 Rwy'n cael ei ddweud i chi'n gwneud y dillunrwydd, oedd mi'n gweithio'r gweithio gweithio'r gwaith a'r ddelunrwydd. Cyngor unrhyw gwyllgor o bach o bobl yn ddweud i eiyw'r mynd i'r trydymu gwneud. Fodd iddyn nhw'n efallai rydw i'n ei ddweud o bach o bach yr hynod o bobl. Rwyf wedi'n gwych yn gwneud ywoodd yr item 1, ond rydw i'n meddwl ein gweld ac ar meddwl yr item 4, of evidence heard during the roundtables session this morning in private? Are you agreed? Next item of business is a one of round table evidence session on brain injury and the criminal justice system. I welcome each participant to the session and it may be—I do not know but some may be a first time sitting giving evidence to a committee. Before I go any further I just want to say that the method for this really is that you are the people speaking and for once and you will love this, the politicians will be restrained so fel cael llawer mwy ddechrau, nad oes waspwn i roi'n ddatganiad. Nid o'r ddweud, hi'n ddweud, ac rhaid i'n cael'r ddweud. Here's a list, so I'll let you know that I've got your name. And I'll also let you know if you're the next person to speak, and your microphone hopefully, because you'll be on your toes, will come on automatically, just as mine has done with the red light. You don't need to press anything, okay? I have so many professors that I am a bit inhibited and such. The copies of written submissions that we have got are circulated in a fit with an amended figure in it... Professor Williams? Professor Williams, thank you very much. I think that the best way to start—I know that you have introduced the people next year—is to invite each member and each participant to introduce themselves, and it says here, starting with me. Well, I know who I am, so I'll just do that. Neil, you don't need to keep reminding me. I'm all right so far. I'm Christine Grahame and I convene the committee. I'm Elaine Murray. I'm the vice convener of the committee. I'm Brian O'Neill from the Brain Injury Rehabilitation Trust. Margaret Mitchell, member of the Justice Committee. Oliver Aldridge from the Howard League Society for Penal Reform in Scotland. I'm Roderick Campbell. I'm MSP for North East Fife and I'm a member of the Justice Committee. I'm Jeane McFarlane. I'm a clinical neuropsychologist working in the NHS in part of the division of neuropsychology. Good morning, Christian Alad, member of the committee. Good morning, John, for the MSP Highlands and Islands. Highlands and Islands. Great, John. Never let me down. Yes. Andrew Allen, Police Scotland, Cymru Justice Division. I'm a consultant in neuro-rehabilitation in NHS Tayside. I'm Sandra White, MSP Glasgow Kelvin and I'm a member of the committee. On Carson, I'm a consultant in neuropsychiatry in Edinburgh at the National Brain Injury Units, but I'm here as the lead clinician of the Scottish Acquire Brain Injury Network. Ruth Barker, assistant director for health and care for the Scottish Prison Service. Alison McInnes, MSP for North East Scotland, member of the Justice Committee. Hugh Williams, clinical neuropsychologist and deputy chair of the policy units of a division in neuropsychology. John Perlin, MSP for Malone Wishaw and the member of the Justice Committee. Tom Macmillan, professor of clinical neuropsychology at the University of Glasgow. As I say, what we do is we ask you to bring it to our attention. We've got about an hour and a bit for, in a sense, for the case to be made to the committee about the importance of the connection between brain injury, the criminal justice system and perhaps how it's letting people down from what we have seen if I just put it in these short terms. First of all, why are you here and why should we listen to you? Who wants to start? Thank you, Professor Williams. You go for it. Okay, thank you. I think the main point to be made is that there's a lot of neuro-disabilities. That's general brain injuries of various kinds in people who end up in the prison system. Traumatic brain injury, where it's caused by say falls or assault or accidents, tend to be a big factor, and the rate of brain injury is very high, and it's prevalence, the numbers of people in the prison system seem to have brain injury. The trends in studies that we've conducted and internationally would indicate that the presence of brain injury is associated with problems in rehabilitation. It tends to be associated with greater degrees of re-offending, greater problems in mental health issues, and greater difficulties in engaging with treatments around mental health and resettlement. So, it's probably likely that trying to address the issues of brain injury, not only because it's a chronic health condition in this population, might be beneficial in reducing long-term costs by reducing crime, but also reducing the number of victims of crime as well. Is anybody else wanting to come in? I don't see anybody indicating. I mean, are we letting people down in the system? I'll just stimulate it. Yes, Dr Aldridge. My main sort of clinical experience is in addictions medicine, and I work in a court-mandated community-based drug treatment programme. In that context, I see a number of people. I mean, we have a population where the statistics, if you ask people if you've ever been hit hard enough on the head to be knocked out, and 70-odd per cent of our clients will give a positive response to that. But there's a subset of those people that, when you quiz them further about that, turn out to have had very, very significant levels of head injury. Some of them have had neurosurgical treatment. Some of them have started off in some level of follow-up and then dropped out, and some of them have never had any follow-up at all. These folk don't seem to be identified in the criminal justice system, and yet their injuries seem to impact on their ability to engage with rehabilitation, et cetera. And it's very, very difficult to get these people to a point where they can be treated. For a start, one has to stabilise their drug use, and that usually one can do to a fairly significant extent. But it's very, very difficult even when you try to set up a referral pathway into a rehabilitation service to get people to that first appointment. And even if you get them to the first appointment where they're assessed as needing further work done, they tend not to go back. And we see this with blood-borne virus treatment, where people will present to a service as soon as you're having to refer them outside of that service, the attendance rate plummets. And the way that we get people into blood-borne virus treatment is to bring the blood-borne virus treatment into the clinic. And I think that there is a pool of unmet need of people with very, very significant head injuries that we could serve better if we could have an outreach kind of service going into criminal justice facilities. Yes, superintendent. I would like to highlight the link between brain injury, mental health and suicide rates. And although this is a discussion about criminal justice, very often it's the police who come into contact with individuals in suicidal instances earlier than some of the other services. And the point that's been made about subsequent referral to services that can help the individuals and reduce the longer-term cost to society are considerable. Committee members have got nobody else please if you want to ask something. Yes, if you want to come back in, Professor Williams. I mean, you have priorities, witnesses, but if there's a silence, the politicians will step in. You know that. Professor Williams. Thank you. I just make a point to Dr Aldrich's and Superintendent Dalland. The big issue is that with the significant brain injuries that may be present in two or three in ten, say, they will have cognitive problems so they don't remember things. They're impulsive, they lack foresight and so on, so they don't plan ahead that well. And they're also lacking insight into their problems, so they're not very aware of their problems, which is why, as Superintendent Dalland was pointing out, the brain injury in a mix when it comes to suicidality is a big factor. We know that suicide, unfortunately, is a common occurrence after a brain injury and a brain injury is a big risk factor for suicidality as well. Yes, Professor. We carried out a preliminary audit study in three prisons in the Glasgow area, linking medical records to the current prison population and found that 23 per cent of the prisoners had been admitted to hospital at some point in their lives with a head injury. We looked at records going back to the 1980s. We carried out the study in just in April there. What was interesting was that a very significant proportion had intracranial injuries suggesting that it had a severe head injury, so about 50 per cent of those with a head injury had severe head injuries. Normally, the epidemiology of head injuries at 90 per cent would have a mild head injury and 10 per cent a severe head injury, so it looked at first sight that there was a significant number who'd had a severe head injury who were in prisons. The other finding that was of note is that, if you look at the epidemiology of head injury, you tend to get them in children, there are peaks in children and young adults, and then in older adults, in this group of those with a severe head injury, a very high proportion had had their head injury before the age of 15. They had the head injury at time when their social brain will continue to develop until about the age of 25, but had a head injury relatively early in life. It was to pick up on the point that Professor Miller made there, and in the papers that were helpfully circulated in advance, there was a lot of reference to childhood injuries. I wonder whether, with the philosophy of getting it right for every child, there is an issue about how that information is shared early on. Clearly, if you have a high percentage of people who might have criminal behaviour, you also have a percentage who don't, so there is also the stigmatisation issue, just because someone sustains. I wonder if there are opportunities to head it off, first and foremost in childhood and before superintendent. Allans, colleagues, come to be involved, which is in advance of any of this with the criminal justice system. If I can speak to that. Before you do that, I just don't fret. I've got Sandra, you're on the list after Elaine, but I've also got Mr Gentleman on, so I'll take Mr Gentleman next. OK, then I'll let the other members in that I have any list. So you are on my, you're on my pink list, and you're on my yellow list, just so you know you're not being missed. Sorry, please, just go ahead. I want to make two points, because they may not be necessarily obvious to everyone round the table. The first is that delivering services for brain injured people, wherever anything to do with the criminal justice system or not, requires quite a lot of individuals and agencies. Ideally this should be done in a seamless way, but reality is very often it's not done in a seamless way, and this is a challenge. One of the challenges is when something happens, it might be another illness, or it might be a mission to the prison system, which cuts the threat of continuity, and then it's difficult very often for the individual to re-access services. The other thing that's not particularly obvious, or not necessarily obvious, is that nine-tenths of people who have had a significant brain injury, which, as Hugh Williams said, would affect their ability to think and reason and judge and so on, will look entirely normal from the outside. They don't have a plaster on, they're not using a wheelchair, they don't have a badge of disability, which at one level is a very good thing for them, but at another level it's not. Often the information which would allow professionals and others involved in their care to deal with them in a different and perhaps better way doesn't flow with them. That is a problem, which I think is important to put on the table, because it is an invisible type of disabling condition. Does any other witness wish to come in on this continuity issue and how we might resolve it? Yes. I would definitely second that. I think that where assessments have been done, there is a problem with flow of information. I mean, we don't get, even within the criminal justice system, we don't get the information from any prison health assessments. And then the information that we gather, we pass on to people's general practitioners, but frequently they're moving around from one practice to another, and I think that continuity of care is definitely an issue. And it's not something that people tend to flag up, unless you ask them specifically about their history, they don't tend to flag it up and often don't see the significance of it themselves until you start to question them. Y Llywydd. Sorry, I'll take Professor Lent. Y Llywydd. I think one of the issues is that young people who are admitted to hospital are often very keen to return to home. And even if services are offered, they don't always take them up, so it can be difficult sometimes to identify them and then difficult for them to sometimes take out the services even if they're available. And so I think there is an issue about prevention and prevention of people developing and defending profile. I think the other issue is of course that in prisons there is a population there who have not had support or intervention, and one of the biggest risk factors for having a head injury is already having had a head injury. So you've got a population there at risk potentially of making their situation worse when they leave, including by having further head injury. My interest is similar to that expressed by John Finnie because the impression I got is that head injury and childhood for young people may result in problems further down the line and I just wondered if more could be done just in terms of recording when a young person's maybe had a head injury. And also an awareness raising amongst whether it's teachers, others that if behaviours start to show later on that maybe that link could be made time before it gets as serious as offending or a suicide or the sort of more severe mental health issues come. This is an issue about general awareness that could possibly pick up problems for young people earlier on. Professor Williams, you want to come in. Thank you. I mean, I think that that's an excellent point. What tends to happen is in studies in New Zealand showing us that children may have a head injury around 8, 5 or 6 even relatively mild injuries within 4 or 5 years they start to problems in school, their attention is not as good the concentration is not as good within 4 or 5 years they start to get excluded from schools for misbehaviour they're twice as likely to end up sort of drifting out of schools and then drifting into crime by a time of 14 or 15 they start to get involved in rather impulsive kind of crimes. So you can track there the kind of problem the brain injuries in the young tends to lead to them falling out of school and into basically essentially bad company used by gangs