prison service. Each year, 450 more people receive sentences under the terms of which they are not eligible for early release. Before the categories were extended, it was anticipated to be about 140. In addition to the general costs of accommodating more prisoners, there will be increased demand for purposeful activity and programmes that address the underlying causes of offending behaviour. However, I know that the cabinet secretary has not explicitly committed to bringing forward supplementary policy and financial memorandums as a committee requested. I urge him to do so. We need to carefully consider the additional costs and demands. There is public appetite for greater clarity and transparency in the meaning of sentencing. I would blame the public for thinking that we were talking in riddles when discussing the various release options—automatic and unsupervised, automatic and supervised, discretionary and supervised. Victims and witnesses are often bemused or even angered by stories of serious offenders being automatically released partway through the sentence handed to them by the sheriff or the high court, regardless of any assessment of whether they continue to pose a threat. That feeling is understandably intensified in high-profile cases or if the individual proceeds to reaffirm it. That bill could help to begin to enhance understanding and public confidence. However, I think that it could have been informed by the Scottish Sentencing Council's work. Improving policy, practice and understanding of sentencing is squarely within its remit, but five years after this Parliament legislated, it is still not up and running, and the body could have played a role in considering how best to manage early release. Indeed, there is a risk that the bill is being progressed in isolation. Other long overdue reforms and apparent shared aspirations have stalled. The commencement of the early release provisions already backed by this Parliament through the 2007 Custodial Sentences and Weapons Act, reducing the ablotted prison population, ending census short-term sentences and shifting the focus of sentencing from punishment to rehabilitation. I think that the short bill is there for another example of a piecemeal approach to penal reform. Scottish Liberal Democrats are clear that, while the legislation is set to be improved and we will support it on that basis, justice policies should always be complementary and guided by the evidence of what works and not quick pursuit of cheap headlines. I now call on Gil Paterson to be followed by Margaret McDougall, a generous six minutes. I am pleased to take part in this debate as a member of the Justice Committee. The end of early release for prisoners is seen by a large cross-section of the public to be a very important issue, which we can relate to in regards to their own safety within the community that they live in. I want to acknowledge the evidence to the Justice Committee and the fact that Michael Matheson, MSP Cabinet Secretary of Justice, extended the provision in the bill to cover all long-term prisoners, which is to his credit and to the Scottish Government's credit. He has shown leadership on this regard by listening to reasoned ardent and responding accordingly. That is a good thing in my book when Governments and Ministers listen and perhaps come to a different conclusion from their former conclusion. During that contribution, I will aim to focus on those prisoners who committed serious sex offences and how this legislation will impact on them and offer some comfort to their victims. As a former board member of Rape Crimes Central Scotland, that is an aspect of crime that I am sadly familiar with through working on behalf of the victims of sexual assault. Many people in Scotland have never understood why serious sexual offenders were automatically released before they had served their full sentence. Those who were the victims of those offences are petrified at the thought of the person who had attacked them and what they understandably believe is the ultimate crime being released early and that they live with the fear of one day being confronted by their attacker. That said, in regards to what many of the public think on early release and particularly the large number of those who were victims, who are in disagreement with the present system, nonetheless I am in full support of the parole board making the final decision on whether serious sex offenders should be released before completing their sentence. The parole board has the benefit of knowing how the rehabilitation programmes have worked on the individual. I am particularly supportive of the work carried out in Peterhead prison. It has introduced programmes designed to change the behaviour of serious sex offenders and the work undertaken has had a tremendous regard of success. I wonder whether that is the reason why people tend not to re-offend because of the work carried out in that institution. I acknowledge that prisoners volunteer for these programmes for a whole host of reasons. Some volunteer in order to influence the parole board to show them that they are putting some effort into changing their behaviour in the hope that they are rewarded by being granted early release. However, there are many prisoners who volunteer because they sincerely believe that they need help and that they need to change their behaviour to better themselves certainly society and to ensure that they never are sent back to prison. No matter the motivation for changing behaviour, we can see the success of this form of system by acknowledging that someone cold released and automatically released is approximately seven times more likely to breach their licence conditions than someone released after a decision taken by the parole board and with some of the programmes in place. For those victims and for members of the public who have been fearful of early release and the impact that it will have on them and their communities, I would offer this message. What is being proposed by the Scottish Government should give some comfort in knowing that very well-tried, tested and effective rehabilitation courses will be available to those offenders while serving their time in prison and they are indeed very effective. Further to that, supervision in the community will also be in place whether or not prisoners participate in rehabilitation within the prison. For me, I would far rather have a parole board after deliberation and detailed reports to grant early release to someone who may have, let's say, one year left of their sentence, knowing that they are unlikely to re-offend based on the behaviour programmes and the assessment by the parole board. I hope that that should be of some comfort to the public. This is where rehabilitation plays such an important role and, of course, the work of the parole boards themselves mentioned by Roderick Campbell earlier on in his contribution. Although I have focused primarily on those who have been imprisoned for serious sex offences, I would argue that the same balance viewpoint will work across all crimes. The bill goes some way to ensuring that the end of early release for all long-term prisoners will have public safety and the need for effective rehabilitation and supervision at the heart of it. I would like to say just a few words about section 2. I find that section 2 is just plain common sense the idea that you would send people out that you really need some help to not re-offend in that fashion knowing that the services are not available, I think, was wrong in the first place, so this is just a simple common sense change and I welcome that. I think that it will have a big effect on people when they are released and in the long run. Help them and society just get a better understanding of how things work early. Work is still needing to be done through stage 2 at committee level, but I feel that we are more than on the right track and I commend this bill to the Parliament today. Thank you. As we have heard in the chamber today, the bill presented before us, which proposes to end automatic early release for sex offenders serving four years or more and other serving 10 years or more, is likely to be substantially amended by the Scottish Government at stage 2, because if the bill was to be passed in its current form, it would only affect 1 per cent of prisoners in Scotland. The Scottish Government's proposed amendments would end automatic early release for all-long-term prisoners serving four years or more, which equates to only 3 per cent of the 7,851 people who made up Scotland's prison population on average in 2013-14. That, as we have heard today, relates greater concerns about the sentencing policy and process within Scotland. Scottish Labour agrees with victim support groups that there needs to be clarity in sentencing. Victims, the community and offenders need to understand what the sentence passed by the judge or sheriff actually means in practice. The bill does not go far enough in achieving the same. The amendments will also introduce a mandatory period of supervision after release. At this stage, however, the period of supervision is undefined within the