 We will have a great time to listen to what is going on. I thank the committee for the meeting on the public audit in the 17th of the public audit committee in 2023. We have an apology from Colin Beattie today, and the first item on our agenda is to agree on not to take agenda items 3, 4 and 5 in private. Are we all agreed? We are agreed. Thank you. The main item for consideration this morning is the report produced by Audit Scotland into the criminal courts backlog. Can I welcome our witnesses this morning, Auditor General for Scotland, Stephen Boyle, who is joined this morning by Mark Taylor, who is an Audit Director at Audit Scotland and by Lindsay Davis, who is an Audit Manager at Audit Scotland. As usual, Audit to General, we've got quite a number of questions that we'd like to put to you, but before we do that, can I invite you to make a short opening statement? Many thanks, convener. Good morning, committee. Covid-19 pandemic created a large backlog of criminal court cases waiting to be heard. Since then, significant progress has been made by the Scottish Government, the Scottish courts and tribunal service and their partners in reducing the overall backlog. Throughout the pandemic, partners in the criminal justice system identified innovative solutions to support recovery, including the use of remote jury centres in sermas. The Scottish courts and tribunal service also made very effective use of data modelling to inform decision making about the effects of the backlog and to help to identify solutions. That included the introduction of the courts recovery programme in September 2021, which helped to increase Scotland's criminal court capacity and reduce the backlog. In September 2022, the number of outstanding scheduled trials peaked at over 43,500. That is more than double the courts and tribunal service considers as its normal operating capacity level. That figure has reduced month on month since then and stood at just over 28,000 in February of this year. The pandemic backlog of summary cases, such as common assault, domestic abuse and breach of the peace, is reducing. The court service estimates that it is on track to be cleared in March 2024. However, the backlog of solemn cases such as serious assault, murder, rape and sexual offences peaked in January 2023 but will take until March 2026 to be cleared. It is important to acknowledge, convener, the impact of the backlog on victims, witnesses and the accused who are experiencing longer waits for their cases to be heard. Average waiting times for solemn, more serious cases, have more than doubled since the pandemic and currently stand at between 43 and 53 weeks. Some of those crimes disproportionately impact on women and children. The Scottish Government published its vision for justice in Scotland in February of last year, but the supporting three-year delivery plan for continued recovery and reform of the criminal justice system has been delayed until the summer of this year. It is important that the Scottish Government finalises and publishes the plan as a priority. My report makes recommendations to the Scottish Government, the Scottish courts and tribunal service, as they work to reduce the backlog and reform the criminal justice system. I look forward to answering your questions this morning, convener. Thank you very much indeed. I think that that statement sets the scene very well. What I wanted to start off by asking you was, you mentioned at the start of the report that you have a plan to monitor the recommendations that you have made in the report. Could you tell us a little bit more about how you plan to do that monitoring work? Yes, of course. I will say a bit about this report specifically and any further work that we might do on the justice system. I will last march to say a bit more about some of our wider arrangements, if that would be helpful to the committee. You will see, convener, that we make recommendations at page 6 of the report. We think very carefully about the recommendations. Sometimes we make recommendations to individual bodies and other times to wider covering in this instance both the Scottish Government and the courts and tribunal service. We undertake a range of mechanisms that we have not settled on specifically for this report yet, so given that it is fairly fresh. However, what we like to do in the recommendations is to set out who they are for and the timescales for that. In this report, some of those are quite shorter than you might typically see at the committee for some of our reports, so covering the next three to six months and then up to 12 to 18 months. We have mechanisms open to us such as a follow-up report, reporting through the annual audit of those organisations or, indeed, we also have impact reporting mechanisms. We are finalising our options, but given that some of those are quite short in timescale, convener, we will settle on that fairly soon over the course of the rest of this year to take stock of the progress that the Government and the courts and tribunal service is making. I think that it is particularly relevant, given that one of our core recommendations is around implementation of the three-year or publication of the three-year delivery plan. That is expected in the summer, so we will be tracking that and reporting publicly on the progress on that front. If you find it helpful, maybe Mark might want to say a bit more about the wider work that we are doing about recommendations and impact monitoring. Thank you, Auditor General, I am happy to do so. Your recall when we came to speak to you recently about the Auditor General's work programme, we touched a wee bit on our impact and insights work. It is building on the work that we have always done to follow through on the recommendations that we have made, but I guess to give a bit more visibility around that, I do that a bit more systematically, both in terms of follow through or recommendations, but also what does that tell us across the piece? I am pulling more of that out. Amongst that work will be piloting a number of approach shades. One of the things that we will publish shortly is a report around city and region deals and looking back at our recent joint report between Auditor General and the Council's commission on the impact that that has had, and it will be an opportunity for the committee to see some of that in practice in a wee bit more. I think that the trick here is to get the balance right between the work programme being dominated by looking back at all the work that has already been done and making sure that we are balancing that with getting into new areas. Thank you. Obviously, we