and all that because they're suggestible. So the critical issue there is to make sure that there's links between A&E departments and GPs and schools and people who have an oversight for the management kids going back into schools to ensure they get support to stay in schools and enable them to learn in that environment and then end up in a criminal justice system. Our data in one of our prison studies in adults showed that those with head injuries tended to be imprisoned from on average age 16 compared to age 21 in a non-head injured. So if you have a brain injury you tend to be imprisoned from your younger and for longer and increasingly for more violent crimes. Yet I take on board exactly your point about we want to stay away from something that then stigmatises the brain injury should not be something that stigmatises because the problem then is that if it is something that people will appreciate too much when necessarily ending up in crime then people might not report that as an issue. What we want is for people to be able to report they've had a head injury and can help and support which actually is, can lead to some very positive changes and they can reclaim their lives. So we do need to steer very clear away from stigmatising but the problem is in societies that historically we've tended to see head injury or not seen it. We've seen it something that sometimes doctors gentlemen said it's an invisible disability very often so the problem is that in that darkness people have not really seen the true issue. I have on my member's list just to let you know Sandra, Roderick, Margaret and Alison so I'll take Sandra now I have nobody on the witness list if you want to indicate so you can commit to Sandra next and then I'll take Ms Parker. Welcome everyone. I wanted to touch on what John and Elaine had also made but to go back to an earlier stage I was interested in some of the submissions where it said pre-birth and birth trauma and I wanted to raise the issue of foreset birth and breech birth would that have consequent a brain injury has any studies been done into that actually as a child has been born would that have an effect perhaps on a brain injury and the actions of people as they go through? Yes, Professor Williams. There's some works that refers to the general idea of there being neuro-disabilities and neuro-disabilities from various sources so any form of impairment to the brain and so there is a marked chance that in the authentic population that there is increased chance of being pretty much every form of neuro-disability of those kinds particularly brain injury and so we think of fetal alcohol syndrome would be higher and ADHD another condition as well so it's not necessarily just traumatic brain injury there's typically comorbidities with other issues but brain injury seems to be the biggest issue in terms of prevalence. Professor Macmillan wants to come in the same thing, Sam Drot, then you can come back in. I think if the injury was happening before around the time of birth there is of course monitoring of milestones in newborn in the early years of life so there would normally be at least some safeguard that a new developmental problem would be discovered I would expect the dangerous more people who are children who are a bit older where the follow-up is brief and the difficulties more like to go undetected. Yes, Mr Drot. The picture that's emerging about birth injury as we've tended to call it down the years is that a difficult labour a difficult birth is often a marker that there's been some form of developmental problem even before birth and there's always been a tendency to identify the birth itself as perhaps the initiating event in why there's disability in the child subsequently but the picture seems to be more complex than that. Yes, Dr Carson. That's a very important point and it's one of the issues I wanted to highlight in general about the discussion is from an epidemiological point of view this issue of what's called reverse causality in other words an example was given of the New Zealand school study that brain injury doesn't happen randomly in the population it often happens to people who have risk factors so if you have behavioural problems as a child you're more likely to have a brain injury and that New Zealand sort of cohorts that were worked up the strong likelihood is that you were dealing that the brain injuries were actually not necessarily relevant but it was the other factors in the life that led to the brain injury also led to the other problems now that brain injury may well be a marker of problem but the vast majority of mild injuries when people have looked at them don't necessarily cause adverse consequences to the brain but they happen to people who have things going wrong with them like substance misuse alcohol misuse, behavioural problems risk-taking behaviours all of which strongly associate with criminality and I think we have to be cautious in the mild injury cases which are the vast majority of not attributing everything to brain injury but realising this is a much more complex social problem separately because of such a smaller number of severe injuries I would fully agree with all that's been said but I think we need to separate these two aspects of discussion out thinking of them all as the one group I think is actually highly misleading as to where the problems come from No that's understand that that's thank you for that distinction Sandra I'm coming to root Ms Mark but let's Sandra finish her the same line though Mr Dr Carson has actually touched on it its severity on the level of injury and I just wondered if you've got medical records and you're working in partnership with NHS in the prisons would screening of you know prisoners would that come into force then about screening forehead injuries Take Ms Parker in now I think on that one I think we can set links into your remits yes The Grampian is working in partnership with NHS Grampian staff to test a model of care to identify and diagnose dramatic brain injury on admission A clinical neuropsychologist will provide enriched support and transition into the community and through the information that's gathered to the health assessment that will further inform any offending behaviour programmes and healthcare records will be shared look at the feasibility of delivering either one to one support or group work support to address offending behaviour the results of this pilot will be will further inform this agenda I understand there has been difficulty in recruiting however it's looking like possibly September that this model of care could be tested in an environment where people are coming into prison and are being diagnosed or assessed which responds to your query Can I just add where are the police in this because people come out maybe just get out and re-offend is there any connection made between the SPS and the Police Scotland there is but there's also a good connection between Police and NHS the records in our custody environment what you will see now is NHS nurses working in Police custody facilities and in many of them now they have access to the NHS computer records within the Police custody suite so when a person is asked a series of medical physical and mental health questions on arrival or presents in a way that we would have concerns we can raise that with the nurses they can then check what information is on the health system and the care can be looked at and then that information is introduced to the system either for assessment prior to release or for use by the court systems I'm just checking Dr Aldrich you wanted to come in but I wondered if it was on this business of the continuity from prison to police is it on this line? It was more around the causation I'll leave that just now then because I think you could come in about It was a specific comment on the records We know from a lot of research in particular stuff from Professor Macmillan's group but in NHS Scotland and indeed in the UK in general that the medical records of whether or not somebody has had a brain injury are actually very poorly recorded and although that information is there and it's certainly better than not having it we know that a large proportion of people have had very significant brain injuries it's not well recorded in their medical record and actually we also know the reverse that a large group of people who haven't had any significant brain injury what started out as a mild bump in the head over the years gets inflated in the medical records to be severe traumatic brain injury the Scottish acquired brain injury network is currently putting a set of proposals together that are going to the national services division of the NHS to look at a dramatic change to how we record brain injury and starting to have a national programme for proper recording of brain injury from the point of diagnosis in A&E onwards because actually when you're seeing somebody 10 years down the line it's not a facile process trying to make this diagnosis it's very very complex trying to do it in retrospect so this is a programme Sabin are quite excited about having promoted and it's just to let you know it's in its infancy at this stage that that might be a benefit Can I keep to this recording and sharing is that what you're going to ask about and speak about Dr Neil and then Dr McFarland is that the same kind of on that screening screening that's fine we'll keep to that just now and you're on the same thing Professor and we'll come back to you on records and then I've got your causation so a part do you want to keep to the records and so on would causation be part of this as well I don't want to park you if you're on this theme I mean I think there's an element of that I was going to say that a useful concept is a kind of web of causation where you look at a large number of factors that in this group tend to be rooted in deprivation and trauma and a lack of social resilience and for some people the consequences of a head injury start to become a very predominant theme in their presentation the difficulty is that when you look at it from a clinical perspective some people have had obvious very severe head injuries and have had treatment and other people have been the victim unfortunately of physical abuse where there have been active attempts at concealment at the time that there were children and piecing together records is very very difficult and continuity of information definitely is an issue I'm going to come in I've got others Dr Neil followed by Dr McFarlane followed by yourself and then I'm going to take Roddie who's been sitting for a while In line with this idea of a web of causation the health services in prisons are increasingly good at identifying mental health problems and substance misuse and potentially if the person has a learning disability what we're proposing is that screening of brain injury is added to that mix so we have a fuller understanding of the need of this population because screening is the first step and there are reliable measures such as the comprehensive health assessment tool to identify the problem that would then lead us to be able to look more closely at the kinds of difficulties this group have in terms of have they got behavioural discontrol problems, do they have emotional dysregulation problems that then would predispose them to further offence Dr McFarlane there's a little bit more about screening that I know my colleagues in Grampain are bringing in this programme pilot but this will be for prisoners who have obviously got a brain injury and there still will be a hidden population that prison is actually serving them quite well with the routine and structure within prison but again what Dr O'Neill was saying about screening for all prisoners would be of use First of Williams and I'll take Ms Barker Thank you, in context of the screening Dr O'Neill and Dr McFarlane mentioned the chat, the comprehensive health assessment tool or screening measures that's now in use across the youth secure estate in England and it's just a few questions so we don't want to end up with too many screening tools and all the rest of it but we do need to know what are the relevant factors in offending and brain injury and other neuro-developmental problems that are now being screened for and it's really important to link records up as Dr Carson mentioned unfortunately very often medical records are not full and they've been done in a hurry and all the rest of it so very often medical records won't be a very reliable resource but it will at least be a resource which is why it's probably a very good opportunity to screen for these kinds of common neuro-developmental disabilities when people come into the criminal justice system and at that point especially thinking about the young coming back to a point certainly about the developing brain the critical issue that people need to understand now in terms of our understanding of developing brains is that because the plasticity in developing brains and injuries of developing brain we won't know what the consequence of that will be for years down the line and very often the brain will not develop in a normal way so a bang on the head will have much more devastating effects than when a brain is older so we need to bear that in mind Thank you, I'll take Ms Parker then I will take you Roddy because that's round this whole issue of the records and screening and so on Yes, the Justice Committee are aware that health boards are now responsible for the provision of healthcare services in Scottish prisons and a memorandum of understanding and information sharing agreement is in place the new director for health and justice at the Scottish Government and Reena Adamson in her capacity as chair of the National Prison Health Network is currently in discussion regarding setting up a work stream on brain injury for prisoners I know that she's interested and has invited some of the members that are here today to give evidence to participate in that work stream and I think that would be an opportunity to look at some of these issues for example, information sharing records transfer of information and Reena, unable to come today because she's an annual leave but I was looking People are allowed it people say why we support her a radio label just put that in the record, it's allowed she has proposed setting up this work stream in the autumn on her return so that would be an opportunity to take forward some of these areas particularly looking at Scottish prisons and Reena also chairs the transfer of health care into the police custody suite so there's an opportunity to join some of that up Can I say I want to have the questions I'm happy if you don't want to do it this way but I've got Roddy, Margaret and Alison who have been a while, if you want to put your questions out there and then I'll just let them be dealt with Roddy, what do you want to ask? I was initially raising the issue of comprehensive health assessment tools in England but you touched on that Professor Williams and said that it did an amount to more than a few questions what