 I welcome to the 22nd meeting of the Criminal Justice Committee in 2023. We have apologies this morning from Katie Clark. Our first item of business is to welcome Sharon Dowey to her first formal meeting of the committee, and I look forward to working with her. Let me now invite Sharon to declare any interests that are relevant to the remit of the Criminal Justice Committee. Thank you. My husband is a retired police officer, but other than that, I've got nothing to do. Thanks very much. I also refer members to my register of interests in relation to agenda item seven, our approach to the police ethics conduct and scrutiny Scotland bill, which we will discuss later on today, albeit in private. Our next item of business is to decide whether to take item six and seven in private. Are we all agreed? Our next item of business is to review the progress being made to improve the response to deaths in custody. We're joined today by Jill Emery, who was the chair of the independent review of the response to deaths in prison custody. I refer members to paper 2, which provides some background on Jill's work and contains a short summary setting out her views on progress made to respond to the recommendations contained in the review. I tend to run this session for about 60 minutes, although we have a little bit of time in hand this morning. I'm now going to invite Jill to make a short opening statement. Thank you, convener and all members of the committee for your ongoing interest in this work. As you know, the independent review was published back in November 2021, and I was appointed the external chair in April last year, 2022, to oversee the progress and implementation of the recommendations of that review. I really want to take this short moment to highlight the contribution made by families to this work. We have been privileged to hear the experience of families who have lost a son, a daughter, a father, a brother and a husband. People have given their time very generously to explain their experience, with the aim of hopefully preventing other families going through a similar thing in the future, but also to help prison officers and staff who experience trauma from responding to deaths in prison. Although the contribution is generous, it is difficult to keep families motivated and to give them confidence that changes are happening when the pace of change and improvement is so slow. I published a progress report in December last year, so that was over a year since the original review was published, and only three of the recommendations had been implemented with another partially complete. As I sit here today, I can say that that partially complete one has now been implemented and one more, so we are at a total of five recommendations, and we are fast approaching two years since that review was published. That is not to say that there is not a lot of work going on to try to reach the improvement. The Scottish Prison Service has reviewed its own internal process, and that revised process has actually started just at the end of August this year. The key recommendation working group started a pilot exercise for a revised process as recently as Monday of this week. You will remember that the key recommendation was about having a separate and new investigative process, an independent investigation into every death. In Scotland, we already have that. We have an independent process in the form of the Lord Advocate, who is the independent head of investigation for all sudden and suspicious deaths, and every death in prison requires a mandatory fatal accident inquiry. Fatal accident inquiries were out with the reference of the original review and are outside my remit, too, but it has been unavoidable when discussing how to improve the response to deaths in prison that people have expressed concerns with which I agree that FAIs take far too long and that communication with families is poor. My opinion is that the key recommendation would not be required with the introduction of yet another process with more expense. It would not be required if the current FAI process was improved in terms of speed and the quality of communication with families. I wonder if I can start off with a general question about the expectation around timescales. There was one key recommendation, as it were, and a number of other recommendations. Given the recommendations applied across a system and not just one organisation, was there a expectation of how long it might be considered reasonable for the recommendations to be implemented? I am not aware of a particular timescale being imposed for implementation. It was acknowledged that some of those recommendations are complex and some could reasonably take some time to implement. However, the work started in 2019 and some of the families have been involved since then. It is four years on and it is a long time for people not to see recommendations and improvements made. Some of the recommendations are not really problematic, in my opinion. I said that in the December progress report and you could see from the updates that I have provided that, when a draft of that progress report went out in November last year, at least two of the recommendations that I said were quite easily implemented, were almost immediately then subject to Governor's and Manager's action notes, so a mandatory instruction from the chief executive of the prison service to make that happen. That is great. However, it does beg the question why I did not do that before. Absolutely. It is interesting that you talk about some of the recommendations that, in your view, should not have been particularly problematic to implement. Do you have a view on why progress was not made with those recommendations? It is very difficult to tell where the reluctance comes from in the various meetings that I have had and the discussions that I have had with people directly in working in the prison service. I think that they do care about that subject, but I think that I have picked up the impression that they do not necessarily agree with the review, that the prison service feels unfairly criticised and that they are actually working as hard as they can and doing as much as they can in order to prevent deaths in prison, but those tragedies do occur and that they will do their best to respond when those situations occur. I have the sense that there is some resistance to the findings of the review that perhaps it is not wholly embraced that there is a need to change. I know that members will look more deeply into that. I am quite keen for our session today to focus on progress in relation to the recommendations. I wonder if it might be helpful to step back a bit. Given the size of the prison population in Scotland, it is inevitable, sadly, that there will be some deaths within the prison estate. I wonder if it might be helpful for you to outline a little bit of the context of the experience of prison mortality in prisons and what are the common underlying reasons, for example? That is an important element that has been, sadly, lacking in Scotland in terms of the availability of data and the analysis of data. We were pleased to be able to produce the first of what I hope will be a number of reports just in August this year, which seek to analyse the deaths between 2012 and 2022. It is a reasonable start point for analysis and deeper understanding of the factors that contribute to deaths in prison. As a high level between those years, 2012 and 2022, there were 350 prison deaths. Just under half of those could be attributed to