see a lot of your reports and I thought that it was interesting that in this one your recommendations are aligned with timetables. You have things that you expect to happen in three to six months, things over the next 12 months and then over the next 12 to 18 months, which is a useful way of addressing some of the challenges that you have identified. It seems to me to be quite innovative and very useful indeed. Are those timescales ones that you have agreed with the Scottish Government and the Scottish Courts and Tribunal Service? I will ask Lindsey to say a bit more about the clearance arrangements. I think that all of our reports are shared with the relevant bodies. We write to the director general of the Scottish Government for all of our performance audit reports to give opportunity for fact-checking and comment, and that is part of our standard arrangements. I am grateful for your feedback first, convener. I think that in making a recommendation all of us would expect that it follows that smart principle. Having clear timescales gives an opportunity for the public body to consider the recommendation, what is reasonable and realistic, and you can have that follow-through, so that it is clear what was asked for and what was delivered. All of our recommendations in today's report can be seen in the context of what is achievable. From a public audit perspective, there is not a great deal of merit in us making a recommendation. However, clear or appropriate, we think that if there is that sense of it is just not achievable from the public body. Aligning the recommendation and the timescale is what we have tried to do in today's report, but Lindsey can say a bit more about the engagement that we have had with the courts and the Government on this. We shared the draft report with the Scottish Government and Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service at the clearance stage, and that included the time-bound recommendations. There were no comments received back or issues identified with them. That is very helpful. Quite a lot of the report addresses the response during the pandemic and the lockdown and all the restrictions that were in place at that time. Willie Coffey has a series of questions on that, but before I turn to Willie, I have just got one. One of the things that happened was that the sheriff court system was consolidated into 10 hub centres, and I think that the JP courts were incorporated into that as well. We had 10 hubs and they were asked to consider essential business. Could you tell us how they defined essential business? You are right, convener. We set out in the report, and I think that we moved from 39 to 10 hubs across the various sheriffdoms across Scotland. In terms of the prioritisation, I think that there is a number of steps and Lindsey can set that out in a bit more detail for the committee. If I may say a word or two before that, I think that what we have seen in the report is that the system in the early stages of the pandemic came together through a range of governance and prioritisation mechanisms that looked at how it could continue to deliver the courts and justice system at the height of the pandemic. It is not that long ago, but I suppose that memories can fade over the course of the past year and a bit when we come out of lockdown, but we recall that those were two national lockdowns that prolonged social distancing and a sense of this could bring severe pressure not just on the court system because Scotland's justice system is interconnected and what that might mean for the number of people held on remand, the waits for cases to be heard and the associated human cost that that has on people who are experiencing the justice system. We saw that one of those innovations was actually how to get that throughput continuing and bringing down into a hub model. Perhaps say a bit more over the course of this morning about some of the other innovations that supported that, but in terms of the prioritisation, Lindsey can set that out. In terms of the prioritisation, priority was given to the custody trials because in legislation the accused are supposed to be heard by the court on the next lawful day. The hub courts were prioritising that sort of business around about the initial stages of the lockdown. I am going to turn now to Willie Coffey, who has got some more questions in this whole Covid response. Stephen, one of you could tell us a little bit more about the initial responses that happened as a result of Covid, particularly the digital electronic transformation of the document side of things that you say in the report. What was a successful thing to do? Could you tell us a wee bit more about how that worked? Is it still in place post Covid in the period that we are in? Lindsey, that is probably the best place to sit. I suppose some of the digital and the evidence sharing arrangements that were one of the innovations that we referred to in the report. I am sure that I want to say a bit more about some of the use of data. I know that this is a theme that this committee considers regularly in terms of how well data is being used across public bodies in the delivery of public services. Today's report is a welcome change of tone. What we have seen through our audit work and set out by the courts and tribunals services that data was used effectively. They had deployed data modelling to support the delivery of the court service and the prioritisation. They used scenario planning to set out what would happen if there were not some of the innovations that are set out in the report. They have also reported that transparently in terms of the use of data. All of that has built on into some of the specific examples that we covered in the report. Lindsey, you can talk to the committee through that. In terms of some of the digital solutions that were implemented, there was the installation of video conferencing facilities within police custody suites to allow the accused to appear remotely. That was initially done to prevent the transport of the accused who were presenting with Covid-19 symptoms, but then it was used more widely even where symptoms were not present. In terms of the conduction of criminal court business by electronic means, that also allowed for the establishment of the virtual summary trial pilots to take place, where the victims and witnesses were able to give their evidence remotely outwith the courtroom. That provision also allowed for the remote jury centres to be established, whereby the juries were remote from the courtroom. One of the barriers to effective working across partners and use of data is data sharing arrangements