I was really interested in from the justice point of view is what we could learn from other justice systems in what way are other justice systems more advanced on this area than us and bearing in mind what Ruth Parker was saying, obviously we could take account of that and moving forward So I'm good to leave that question because I'm going to put that question out there Yes There's been a lot of concentration on brain injuries of people in prison but if an alternative to custody's disposal is given how do we then identify these people, there's some progress with them being on remand but would this comprehensive health assessment tool help for these people or what else can be done? Alison Professor Williams talked about help and support and Ms Parker spoke about offender programmes and what I would find useful to understand is just how successful cognitive rehabilitation would be and where it is at at the moment if we do all this screening is it possible to make a significant difference Thank you I'm going to start first of all with what can we learn from our body's question who wants to Thank you Professor Williams I will be helpful to say that it will allow us there to be it's in different parts so from the risk assessment of suicidality and so on early on through to neurodisabilities is what's used in in England in the youth offending institutions and that's going to be moved into the community side as well over the next year or so it's been quite helpful so far because it's been shown to be very sensitive in terms of picking up on the issues and then incredibly importantly addressing whether something is a relatively mild issue that we don't really need to have too much in the way of intensive intervention just some education around can maybe your thinking has been affected to some extent or memory might be affected but not to a severe degree but also like a triage system to identify the ones who really do need more intensive interventions and in pilot projects that I'm involved with through the disability stress where we've put link workers in to major young offending institutions in one in Leeds and one in Manchester we are finding that it's incredibly helpful to have these brain injury link workers to help the prison staff identify and then manage the young people with brain injury where there may have been an indication in the past that there was a problem but the staff weren't aware of the true extent and the effect of those problems and so it has become it's a useful system for identification in terms of intervention these kind of link worker projects seem to be I want to keep to the one topic first of all other systems then we'll come on to the other members Dr Carson you want to talk about what we can learn from other justice systems No it's really just to pick up on a small point about these screening tools like the chat and other measures they do tend to be very sensitive in other words the chances are that they will pick up all people who haven't had a brain injury but they tend not to be very specific in other words they also pick up a lot of other people who haven't had a brain injury You said that a word about other justice systems can you perhaps now I just really wanted to make that point with screening is that the point is if you want actual proper diagnosis it's quite labour intensive and if you're thinking as your colleague was mentioning about custodial diversion as opposed to programmes within a custodial that becomes quite a big issue I think we understand the complexity and it's not one size fits all there's one reason for it and there's the complex environmental family whatever's happened to you Can I go back to other justice systems because we've had examples from yourself but has anybody else got examples for Scotland lagging behind sounds like it from what you're seeing I know that there's been submissions to the Welsh Assembly recently that we've been involved with along the same kind of lines in the United States and New York there's been a recent initiative about screening all the young people coming into the justice system indicating the half of all the young people, male and female have a knockout histories so in other areas in Canada the similar programmes Australia and New Zealand there's an interest in trying to screen more effectively so the screening side of things that seems to be some people picking up on as something that could be done Dr Neil I think that other justice systems have found ways of identifying particular problems that are associated with re-offending so attentional dysfunction is something that is likely after brain injury and one study found that if they identified who had attention deficit hyperactivity disorder which is associated with impulsive behaviours appropriately medicate this population then their chances of offending is reduced by one third so just by identifying a cognitive domain that is impaired medicating to prevent the person engaging in impulsive behaviour you're reducing by one third the re-offending rate Superintendent Alan We also have to give the Scottish justice system some credit for how it deals with people with brain injuries as victims and witnesses the police have the vulnerable database we have the vulnerable witnesses and victims legislation so there's a considerable line of work being done across the justice system that I think puts us in a strong position compared to many countries We know about that, we did the bill but I think the issue might be that people conceal or may not be aware that they have consequences from some injury at some point in their life I think that's perhaps the issue that's coming up from as well I think that relates to the range of causes that are described where the legislation and the database enables us to record vulnerability for a variety of reasons and then handle the individual without a label other than vulnerability and I think that's an important strength Can I go to alternatives to custody and remind me, Margaret, your question was about the number of cases that we have to deal with in prison, we're talking about routine screening there's already a pilot giving some good practice how much that's followed on with other NHS boards would be interesting how much they've got this in the radar at all but particularly if it's a non custodial sentence where do we start to identify this let alone do something to intervene and treat Thank you, Professor and then I'll take Dr Aldrich, yes Professor McMillan, sorry I think that you have to distinguish again in terms of the severity of the injury so if the injury has been severe and is essentially disabling in terms of the person's daily life then very likely what would be required to effect a change is a period of inpatient rehabilitation and if the disabilities are largely cognitive and emotional the best evidence base for creating a change is a holistic forms of neurobehaviour rehabilitation so I think if it was a severe injury that would be the route that one would think of going down if the injury has had a less disabling effect in the person's lifestyle you then may be looking at more of an education based programme of intervention and we're hopefully going to be what we are going to be looking at piloting a feasibility study in Pallment which would be a more of a generic system which is based on a cognitive behavioural therapy model that has been developed by Professor Chris Williams at the University of Glasgow and which folks is really in changing people's attitudes towards their lifestyle but that has a theoretical basis for doing that and that's a group based programme which potentially many people could access and doesn't require clinically trained staff to provide it so we're hoping to do a feasibility study in that could be a timing for that is there dates I've been to meet the governor and Professor Williams and I are going back to Pallment in a couple of weeks time to discuss further initiating a feasibility study that's a prison based setting but I wonder then if the pilot might concentrate on remand prisoners who may also be given when they might be released they might be given a non-custodial sentence if it could try and identify these cos it's the non-custodial sentences, how do you identify them and where are they screened? Well I think identifying them is an issue that that type of programme is a programme which hasn't been developed specifically for prisons so potentially that kind of programme would work for people who are not going to custodial centres identifying the people would be a matter of having a screening system which could pick up people who potentially have had a brain injury but this kind of intervention would be suitable not just for people who have had a brain injury because as we've said it's a complicated picture and it would be suitable also for people who may have drug abuse and other issues Are we moving to routine testing in the criminal justice system for brain injury traumatic brain injury is a matter of course to identify these when people whenever they come in contact with the criminal justice I think that would be a good step That's all good I think that it's very possible and desirable for people to be managed on community sentences with this kind of condition we're talking a lot about rehabilitation but we mustn't forget that functioning is often affected on a global level and they may become fairly vulnerable and some of the intervention which you may be looking at is really helping to support people to access and maintain housing and tenancies and benefits etc it's not all focused directly on rehabilitation The committee is quite good at that we do understand particularly with women offenders we've looked at all these issues some practical things like having a roof over your head and your benefits arriving and so on, stability Absolutely and I think you're right to point that out that a lot of good work is being done and I think a lot of that can be done well within a community sentence and we certainly identify people on a court mandated community based drug treatment programme with head injuries there's no reason why that kind of screening can't take place I'll take, I've got Professor Williams and Dr Neil on the same topic as Ed That's right And then I'm back to your question Alison I think as Superintendent Allen kind of mentioned that the police have a way of understanding when someone is vulnerable is excellent because that can flag up across the system, somebody's coming into the criminal justice system that there's an issue here we are trying to enable probation staff obviously that's right, the tricky around picking up on the issue both the magistrates and judges so that they can make the decisions around will be the best placement for somebody in terms of their ability to change behaviour and so if you were to start to have screening tools that were associated with identifying a vulnerability and the screening tool around identifying going to bring you then that would inform your judicial process as to whether somebody can participate in the judicial process what's actually happening around them and also understand what the consequences is of the centres they've been given be it community or custodial so I think it's a paramount importance to be able to put in screens in early on and linking with the police systems I was just thinking that we could have done perhaps with somebody from the social work system as well which is sort of missing in this who are often in the front line and meeting people who have got behaviour and it's challenging for various reasons I don't know if we did that we did ask yes so I think that's perhaps a little missing I've got Dr Neil If behaviour is identified as problematic and causes an offence then that's referred to as neuro behavioural disability if there is a brain injury associated with it so if we can identify these vulnerable offenders who potentially have neuro behavioural disability thankfully the provision of the holistic neuro behavioural rehab that Professor McMillan referred to in Scotland is growing so we've for many years had Dr Carson service at the Robert Ferguson unit and now the brain injury rehabilitation trust also runs a unit in Glasgow providing this holistic evidence based intervention the various studies that have been carried out on the cost effectiveness of this show in terms of the functional gains of life skills that these people can gain a kind of lifetime saving of between 1.3 and 1.8 million in their lifetime care costs so there's kind of re-equipping people with skills that they may have lost as a result of the injury are never because of their adverse social experiences in early life never really developed Can you tell me about this 1.8 million what does that relate to? Sorry, is that one a lot of money I just want to know what it is well if you have neuro behavioural disability it is very cost the cost of your care is very high there after because you have to be kept safe and other people around you need to be kept safe from your behaviour so if people are admitted to one of these services can have their behaviour ameliorated then their lifetime care costs are less these are people who have maybe not ended up in the criminal justice system or may have passed histories of criminal justice service use but either way these are two studies carried out by Audie and Ramos which I can supply to the committee if you're interested or worthy to net all I'm just interested as always because the departments have to look at money and if it's if it's putting preventative and you're even spending more to prevent people going into the criminal justice system and re-offending and so on you're saving to the public person shouldn't be the basic reason for it but it's very helpful if you introduce a thing like 1.8 million you can see the public going 1.8 million to save one person or something you know there's a lot of money that's not what you're saying or that were the lifetime care costs of someone with neuro behavioural disability okay Mr Gentleman I simply wanted to expand on that point I agree with what Dr O'Neill just said but there's been a wealth of evidence for something like 30 years a lot of it from the USA admittedly but also increasingly from other countries that says basically that if you invest money in rehabilitation services however defined and that would include the social and housing rehabilitation then you get in a sense the money recouped within three to five years afterwards because you convert somebody who is dependent into someone who's independent and in the best case scenario you convert someone back into a wage earning taxpayer the difficulty sometimes is that it's different pots of money someone has to spend the money for someone else to recoup the benefit later on and joined up thinking would help the deal to make the economic argument for rehabilitation clear Governments moving in that direction with regard to looking at the holistic spend rather than the various silo spend I've got Professor Williams I'm getting to your question Alison Professor Williams, Dr