bill. Furthermore, we do not know if this period will be part of the issued sentence or will be added on at the end of the custodial sentence. It would be helpful if the Scottish Government could clarify that point as a matter of urgency. The second part of the bill, which, like others in the chamber, I welcome, would ensure that offenders due to be released on a Friday could be released up to two days earlier to ensure that proper care and support is in place before the weekend. That should improve transition from prison back into the community, because, currently, if someone was due to be released on a Friday, the proper care and support, such as social services and housing, would not be in place, and that can and does lead to issues. Given those substantial amendments, both the financial and policy memorandums will need to be rewritten. The spiced document on the bill originally estimated that the eventual long-term impact would be to increase the average daily prison population by approximately 140. I would expect this figure to increase as the number of those affected using 2012-13 figures stood at 131 offenders. The amendments would see it affect 473 against figures based on 2012-13. It is also expected that there would be an increase in demand for prisoner programmes to reflect the fact that an early release for relevant prisoners would be based on an assessment of risk to the public. With that in mind, we must ensure that adequate rehabilitation services are in place, as the Howard League for Penal Reform in Scotland states that. It is necessary for the Scottish Prison Service to provide sufficient rehabilitation services to allow prisoners to reduce their risk of re-offending and harm, where such services are not available, continued detention may become arbitrary and in breach of article 5 of the European Convention of Human Rights. Offenders who have been refused release could have a human rights challenge if they have not been offered the necessary rehabilitation programmes. We certainly agree across the chamber that we should avoid that. Some of those changes will put additional strain on the prison system if proper resources are not made available. Indeed, during his evidence to the Justice Committee, Professor Alan Miller of the Scottish Human Rights Commission stated that, he has heard from witnesses that the resources within and outwith prisons are not seen as being adequate. The legislation will increase the spotlight on whether resources are adequate. Given that the bill is due to go through substantial amendments, it is difficult to discuss the full impact of the bill while we currently do not know the full projected costs and effects of the amendments. However, Scottish Labour will be supporting the bill at stage 1. Despite the fact that it fails to address sentencing policy and reconviction, it is a start. I hope that the Scottish Government will ensure that prison and parole boards are properly resourced, ensure that adequate rehabilitation services are in place and that they can meet the future demand. I very much welcome the opportunity to speak on this important subject today. We all know that the control of the release of prisoners is a subject that has been needing addressing for some time. I had the privilege to serve as the shadow justice minister in session 2, shadow deputy justice minister in session 2, with special responsibility for prisons. So I ended up visiting a lot of prisons, soft and menace, Peterhead, of course, in my constituency. I was in more often than I would wish to be. I visited prison in Wales, prison in France and I met when I was across the justice minister in Georgia and talked to him about prison policies there. It is clear that there is a wide range of approach that different jurisdictions take. It is also very clear that we need to be very careful about some broad brush assumptions that we perhaps have been making in the assumption. The first and obvious thing to say is that each prisoner is an individual and we need to be very careful to look at each prisoner as an individual. That is why it is important that the patrol parole board is particularly well resourced on the back of the reforms that we are looking at. The figures that are provided in the memoranda that comes with the bill say that for the parole board by 2029, that is a fair distance out. The number of cases they will be dealing with will rise by some 230. We need to make sure that we have the resources in place to do that. We have been talking quite a lot about sex offenders. It is probably important to remind ourselves that there are two kinds of sex offenders. There are those who are essentially violent criminals, who express their violence by sexual offences, by rape, violence in a sexual relationship. The more insidious one is, of course, the pedophilia and those who groom people who are going to subject to sexual abuse. We say that re-offending in sex offenders is law, and that is factually correct. However, we must not confuse that with reconviction as law, but re-offending may or may not be law, because it is substantially more difficult to detect many sexual offences. I think that, where sexual offenders are concerned, we have to be particularly careful and make sure that the parole board and others are resourced well to deal with that particular category of offender. Of course, the average IQ of a pedophile is a bit higher than the average IQ of somebody who is in prison for other offences. They are more cunning, they are more dangerous and they carry greater risk. We need to be careful that we address that. I have confidence that we will do that—confidence in the prison service, confidence that we in this Parliament would wish to do that. At the end of the day, our objectives here in dealing with people who are serious offenders are threefold. We have the element of retribution, giving back to the person who is offended a real sense of the opprobrium that comes from having committed an offence against another member of society. The person who has been subject to that offence would certainly wish to see that and that is right and proper. Rehabilitation. We have talked quite a lot about rehabilitation. The reality of rehabilitation is the moral thing for us to be doing, but it is also an economic thing for us to be doing because it is very expensive to put people in prison. We know that. Every time we effectively turn someone's life around and start coming back to prison, there is a huge economic benefit. The thing that I have not heard mentioned but has been mentioned in other justice debates is restitution. That is a relatively limited thing, but my mother-in-law, who had her purse stolen, for example, the courts imposed on the two individuals who had been responsible for stealing her purse, had to repair the money. That is a proper part of sentencing policy. We have to be very flexible and have the ability in our judges when they are sentencing to flexibly look at the circumstances and apply them properly. Not all prisoners get it. One of the visits that I made as shadow deputy justice minister was to sock them in prison. I found myself in a cell with six lifers who were in there for murder. The prison chaplain was on the open door so that he could summon the staff if things got too heated. One of the offenders put it to me that he had been released on licence and he had been recalled. In his view, he was entirely unjustified. He was just because he happened to be with a group of people when another murder took place. He had nothing to do with a murder, but he just happened to be there. When you deal with prisoners whose attitude is thus, you realise that it is impossible in the nature of things to get it right all the time, because I did not feel uncomfortable about that recall and I do not think that many people would do so. The important thing about the bill is that it does restore perhaps confidence in the public view of how sentencing works. It takes the first steps. We have to get the whole road in due course. We have to make sure that we have the resources when people come out. We have to make sure that the new arrangements for access to health, housing and other services are there for prisoners. I was very impressed by Stockton when I visited him a few years ago. Peterhead, with a very different category of prisoners, did its own thing. The new HMP Grampian has a very good approach that they have in plan to work with prisoners. We now have young offenders, we have women prisoners and we have a more general prison population. The first time that we put them all on one campus, it is expensive to do, but it is even more expensive not to do properly. I very much look forward to working with HMP Grampian, because it is going to be more challenging for the community to have to interact with prisoners as they adjust to going back out, than it used to be when we had all Scotland's Serious Sex offenders locked behind the walls, entirely disconnected and discharged back to communities elsewhere. However, I think that that is a price that is worth paying, and I am sure that the staff in the prison service will do well with that new facility. What