not being in place. We refer at paragraph 34 of the report as part of the recovery, new and transform programme. One of the overarching arrangements that set out how services would be delivered in the criminal court system was that that was part of their thinking. The committee will again be familiar with many examples where data sharing arrangements have not been in place between public bodies, but we have seen that that was the case supported by the Scottish Government's Justice and Analytical Services division. That continues to be the case as they look to further reduce the backlog as part of their thinking about transformation. I was speaking with Procurator Fiscal last week to discuss the report. She was talking about the presentation of digital evidence that has led to early presentation and disclosure of evidence that seems to turn the backlog around pretty quickly. It has always been possible to do that, convener, but Covid made us do things that we had not possibly considered before. That seems to have been a particularly successful thing to do. I wonder if that process is still going to continue to be embedded at the heart of the system to further reduce the backlog? I am happy to come in on that. In terms of the coronavirus recovery and reform act 2022, it was brought in last year. I can double check to see if those provisions are still in place. One project that we mentioned in the report is the desk project, which is the digital evidence sharing capability project. That was something that was being worked on pre-Covid, but the Government announced it this year that it has been piloted within Dundee and with a view to further nationwide roll-out later this year. That is creating a unified digital system for evidence sharing between the court staff, prosecutors, defence agents and police, where they can handle and access the evidence. That is an important part of the summary case management pilot that is on-going, which relies on the disclosure of evidence to the accused and their defence agent, so that they are more informed of the case against them. In domestic abuse cases, that evidence disclosure is automatic, so the desk system will help with the timely provision of that evidence. Yes, you certainly mentioned that, but is that system available to us in the solemn cases? I know that you said that the backlog is still pretty high, so is that process usable in solemn cases? I would need to double check the information on that and get back to you on that, if that's all right. Thanks very much. Steven, your report also tells us that the pace that was required by the emergency response for Covid did a highly good collaboration among all the partners in the initial stages of the pandemic. What's your evidence base for the conclusions that you've reached? You also note that there was a failure to fully document plans and outcomes and so on, so how are you able to reach a conclusion if you don't have a documentary evidence base to look back on? I think that both things are true in today's report. We all recall the early stages of the pandemic and public services trying to sustain services, so we touched on that this morning to agree that the court service, primarily because of its earlier investment, pre-pandemic, had invested in upskilding data in a way that some other public services hadn't. It was able to use that expertise to deliver and sustain services model scenarios working with its partners to really look at the scenario, Mr Coffey, of if they didn't do this, if they didn't explore some of the innovations that, in terms of remote jury centres, remote balloting, some of the evidence sharing arrangements that Lindsay mentioned, that meant potentially an overwhelming of the system in many years to hear cases and all the human cost that that brings. It's also true that decisions were taken at pace at the start of the pandemic. As we've also set out in earlier reports on Covid, that is to be expected, but what we don't do in today's report is give a clean bill of health entirely around some of the decision-making and the governance arrangements. As we look forward and touch on some of the latter stages of the pandemic, not all of the governance was as effective as it should have been. The role that some critical parts of the governance system played weren't as comprehensive. We've particularly mentioned advisory groups, which tend to be comprised of representative groups and victim support arrangements. The use and application of equality impact assessments still has some way to go. Applying all of those things into a rounded, effective governance model for some of the vital transformation arrangements that are still planned has still got some work to do, but that doesn't detract from what we say. The start of the report is that, at real pace and a time of crisis, the courts and tribunals service and their partners worked well to sustain and allow the system to continue functioning. Very briefly to the root of your question, Mr Coffey. This is a bit of a generalisation. Often, in the audit business, we are reliant on evidence of work in progress, governance and those things. As Dr General said, that is really important. In this circumstance, the speed of the response is such that we are able to look at the actions that were achieved, which have involved multiple partners and the implementation of those actions. I think that the really strong evidence from us about the way in which for that to occur was that collaboration taking place. Thank you. Last question from me, convener, if I may. The backlog clearly has an impact on victims and witnesses. We know that, and you've said that quite clearly in your report. Is there any other additional support that is required by the Scottish Government other than providing some additional funding to assist it? Is there any other type of support that you consider, whether it be advocacy or whatever else, to assist victims and witnesses to get through that process? A couple of things to say, and then I'll limit my response to an extent. I mentioned that the use of the advisory groups for some of the reform was a necessary and welcome part of the consideration of how services would be delivered over the course of the pandemic and the future, but they weren't fully deployed. Victim support Scotland, rape crisis Scotland and other groups who represent people's experiences of the justice system, weren't used to the extent that we might have expected and would expect as part of those transformations. I mentioned how that was applied to the equality impact assessment. As I mentioned in some opening remarks, women and children