Aldridge and Dr Carson after that I would just make a point in a concept of preventative economics it seems to be that reoffending costs about £10 billion to the UK to the UK yes we need the Scottish figures I wonder what the Scottish figures are but that's the figure from right honourable Christopher Grayling last year somewhere between £7 billion to £13 billion and if you then look at where does that if you then start to think about what does a reoffending person look like what they look like people that we've been talking about the brain injuries will be a big factor in the level of risk factors but it seems to be that brain injury is the keystone condition within that that's why some preventative spending around identifying a managing brain injury particularly early on may bring along some health of some economic benefit down the line Thank you Dr Aldridge I think that if I go back to my clinic this afternoon and identify someone with this kind of level of problem by the time they if I then make a referral it can be several months before that appointment is offered if they happen to miss that appointment then it may be another sort of four months or so before they get an offer of an outpatient assessment and in between that time we need to try to stabilise their drug use so I think it feels like an under resourced area and if I'm sitting in my clinic this afternoon with someone like that it's probably going to be a year or so before I can get them almost to their first appointment with neurorehabitation services even for their assessment it just takes that long and so it feels under resourced Dr Carson I'm going to make that point with some Scottish figures again as part of his general programme for trying to improve head injury care in Scotland putting forward a comprehensive proposal and in the rehabilitation aspect of that we would estimate that Scotland should have about 400 rehabilitation beds with associated outside services it has 120 and some areas are severely under resourced in terms of community service at all let alone adequate service so that there is a huge gap if however once going then to talk about custodial diversion there is a separate issue about the containment depending on the severity of the crime there are currently very few forensic beds in Scotland for brain injured offenders my unit's probably the only unit of the brain injury units in Scotland that occasionally take brain injured offenders but we come into security problems because we're not a secure unit the majority of the medium secure forensic psychiatry facilities do not take brain injury as a matter of policy the state hospital does but there is a massive gap in provision and there is also a problem with the compulsory aspect of treatment in that most of the studies quoted are on people who are volunteering for treatment and at least willing to engage with all the cognitive difficulties can get in the way but that's before you start looking at using the mental health act or the criminal provisions of it to divert them and then it gets very complicated so it's not straightforward again just the point to make Ms Parker I'll take you then I'll take Alison to repeat your question again and then I'm going to do a wind-up of this session SPS experience and making referrals to health boards assessment for prisoners identified with traumatic brain injury have also evidenced up to 12 months huge resource implications across health boards in Scotland thank you and Alison can you remind us of your mainly because I've written it down I can't read my handwriting anymore I mean that is I'm asking you I suppose I've been keen to find out how successful cognitive rehabilitation was I think Dr Brian O'Neill and Mr Gentleman have touched on that but what's more clear is actually it's seriously under resourced and we're just talking about cranking up this so I think that's the main message I'm not sure there's anything more to be added to that I think the question for us is where would the resources come from and spend to save I'm going to wind up now because I would like each person that's not a parlor game but I'd like each person is we're going to consider if there's one key point and I mean one key point that you'd wish us to consider in a recommendation as it were to take forward and to do one thing I know that's not fair really but then that's not why I'm sitting here I'm not going to be fair because we have a short time as you know we have a gap we're able to do this discussion but if you have one thing you want to take home I think we're beginning to get some of them now after the broad discussion what would it be and who would like to start you just nominate yourselves you only get one bite at this cherry yes I'm confident my colleagues will add in other things that would be on my list but I think one place we need to start is with a comprehensive epidemiological study that would give us good information about head injury throughout the prisons in Scotland and the relationship to offending Thank you very much Yes, Doctor MacFarlane Epidemic Epidemiological study would be key to that but I also think some teaching and training for staff to increase awareness would help improve prisoner wellbeing Thank you Thank you, Doctor Both identification of brain injury in offenders and the provision of training has been carried out by the disabilities trust workers who go into the prisons to train and help people identify vulnerable offenders So your recommendation is more link workers More link workers? Yes, if could just Thank you, yes, Ms Parker When focusing on prisoners and screening rehabilitation I would, my wish would be for continuity of care to ensure that we have that community reintegration package right and that if we're looking at rehabilitation centres that we've got that consistency across Scotland Thank you Yes, Mr Gentleman Thank you Many years of running a brain injury rehabilitation unit as a doctor have taught me that if you look at only the medical over clinical issues you'll miss a lot of the picture and I would put in a plea for more resourcing of the resettlement of offenders in the community to reduce the risk of reoffending and to provide services of life, of course Thank you very much Dr Carson I think his answer is better than the one I was going to give you I'll let you think of another one I'm sure you can fuck another one out I would like to look at what we can do about secure beds for patients with known very severe brain injuries that have committed significant crimes that are in the criminal justice system and are currently impossible to place I think it links very much to the lack of available services and that was this week's publication by HMIC of a review of police custody and that highlighted the challenges of appropriate mental health service access once people are identified as needing it and in terms of a potential beneficiary of any increased spend it would probably be us that would reap the savings as well as the overall public purse but I would have to support the services in need of additional funding Thank you very much Others please, Professor Williams I'm sure the point to be made about screening screening is an incredibly important point so I won't make that point but what I would wish for would be some preventative action around childhood brain injuries to pick up on childhood brain injuries more effectively the linkages between A&E departments, GP practices and schools to enable better reintegration of children at risk back into schools and didn't so doing they're in schools running down the line in prisons Thank you, some people not somebody not giving me something yet Dr Aldridge and then Dr MacFarlane of you you have sorry Dr Aldridge Well I think that in terms of prevention I really think that this does feed into the sort of agenda of minimum pricing for alcohol for instance to try to reduce the ability of that because that feeds into the kind of risk factors associated with getting a head injury in the first place I think and for more resource and awareness to be directed at that sort of issue The causations You've written a report for us we don't need to sit afterwards I've got all the points there I thought I'd save you the time Thank you very much for your very valuable time and for extremely interesting as always to have round table discussions and to hear across the spectrum Thank you very much and we will I think you will find out what we're going to be doing with it in due course but it's certainly I don't think we'll stop here I'm going to suspend till 11.10 Thank you A next item of business is another one of round table evidence session this time on environmental crime and its connections to serious organised crime and money laundering I'm an participant to this session and thank you very much for written submissions I don't know if you've all been at a round table in Parliament before No, so what I will do is first of all I'm going around to introduce themselves and then this is a chance to keep the politicians silent which takes some doing but we will do it and I also welcome Graham Day I'm not saying you have to be silent all the time Graham will make a nice change what I will do is let mainly its interaction between witnesses because it's a listen and learn for the politicians I have two lists, I have my yellow list which is witnesses of priority and as my committee know they're on the pink list which means they are in the B plan here but we tried to get through as much as possible and we've always found it extremely useful as we did the last session can I welcome you for also giving up your time and can I ask people to introduce yourself I'm Christine Graham MSP and because you all said it before I'm going to say I'm the MSP from Midlothian South, Tweeddale and Lauderdale a bit of a mouthful but wonderful place and I convene the committee I'm Elaine Murray MSP I'm Fraisha and I'm the vice convener of the committee good morning sorry, meant to say your lights will come on automatically just let me know that you want to be called I'll let you know and I'll call you and your light will go on little red light will go on so when it's on be discreet your neighbour you would wish to be said in public I'm looking at myself good morning, I'm Katrina Durham the head of policy for the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service Margaret Mitchell, member of the Justice Committee and MSP for Central Scotland Stephen Freiland from the Scottish Environmental Services Association which is a trade body for the waste industry I'm Roderick Campbell MSP for North East Fife and a member of the Justice Committee good morning, I'm Linda Ovens chair of the Scottish Centre of the Chartered Institution of Waste Management, the professional body for the industry good morning, Christian Arad MSP for the North East of Scotland and a member of the committee good morning, John Finne MSP Highlands and Islands and committee member I'm Graham Day MSP for Angus South and I'm here as deputy convener of the rural affairs climate change and environment committee I'm John Mundell chief executive of Inverclyde council I'm here representing Solace authority chief executives and I'm the portfolio lead on environment sustainability and waste management Sandra White MSP for Glasgow Kelvin and a member of the committee good morning, Gary Mitchell detective chief inspector within Police Scotland organised crime counter-terrorism unit good morning, Roryn Nicholson assistant chief constable organised crime counter-terrorism and safer communities good morning, Alison McKinnon MSP for North East Scotland a member of the Justice Committee Wilson national operations western enforcement management board for SIPA John Pentland member of the Scottish Parliament for Malmousher and a member of the Justice Committee good morning, I'm Calum Mcdonald an executive director with SIPA and chairman of the environmental crime task force established in 2012 and now conscious that Mr Day has come with his title with him as deputy convener of the environment world development committee when we're directing it to links with crime so we'll not trend on toes we hope and I think just as a general question to start people off is to say why on earth should one link serious organised crime and environmental waste and crime like that I mean the public would say what's this all about Alfie and I'm asking you who wants to start you look at man ready at the starting gate ACC Nicholson you're ready there, yes I can start absolutely no problem at all organised crime is involved in any in every facet of Scottish life so they will be involved in environmental crime like they are involved in any other kind of criminality they'll try to get involved in legitimate business they'll try to undermine legitimate business which is a key component of what we're going to talk about today no doubt and as I say we've done data sweeps we do that quarterly to have a real understanding of what organised crimes involved in we've got roughly about 220 organised crime groups in Scotland there's about three and a half thousand members we know at this point in time that the involvement in environmental crime has been growing when we looked at 2012 we think it was about 1.3% come on to 2014 we think it's about 4% and we think now there's about 10 organised crime groups involved to some degree in environmental crime so it's very important in terms of how we take this forward they don't adhere to legislation they don't adhere to regulation that then is a competitive advantage because they can compete with legitimate business they can undercut legitimate business and fairly obviously that's what we want ultimately to stop and we want to stop the difficulties there are from what they undertake so dumping waste, toxic waste into landfill sites and a whole range of different things that save them finance that causes difficulty for the environment and other parts of the economy so that would be the starting point and I appreciate for reasons of prosecution and things you can't name names when you accept that who wants to come? Mr McDonald I would agree with everything that Ruri has just said there's a very low barrier to entry into the waste industry for organised criminals and the potential benefits for them are huge and there's little to dissuade them from becoming involved in this and there are really high rewards yes Ms Evans that's increasing the cost of being compliant within our industry is increasing with taxes and requirements to separate waste and new regulations coming in requiring more people to do more things which has a cost impact and provides a wider envelope if you like to operate Bill Nolack In addition what Linda has just said organised crime as Ruri has mentioned is dynamic, flexible in the way they operate so they are quite adept at putting up a legal facade putting in the impression of compliance but sitting behind that is the underlying motive of gaining money not adhering to the environmental requirements that are applicable to them but in the same time under cutting legitimate business