happens at HMP Grampian will inform what should happen elsewhere. It will lead to improvements in our programmes, it will lead to improvements in outcomes. The bill is a good, useful one-page bill that takes us forward on the kind of road that we need to be travelling. I congratulate the minister and the Government for the progress that they have made, but I and others will properly continue to challenge the Government to do substantially more when we are able to do so. I call Christina McKelvie to be followed by Patricia Ferguson, generalist in six minutes. I have not or have ever been a member of the Justice Committee of this Parliament, but I was looking back over the eight years that I have spent here and the number of Justice-related debates that I have taken part in, and they have usually always came from a very personal, if not a professional, interest in the work that the Justice Committee does. Certainly, it is important work that we all expect to be done because we want to be living in a safer society. My background in social work took me to many households and local area teams and support groups and support centres, where I have seen some amazing work going on. When you see people who have been, in some cases, possibly a victim of the justice system and as much as how they ended up there and how they are rehabilitated out at the other end, you cannot but stop to realise the fantastic work that is being done by the professionals in that field. What they need is every tool in the toolbox to help them to do that. I have said it before, but I will say it again. I think that the safety of our public has to be an absolute priority, but the rehabilitation and the support for people who have been through the justice system is just as important to building that safe society that we all want. However, the question is how best do we achieve that result? I know that it is not going to be done in one great leap, and certainly the number of debates that I have taken part in, which are probably a drop in the ocean compared to some others in the chamber, are a way to highlight some of that. However, that bill in particular takes us a small but important step forward. One of my interests as a co-convener of the cross-party group Men's Violence Against Women is obviously what happens to people who are victims of domestic violence or sexual abuse. You might see convicted criminals being sentenced up for 10 years, for instance. His victim heaves a sigh of relief. In most likely cases, it is a she who will be well aware that the likelihood of that perpetrator being early released and that person not knowing about it is very likely indeed. One of the pilots that I supported—I am very happy that the Scottish Government has taken it forward—is the Claire's Law pilot, which allows someone who has suspicions about a partner to get the information that they need. Those are important ways of providing people with relevant information where appropriate. There are questions about transparency, and I see that transparency and clarity are a key theme within the stage 1 report. People's rights and, obviously, some prisoner's rights have to be transparent and given clarity, too. Those are two sides of the same coin, in my opinion. Knowing what the real, rather than the theoretical outcome is going to be is just as important to the prisoners as it is to the victims. Transparency, in my opinion, is a hallmark of this Government. We live and operate in a real world, rather than between the gated entrants of Downing Street for instance. The bill is a move towards greater transparency. Rather than the vague assumptions about early release, it will introduce proper controls that will improve the system by allowing decisions about when and how people are released to be the most important element. Those decisions will be taken and informed by the individual consideration of a prisoner, taken into account public safety and the need for effective supervision. In that way, it addresses both sides of that coin. It ensures that dangerous prisoners do not get released automatically while bringing in a mandatory period of control through supervision for all long-term prisoners leaving. Custody, I have to say that long-term support and control is something that I absolutely agree with. I suppose that it will always be something of a balancing act to do this successfully. In working with some of the criminal justice social workers that I spent some time with, sometimes that judgment call is a difficult judgment call to make. That is why, as I said in my open remarks, they need the best tools at their hand to do that. We are not thinking about petty criminals here, people on three or four months sentences, but we are talking about people serving much longer jail terms and the fact that they should be remaining in that jail for the sentence that they have been given. No prisoner seven times for serious offences would be automatically released in the licence after two-thirds for the sentence, for instance. We already know that a prisoner on automatic release is seven times more likely to breach their licence condition than someone released after a decision by a parole board. The reason is obvious. When individual considerations applied, people are likely to respond more positively. When the Government decided to close down Cornwall Women's Prison, that was one of the realities that the cabinet secretary recognised. Prison of itself is not curative. What works is small units, such as the 218 centre, where women prisoners are managed in a far more constructive way. While by far the majority of women in prison are there for minor offences, women can and do commit violent crime and the society should be protected from them. Dame Eilish Angiolini's report pointed out that, on the issue that women commit different types of crimes for distinctively different reasons, drug abuse, a dysfunctional or deprived family background being victims of violence themselves and sometimes confused, desperation, all-colour promotives. She pointed out that, while the proportions of the male and female population in prisons for violent offences are similar—about 35 per cent, as of 30 June—proporfer more women in prison for other crimes. The current system, for me a bit like Westminster, is not working for Scotland, but we have the foresight and the intelligence here to see ways of better managing criminals, all of which indicates how right Dame Eilish is in her recommendations. Why am I talking about the women's prison? I think that the recommendations from Dame Eilish's report could apply across the board and that one-stop shops like 218 or the Willow project model can be used across the board to deal with all prisoners. I believe that there is scope to develop that idea across the entire prison regime and I would hope that the cabinet secretary would think about that. Using support services like those described, the more clarity called for in the stage 1 report on release arrangements can only help to ensure that we reduce re-offending and we give the professionals and the teams the tools to do the job properly. We know that victim support has called for a bit more clarity and I am sure that that is something that the cabinet secretary will step up to. In closing, it is clear that the Government wants to move forward with innovative responses. It is clear that each chamber wants to move forward with those responses to seek out a more effective and meaningful way forward than the current system can offer, and that can only be good for us all. I appreciate that. I now call on Patricia Ferguson to be followed by Clare Adamson, a generous six minutes. As someone who is not a member of the justice committee and therefore not as familiar with the systems and processes involved in our application of criminal justice, it has always seemed to me that the sentencing of those convicted of crimes is an area where greater clarity is needed and where more work to explain the system is needed. Nowhere has this been more the case over the years than in the debates that have been about ending automatic early release. I had hoped that the reforms that the Scottish Government has promised would help to provide clarity to do that, but my reading of the bill and the report by the justice committee would suggest that that is not the case and that the proposals in the bill do not go far enough, in my view, to provide protection to our communities. I say that because I am speaking about the bill as we have it in front of us at the moment, but we really are in a rather strange position today when we are having a debate about stage 1 of a bill that will be fundamentally different by the time that emerges from the stage 2 consideration. Having said that, I very much applaud the cabinet secretary for being willing to bring forward the amendments that he has laid out today, because I think that they will help to make the situation better and to make it more clear. I am sorry that he has found himself in a position where that has been necessary. I am sure that it is not a problem of his making, but it is one that he seems to be stepping up to the plate in