suicide or drug-related deaths. Over half were attributed to illness, disease and natural causes. I caution about the acceptance of the number of people who succumb to disease and illness in prison, because there needs to be a greater scrutiny on the quality and availability of healthcare available to people in the prison estate and the availability of resources, not least in the prison escort capacity, in order to take people out of unestablishment and to access appointments and treatment. That is not something that the initial report has been able to do as yet. I am going to open up questions to members. I will hand over to Russell Finlay, and then, if members could indicate when they would like to come in. Just to go back to the chronology of events, the Scottish Government commissioned the report in November 2021, and it reported in November 2021. Almost two years ago, there were 19 recommendations and six advisory points. To be clear, of those 25 in total, almost two years later, only five have been implemented? Correct. It is actually 26. If you count the key recommendations, the key recommendations are 19 recommendations and six advisory points, and only five are correct. How do you feel about that? Is it frustration? Is it surprise? What are your thoughts on that? Frustration would be a fair description. I am not. I do not think that I am surprised. The recommendations that many are shared between the Scottish Prison Service and the National Health Service. In the first case of the prison service, I have mentioned that there is a system and a hierarchy where the chief executive can issue what they call GMAs, so Governors and Managers, action notes. That is an instruction with which all Governors must comply. We have already talked about being puzzled as to why that has not been employed more widely, more quickly. As for the NHS, there is a very hard working network in Scotland, the prison care network, which seeks to improve healthcare provision across the prison estate and to achieve an element of consistency across the establishments. However, that network does not have any power to make the health boards implement the recommendations that they are proposing, and that is very frustrating and difficult to see how that is going to improve. In your opening statement, if I understood it correctly, the key recommendation of the report is that there should be an entirely new system of investigating deaths in custody. I understand correctly your view that that is not necessary if only the fixed fatal accident inquiry system for which concerns have been raised for almost a decade. Where is the reluctance coming from? Is that the Scottish Government or is that the Crown Office? Is it the blob? What is the problem with fixing FAI when it is so clearly fundamentally flawed? I think that the only people who do not think that there is a problem with fatal accident inquiries are the Crown Office. Does it take the ministers to start insisting that the Crown do accept the problem? Absolutely. I think that the reticence and the difficulty there is that the Lord Advocate's position is entirely independent. For that reason, the process was deliberately excluded from the terms of reference of the review. I have said outside my remit that what I am reflecting to you today is the feedback that I have had from families who are affected directly by the system and my own observations. There is nothing stopping any Government from saying to the Crown Office notwithstanding the Lord Advocate's independence and the Crown's independence that they could impose or create or fix a system without impinging on that independence. Constitutionally, the Lord Advocate is entirely independent, so it would be very difficult for ministers without a change in legislation to impose mandatory timescales or something like that. However, I think that that would help, given that there has been criticism for many years and that the problems continue, so something needs to change. Finally, there have been 350 deaths in custody since 2012-23 this year alone. You were due to meet the Cabinet Secretary for Health and the Cabinet Secretary for Justice in August. That meeting was cancelled. You were then due to meet them in September and that meeting was cancelled. There was a new meeting scheduled for November. Do you know why those were cancelled? It does not suggest to me that there is any great urgency to sit down and work out what needs to happen here. I have just been told that there was other pressing parliamentary business on both those occasions, but I think that it is disappointing that even half an hour to draw the Cabinet Secretary's attention. I was so pleased that it was not just the Cabinet Secretary for Justice, but also the Cabinet Secretary for Health, because the two are inextricably linked on this topic. There have actually been 26 deaths this year, one most recently, sadly, at the weekend. Now 20 of those deaths have happened since May, so we have been seeing quite an acceleration during this year. I am going to bring in Rona Mackay, followed by Pauline McNeill. I am trying to establish the process of the group. You say that there have been some reluctance to accept some of the findings of the report. How often, if at all, did all parties meet round table to discuss issues? Why did you get that impression that there was resistance? After I was appointed in April last year, I was able to set up a death and prison custody action group, so that is an overarching group with all the stakeholders and various partners present at that group. Under that group, there already was a key recommendation working group, the Government Chair. That has all the various partners around the table. I introduced a family reference group, which I referred to in my opening remarks. I also introduced a further working group to look at the data. It is called understanding and preventing deaths in prison working groups. The prison services represented all those groups, with the exception of the family reference group, although they have come and presented to the family reference group on a number of occasions about improvements that are under way. Things like the family support booklet, which is now published. Things like the means for family members to contact a prison and express concerns about their relative in prison, which is not yet complete, which is an example of one of the things that I mentioned. There are some things that do not seem to me to be hugely complicated, nor expensive, and that is one of them. The partners have all had ample opportunity to sit round the table together. Every time there is an action group meeting, we seek updates from everybody—the prison service, the NHS and all the parties. We have a lot of detail on a spreadsheet that is available for public scrutiny. How often did those meetings take place, on average, in a year, when you all got together and you had the data and all that? I am trying to think about that. The action group has probably met four times this year, or since April 2022. There are also working groups underneath, and the key recommendation working groups. I would say that there have been at least a dozen meetings in the various iterations. It seems like there are an awful lot of working groups. Is it the case that maybe there is a lack of communication? Is the structure of it too layered? People are often in their own silos doing stuff, but nothing is actually getting done. Can I ask how you felt as the chair? Was your position undermined by the delays in all this? To answer