and effectively not allowing a level playing field to operate I've got no other witnesses on my list so John you want to ask a question John Finnie It's a point you start off initially with I wonder the extent to which the convener talked about public awareness public awareness is terribly important whether it's someone undertaking repairs or renovations on your house and knowing what would be done to understand that the waste that comes from that has been properly disposed of has there been any campaign I appreciate a lot of the stuff you talk about Mr Wilson there there being a legitimate front to it and it might not be obvious but some raising of public awareness because I think that's terribly important I sought to engage with the industry and with those who are involved in that infrastructure supplying haulage and moving waste to and fro various sites and so on the underlying evidence is that prices are too good to be true and we have to get that out to the industry and we've sought to do that there is a duty of care on the industry in terms of its movement of waste back and forth but we now I think need to reach out to the public because it does start at some point and it starts certainly in the private sector in the public and local authority sector we're reaching through the work we're doing with John Mundell and local authorities but now is the time to reach to the public and put this message across Mr Mundell, I know my members list of good market, Elaine, Christian and Sandra Public awareness is increasing, we've just had national litter week huge litter campaigns and the public is very aware of flytipping incidents and the small scale crime that is kind of on-going but what we're looking at today is a level above that is the organisations that they're organised organisations we're not on flytipping and litter we're into toxic waste that's what we want to hear about the public are very aware of the low level if you like criminality but not what we're talking about today on this issue this is still on publicity and so on I've got John Mundell back in again and Graeme you're on my list The public invariably are the people who identify problems with dumping or whatever and they're usually the ones where they've witnessed increased volumes of traffic going to particular sites who very often report these things at the moment however there are a number of campaigns that have been undertaken up till now for example the Dumb Dumpers campaign which is run by Keep Scotland Beautiful and some of these campaigns have been on the television that type of thing to raise awareness and obviously you said that you don't want to deal with flytipping which you can understand but there are varying degrees there are small incidents maybe an individual householder up to building businesses which again is a form of crime as far as I'm concerned but there may be dumping materials which can include asbestos and it may have all just been a field entrance but nonetheless the issues of dealing with that can be major sites Not disputing that for a moment that it can be just somebody dumping a mattress or a whole lot of waste that's being flytipped on maybe farmland but we're looking specifically at a serious organised crime which is under the carpet under a blanket that we don't know about and that's where we want to get publicity for this and what publicity is there out to the public and perhaps to other agencies who are the big people who give the contracts out like local authorities and health boards that's the real so that's the kind of thing that John what information and publicity are they getting to know when they get bids in who's behind the bid so I'll now take sorry yeah I know but I'm going to take the witnesses first just that I'm Christian I know but I'll take the witnesses first so I've got that Mr Mundell you've done your bit there the large agencies so I would say that public awareness is low but John is also right that it's often members of the public that draw illegal activity to our attention but amongst the public there's a very low awareness that organised crime is involved in this particular industry I think it's probably also fair to say that awareness amongst many responsible authorities is pretty low but growing now and you know the different people that you've got round the table have been meeting and discussing this issue with a view to work in co-operate lovely and that includes the legitimate end of the industry and the shape of Linda and Stephen Freeland the trade body and the professional body do you want to come in there Mr Freeland I think that's your cue yeah I think one of the least well known victims of this is the regulated and legitimate industry if we don't make greater efforts to clamp down on environmental crime and the sears are organised criminals involved in this materials can be diverted away from regulated sites we've got our members who are committing to multi million pound developments on new facilities in to meet to the zero waste plan objectives why would they want to invest the risk of that money if there's no guarantee they're going to get a return so for me the weakest link in this whole supply chain is on the waste producer the high street business who is being bombarded now with the whole list of regulations and this is all we fully support the regulatory framework it needs to drive up improvements and very standards that invariably comes with an additional cost if they're unaware of their regulatory requirements and somebody comes along and is able to offer a cut market price there's a temptation to use that so the thing is that the existing framework the existing duty of care has been for 20 years is an existing requirement it just needs to be strongly enforced, strongly looked at and a better understanding of this information that comes through duty of care I'll take you Graham then I'll take Margaret then Elaine I've put Margaret and Elaine's questions together like last time so Graham I was just struck by a comment in the written evidence and Mr Mundell's organisation when he talked about the constraints of EU procurement regulations on councils I just wonder given this partnership approach that's been taking to tackle this issue what actually needs to be done to put councils in a better place to ensure that they're not giving contracts to organisations like these who wants to take that one up Mr Mundell thank you the primary control a council has in checking suppliers of whatever is through the tendering process and at the moment a council cannot legally disbar a supplier or a tenderer indeed from submitting a tender to a council for particular works and we will be dealing with our domestic waste stream disposing of that based on purely intelligence from the police now the environmental crime task force is sharing on an increasing scale intelligence which is hugely helpful and I have to say I'm feeling very positive about the workings of the environmental crime task force in that regard because HMRC, police, SEPA and agency as well so that's hugely helpful however we are barred from excluding a tenderer if there have been no formal criminal convictions these convictions could be anything from corruption, bribery and corruption through common law type legislation and if there have not been any convictions it really makes it extremely difficult for us to bar these very sophisticated organisations from tendering or indeed awarding a tender to these suppliers if in the event during the term of an awarded contract we come across evidence that proves that supplier has not declared any criminal convictions prior to the tender stage or at the time of award we can actually cease that contract immediately without any recourse to compensation for that supplier so there are rules and regulations there the difficulty is getting the intelligence the environmental crime task force at the moment are improving their information sharing protocols which is hugely helpful and again that's not easy either that's quite complex to achieve effective fast-tracked information sharing I was just going to ask you do the criminal convictions have to be relevant to the nature of the contract because we're talking about money laundering often dirty money being put literally into another so-called legit business can it be any kind of criminal convictions and how would you get behind the facade of individuals and the legal status of a company I mean it's quite difficult technically legally how would you it's extremely difficult and I'm certainly no expert with regard to the different forms of legislation in that regard but there are common law powers I've mentioned them already in fact there's a whole long list cheating the revenue HMRC failing to pay VAT and convictions are all very relevant and indeed they probably exist in a great scale with serious organised crime I'm trying to get to the point though is it convictions perhaps that ACC can help me convictions to individuals or how do you do that link that to a company name which has the veil of a different identity it's extremely difficult and many of the individuals that we're talking about wouldn't have any criminal convictions from all of that however we will have intelligence that we would want to share that becomes very very difficult and even if we do share it there's no confidence in being able to use that and the litigation that might follow so we need to find ways of sharing intelligence that doesn't amount to a conviction straightforward but if we've got intelligence that depending on what the social intelligence is we legally cannot share at this moment in time there's no way of changing that in the future that gives confidence to councils for instance and other bodies in terms of refusing to give contracts to the kind of businesses, organisations and individuals that we're actually talking about today and we'll maybe combat Mr Wilson I'll let other members in now Mr Wilson after you Just to sort of broaden that issue out as an agency we're also constrained with the current legislation in terms of the issue of licences and permits we have fit and proper person tests but in terms of convictions the limited environmental convictions or they are concerned around financial provision or technical competency we are looking at legislation just now through the Regulatory Reform Act and looking at the area of fit and proper person but it's piercing that corporate veil it's a problem because sitting behind whatever conditional fit and proper person we put up we may still have intelligence that despite all that the company is merely ever sad and we are left with the position of what do we do as an agency if all the boxes have been ticked how do we stop this from happening Mr Alrumpol this is for the Crown Office come in I think As ACC Nicholson identified it is the issue of converting the intelligence into evidence that can be then led in court in order to obtain a successful conviction and there is quite a lot of case law in the United Kingdom in relation to piercing the corporate veil and looking behind the company if it is being utilised for sham purposes and we certainly are completely committed to working with all the different agencies to try and secure these convictions when the evidence is there piercing the corporate veil is also very, very relevant when we're looking at assets and we're looking at the utilisation of the proceeds of crime because that's another tool that we use in terms of successfully trying to combat the serious and organised crime group infiltration and we certainly will do everything we can to work with all the different agencies to make sure that we identify the benefits and the assets that can be restrained and then the assets that can hopefully be confiscated at a later stage it is complex and it requires a multi agency approach that's the key here and we have already established very, very good links that have indicated people working with all the agencies around the table Mr Wilson, and then I'll take in Margaret and Elaine Mr Wilson You'd be very interested in learning more in participating in any consultation around the second roof the legislation that will come out for the Procurement Reform Scotland Act that gave the Senate in June of this year because that seems to be an area that we could provide some experience on in terms of if we could pass on some of the issues that we have and see whether they have some relevance to that legislation while it's still in that draft form Let's take Margaret and Elaine if you can give your questions please Margaret Just concentrating on the awareness just to the public generally of an individual crime say fly tipping, an organised crime for fly tipping and other activities that's very lucrative what extent is the taxpayer aware of the cost to their pocket and how much could be made of that to try and get them to be more aware of possible sources of intelligence that they could give for example the cleanup rate the costs of all of that for various breaches the actual investigation itself and the prosecution and also how do we address the leniency that seems to be apparent in sentencing and as the Crown and Procurator Fiscal got any particular specialism here in environmental crimes that could help and the last bit I think is the duty of care for businesses and companies enough to make them aware that if it's cut price and it sounds too good to be true it almost is and you're almost injured in fear of being prosecuted and that's going back to the leniency of sentencing again that was clever, that was three questions they're too cute for me in here Elaine, I'm going to get the pile of questions and I'll put them out there my interest is also in deterrence clearly there's two aspects to that one is whether or not you're actually going to be found out and obviously you've been already touched on something like the joint working that's been done around that but I was also interested in the CISA's evidence that suggested that, as Margaret said that the sentencing was leniency and whether or not the punishments that are available actually fit the crimes or do we need to address that? Right, so I have to what extent is the public aware of the overall course clean up everything that happens that hits their pockets, do you have any figures for that and leniency and sentencing is that part of the punishment not fitting the crime of the Crown Office in environmental crime and the information or duty of care to businesses and companies that they, if they're party to it or they turn a blind eye or they don't meet too much of an inquiry there's some kind of comeuppance for them so I'll start off first of all with the overall cost does Emily get any figures to give us it's quite a tough one but somebody can do it Yes, Mr Freeland Yes, it's very very hard to quantify the ESA educational trust did a report which I think you probably saw earlier on this year that tried to quantify this, is it a UK level rather than a Scottish level and obviously the figures were set to a range of different variables but they did suggest an overall cost