trying to resolve. It seems to me that we are only looking at one part of the system in the bill, certainly as it stands, the end point when a prisoner is released, but we also need to look at the situation at the point at which the prisoner is sentenced to ensure that our sentencing policy itself is correct and is transparent. The fact that the sentencing council that it legislated for in 2010 will not begin its work until the last quarter of this year seems to me to be wrong. It would surely have been better to allow the policy proposals contained in this bill to be part of a comprehensive package of measures that could have been influenced by the sentencing council. That is not to say that I am suggesting that there should be a delay in putting forward those provisions, but I do think that they would have been all the better for having had the benefit of having been considered by a sentencing council that had been introduced prior to this point. Indeed, the law society in its briefing to members makes the very valid point that the most significant, and I think that they and, indeed, Margaret Mitchell said, the most radical change to custodial sentencing policy in over 20 years will be introduced by way of a stage 2 amendment to a bill already before Parliament. The law society contrasts that with the situation in 1993 when significant changes were last made. At that time, as we know, the changes were only made after the careful consideration of two reports on the matter, one of which had had the benefit of 14 months of consideration and much discussion within the legal profession and elsewhere. Would the member accept, however, that the Justice Committee will have the opportunity, if it so wishes, to take evidence on what might be substantial amendments at stage 2, and that the law society, among others, has the opportunity to challenge those amendments? I absolutely accept that point, but I still make the point that it is quite a strange way to be legislating. We should really have had the materials in front or the committee should have had and Parliament should have had those materials at stage 1, if it was to do the kind of job that we all expect it to do now. I have no hesitation in saying that I know that the Justice Committee under the convenership of Christine Grahame will do a fantastic job in doing that, but it should not be having to do it in that way. Victims and communities, Presiding Officer, need to know that if a sentence of four years is handed down that the prisoner will be in prison and that communities will be protected from that individual for that length of time. At that point, I do not disagree at all with the Scottish Government, but victims and communities also need to know that when the person is released from prison, that everything possible has been done and will continue to be done to prevent that person from re-offending. The bill must put in place systems to help to manage the transition that every prisoner has to make back into their community at the end of a sentence that they will have served in full. The offender, too, has to leave prison equipped with enough skill and self-awareness to be able, with support, to find a productive role in society once again. I acknowledge entirely that that is the difficult part. Rehabilitation is not easy, but it must not be seen as an add-on but as an essential part of a successful justice system. And if rehabilitation is to work, it must surely continue as tailored support when a prisoner is released. I congratulate the Justice Committee for its work in this bill and for its carefully considered report, and they were right to ask for clarification of the Scottish Government's intentions. They are also right to want to know what the minimum period of supervision upon release will be and that any guaranteed minimum period should be sufficient to allow effective post-release work with the offender to take place. That, too, must be accompanied in my view by continuous risk assessment. The cabinet secretary in his opening comments quite understandably asked for views about the length of that mandatory period. Clearly, he is still considering that, and that is to be welcomed. My own view would be that, surely, that must depend on the nature of the crime and that it must be proportionate to the sentence. I am not sure that we can say that six months or nine months is right. Perhaps the Justice Committee's evidence will prove me wrong, and I am happy to be proved wrong in this one, that it should really be tailored to the individual and the pattern of their offending and the sentence that they have served, but time will tell what the outcome of those deliberations are. Of course, as we have heard, continuous monitoring will bring additional pressure to bear in the parole service and in other community-based services. The question of how they are to be resourced must be properly addressed, and the committee is right to press for a supplementary financial memorandum in that regard and an updated policy memorandum, too. With regard to the prospect of allowing release to take place up to two days earlier to avoid a clash with the weekends, that, to me, makes absolutely perfect sense. I am sure that, like many members, I have had phone calls not just on a Friday but also earlier in the week from people who are being or have been released from prison. I have had letters in advance, too, and they are looking for support because they are worried about what will happen to them when they are released and about the effect that that might have on their behaviour. I would like to note that the decisions that we make as the bill goes forward in the Parliament will affect our prison communities much more than just the prisoners, the staff, wardens, support and counselling services—all form part of that community. Any changes that we make with the bill must ensure that no damage is done to the community occasion within our prisons. Long-term safety to the public and the public service workers must be paramount, as that moves forward. I am not a member of the justice committee, but I have listened to the debate with interest this afternoon. I do not have a professional background in that area, although I served as a substitute member in the community justice authority in Lanarkshire, and, as such, I was familiar with MAPA regulations. However, I am convinced that the safety of the public is the absolute priority of this Government, and that progress has been made in recent years. That reform will ensure that no long-term prisoners are willing to be eligible for automatic release after just two thirds of their sentence. I believe that the bill will improve the system of area that is released by allowing decisions about when and how people are released from prison to be taken in informed individual consideration of the prisoner and public safety and the need for effective supervision of that prisoner. I think that ensuring dangerous prisoners do not get released automatically while ensuring mandatory period of control through supervision of all long-term prisoners leaving custody will be achieved by that bill. I also think that it will improve the system of area released by allowing decisions about when and how people are released from prison to be taken in informed manager, and I think that it has been well spoken of this afternoon that section 2 of the bill should achieve that no one actually has what has been termed cold release. That can't be taken in isolation of previous reports, previous bills and what has been happening, but I do believe that, eventually, as was stated in the 2008 report of the Independent Prisons Commission, fundamental changes to the operation of the current system of early release can only be taken once prison numbers are established at a longer-term, lower-trend level so that capacity within the prison estate is available to deal with short to medium-term impact of making changes to the early release system. We have to take this in the context that recorded crime has fallen for the seventh year in a row and is now at a 40-year low. Government continues to maintain its commitment to 1,000 extra police officers tackling crime in our communities. Many people have spoken this afternoon about rehabilitation programmes and ensuring that they are available and that they are properly funded. The eventual impact of prisoner courses of the policy to end automatic early release will be some years in the future, but the cabinet secretary will work with the Scottish Prison Service to ensure that appropriate access can take place so that prisoners can access the support that they need to rehabilitate. Radio 4 had a programme this week, which was informative and at times challenging to listen to. It was called Inside the Sex Offenders Prison. It was a documentary made by Rex Bloomsdine, a documentary filmmaker who had unprecedented access to each of Her Majesty's Prison Wharton in Nottinghamshire, which is the largest sex offender prison in Europe, and his role was to investigate how inmates are rehabilitated for release. This is Europe's biggest prison of sex offenders. My colleague Stuart Stevenson was talking