your first point, I do not think that there is an excuse in terms of some sort of lack of opportunity to communicate effectively. There is constant communication in terms of seeking progress updates to populate the spreadsheets to say what is being done in relation to each of those recommendations. In my position, I feel that it is difficult to continue to have credibility when you are not having the impact that you would want to have, that coming into the role, it would seem relatively straightforward that there has already been huge amount of work done by other people, not by me, in order to arrive at a key recommendation, 19 recommendations, six advisory points, all of which have been accepted in principle by the Government. It should be a fairly straightforward task for me as an external person to oversee the implementation. It has not proved to be the case because it is just very, very slow. Could you have put any timeline or deadline in any of those implementations? Would that be within your remit to do that? Yes, absolutely. We did indeed do that exact thing. I could show you it, but it looks more complicated than it is. We arrived at quite a high-level action plan with what I am happy to share with members and tried to impose deadlines from 0 to 9 months, 9 to 18, 18 to 24, and reflected on that in preparation for today. In that 9 to 18 months, there are only two things that I could put a tentative tick at, and in the 18 to 24, there is nothing that I could tick at. Did you get any robust explanations from the groups why it did not happen? Did it just not happen and there was no comeback on that? I think that there are lots of pressures on the system. There are lots of competing priorities, particularly in the NHS. I have made a positive comment about the network. I think that people work very hard in the national prison care network. Indeed, that network sits underneath a Scottish health and custody network, and the chairs of both of those are very hardworking and enthusiastic people and have very small teams to support them. Having tried very hard to get access to NHS chief executives and then ultimately getting time at one of their private chief executive meetings, I have rarely experienced such a lack of interest in a piece of work in all of my 36 years of public service. Thank you very much. Good morning. What you said, there is very concerning with 350 deaths, and numerous, numerous cases that members of this Parliament have taken on the deaths of Alan Marshall, on remand in our care, and key to Alan, a young woman who took her own life in polemont. It is shocking to hear that. When we heard the independent review in response to this in prison custody report, all the recommendations seem to be good ones, but it is staggering what you are telling us, that very few of them have been pursued. There is two in particular that I wanted to ask you about. I have had some involvement with Katie Allen's case of mepter family. I understand that they, through freedom of information and meetings, had a commitment from the then cabinet secretary for justice on the removal of ligatures from the prison estate, but they are led to believe that it is cost that is preventing this from happening. Is there anything that you could comment to the committee on that? That is one that has been implemented now. There was a recommendation that suggested the introduction of privacy screens and the availability of ligature cutters. That was the one in December last year that was partially complete, because the screens had been made available, but the ligature cutters had not. However, as I am sitting here today, I can say that I have been told that ligature cutters are now also being made available and procured, so that recommendation is fully implemented now. I think that there is an issue about who goes in and checks to see that the improvement that has been reported is in place and that the systems are working. That is something to which my role does not extend. My role will cease at the end of this year anyway, so there needs to be some consideration given to what is the scrutiny mechanism, what is that on-going monitoring process and how will people be reassured that improvements such as practical things but fairly straightforward things have actually been achieved. The second question that I wanted to ask you is about the recommendation about unfedded access to information following the death, which I think is critically important, and is the question that I asked the cabinet secretary at the time. Given what you said about the exclusion of the crown and the case of Val and Marshall, which is the one that I am thinking about, well, as you are aware, the Crown took a decision not to prosecute any of the 13 officers held down and lashed down before he died in an attempt to try and get answers at the FAI, but it took seven years to get there. What I wanted to press you on was, is it possible in your view that unfedded access is possible for that to happen? If families want to go in and get that information immediately, they do not want to be told that they cannot come in, that they cannot collect belongings, that they cannot see what happened. I did think that it was an interesting recommendation because I thought that, in police investigation around the death, I could make that commitment, but the cabinet secretary did make that commitment. Do you think that it is possible to devise a system to allow families? In that case, their view was that it was a cover-up. They would have preferred to go in and find out exactly what happened, and at least they would have had their own answers before an FAI. Do you think that it is possible to do that without the Crown's involvement? The short answer is no. The pilot that started, as I said recently this week, is trying to probe exactly those really complex issues about how you share information without compromising some future process. Obviously, a fatal accident inquiry's purpose is to establish a cause not to attribute any blame to any party. If that process were to occur more swiftly, with more effective and more sympathetic communication with families, I think that that would achieve some of the aim, certainly of the key recommendation, but also access to information. If such a thing could be done, like a timescale of two years following the death, which I do not think is unreasonable, perhaps families might feel less concerned about getting that immediate access if they thought that they would get answers within 24 months. Do you agree with that? I completely agree. What family members have told me is that they get the feeling that they are somehow the enemy or a risk or that there is anxiety and fear about telling families what might have happened in case someone is blamed later on. Whereas the families, I have been quite humbled to listen to how concerned they are, not just about their own family and other future families, but about staff and prison officers. They know how traumatic they feel that sympathy for prison officers and staff is having to deal with those situations, too. I would like to follow up where you left off in relation to the interaction between the proposed investigation that would take place and the fatal accident inquiry. I wonder whether any thought has been given as to whether it is possible to have the type of comprehensive independent investigation that has been proposed here, which I completely understand the rationale for. Although a fatal accident inquiry is pending, we often rub up against the necessity to leave