of about £570 million a year breaking that down to £157 million of that was through a vision of landfill tax and the rest split between flytipping £186 million and the rest are actually dealing with illegal sites Those you know about Yes, somebody else want to come on the cost Yes, thank you Mr Wilson Just in terms of the cases that we cannot go into detail for obvious reasons because they're live the financial benefit that we have seen in terms of that the vast majority of which is made up tax evasion between 18 and 90% we provided some written evidence that stated it was £27 million and well since we submitted that the figures risen to £29 million now 90% of that current figure for these cases is around tax Is the public aware of that? No I think that the question ought to be asked should there be more public awareness in this area Definitely This is theft from the public purse pure and simple and it's not going back into the purse it's not being used for the operation of the Government Have you included the cost of detection and all the surveillance in that figure? I mean that's just cleanup We're talking about the total cost the efforts of trying to do it so somebody got figures for that That's not cleanup cost that is the financial benefit that the individuals do The cleanup costs are substantial Again without going into the details the figures will run for these cases if we go into Wellington's millions and millions of pounds there are cases that I think have been submitted and written submission from the Northern Irish experience and the figures there are startling We have to combat that we have to bring awareness to the public to the Government that this is a serious issue Can I move to the second question if nobody else is coming about the cost about it leniency and sentencing who wants to comment on that you feel that there's not the punishment doesn't fit the crime they can't ask the Crown Office they're not allowed to do talk about that but is there anybody who's been on the police can any views from local authorities who've got the burden perhaps of doing all this or do no comment You're free, be bold, this is your chance Yes, you go for it, Ms Evans Thank you You just go for it, let's have that you think it's leniency and sentencing it seems very coy about that question I think just in terms of awareness to say that it's not just the general public who don't have much understanding of the level of cost and the level of finances involved in this I think the industry do as well that our own industry is shocked when cases do come out and can be publicised then the figures the millions of pounds are shocking to the compliant industry as much as the public In terms of fines and leniency we've seen for years that fines are for specific environmental crimes such as fly tipping and we've seen in the ESA reports that was provided today that the fines that are attributed to the cases in England in that report are far less than the actual cost of the tax evasion and the clean up and the legal cost to go with that Are statutory fines or common law penalties imposed? Can somebody clarify for me? I'm not sure about England and Wales but certainly in Scotland if it's prosecuted under the statutory legislation then it would be a statutory fine Do we've got Mr McDonald Yes I'm certainly not going to criticise the judiciary here and the levels of fines are entirely a matter for them They are about, that's why I ask the question But what I would say is that I think there is a trend which is moving in the right direction just in recent years cases that CPAS brought to the courts have resulted in I'll give you a few examples one a fine of £200,000 one a custodial sentence for six months and another one a restriction of liberty order and these are all recent so I think there is a move which is in the right direction Yes Add to Callum there we do have a conviction last year where in terms of environmental crime there was the first confiscation order so there were a seizure of assets there and that was £41,130 was seized off an individual or a company I think it was Can I go because you're on to specialisms because we know the Crown Office has specialised and tried to do wildlife crime and environmental crime to expand One of the strategic priorities for our organisation includes crime and the recovery of assets from those involved in criminal activities The Serious and Organised Crime Division was created in 2011 and that division is split into seven units we have the proceeds of crime unit the economic crime unit the international cooperation unit the wildlife and environmental crime unit the organised crime unit and the criminal allegations against the police unit and we will be in the course of this year setting up a regulatory crime unit and that demonstrates that within these units there are specialists the proceeds of crime unit for example has about 19 or 20 members of staff within it that are working exclusively on seizure of assets in relation to the on-going live investigations I was going to draw you an ACC Nicholson about specialisms with an obviously starts with them to some extent with you The police Yeah, exactly Fairly obviously we've organised crime and counter-terrorism safer communities just to add in some other bits and pieces but we obviously adhere to the Scottish Government strategy in terms of letting our communities flourish and the 4Ds so detect, deter, disrupt and divert You did well to get three Fairly obviously then leads on each one of these that allow us to take this forward because at the end of the day once we're talking about fines then we're probably at the wrong end of what we need to be doing here so actually there's about 9 billion pounds of public service contracts in Scotland that's what we ought to be trying to protect so we should have every single penny of that ought to be going to legitimate business that ought to be the outcome of what we try to do here what we try to do collectively so each agency here is working together so Gart Cosh brings benefits in all the various agencies coming together we've got SEPA will be embedded into Gart Cosh just over the next three or four weeks we've just signed an information sharing protocol with SEPA myself and Calum signed that in June and so Stride's being made in terms of actually how to take this forward what I said earlier on was in terms of intelligence sharing so we would like to share much more intelligence about what's going on, share it with SEPA fairly obviously but also share it with local authorities because we know from our intelligence we don't have the level of a conviction but we know from our intelligence that people are involved in series organised crime we know if they're involved in money laundering and at times we can't share that level of intelligence with others when they could make decisions about whether having these organisations involved or not and so we need to find ways of actually making it well some intelligence that we gather it's illegal to share with other organisations some intelligence is not at that level of corroboration where councils and others have confidence that they can actually take that forward We're not allowed to use the C word in your corroboration but can I just say to you I understand that but when you're not so secure in it and quite rightly local authority this is not this kind of dodgy information it's not really sustained but you said for other reasons you can't share what are those other reasons without naming cases what are the other reasons Under RIPA regulation of investigary powers act part 1 there's certain intelligence that we legally cannot share with anybody else and so but however that intelligence would give us a confidence that organisations are involved in serious organised crime and we are not in a position that we can share that I want to give us an example of something under RIPA that you can't therefore share because that seems to be the whole problem for you Yeah well it would be intelligence a very sensitive level that we can gather that we are not in a position that we can share with us So at the most sensitive level of intelligence gathering then we cannot share it's under the legislation it's under RIPA part 1 for instance but there's other intelligence as well that we can't give the social off so fairly obviously legitimately people in councils would want to know well what is the social that intelligence how can we rely on that intelligence well we can tell you the intelligence but we can't tell you the source of it so it's not that the intelligence wouldn't be it couldn't be relied on it that most of the intelligence that we would give we would suggest we can or you can rely on however sharing that sharing the provenance of that we cannot do and that causes a difficulty because when the councilling goes forward they get challenged on the courts litigation wherever else happens to be they don't have the confidence in using that intelligence where it came from and a whole range of issues now we've suggested the notion of an intelligence and information commissioner high court judge or whoever else that might look at our intelligence and be able to give some form of certificate I don't know what that would look like but nonetheless be able to say yes I've looked at the intelligence I've looked at the sensitive intelligence and I can tell you that that organisation is involved in series organised crime or no they definitely know it they get a clean bill of health organisations the opportunity then to deal with that and make decisions about whether in fact that organisation that individual could get the contract that they're trying to procure so we think there are ways of moving forward we think that there are ways that we ought to be able to share more of the intelligence that we hold, not only that we hold but also a secret hold the local authorities themselves will hold that can be shared more readily as we move forward as I said originally this is about the 9 billion pounds of public so we're focusing today on environmental crime and I wholly understand that however as I said at the very start a series organised crime is involved in every facet of Scottish life so whether that's nurseries or whatever it has to be exactly so my plea here is that it needs to be broader we need the public marketing of all of this needs to be about environmental crime of course it does that's really important for the public to understand the involvement from other aspects of what organised crime are involved and now from a police perspective we do a lot of marketing we go to the media we promote success as we see success and whatever else happens to be but anything that can be done to make sure that the public knows and understands and actually doesn't buy into if it's too good to be true then it's going to be too good to be true on that point can I just start there with other questions but you mentioned duty of care Margaret's question was about duty of care from the parties issuing the contract does anyone want to comment on that perhaps from I don't know if the Crown Office if there's a role for the Crown Office at the end of the day there when someone willfully turns a blind eye or something is there a legal remedy there or it's more likely to be a civil legal remedy I would suggest in terms of the tendering of contracts and duty of care yes is civil but I meant it it would depend entirely on the circumstances and the state of knowledge but it's something that we wouldn't be adverse to looking at certainly if we have good evidence to suggest that that's being done I think what I'm getting at is that other parties to contents that regularly are quite easily giving them out to the wrong sort of companies who so they're in it together yes I'll take Mr Wilson first because he was ready and Mr McDonnell I think I'll come in within the environmental legislation there is provision within a number of acts for duty of care the question is whether duty of care is fully understood in terms of the responsibilities on the operators that has been in effect for a number of years in various guises but more needs to be done in terms of its enforcement and bringing that back to the attempt of industry we did hold and continue to hold discussions with industry and professional bodies and we have outlined at the launch of Ceasar's pathway to zero waste as recently as 2012 that duty of care lies at the heart of that and they have a joint responsibility to undertake duty of care and that's been introduced in recent legislation also Mr McDonnell then miss Evans Stephen Freeland mentioned earlier that the duty of care legislation around waste has been around for 20 years plus the key thing to note about it though is that it was designed pretty much as a self-policing mechanism there are literally millions of transactions in a year around the movement of waste materials and it would be impossible to actively and proactively police all these transactions so the system as designed 20 years ago the intention was that it be self-policing and that's part of the problem The duty of care system and when we discuss that in an industry forum in Ceasar or wherever is to the operators and it's to the people who understand what duty of care is and what duty of care needs to do and everything but it comes down to there's a bunch of new businesses that are required to look for contracts and do all this and primarily as a householder then would you know that you need a transfer note and you have to be a regulated carrier to take that waste away you put your bin out and the local authority takes that Mr McDonnell I may have reached a duty of care but as a householder that's not something you would think about automatically we've now got more and more small businesses especially who then are not aware that the rules are different for business waste and that's on all scale so I think duty of care works for the people who know what it is and that it's fine but there's a whole education layer missing at the moment of those responsibilities Mr Freeland there are moves to move from a paper based to an electronic based approach to duty of care which is very much welcomed and should provide a greater oversight into the movement and transaction of waste and hopefully then be able to pinpoint exactly where the problems are lying what do you mean electronic it's not a magic word at the moment when a high street waste producer contracts with their waste collector it's a paper based note which says I've picked up from X location I've taken X waste and I'm taking it to destination Y and that paper then gets stored in a box and it's more waste and it then gets stored by various different parties in the chain and it then means that if SIPA then do come and are required to try and do an audit of where that waste is gone and who's been handling it that should be available and unfortunately a less scoopless operator is less inclined to keep hold of this so if we're all moving to an electronic based system it's making rather than paper based it's all transfers of spreadsheets and