about sex offenders. It is noted that, in Wharton, no distinction is made by the type of sex offends, the absolute focus on is the recognisation that there are victims to all of the crimes and is about the prisoners taking responsibility for their actions. Lynn Saunders, the governor, said that it is a great leveler. She said, you have everyone you can imagine. She adds vickers, teachers, airline pilots, police officers, prison officers, doctors, people with learning disabilities, people who have low IQ and also people with complex mental health problems are all represented in the prison community. Approximately half of those prisoners are on determined sentences and know their release date. The rest do not. However, what Wharton has become known for is its specialist treatment centre for the rehabilitation and offering a wide range of sex offender treatment programmes more than any other prison in the UK. The overwhelming majority of its inmates have accepted their crimes and are working to address them and the range of offences that they have been convicted of, which varies considerably, as I have already stated. David Potter is one of Wharton's most experienced facilitators and says that what we do at Wharton is to try to get them to understand the harm done to others, the harm done to themselves and ways of dignifying the warning signs when they get out so that they are not set on the path to offending again. As I said, this was a very challenging documentary at times and it was not an easy listen, as it was said. It addressed some of the issues that, such as the negative emotions of shame and guilt that were held by the prisoners, were a huge barrier to the treatment process and they had to work through to build the self-esteem of the prisoners. The documentary maker frequently addressed the paradox here—I think that it was mentioned by Elaine Murray—about the societal pressures and the pressures on us as politicians and how we view offenders and how they should be dealt with. He addressed those paradoxes. On the one hand, we want sex offenders to be profoundly remorsal of their crimes, but the process of rehabilitation demands that they go far beyond that to address and prevent their re-offending. It is interesting that many people have talked about the low rate of re-offending from sex offenders. In the governor, Sonders of the prison noted that it was only 6 per cent compared to the general population of prisoners of a re-offending rate of over 50 per cent, so they seem to have had a great success here. The reason I want to highlight that is that the rehabilitation programmes and the resourcing of those programmes obviously is a big challenge to the Government and I look forward to how the minister might discuss how he would approach some of those areas. It is absolutely vital as we take this bill forward that rehabilitation is at the core of what we are doing in the prisons in order that the society as a whole is satisfied that this bill takes it forward. I just like to finish by commending the bold approach that the minister has taken. The cabinet secretary, in my mind, has approached the stage 1 deliberations and listened to the evidence and reacted to them. I think that his decision to not to build the prison, women's prison in Greenock, is a testament of his absolute commitment to prisoner reform. I now call on John Finnie. Six minutes are thereby, please, Mr Finnie. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I, too, would like to thank the many people who contributed evidence and which formed the basis of our report. I would like to quote straight away from one of them, and that is Professor Ferris McNeill of Glasgow University, who said, and I quote, to put it crudely, simply storing the risky for a little bit longer and does not, in fact, serve to reduce it. The key issue for public safety is the condition in and conditions under which people are detained and then released, not how long they serve. How long they serve is principally a matter of just deserts or proportionality of punishment to the offence. Professor McNeill also encouraged us to raise the level of debate. For that reason, I welcomed the change that was initially saw the restriction to sex offenders in those over 10 years. I think that that may have been popular, but it certainly wasn't evidenced by the issues such as re-offending rates that we heard of. Although some still want to talk tough, I would sooner that we talk just and effective. It has been a very wide-ranging debate that has stretched beyond the terms of this stage 1 report, and, like some others, I am certainly, rather than be critical of the Scottish Government for the approach that has been taken for once, it is good to record that it is commendable that people have listened and responded accordingly. I am going to mention another contribution that was recalibration of sentencing, so that, when a sentence is announced or laid down in court, it relates to a real time rather than something that has been chopped and changed around, it would be very helpful indeed for everyone involved, from the perpetrator who has been convicted to the victim. A huge amount of clarity is required, but we have potential to join things together and come up with something coherent, which we do not have at the moment. That was not said by a Conservative politician, but said by Pete White of Positive Prisons Positive Futures. It is important that we have clarity. The policy memorandum talks about reducing offending and improving public safety, and everyone surely can go along with that. The policy memorandum also talks about the minimum period of compulsory supervision in the community. We must understand again what the purpose of prison is. It is to punish, but it is also to improve public safety. We heard the minister and more than one occasion talk about dangerous prisoners. Crucially, it is about long-term reintegration, or I might suggest integration, because many of the people who are in prison and find themselves a subject of custodial sentences have never really been integrated society in the first place. Years before the effects of the proposal will kick in and there will be an opportunity to see reintegration. In my book, that will be the gauge of the effectiveness of these proposals and how they will be judged. However, as I said, that is sometime in the future. I think that we need to look out with the prison walls, too, and commend the outward-looking approach of the chief executive, Colin McConnell, and his staff. They have welcomed the proposed guaranteed minimum period of release. As has been said, and more than one occasion, it is important that we continually assess the risks and put in place measures to address those risks. One such measure, I would suggest, is not only the two-day early release, but the fact that Scottish Prison Service now has outreach workers who are in an ability to facilitate the integration that we all want to see. Part of that integration will be about the effectiveness of the management programmes within the prisons. We have heard, and there are indeed challenges around that. We have heard from the Scottish Prison Service that these are, and I quote, resource-intensive and require specialist delivery skills. We have also heard the deliverant the most appropriate time in their sentence, taking into account their willingness and readiness to engage. Cushily, the availability of programmes has been a concern for us all. It is important, too, to say that prisoners are not one uniform group, and it has to be an individual assessment of individual needs. Reference has been made to the purposeful activity review undertaken by the Scottish Prison Service. The Scottish Government's response to that did talk about developing learning and employability skills, to build life skills and resilience, to motivate personal engagement both with the prison and community-based services, and that, again, was welcomed by prisons' positive future. The role of the parole board has been mentioned, and I absolutely agree with the cabinet secretary that I trust their judgment, and we do know that they welcome the proposed period of post-release. The cabinet secretary sought views on the minimum period, and I know that the figure of six months has been mentioned, and I would like to make a suggestion. My view is that it is not about quality—in other words, the quantity—but about the quality, and it will be important to have in place all robust mechanisms to report people when they have been released. The Scottish Human Rights Commission has been mentioned here, and I hope that there will be a positive response from the Government to that. Early release has frequently been talked about, and that is beyond the gift of this particular chamber there, because one of the particular challenges—of course, it is housing, but it is also about benefits and having DWP on board for anything that is done would be very helpful. I would also like to see a move to end short sentences. I want to see robust community disposals—Social Work Scotland—to talk about proposed reforms but a review of sentences and guidelines. I also want to see the Scottish Government do more than simply note the suggestion of extending MAPA provisions. If we want to enhance public safety, then ideally that will take in violent offenders too, not just sexual offenders. Coordination across the criminal justice system has frequently been mentioned. That is the key to this, as far as I am concerned. I think that this has been a challenging initial approach from the Scottish Government. I welcome the reforms that are being suggested, but I still think that, rather than talked of, let's talk just and let's talk effective. Many thanks. We now move to closing speeches. I invite the members who have taken part in the debate to return to the chamber. I will now call on Annabelle Goldie in six minutes or thereby please. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. This debate has revealed a conundrum. To me, automatic early release is something that you either support or oppose. If you support it, you have it. If you oppose it, you don't have it at all. My party has a distinguished record of a loan in this Parliament consistently opposing automatic early release. Yes, it was a Conservative Government at Westminster, which, over 20 years ago, introduced automatic early release. It was a Conservative Government which recognised that automatic early release failed victims, failed judges and failed the public past legislation to abolish it. Legislation, which was never implemented by the incoming Labour Government of 18 years ago. Since 1999, it has been this Parliament's responsibility to deal with this issue. My party has been unequivocal in our criticism of automatic early release. Since 1999, I have spoken in numerous debates in this Parliament condemning it. My party has frequently brought amendments ending automatic early release to this chamber, only to be defeated by all the other parties. As a political principle, let me just expand my argument. As a political principle, Deputy Presiding Officer, the credentials of my party could not be clearer on this issue. It was heartening to find that, in 2007, we had acquired a political ally. In both its 2007 and 2011 Scottish election manifestos, the SNP committed to abolishing automatic early release of offenders. It said in 2007 that it believes that there should be an end to the automatic release of offenders. It said that we support the recent legislation of this area and, in government, we will drive forward this important area of reform. It echoed that in 2011. It said that we will build on the work that is already done and will involve the sentencing council and further action to address unconditional early automatic release. It seemed that our arguments had won over a new adherent to the principle of ending automatic early release. In politics, principle is not enough. It needs to be married with policy to deliver what is pledged. It is disappointing that, eight years on, we have from an SNP Government a proposal not to abolish automatic early release but to introduce a partial and heavily qualified abolition. According to SPICE, the bill is introduced in 2012-13 that would have applied to 107 people convicted of sexual crimes and 24 people convicted of other crimes and offences. That total figure of 131 offenders would have represented less than 1 per cent of all people receiving a determinate custodial sentence. We have an abandonment of the principle and a divergence from those earlier manifesto commitments. I do not disagree that introducing abolition of automatic early release is not straightforward. It is not. There is a need, and many members have contributed eloquently on this point. There is a need to address prison capacity, to address whatever issues confront the prisoner, be that drug addiction, alcohol dependency, illiteracy, inhumoracy and to prepare the prisoner for release. But these are issues of management. They should neither intrude upon nor detract from the kernel principle of you either have to automatic early release or you do not. Just bear with me. What we currently have from the Scottish Government is a proposal to scrap automatic early release for a tiny percentage of prisoners. It does not affect short-term prisoners and it affects only some long-term prisoners. My opinion, Presiding Officer, that is not good enough. I suppose that the Scottish Government is sensitive to perceived shortcomings in the bill and proposes to bring forward significant amendments at stage 2. Those proposals do not, in my opinion, address the fundamental shortcomings of a partial end to automatic early release. The proposal certainly raises issues of process for this Parliament because the new proposals would apply to approximately 450 offenders or just 3 per cent of all people who received a custodial sentence in 2013-14. What the Justice Committee is now being asked to do is to form a view on those proposals as part of its stage 1 report, whether it is outside of a revised policy memorandum, outside of a financial memorandum or outside of explanatory notes on the bill. That is not conducive to scrutiny. Mr Stevenson? I am obliged to the member. While accepting that the member will be correct to point to the small percentage of prisoners, I wonder if the member will accept that it is a very, very much larger proportion of the increased prisoner nights that will be derived because it is the longest sentences that are being lengthened and therefore it is appropriate to proceed in a way that makes sure that we are able not to lose the principle through difficulties in implementation. I was expecting an intervention, not a dissertation. What Mr Stevenson does not address is the fundamental intellectual conundrum. In my opinion, you either believe in automatic early release or you do not. And why not deliver it? Because you are not delivering it. That is the fundamental problem that is confronting— Can we stop hush-outing across the chamber, please, and allow my school to continue? Thank you for your protection, Presiding Officer. That is a fundamental conundrum. That is why this bill, even with the Government's proposed flourishes, does not end automatic early release and nobody can pretend that it can. Labour has been very honest about that and they have been quite frank in revealing their sense of identifying a paradox about this feeling that it is not going far enough but that they still want to support it. In the opinion of my party, Presiding Officer, the bill, as structured and as proposed, does not provide victims, it does not provide their families and it does not provide judges with the simplicity and the clarity that they need and to which they are entitled when a sentence is being imposed. It is for that reason that my party will abstain on the vote tonight. I now call Hugh Henry, Mr Henry, eight minutes. Can I start off echoing some of the comments that have been made about the role of the Cabinet Secretary? I want to congratulate him for trying to do the best that he can to make something sensible out of, frankly, what is an incoherent and unacceptable bill. He is showing good will to this Parliament in trying to sort out a mess that he has inherited. Frankly, Presiding Officer, this is a bad way to make legislation. This undermines the credibility of this Parliament. We prided ourselves when the Parliament was set up about how we would be different and how we would make good legislation, how we would listen and how we would then reflect the advice that we heard in our strong and powerful committees. That has not happened in this case and it is not happening in this case because what we have before is, and it is ridiculous, Presiding Officer, we are having a debate about stage 1 of a bill in the full knowledge that what will be considered at stage 2 will be completely different. John Finnie? I am grateful for the member taking intervention, but does that not precisely prove the point that there has been robust scrutiny? I think that you failed to understand what I was saying. I am not criticising the committee because it is because we have one of the best committees in the Parliament looking at this that we are going to be able to make substantial changes. My criticism is of a Scottish Government bringing to this Parliament a bill that, in many senses, is not fit for purpose. The Scottish Labour Party tonight will be supporting stage 1, but we do so with severe and significant reservations because we are having to debate something, frankly, that is a debate in the abstract. We do not know what is going to come before stage 2. We support the principles, but we have not got a clue about what will be coming before us. I share your aspirations about the way that this Parliament needs to change and its committees need to change, but one of the things that we should all collectively do is reflect on the process that the bill is demonstrating. It has been asked to make significant decisions with an absence of detail, with an absence of clarity, and it does not do anyone any good trying to make a decision on that basis. It does not help the public, it does not help the victims. We know what the principle is, and we can sign up to it. In a sense, it is a shame that some