things until a statutory process, which you quite correctly say has to take place in relation to a death in custody. Has there been any interaction through the group with the Crown about what can be the sequencing of all of this? Yes. The Crown has been represented at all the groups that I have spoken about, but specifically that working group on the implementation of the key recommendation and has been closely involved in revised potential process that is being piloted. There is a pilot exercise that is being led by the Inspectorate for Prisons, and we will be a desktop exercise looking into cases that are complete in the sense that those are cases where a fatal accident inquiry has already taken place, but they will use that set of circumstances in order to test that new process. The prison service has its internal review process, the death and prison learning and audit review, the DIPLAR. The NHS has its internal process, which is a significant adverse event review. There is the place investigation that reports under the instruction of the Lord Advocate. The key recommendation is to introduce potentially a fourth investigative process, a brief review. The key recommendation implies that there should be a new body to carry that out, which, in the current climate, would be quite unrealistic to achieve. Listening to what you have said, in particular your responses to Pauline McNeill about the perspective of families, families quite understandably want to hear early information. I think that even the concept of 24 months feels to me to be an awful long time to wait for information. It is a lot sooner than they get it at the moment. It still feels an awful long time. If you could share with the committee the process of scrutiny that is undertaken by the Scottish Prison Service and the National Health Service, what sort of timescales do they take place under? Are they swiftest processes than the FAI? Yes, they are much more quickly introduced, but until this review and until the pushing for the implementation of the recommendations of this review, the families sometimes did not even know that there was a diplar taking place and they were not in any way involved. The revised process that has just been brought in last month puts an emphasis on family involvement and having a point of contact for families, having a liaison person for families so that they have an opportunity to ask questions about the death of their loved one. That would strike me that if families were able notwithstanding the issues in relation to the arrangements for a fatal accident inquiry, which are, as you rightly say, entirely matters for the Crown, which are carried out independently of Scottish ministers. I am interested whether or not a pragmatic adaptation of the processes that are undertaken by the Scottish Prison Service and the Health Service could be done timidly so that families would get really quite early and prompt and thorough and engaged and courteous engagement about the circumstances of the death of a loved one. I agree that both of those processes, the Scottish Prison Service process and the National Health Service process, hold the potential to meet the needs of families in terms of more prompt answers and a more sympathetic and respectful communication. If I can move on from that point on to the composition of the deaths in prison custody action group, I am interested to know whether everybody is rowing in the same direction. I think that we have had good representation from the various agencies at that action group. It is not quite what I am asking. Is everyone on board? I think that there has been a reticence on the part of, I have said, the prison service in terms of genuinely embracing the review and welcoming it and seeing that there really is something that needs to change. I have felt slightly humoured at times, patronised at other times, so that I do not understand how difficult it is. It is absolutely a challenging environment in which to work and the system is under pressure, but I keep returning to what I feel is one of the most compelling parts of my duty as to the families of people who have died. It is very hard to sit in a room with relatives who are bereaved, asking them to give their time, asking them to repeat their experiences over and over again without the actual result that they are looking for, which is improvement for other families and, indeed, for dancers for their own situations. I have felt at times that some people have not been pulling quite in the same direction, and I think that Crown Office does not think that there is a problem with the fatal accident process. Indeed, when I published or put out the draft of the progress report in November last year, the Crown Office immediately came back and asked me to remove the reference to fatal accident inquiries because it is not in my remit and I do not have any business in commenting on it. I refuse to remove it because what I am doing to you today is reflecting the feedback that I have had and the observations that I have made as an independent person, which I think has some validity. I was struck by your remark about the fact that you were cautious about relying on the data about 50 per cent of deaths in custody arising out of what one might describe as illness or natural causes. I understand exactly your point on being cautious about that data because I think that it opens up a discussion about the extent to which being incarcerated actually exacerbates the decline in health of individuals. Therefore, what must society do to try to address that particular point? I wonder if I am correctly understanding the substance behind the point that you are making in that observation. Absolutely. The lack of scrutiny of the availability and the quality of healthcare across the prison estate is a national disgrace. There really is very little scrutiny applied to what sort of healthcare is provided to people who already, some already have complex needs. In the care of the state, people should actually be accessing better healthcare than they ever would in the community because they are literally a captive audience for health interventions, and that does not appear to be happening. Has that particular perspective been the subject of discussion around the table of the custody action group, given the fact that you have the prison service and the national health service and healthcare improvements, Scotland, among others, around that table? It has been discussed, and I have mentioned the network, in particular the national prison care network, is very motivated to try to achieve consistency across the prison estate. I do feel that the NHS health boards do not necessarily wholly embrace the priority that should be given to members of the community from every health board who could find themselves in prison, so it is not just the health boards where there is a prison physically located within their geographic area, it is every health board. I think that there is the issue that I have already mentioned where that network, no matter how well hard-working and well-meaning it cannot, it does not have a mandate to make health boards take on the responsibility for health care provision within prisons. You have already answered a few of the points that you have already had, but can I just check again? You said that five of the recommendations had been implemented in your written communication. You said that one of the recommendations is said to be addressed, so are the five of them fully implemented, or is one of them still being addressed? There are five or complete, yet it may be that I have used a different word. No, that is fine. Can you tell me what recommendations have been completed? I can, absolutely. Even just the number point, I have the numbers here. If you could just tell me the numbers, that would be fine. I can absolutely do that, because I anticipated that question. Where I have put it in my notes is a different issue. I can come back to that. No, no, it is absolutely fine. So, 1.4, which is the next of kin, is implemented. That was one of the three that was in the progress report last year. 2.2, which was the one that I discussed with Ms McNeill about the ligature and the screen provision. 