handheld electronic gadgets and where does it go does it just stay with the person who puts it on the database well then if it means it can be uploaded to SIPA's systems automatically which will hopefully provide a bit more oversight thank you I need these things explained and this happens just to add to that as the electronic system in the paper system then there's been a gap historically between waste collection information and the site information so it's been quite difficult I would say for SIPA to match where somebody says things are going to on the collection systems on a paper system to actually are those sites available we'll make that much more transparent Mr Wilson electronic duty or care has been introduced it's a voluntary system at the minute there's perhaps something that can be looked at in the future in terms of making it compulsory at some point but we're a long distance away from that at the moment what it does allow is for we hope it will allow for more systematic analysis of these waste flows the system as is just now with this paper based system is open to abuse if you're an unscrupulous operator you can falsify you can copy you can do whatever you want with the paperwork and it's clearly an avenue that can also exploit we come back to the specialist question that kicked us off there there needs to be more work done on financial investigation needs to be more work done on analysis of these waste flows to understand where the trends are in terms of where we've seen movements that don't make sense and where there's hotspots where we see that waste that shouldn't be going to a particular site is going that analytical work has been done by staff within the agency just now it is difficult using this paper based model because there's so many copies and so much paper that's in the system in a minute can you expand on how we see it's voluntary can you expand on percentages using it or give some idea of the electronic duty of care just being introduced it's a number of operators already have electronic systems where they for their own particular business model they have duty of care systems in an electronic form where they follow the flow of their materials because it's in their own commercial interest to do so and so there's a natural rock to the change from one system that they've spent time and money invested on that they are content with to move towards a centralised system that is effectively in the hands of the regulars Yes, it's voluntary Sandra, that's when I'm pursuing it The councils aren't involved in that either to put this all together because to me that is one of the biggest questions If you have a small business now You've dumped the queue but I'll let you in here on my pig list John Pennland will be very crossing his legs after we've... It is voluntary We'll come back to that and raise a very important point Quite often in these discussions we get down to Nitty Gritty and we're getting to Nitty Gritty or Nitty Gritty, I'll let you in because you're representing the rural development environment committee and that's the only reason I'm letting you ahead of the queue Thank you for indulging me, convener I was struck in the evidence with an assertion that said we're not operating without any licenses at all Now that may be small scale I'm sure you can expand upon that but it strikes me that in talking about duty of care should there not be a basic requirement if it's practical that whoever is small companies whatever because I presume local authorities would check whether sites were licensed that the person who's issuing the contract or tying into the contract is actually required to check that whoever is taking their waste away has the appropriate licenses that's something that could be developed Who's going to deal with that? Mr MacDonald? Happy to take that, that is the requirement at the moment so the duty of care does require that that every person in the chain passes it on to someone who's entitled to take it and you'll write to disposal but that hasn't stopped the increase in the growth in completely illegal sites with no license I'm going to take three questions as I did before John, your question, John Pentland, Christian and Sandra John, can I have yours? My question has perhaps fallen up again on the duty of care and I think that Linda said that when this can be grouped with me that's probably one of the topical subjects that is brought to the table Have you ever considered perhaps my understanding is that most of the crime is associated with recyclers who have exemption and they don't require a license and I suppose a good to be backing up was there was an operator in my constituency a couple of months ago when we were talking about whether it cost a public purse it cost a public purse nearly £400,000 to clear up and it also brings in the case of awareness you know, the general public who live in and around that area didn't think there was anything wrong because they were opinion that because they were able to stock the tyres they were able to, but obviously that was the thing, so I've ever wondered if you have to table can maybe comment that perhaps we should be in a position where we should start suspending exemptions for recyclers and my second point of light to be and again it because of what happened to my constituency and this is the kind of question my constituency were asking me is there not a proper audit for a tyre disposal that's two thank you at least just two not four like margaret but there we are I've got Christian and Sandra I'm going to put Roderick and Alison in the next batch so we are not forgotten Christian, what's your question? Yes, I wonder if we're not going away from the main point which is about serious organised crime you know what we're talking about the last five minutes is more about regulating normal legitimate businesses as opposed to serious organised crime will make sure to have a facade which are very well well seen and will make sure to follow up all the new regulation you can put up too. I was going back to the public awareness and particularly what Linda once said about people in this sector you know how we are soft touch at Scotland as we see ourselves maybe free from that serious organised crimes which could be prevalent in other countries like Italy for example I know that in the sector I used to work in the camera was very much involved in the north east and it was seen as incredible you know people rejected and thinking and even companies working in that particular sector where we did infiltrate thought that it was not possible that not in this country, not in the UK not in Scotland it wouldn't happen so how can we address this is this part of the biggest problem that we feel that organised crime serious organised crime is not in this country and if we can talk about it do we need a private session maybe as a committee to talk about this particular subject? I think that's something the committee would discuss at the end as we have our wash-up on this at the next item. Sandra I think thank you very much I'd be very kind letting in when you jumped a cube I apologise for that but I think for the time we had been on we did the wander off in slightly different directions I mean it's been 10 organised crime groups already so it's obviously expanding and it's not just in Scotland because it's cross-border obviously even in the rest of Europe bringing waste into our country and obviously exporting it as well but what came out of what we've had so far from me anyways we're looking at two issues here we're looking at legal sites how do you manage to close those down and we're looking at the so-called legal sites which is in my mind where the organised crime is because it's part of money laundering so what is the problem with legal sites are they not licensed properly is it not followed through is it audit which has just been said I find it quite unbelievable most of us have had constituents with a small business who have to pay quite a big bit up front to take hazardous waste like it's best for instance and if somebody else comes along and said I'll take it off your hands at a cheap price they're going to do it but like other areas there is an audit trail if you go forward so where is the problem wise is the problem lying in the illegal sites that are opening up for dumping or is the problem lying in legal sites where known criminal gangs are being afront there is it to I think it was Mr McDonald that mentioned at the beginning a low barrier for entry how do we tighten that up in illegal sites then how do we stop organised crime from laundering money we've mentioned it all before but it has to do with licensing, auditing and basically looking into it please remind me if I've got your question wrong because my handwriting is that of a medical practitioner you were asking I think John about suspending exemptions for recyclers is one of your things when you're known it and an audit and that to some extent picks up on Sandra's audit trail, yours was tired disposal but yours is an audit trail for illegal and legal sites and what's going on wise I think we're looking at two different things here, we're talking about illegal sites where it's being dumped and nobody's fallen up in it but we're actually talking about legal sites which in my opinion and I'm not saying evidence I've got but certainly in my area I have people come to me and say that there are legal sites that have been run by criminals so that's afront so how do we stop that the site itself rather than the site itself is your official decision but it's run by criminals and also the position from your experience in the north east is that people just don't believe we don't have a like a mafia here that they just don't believe it's happening at that level that serious organised crime perhaps is so clever in Scotland that they just don't think it's at that level and perhaps how do we make playing well this meeting is one of those reasons for it and the other thing Sandra which she raised was cross-border asex being exported out of Scotland now can I just I leave these all there so that you can start answering the whole lot together or pick and mix so who's going first Mr Wilson you're in first taking waste tyres waste tyres recycling is a significant problem not just in Scotland but across the UK and beyond there are companies that operate business models that frankly do not stand scrutiny they a number of which are able to run under exemptions which means they don't have a full waste management licence requirement because the storage limits are under a certain quota etc the site that was referred to I can't go into the detail of that too much of us you saw a nice crime might just be listening to this session but in terms of that we are working closely with the Government in looking at particularly the exemptions regime around waste tyres to change that works obviously it's not something that can be done overnight but we're working with Environment Quality Vision Act within the Scottish Government looking at that particular issue because it has been not just a problem in North Lanarkshire but beyond that and it's a scenario that we're closely concerned with and we are monitoring a number of sites across the country that are on a priority list for us to undertake regular and repeated inspections and compliance and if necessary reinforcement activity that work will continue it's not a short term thing because legitimate markets for waste tyres in the country are limited and so there is an overflow of this waste product and so it does again open itself up it touches on Mr Allard's comment about the export materials as well waste tyres can be exported along with other waste streams and Scotland does export waste overseas particularly to West Africa but also to the Far East China in particular and India and it's an area that we are concerned with also because not only do we have a duty here in the country we also have a duty beyond that in terms of transfrontiership and illegal waste shipments and it's an area that the agency is strongly involved in not just here in the country but involved with European and other partners working the law enforcement agencies such as Interpol and Europol and with other professional groups in Europe also In a way you might also morally argue you have a greater duty to underprivilege countries that perhaps don't have the regulation that is used as a waste dump for western societies well and also I'll just let the responsibility be there absolutely but I'm talking just on top of that you didn't address the issue of suspended exemptions for recyclers John you want to reiterate that what was that that returns again to issues in relation to exemptions we can suspend exemptions we can suspend licences or indeed take licences from individual operators again it's down to what is our course of action that best fits the situation that we found on any particular given site so there's a range of options in terms of enforcement through to compliance through to warning letters options that are open to the agency to apply and we do so Mr MacDonald Key point though is that simply removing a licence or suspending an exemption registration doesn't actually solve the problem the tyres have to go somewhere and is it the absence of a market for the use of these materials or the re-use of these materials that's part of the problem so simply tackling it from the point of view of the site where the materials are dumped is not the answer it doesn't bring the whole answer so a collaborative effort is required in terms of developing markets talking to the waste management industry to help in that respect and there are more than a significant number of players who have got a role to play in this I've got nobody else indicating that what about Soft Touch Scotland if I put it in that colloquial way is that the case I wouldn't suggest that I don't mean you're defaulting I don't mean the police I'm talking about public perceptions that they don't believe that it's such an issue I suppose to some extent that is true I mean do the public know the extent that we've got 220 organised crime groups so there's three and a half thousand members all that kind of stuff but to the public no-one understands what the consequence of that is perhaps not but that's one of the reasons for this session is that the public become more aware of just exactly what organised crime is involved in It is part of the reason what Police Scotland it's all of information campaigns that have been very useful we've been on this publicity thing before but how much have you actually done and I may have already dealt with this on that particular aspect on environmental crime or on the broader serious organisation just take it on environmental crime which people tend to, it's invisible it's not like vandalism it is a vandalism but they don't see it we probably haven't done very much in terms of environmental crime itself it takes me back to exactly what I said before because I try, we try to keep it across all commodities so that we're actually talking to to the public in the