of the debate this afternoon has actually started because of the lack of substance in the bill. It has started to veer on to a wider debate about sentencing, prison policy and rehabilitation, and that is a debate that this Parliament does need to have at some point, and I hope that we will get that opportunity. However, this is a specific bill about early release, not about wider prison policy, a specific bill about a very specific thing, and yet we are not seeing the detail. The cabinet secretary is not able to tell us today what is in the detail that Christine Grahame wants to come in by all means. Just simply to Hugh Henry that we are simply voting on the general principles of ending automatic early release for long-term sentences. There is every opportunity, as you are well aware, at stage 2 for a substantive amendment to fall, and indeed at stage 3. It is not the best way forward, but it has shown committee procedure here at stage 1, and it will at stage 2 do its utmost to make good legislation. I have every confidence in Christine Grahame in her committee, and I am thankful that it is the justice committee that will be considering it. However, that does not excuse the failure of the Scottish Government to bring something coherent to us today to consider. It is not good practice to say that we will vote and press the buttons today on a principle, but we actually do not know what the detail is that we are voting on. Yes, by all means, change bills and improve and amend, but we are taking evidence from people, and then we are saying to them that what we are going to do once we get to the detail is possibly something different from what we debated and discussed at stage 1. No, thank you. A number of people have made comments about the parole board, Michael Matheson, Christine Grahame and others, and Stuart Stevenson, I think, hit the nail in the head. We cannot make those changes unless we are prepared to invest resources to make the parole board work effectively. Jane Baxter, Margaret MacDougall and others spoke about the need for clarity for victims, because at the bottom of any argument in this has got to be the fundamental principle that we should be giving the victims the clarity that they deserve when it comes to sentencing, and we should be making sure that there are judges of the wherewithal to do that properly. However, as Elaine Murray said, we now have a policy document that, in frankly, is not fit for purpose. We have a financial memorandum that is actually based on something completely different. We will vote for that today, but we do not know actually whether the financial memorandum that will eventually come will be anything like the financial memorandum that is there just now, because it is going to be a completely different bill. That is not the way to make good legislation. That has got nothing to do with party politics, Presiding Officer. That is an observation about the way that this Parliament is working. This is a poor example, and I am not critical of the Cabinet Secretary, because he is doing his best to sort out this mess. We will have a bill that, as many of the members, Elaine Murray, Margaret Mitchell, Roderick Campbell, he even suggested a bill that will be totally different at stage 2 from what is under consideration. Nigel Don is absolutely right that there is a need for parliamentary scrutiny, but we cannot scrutinise if we do not have the information and stage 2 is going to be critical. In a sense, stage 2, as Christine Grahame rightly said, is inviting evidence. Stage 2 is going to have to now do the job that should have been done before stage 1, going back into that detail. It is not just about evidence on the amendments, we are actually going to have to go back in to look at evidence on some of the fundamental principles. A number of members have talked about the Sentencing Council, and we have got this whole process back to front. The Sentencing Council, which was promised long ago, should have been set up, should have been coming forward with recommendations so that this bill could have fitted in to the deliberation of the Sentencing Council, instead of setting up a Sentencing Council after we have this bill. Can I finish off, Presiding Officer, by making reference to some of the comments that Christina McKelvie mentioned about broader policy? I mentioned this earlier. I do think that the debate on women's re-offending and the recommendations from Dame Ailey Shangelini are pertinent to that wider debate, but we need to fit this bill now into that wider debate. We need to get out of the party politics of this, because the SNP does not want to spend money on prisons because it would not be seen to the right thing to do. Labour will not come forward with proposals that say that we need to spend more money on the criminal justice system, because that might not play well. The Conservatives want to do their bit, the Lib Dems and the Greens. We are all hesitant about doing something that is maybe the right thing. We need to have a debate. Are we willing to spend more money on prisons, on more prisons but smaller prisons? Are we willing to spend more money on rehabilitation that has been mentioned time after time after time? If we do not, we are investing in failure and we are investing in the surety of having to spend more in the future. We need to have that debate about our prison system, about our justice system, about the way that prisoners are prepared for release. At the end of it, it has to be coming down to safer communities, justice for victims and clarity for victims. As long as we are dancing around each other playing party politics, and as long as we are having to look at— You need to come to a close, Mr Henry. I am not going to engage it. I do not have the time to engage in that, but as long as we will not, as a Parliament, address some of the fundamentals about the way to make improvements, and as long as we bring forward a bill in this cat-handed way, we are never going to advance the arguments at all. Thank you. I now call the cabinet secretary to wind up. Mr Martin, it is about 5 o'clock. Can I begin by saying that it has been a very useful debate and there has obviously been a whole range of different contributions around the content of this bill? As John Finnie correctly says, it is a debate that has gone much wider than the bill in itself. For my practical experience, is it unusual of stage 1 debates where very often individual members will raise issues that are related to the legislation and the debate that is taking place, but will obviously bring in issues of concern or experience that they feel are relevant to that debate in its cell. As I mentioned in my opening comments, I fully recognise the detailed scrutiny that the Justice Committee has given to this particular piece of legislation as someone who has served on the Justice Committee for almost seven years and is well aware of the detail and the type of scrutiny that the committee undertakes in those matters. As I would expect with any piece of legislation for a committee of this Parliament to identify where there are areas that can be improved and to highlight issues of concern that has been highlighted to them in the course of evidence by witnesses, either orally or in written form, to highlight that as part of their stage 1 report. I think that that is one of the real strengths of this particular Parliament. I must say that I am a little confused at some of the suggestion of what the Government is now doing is, in some way, not acceptable because what I am trying to do is to respond to some of the concerns—I finish your point, I want to make first of all Mr Henry—what I am trying to do is to respond to some of the concerns and issues that have been raised by the committee, both by committee members, by witnesses to the committee and to try at the stage 1 debate, which is why I responded to the stage 1 report in the Government's response prior to this debate taking place, setting out how we would approach some of the concerns and issues that the committee has raised in their stage 1 debate. I see that as being a mature, reasonable way to conduct this type of debate. What I would say is that it is inappropriate for a Government not to set out at the stage 1 stage how it was going to deal with those issues and to then just push on irrespective of what the committee has heard and not respond to those issues. I will give way to Mr Henry at this point. The cabinet secretary is absolutely right that that is the mature way to deal with it and I congratulate him for it. He is doing the right thing. The problem is that we are going to have a bill at stage 2 that is fundamentally different from what was introduced and the failure is in the way that the Government prepared and introduced that bill in the first place. That is what we have got to examine. I think that it is probably fair to say that saying that the bill will be fundamentally different is probably over-egging it slightly. However, I know the point that the member is trying to make clearly for no political purposes. However, what I do recognise is that we are bringing in amendments at stage 2. As I have