3.1 was about a governor-in-charge actually being in contact with families is implemented. 3.3 is the family support booklet, which I have said is implemented. 5.4, which is for the prison service to conduct that internal, the DIPLAR, internal review process for all deaths, is also implemented. I was going to ask you as well about a plan of action for the rest of the points. You have already mentioned that, but are you aware of a plan of action from the Scottish prison service and from the NHS that lists a timescale on it for when it is going to be implemented and if it has an accountable person on it as well? Is there somebody who is accountable for making sure that that point is actioned? We have pushed quite hard to get when I have explained that we have sought updates at every stage. When there is another action group meeting pending, we would seek an update in order to be able to populate a spreadsheet and make that available publicly to show the various activities that are under way. There are timescales. Those do and have slipped. You would see that in the briefings that I provided in June this year and then again in September at the start of this month that certain things anticipated would be available, however those have not happened until much later. There are responsible people now identified in every health board for healthcare in prison. We have yet to see that manifest in change, but I am hopeful that that will help that the network that I have mentioned is at an advanced stage of producing a toolkit to achieve some consistency across the prison estate for a response to deaths in prison. The health boards are pivotal to making that a reality across the country. We keep pushing for timescales, but those tend to slip. Is there somebody who is being held accountable within those areas, such as the SPS or the NHS? Is there any way to write to somebody and say how you are progressing with point number 3.2? We have named people, but there are limitations to the mandate that they have. That is what I was explaining about the national prison network. There are named people working hard in that network, but they cannot make the chief executives implement their recommendations. After the progress report was published on 14 December last year, the then cabinet secretary for health and justice wrote on 18 December to the chief executive of the prison service and all the NHS chief execs and told them to prioritise that work. Unfortunately, I do not think that that has quite had the effect that it was holding. I wanted to ask you about that as well. It was already mentioned by Russell Finlay on the meetings that were cancelled. One of the other things that I noted in your submission was that you are due to finish in November as well. Can I ask how many meetings have you had with the cabinet secretary since she took your post? One. Was that with both cabinet secretaries or was that just one? With both in November last year. So have you had any written communication with them in between times? Other than the progress report in December? No. There has not been any meeting. What happens when you are posting in November? Will you be kept on or does that finish? Or have you done any communication in that at all? No. I have certainly agreed to stay until the end of the year. I will have time to produce another final report, but it will only be final in the sense that it is the last report from me. It will not be final in the sense that all the recommendations will be complete, I am pretty sure. The rationale for bringing someone external in was to try to give impetus to implement those recommendations. It is difficult to justify keeping someone in that capacity on beyond two years after a report has been published. You have obviously said that there has been slow progress in the last two years, so you are obviously trying to keep pushing this on. What is your biggest concern for those family representatives who have given their time going through that triggering process of not just telling their own stories but listening to other families' experiences and feeling that I have let them down? I will not be able to look them in the eye and say, I came in to do this and I have done it. I think that the responsibility then falls to the statutory bodies. Most obviously, the inspectorate for prisons. Again, there is a limited resource at the inspectorate in order to drive the scrutiny. I have spoken to other groups, such as the national preventive mechanism, which is a network of scrutiny bodies for people who are deprived of their liberty, to raise that question with them. Do they feel that they have some capacity to monitor and keep some pressure on to implement those recommendations? Healthcare Improvement Scotland should be looking much more regularly at the quality and availability of healthcare in prisons. It participates in the joint inspections that are led by the prison inspectorate, but those are only two or three establishments a year. Nobody spoke to you about extending your term. You do not know about anybody else that is coming in. What do you think needs to happen to try and get more pace to get the implementations done? I think that absolutely there needs to be continued scrutiny and somebody needs to be driving the activity. I am not sure, having done it since April last year, I am not sure that bringing in another external chair will make any difference. Thank you very much. I will pass over to Fulton MacGregor and then bring in Russell Finlay. I will just follow on from where we are sharing. We can all hear the passion in your voice for this piece of work. It is probably prompted by your time coming to an end and perhaps it is not as complete as you would like. That is probably an understatement. In many ways, I am going to put words into your mouth here and it might be a bit extreme, but it almost feels today coming to the committee and contacting the committee that we have a cry for help in terms of this piece of work. Therefore, I would put it out to you. What do you feel this committee can do to help progress the recommendations that you are making? You have made it very powerful today. I think that if you had the time to invite some of the people responsible for delivering on the recommendations to come and speak that that would be helpful, then there would be direct exchange about what it is that is making it so difficult to achieve. Obviously, there are many recommendations that are not implemented yet, but in total it is not insurmountable. It is 20 things and six advisory points that, as a country, we should be capable of achieving for people that are literally without power in prison in our country's prison estate. Thank you for that. You have certainly given us a lot of food for thought when we come to discuss what we have heard today. There were two other re-points that I wanted to ask