media about all commodities that organised crime is involved and because they're unlikely just to be involved in environmental crime they will have firearms, they will have drugs they will have everything else that you can think of so they are about making money so it's about their threat, risk and harm to our communities and it's about territory and they'll use violence as their competitive advantage in terms of making sure that they get so they undermine or they undercut contracts in terms of finance but they also use violence and other facets to make sure that they get these contracts so I think it's the general public understanding what organised crime is involved in across the spectrum rather than just environmental crime so my focus is across that spectrum to make sure that there is that real understanding of what serious organised crime is involved with Mr Wilson followed by Mr and Donald followed by Mr Freeland Yes, in terms of the question of the Scotland of Soft Touch I would say it's not as more to be done definitely how do we compare with other countries better than a number Mr Allan touched on Italy they are a well entrenched problem with mafia clans particularly within the waste sector on half of the country they are anxious to do more in relation to that they have seen the export of that criminal model beyond the Italian borders into Eastern Europe in particular we as an agency are engaging with our touch on Europe we are partners within the pollution working group and we are anxious to take part in initiatives that will look to learn best practice and maybe better experience of other countries and share that working on a project with funding receiving EU life plus bid which looks specifically that area about seeing what are the vulnerabilities in the market that make it so attractive to criminals that want to operate in this why not other industry sectors and more particularly in the year ahead we will look at what particular waste streams is it that are the target focus Mr Freeland touched on waste times I would say that was one clearly but there is a number of other challenging waste streams that are difficult to dispose of that have little negligible value in terms of resource recyclability the value has been taken out so therefore they attract in terms of their commingo nature a higher tax rate examples please waste fines which is the effects of the death rates from the material recycling facilities that have been commingo to such an extent that they can only go to a landfill that attracts a higher rate a standard rate of tax that rate of tax is £80 per ton if it was a net material on its own it's £2.50 £2.50, £80 is the margin in which criminals operate so tax avoidance is extremely attractive in a highly profitable area in which it's going to explore thank you Mr Wood Willie is pretty much addressed I was going to say something about Scotland the soft touch so Willie's pretty much addressed that just with regard to international comparisons again, I agree entirely with Willie that we're not we don't have the same scale of problem as exists in other countries for example Italy and I don't want us ever to get anywhere near that so I think we need to be vigilant in fact I would suggest that Scotland punches above its weight in Europe and the environmental crime task force model that we've developed here in many countries and it's been suggested for rolling out in different parts of the world the question of raising public awareness has come up a number of times and I just wanted to take an opportunity of a e-free advert around an event that the environmental crime task force is organising in November later this year it will be in Edinburgh we'll have keynote speakers including the Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs and the Environment we'll have Frank Millholland, the Lord Advocate speaking at that and various representatives from other bodies on the environmental crime task force and I would very much welcome attendants by members of this committee and other parliamentarians and the message is we're trying to raise awareness for the subject. You see that's a poor trailer because she didn't tell us where, when and the time, the date so if you want the advertise you need to put those in. The dates they'll be made available to the committee. I'd really love to see some of the some of the members of this committee you know in the body of the Kirk Wilson to that. Depends obviously to parliamentary commitments I think they're very interested. Ms Freeman, yes. I think that... Mr Freeman was first. Mr Freeman was first. Yes, sorry, I'm jumping my yellows jumping before my eyes. You're just looking down my I think just going back to one of the points that Sandra had raised but before I do just for the record there is a legitimate trade and export of materials for recycling. We accept that. You're not on trial. And it wasn't for exports. Our recycling rate wouldn't be anywhere near where it is at moment. But my point was I think Sandra's trying to see whether there was a distinction between a fully illegal site and one which was operating with licence. When I see five types of sites you've got a fully illegal landfill site you've got an illegal recycling operation you've got the licence site which is deliberately abusing its conditions for financial gain you've also got a licence site acting as a front for legal activity and also the fifth one was just really stopped upon is this deliberativeness of classification of materials to benefit from different lower tax rates. So I'm not sure whether there is actually a distinction between these. I think environmental criminals are operating across all these sites and they've got a foothold in all and they'll probably use a whole range of these sites so I think their effort needs to be focused on the bigger picture rather than just on an illegal site or one that's operating for licence. That's very helpful. What would help raise awareness and raise the profile of all of this is for some cases to make it through the system and actually be available as local cases and publicly told in terms of the financial impact to the taxpayer and to the general public and how these all come out. Or in the system that we can't talk about but really for events such as Callums in November to be able to stand up and say this is the evidence and that's a frustration of the industry is that we know illegal activity is being undertaken but it's anecdotal. We can't put facts and figures and numbers to that. We know what's happening and we can pass some of that on or all of it on, we hope but then we hear nothing back but the time taken to take these cases through means that you don't know if anything's happened and in the meantime the compliant operators are being regulated in their own capacity and maybe falling foul of their conditions not deliberately so they are getting the hard line from the regulators but not seeing what's happening with the bigger picture in these cases coming through. Contact later now. Last, Roderick, your time has come in Alison so can I have your questions please? My points have largely been discussed but I just wanted to raise the question of whether the regulatory regime was adequate and whether it was fundamentally more of a problem following on from what Mr Freeland and indeed what Lynn Domans has said that organised crimes evade the regulatory regime by consenting a façade of compliance, employing managers and consultants to mask activities what general comments we had on those points. Alison, it's quite similar to Roddie's point we heard from, it would be useful to hear from the industry witnesses whether there are weaknesses in the current system of licensing and monitoring that makes it particularly attractive to illegal operators. All right who wants to, yes thank you very much for your question. Thank you, could I come in from Mr Ovan's point. Recognise that successful outcomes is actually a really good way of raising public awareness and I think it's just important to recognise that organised crime is so fluid with organised criminals seeking new opportunities and obviously this is a relatively new opportunity for organised criminals in terms of the increase that the ACC Nicholson identified. As people are aware we are working and the Police Service of Scotland on a very large and complex environmental crime money laundering potential tax evasion inquiry which we can't talk about but we do recognise that effective prosecution is an important element in the strategy to reduce the harm of organised crime. What we haven't actually talked about is the asset recovery because that's also very very effective hitting the criminals where it hurts in their pocket and identifying serious and organised crime is about making money so what we can do is try to take that money away from them and the legislation in terms of the Proceeds of Crime Act is there and I know that SEPA have now got their own financial investigators to identify the benefits, to identify the assets and where that occurs and there's a link to the organised crime groups then we can restrain them and then we can ultimately in the event of a conviction seek for confiscation we will do that as best we possibly can where we have every opportunity in terms of the evidence to do so. Mr Wilson. Just touching on the legislation we now have the Relate Reform Act that came about as a recognition that the various forms of legislation that were in place needed to be revisited substantially in terms of giving us more enhanced powers being leaner in terms of how we operate legislation and making it easier and not overly bureaucratic for industry itself so we're now looking towards having a simplified and integrated framework working under one regime rather than a series of regimes that was not helpful to industry was not helpful to our own regulatory staff here in terms of how they apply these compliance models so that legislation has been proved we're working through that but in addition to that that is also giving us more enforcement powers as well. Again, just touching on sentencing within that regulatory form act work we're also looking at improved compensation improved a requirement on us to describe financial benefit and so that that's taken into close account when it comes to sentencing and when it comes to prosecutions itself and lastly on that touch we've now had for the first time a new offensive of a significant environmental harm again that will itself bring an aggravation is aware to the legislation that didn't previously exist and again should allow us in terms of placing information before the judicial system the evidence to support consideration for other sentencing. Thank you. I've got Mr Macdonald then Mr Freeland Mr Macdonald. So just adding to what Willie has just said these new enforcement powers that are coming to us as a result of the regulatory reform act are very welcome they'll be available to us from April of next year and also there'll be some new sentencing powers available for the courts as a result of that legislation but an improved environmental regulatory regime on its own isn't going to be enough to successfully tackle organised criminals and environmental crime this is going to take more in the way of collaboration between all the different parties involved and a bit of creativity moving forward and I think that the strategy around the four Ds has to currently play in this respect as well so I'd welcome that Mr Freeland Yeah just going back to Alison Macdonald's points about where the weaknesses might be in the system I see three weaknesses the first one being as I've said at the beginning Cal Macdonald said the barriers to entry are low you need a truck in a skip and off you go and that's you so that that's a problem which I think needs to be addressed by the fit and proper person test at the beginning to make sure that's properly looked at the other weakness is with the exemptions the exemptions are used by logistic industry as well they're purely for dealing with a small amount of low risk materials but it does have a light touch approach to that regulation of those activities and that's what's been exploited so it needs greater oversight of that and also I think given the plans that are to change the regulatory regime there's going to be new tiers of regulatory oversight I think that should help to address that problem so that's I'm going to stop there and actually you've summed up you see for your point I said to the last round table if there's one issue that you want us to take forward one thing that might be remedied and requires and not going to come round necessarily volunteer yourself as the first person one issue you want us to consider when we consider this in the next session I think I'll just leave yours on back and just have one then but what do you say so who wants to come forward with one thing that they think from their particular perspective the committee should be taking forward Mr McDonnell it's only one remember and we're waiting for the date and the time in the place but that's not the issue I promise you I'll stick to one I would like us to get to the point where we can use intelligence to influence procurement decisions right who wants to come next with one issue and who wants to bring forward you don't have to have one if you don't want one but if there's something that we should be looking at yes Ms Evans I would say speed up the prosecution service however we can work together to do that right close on the lit pole on the legislative care right anybody else Mr Wilson yes I'll take Mr Wilson so on he is I'll take Aces everything that's been said financial investigation financial intelligence sharing thank you that's just supporting that that's just opening the gateway so that we can better share intelligence in terms of what we know and it's a good example given the area where there's a knowledge that in a local level that criminality's involved in that but how do you use that kind of information intelligence to good effect to make sure that criminality's not involved so that's the kind of thing that we really need to focus on yes Mr Mando support to you're allowed a separate one we know you agree to create the biggest step change I think the information sharing and the barriers that are attached to that at the moment I think that would give us a biggest single step change and in turn in due course help advance the pace of dealing with the enforcement side through the courts etc yes I don't disagree with any of that I disagree with the massive amount of collaborative working that's on going and make sure that we all continue that information sharing and talking to each other so I think everybody's had a say now thank you very much oh you know did I miss you Mr Freeland well I think I saw those with duty of care no we've looked after Mr Freeland it does we have I didn't miss them thank you very much it was extremely useful thank you for your time which is very valuable I'll suspend for two or three minutes to let the room clear and then we'll go into private session