experienced in my time in committees in this Parliament, in different types of committees, it is not unusual to take further evidence at stage 2 based on the amendments that the Government brings forward. I experience that with the previous administration as well. I think that that is an important element of this process. Anyway, I have set out the approach that we are going to take and I would fully expect the committee to take further evidence, as Elaine Murray stated in her own contribution at stage 2 to consider those issues. As I mentioned, this is a debate that has gone wider than just the particular remit of this particular piece of legislation itself. It is going into penal policy, sensing policy and a whole range of other matters as well. When it comes to penal policy, I believe that everybody in this chamber—or I would hope that everybody in this chamber—agrees with Henry McLeish's prison commission's view. That is, and I quote Henry McLeish's report, the evidence that we have reviewed leads us to the conclusion that to use imprisonment wisely is to target it where it can be most effective in punishing serious crime and protecting the public. The approach that we will be taking forward as a Government is intended to achieve that in a range of different ways. A number of members have raised a whole range of issues relating to penal policy. The first issue that I want to address is the issue around the delivery of programmes within the prison estate as well, because there are a whole range of programmes that are delivered within the prison estate. Elaine Murray raised quite legitimately issues about access to those particular programmes within our prison system. She will be aware that there has been the purposeful activity review that has been undertaken on how activities are delivered within the prison estate. There is now work being taken forward to implement the recommendations that have come forward as a result of that. We are now going to go into an independent review of programmes, including psychological programmes, that are delivered within the SPS estate. Once we have that report, the SPS will then be able to look at how it can build on the programmes that it has at the present time. There are broadly seven strands of programmes that the SPS takes forward along with a whole range of other activity mechanisms in the review, which will be independent—by an independent person from the SPS will consider all of those issues. I also said when I attended the committee that when there is an anxiety about access to those types of programmes within the prison estate, a very significant amount of resource within our prison estate is drawn into dealing with shop-term offenders and the churn of shop-term offenders within our prison system. If members are serious about dealing with the whole issue about more effective resourcing of rehabilitation programmes within our prison system, they have to also be serious about dealing with the churn of shop-term offenders. To do otherwise is completely missing the point and entirely unrealistic in being able to deal with that effectively. I am more than happy to have that debate. The approach that I have set out in terms of taking an approach about making sure that we use our resources in a way that are much more evidence-based is the approach that I intend to take. When Hugh Henry makes the issue a point about whether we should invest in prisons or not because of the political perception of it, I would add that, as a Government, we have spent more than £1 billion since we committed to Government in investing within our prison estate in order to improve it and to improve the quality of what can be provided there. On the issue that was raised by Christina McKelvie in her contribution when she mentioned the whole issue of dealing with women offenders, the chief option was to build inverclyde prison, but the approach that we have set out is a Government that we are going to take that is much more evidence-based and the way in which we will design that approach will be one that is more costly to us, but we will do so mindful that the outcomes will be better and that it will deliver safer communities as a result. I give way to Elaine Murray. I am not in any way disagreeing with what you are saying, but surely you are demonstrating the point that my colleague Hugh Henry was making, that those discussions have to be removed from the party political battle. We have to discuss that in a sensible way, not having a goal at each other, because we are not going to resolve many of those issues if it becomes a sort of political football. I am not entirely sure about the political football stuff because the group that we have established has made up of a whole range of different stakeholders to advise on how we move forward with the female prison estate and how we can manage that. We have the Elisha Angelini commission, we have the McLeish commission, all independent of government, sent out very clearly about the measures that we should take in a non-party political way, and that is how we will continue to approach this matter. I turn now to the issue about the Conservatives' position on automatic early release. I have tried in the course of this debate and when I read the stage 1 report to deal with the intellectual conumbrum that Annabel Goldie highlighted here today. That is the logic of the Conservative Party not to support the ending of automatic early release for our most serious criminals. As Annabel Goldie stated in her contribution, the Conservative Party have a distinguished history in this issue, a very distinguished one. They introduced automatic early release for all prisoners. The logic is that we are not supporting a bill for ending automatic early release for our most serious prisoners because it does not also do for short-term prisoners. I am afraid that it is beyond me. When the member makes the point that this only affects 3 per cent of the prison estate or prisoners who will be affected by the change in this policy, I am mindful of what the UK Government has said in this issue. That is Chris Gailing, his member, who is responsible for this area of policy in England. I have got limitation on the number of prison places that I have got, so I have started with the most serious offenders. Exactly what we are doing here in Scotland. He then goes on and states, It is not something that I can change overnight, but it is something that I am going to change step by step. I am starting with the most dangerous and unpleasant people. Exactly what the Scottish Government is doing. Now, if it is good enough for the Conservatives in Westminster, why is it not good enough for the Conservatives here in Scotland, Margaret Mitchell? I will have to be brief, Ms Mitchell. I am very briefly puzzled why you should, given that this is a devolved issue, be seeking to look at what is happening in England. Positioning is quite clear. We are in favour of the ending of automatic air release for all prisoners. This bill does not do that. We are abstaining this evening in the hope that the radical changes that the cabinet secretary has been forced to make to this bill can again be looked at to bring some common sense here so that, as stage-prue, it is effectively abolishing automatic air release, not for 3 per cent, but for 100 per cent more. Cabinet Secretary, you need to be brief. I will be brief. The message from the chamber here tonight, with the position of the Conservative Party, is that it wants to maintain automatic air release for long-term prisoners. To vote otherwise, to vote against this bill or to abstain this bill, is the message that you sent out. You introduced it, and tonight, it looks as though you are seeking to preserve it in place. This is a bill that is an important step forward in ending automatic air release. We set that out in our manifesto at the last election. We are taking that forward in this legislation. I would call on all members to support the general principles tonight. That concludes the debate on stage 1 of the Prisoners' Control of Release Scotland Bill. We now move to next item of business, which is consideration of motion 11827, in the name of John Swinney on the financial resolution on the Prisoners' Control of Release Scotland Bill. I call on John Swinney to move the motion. The motion will be put a decision time to which we now come. There are two questions to be put as a result of today's business. The first question is at motion number 12878, in the name of Michael Matheson, on the Prisoners' Control of Release Scotland Bill, be agreed to. Are we all agreed? The Parliament is not agreed. Members should cast their votes now. The result of the vote on motion number 12878, in the name of Michael Matheson, is as follows. Yes, 70. No, 0. There were 10 abstentions. The motion is therefore agreed to. The next question is at motion number 11827, in the name of John Swinney, on the financial resolution for the Prisoners' Control of Release Scotland Bill, be agreed to. Are we all agreed? The motion is therefore agreed to. That concludes the decision time. I hope you the sun shines on you and you managed to get some rest.