about, other than what we point to in terms of the evidence session, but they are not really small on any means. I think that John Swinney was asking about it as well. It is around the deaths and across the period of the pandemic there was an increase. Did you ever get any information or was there ever any information that was released through that bit of work about what was causing those? Was it related to the pandemic, either the virus itself or the restrictions? Did you ever get a feel for that? No, I didn't. Other than the fact that the number of deaths peaking at 53 for, I think that was 2022-21. There was a noticeable increase, but no, I haven't had any further analytical work to establish what that was about. As I said earlier, I do feel that the report that was published in August is just a start point that there should then be more analysis carried out into the deaths and into comparing the trends with trends in the general population and all with a view to trying to understand factors so that there can be some prevention intervention to reduce deaths in the future. On a similar point that you mentioned at one point, there has been an increase over the summer, I think, since May. Is there any data analysis around why that has taken place? No, there isn't, but you will have heard about pressures in the system and increases in the prison population. It will be interesting to see what the factors are, but it is concerning that the level of deaths is increasing over time. First of all, the Scottish Government will be watching this evidence and will read your submissions. Would you consider if it was at all possible extending your tenure for, say, a 12-month period or if you completely scannered and you've had enough? Is that an option? I would be willing to continue to try to help if I can, but I would temper that enthusiasm with reality of how much I have managed to achieve so far. I wouldn't say no. Fundamentals, the fatal accident inquiry system is central to death in custody, but the review and you were told that you couldn't even look at it and you quite rightly said, well, that's ridiculous and you did look at it. Uniquely, the Crown Office seemed to think fatal accident inquiries are fine despite the abundance of evidence of all the misery and pain that they are causing in addition to the deaths that have occurred. Given the reluctance to or the inability to fix FAI, we are therefore left with the key recommendation, the one that you would rather not see enacted, but that surely is the direction of travel and at some point may or may not be enacted. Do you know if there's been any work done around the cost of this in setting up a whole new organisation that would deal specifically with that in custody? Is there any work or any discussions there? Not to my knowledge, but I was very aware of that and how it might co-exist with the three existing processes and how much more pressure it would put on the public purse, as well as the inherent difficulties of asking people, families and prison officers' staff to comply with potentially four processes, not just three. Can I follow up on the point that Russell Finlay has just been advancing there, which is in relation to the adequacy of the immediate health service review of a death in custody? I understand, by statute, the requirement of a fatal accident inquiry to be undertaken where somebody is in legal custody. From the perspective of addressing the needs of the families that you have powerfully put to us this morning, what do you believe those processes—I am not sure whether you are familiar with the content of those processes—but, if you are, do you believe those would provide a sufficient amount of information in advance of a fatal accident inquiry, which would essentially avoid the need for there to be a potentially fourth process that is added on to the system? I think that they could, and I think that that is the revised process that I have mentioned has just started at the end of August this year. There was one of the instructions that was issued for all Governors in all establishments in Scotland to introduce the new, revised Diplr process, which prioritises liaison with families. I understand that that will be evaluated and reviewed in February next year, so it will have had an opportunity to be tried in real time. It would be a great improvement if that delivers what it is hoped to deliver. On the NHS side, the toolkit that I mentioned at the network is at an advanced stage of providing national guidance on how the serious adverse event review will be carried out in response to a death in prison. The issue is to ensure that all NHS boards implement the toolkit, as they are calling it. I hope that the fact that the boards have now got an executive lead in every health board for prison care will help to ensure that the toolkit is implemented. Those two parts should improve and enhance the existing internal processes of review for both the prison service and the NHS. What do that culminates in something that negates, and I certainly would not say that it negates, but the need for improvement in the FEI process is absolutely required. Do you think that the improvements that you have talked about are on those two processes? Do you think that they provide you with sufficient confidence, in theory, that they would substantially address some of the early issues that families may have in the absence of a fatal accident inquiry being able to be undertaken in a really timuous fashion? Yes, in theory they do give me confidence. All the families really want is a few answers to perfectly reasonable questions about what has happened to their loved one in prison. We are just about up to time. I was just wanting to pick up, staying with the key recommendation on an additional independent review process. I note in the review report the context particularly around the needs of families, which we have discussed quite robustly this morning. I noticed in the review that there was reference to the fact that this change, i.e. creating another independent process, would bring Scotland into line with practice and other jurisdictions, including England, Wales and Northern Ireland. I know that it is not just a case of taking a model from somewhere else and slotting it into our policies and processes, but I wondered whether there was any work done to look at those processes and if there was a feeling that there was good learning from those processes that could realistically form part of a new process in Scotland. I bear in mind what we have been discussing today about the other option, potentially, of looking at the processes that exist already and perhaps making some changes there. Yes, there has been work carried out by the Government to engage with the relevant people in other jurisdictions to understand the approach and to try and take the good practice and any learning from elsewhere to bring to bear on the review of processes here. Yes, absolutely. There is an interest in and have been efforts to look at the approaches elsewhere. Obviously, the big difference in Scotland is the role of the Lord Advocate. Yes, indeed. Just one final comment about the feelings of families as they stand at the moment in respect of the slow pace of implementation of the recommendations. You clearly have close contact with families. What do they feel about where we are now? I think that they are disappointed and frustrated at the lack of real change that some of those families have been involved since the review was commissioned in 2019. It is nearly four years and not much has changed. I think that they have been remarkably resilient in continuing to attend the various meetings and that representatives from the families attend every one of the groups that I have mentioned. When I started, there was so little trust on the part of the families in what they were being told that they really wanted to have someone in the room at every meeting of every group, and they have that. I think that they are encouraged to some extent that the committee is interested and wants to hear more about that, but they would rather, obviously, in their individual cases, want to have answers to their questions, but more generally, they really want to see improvements for other families in the future and to prevent future deaths. I am going to bring this session to a close. I thank you very much indeed for attending this morning and I will take a short suspension to allow us to have a comfort break and to allow Ms Emery to leave. Thank you very much. Our next item of business is to review the Scottish Government's response to our post-legislative inquiry on the Domestic Abuse Scotland Act of 2018. I refer members to paper number three, and I am going to invite members to come in with any comments or points that they would like to make on the Scottish Government's response or any suggestions for further follow-up. Are there any points that members? A few points. One of the most important ones relates to the statutory aggravator of involvement of a child in a domestic incident. Our report, which was made at eight separate recommendations, was perhaps key. Essentially, what we said is that it is not really being measured or used, or it is not clear how well it is being used, because we do not really know that it is hard to work out the detail that is not entirely clear how it is being used. The response to that point that we made in the report is a little bit vague. I would suggest generalities, because it does not really say exactly what the Government is doing to address that. The second point relates to communication to the public. Our report also made a recommendation that there was previously quite an effective public awareness campaign, and a suggestion that something similar could be done again, because people maybe do not realise what this legislation does. Again, the response from the minister appears to be slightly… I think that the word is used again is vague. There is consideration of a campaign to address these issues. It is nice to know whether there is material in respect of both those points. In relation to the aggravator, that would clearly be an operational issue, and one where it is at the officer's discretion whether it is appropriate to include it. I have noted that. My recollection is that we were quite keen for something to be explored in and around a public awareness campaign due to previous indications that it is an effective piece of work to undertake. The minister says that he will publish more detailed statistical information at some point later this year. It would be nice to know when that is. The evidence that we took in the report, there is quite a lot of evidence from witnesses saying that it has not been used properly. It is not clear when and how it is being used. It is hard to assess how well it has been used, because the frustration was that it could not get the data. It would be nice to pin it down a bit more, I think, on that. I am happy to go back and stress that we would be keen in particular to ensure that that particular issue is incorporated into the report. I have not had a chance to read the domestic abuse and stalking charges report that was published on 12 September, but I look forward to that. I think that that will probably throw up a lot of information. I am just not clear in the main findings whether there are statistics for the coercive element of the bill. I am not sure whether the statistics used include that in the new statutory events. Of course, the behaviour, which is beautiful for a partner or an expert, might be coercive, but it does not state that. I quite like to know that. I was interested in the stalking charges that 921 stalking charges were reported to the Crown Office. Of those, 485 were identified as domestic abuse. Those are useful statistics to have. As I say, once I read the full report, I will be better informed. Pauline McNeill I mean just following on from Rona. I would be interested to spend more time looking at the stalking charges. It is obviously broader than domestic abuse, and I think that there are some issues with victims certainly reporting some failures in the system in relation to the law there, but for another day. From the paper, we are to assume that under item 3, those changes have already happened or have already been agreed. That list of creating standard conditions of bail, placing a restriction and granting bail, allowing certain evidence that those have already been created in the sense of engaging abusive conduct. For example, where a Chelsea's here is doing domestic abuse incident, that's what Russell had raised for the changes included, so we're to assume that this has all happened. Is that paragraph 3 in the paper? I would need to check for you, Ms McNeill. The bill or the act was passed in 2018. I'm not aware that there are provisions in that act that are not yet enforced, but I'll clarify that. That's what I thought. I believe that I'm not yet enforced, but I would need to clarify that. That's what I thought. I think that the top ones would require further discussion, if they haven't been implemented. The bottom three, applying certain special measures aimed at protecting child witnesses, requiring the court to consider future protection of victim and sentencing and offender. The bottom one, which I think is really important, to turn the court to always consider making a non-harassment order against a person convicted of a domestic abuse offence, is really important. Otherwise, many cases up until now have had to seek privately, either under one of the interdict civil processes, which is costly for most people. That would be helpful to clarify if those are just recommendations or not. That's fine, we can check that. Any other comments? Nope. Sharon Dowey. The only comments that I'd put all the way right down was when, because there's a lot of, in the Scottish Government response, there's a lot of actions, but there isn't any dates or anything when it's going to be achieved. So it's later this year, and then we will reconvene in form future consideration of a campaign to address these additions, but there's no dates on when anything's going to happen, so I'd be interested to see that. So is our report later this year going to be the 31st of December, or can we expect it before that? The only other thing, and again, I'm just new in, but some of the thing about sentencing as well. So from an outsider looking in, a lot of the issues in the press seem to be about sentencing, so I don't know if there's anything getting done along with the sentencing council, just on sentences that are being given out, and I know there's the under 25s, et cetera, but that was one of the things that I'd put down as well, but looking at sentencing. Okay, thanks. I mean, you're right, there's not a specific date been included in the response, but my interpretation of the update in relation to a final report later this year would be by the end of this year, but we can monitor that obviously in relation to the issue around the sentencing council. Obviously, they are independent, and so I think the, again, it's more about looking at tracking the policy around sentencing in relation to domestic abuse and violence against women, so I think, I assume, that that will be included in the further response that we get. Sorry, just very quickly. The recommendation in our report, which is numbered 89, it was after taking evidence about how some particular domestic abuse cases in the criminal courts, there's civil cases running in tandem, and often an abuser will use one or the other to continue the abuse, so our recommendation was there should be asked the Government to look at or consider or come back with a view on a single sheriff model where there's civil and criminal cases operating simultaneously, and I think the response from the cabinet secretary is not really satisfactory. It talks very generally about joined-up thinking. It doesn't use the dreaded phrase, a series of workshops. It doesn't say whether they agree or disagree with this, even in principle, and it doesn't give any indication as to what is going to happen next, if anything. The response ends talking about child contact centres, which is a completely different subject. It looks like padding. Thanks for that point. I do remember we raised this, and it was a valid point to raise. It's potentially quite a big piece of work to undertake, but we can ask some further questions on that, because I think it's a valid point to make. Maybe the Government don't want to go down this road. Maybe there's no plans to do so, but in which case just tell us that. Thank you very much. Any other points at all? We can certainly go back to the Scottish Government for a wee bit more detail in and around the points that you have been raised this morning, and one other option might be to reach out to some of the witnesses that we engaged with during that piece of work, just to seek any further updates or reflections that they might have on progress. Members happy with that? Our final item this morning in public is consideration of a letter from the minister for community safety on the issue of the misuse of pyrotechnic devices at football and other events. Members will recall that we wrote to the minister asking whether the police can prevent someone detained after being found with such a device from simply going into the ground once they are released after a search. We also asked whether football ban and orders can be used. The minister has replied on both points, and her letter is set out in paper 4. I'm pleased that we raised that as we've obviously highlighted an issue which the Scottish Government has indicated that it's now considering in relation to how to resolve. I'm just going to open it up and again ask members for any comments. If you agree with my suggestion that we now give the Scottish Government a bit of time just to come back to us with a further response and any plans in that regard, I'll just open it up to members. Yes, maybe this is clear, but I don't know if we know and indeed more importantly the public know what exactly the timeline of implementation is going to be because the legislation that was brought in quite quickly on the basis of needing to address the proxy purchasing for under 18s, and the expected timeline has already been put back in relation to fire control zones licensing and so on. There was a suggestion, I think, in the letter from the minister that there was still the Government's intent to bring in a key part of this this year. Where are we? I think it was relating to fire control zones, but it seems pretty unlikely that that's going to happen if we don't know anything about which local authorities have a look at who's doing what, how it looks and so are we up to speed on timeline and forgive me if I don't know that. I mean obviously your question is about the broader issue of the implementation of the legislation and we do know that there have been challenges and delays in terms of timescales. I do understand that the minister is aware that we maintain an interest in that and has undertaken to keep the committee informed specifically about the issues that you've raised around the likes of firework control zones, the licensing scheme and I know that members are very interested in that, but for today what I'm interested in is just ensuring that members are content with the response that we've received in and around the specific points that we raised in connection with football banning orders and the actions of an individual on release from being detained by police if they've been found in possession of a parotett. I'm quite keen to just maintain that focus but I do absolutely understand the points you've made which I think are reflected across the room. Pauline, I think you wanted to come in. Yeah, I mean when I read the letter I mean it goes back to an issue the committee raised previously which was it felt really rushed and now I'm actually wondering you know it should have been clear about the relationship between football banning orders and this mean far better for me to say but surely the role of lawyers and government officials is to match up legislation when they're drafting it in relation to all other pre-exiting legislation and work out the answer. Obvious relationship and we are now asking questions in hindsight in the ministers have to ask that question and whilst she's quite correct to say it's a matter for the courts, it's a matter for Parliament to determine what they wanted when they've legislated and now they've thought to a party and to a person what we wanted was to give maximum powers to arrest people for the use of parotettonics on the football matches which are extremely disruptive and now we're having to try and fix this in hindsight so I don't I think the committee probably should have been drawn to retention from the beginning that there's I mean wouldn't it have occurred to me that there's a 2000 pre-existing act that might have a relationship with some. Okay thanks I mean I can obviously speak on behalf of the government in relation to the sort of preparation process for the bill but I absolutely acknowledge your your point and I suppose I'm pleased that we've now highlighted it and there's some work underway on that. Rona Mackay did you want to come in? No, not I'm happy. Anyone else? Shaddan Dowie? Just a question in the probably can I follow us on for Pauline's same on the repeated convictions for possession of pyrotechnic articles I was just wondering what the the penalty for that would end up being looking at the under 4.2 the fireworks and pyrotechnics article Scotland act 2022 a person who commits an offence who's found the fireworks on them without a license is liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding six months but I'm just wondering if that's the same penalty but then we've got the presumption for no having sentences less than 12 months so is that actually relevant? I can't answer that off the top of my head. I was just a question to ask. Yeah we can we can look at that I'm not able to answer that off the top of my head but yep I'm happy that we take that away as a wee point of action okay if there's no more questions are members content that we give the government just a wee bit of time just to come back with to us by way of follow-up okay thank you very much so that concludes our business in public this week next week we'll be starting our stage one evidence on the victims witnesses and justice reform bill and we'll hear from the cabinet secretary for justice and home affairs and we'll now move into private session thank you