are disproportionately affected by some of the crimes that are related to the backlog. In terms of their place in shaping the system and consultation with stakeholders, that's a vital component so that there is a shared understanding, shared view and effective consultation for how services should be delivered. You're right that funding is also one mechanism, but having the voice of users as part of shaping the system matters, too. Ultimately, it will be up to the Government and the court service for how they make best use of and engage with people who have a stake in the justice system. Thank you very much for that for the moment. Thank you, convener. I hope to come back in later on. Thank you. I will bring you back in later on. Next, I'm going to call on Craig Hoy to put some questions to you. Craig, good morning, Mr Ball. Obviously, prison overcrowding is nothing new and you've previously reported that the prisoner population in Scotland today exceeds the capacity of the Scottish prison estate. To what extent can you say that the courts backlog and particularly the number of prisoners being held on remand sometimes for extended periods, to what extent can you say that this is impacting upon the existing and long-standing pressures within the Scottish prison service? A couple of points I would reference just to bring to the committee's attention the points that you make. Prisoners held on remand increased by 14 per cent over the course of the pandemic. Time spent on remand, which is not a linked statistic, also increased. We also, just to highlight to the committee's attention at paragraph 17.9, some of the equality considerations of remand further where, according to prison population statistics in 2021, the proportion of women on remand was 30 per cent, young people 48 per cent, compared to 25 per cent of men. We haven't looked into the detailed background between those statistics, but they are a very relevant factor that the courts and tribunal service and the Government will want to consider. If I may just to answer a bit further, we produced a report last year on the workings of community justice in Scotland that also reported that Scotland has one of the highest prison populations per head of population in western Europe. All of those factors lead to what does that mean for the justice system that Scotland wants to have post Covid, some of the reforms that are intended, and we are also thinking about what that means for our own work programme in terms of the prison estate, the pressures that are under on the Scottish Prison Service and so forth. All of that is in our thoughts, Mr Hoy, for future audit work. Do you know what, if any, assessment is being made into the extent to which the figures and the high figures and increasing figures of the number of people being held on remand is impacting those individuals, for example, in relation to their mental health or the loss of earnings or the loss of their employment or any impact that it might have in relation to their future housing arrangements? Those are the factors that we also identified in our community justice briefing paper as well about the impact of prison sentencing being held on remand, and what that means for the life chances of those people. All those are relevant. In terms of what work has been done around that, it is clearly a vital role that that is part of any work for the Government, the courtservice, the community justice authorities as well, that they are playing a connected role with the multi-agency partners who will support people who have experience of the justice system. It was not part of our scope for this audit, I should say, but it is something that we retain an active interest in. Papagraph 29 on page 17 of the report states that the Scottish Government introduced the maximum time that an accused person can be held on remand prior to a trial without the court granting an extension through the coronavirus Scotland Act number two. Could you tell the committee a bit more about those time limit extensions that the Scottish Government has introduced as well as what they were previously prior to Covid, particularly in relation to those being held on remand? I will ask Lindsay to set that out for the committee. We have a bit of detail on what we have set in the paragraph, which is the time limits before Covid, what the coronavirus act meant, and the implications had that not been in place and the anticipation of—we do not use that expression in the report, but it is really rubbing against the effective functioning of the justice system had some of those provisions not been considered. As we say in the report, there were introduced, as without them, applications would need to be made to the court on a case-by-case basis to extend those time limits, and that would have taken a significant amount of court time to do. However, there is some mixed feedback in terms of their effectiveness. I think that there is agreement that at the beginning they were necessary. However, as time is going on, there seems to be a negative impact. In terms of what the exact time limits were, I can get back to you on that information, but the coronavirus act did extend them. The time limits are still in place through the coronavirus recovery and reform act 2022. Those temporary provisions are due to expire in November this year, but there is the potential that they could be increased by up to two years to November 2025. If my memory serves me correctly, you said that, for less serious crimes, the backlog should be cleared by spring of next year. However, for more serious crimes, it is likely to be 2026. Does that point to a structural imbalance in terms of co-provision, for example, at the High Court versus lesser courts? That is not a judgment that we have reached in today's report, Mr Hoy. I guess that a number of factors that might, in Mark White, want to say a bit more about that as well, is that the progress in reducing the backlog for less serious cases was significant. That allows us to reach a judgment in the report that, in overall terms, allowed the backlog to fall to the extent that one of the responses to it was the intention of the Courts and Tribunals Service on the Scottish Government to shift resource to tackle the solemn case backlog. That is not as straightforward, because the clear leads are different style of cases that require more input from legal profession, collation of evidence and so forth. There are different views about how achievable that is. Some of the key stakeholders in terms of criminal lawyers and the law society have expressed views on how achievable it is to shift resource from some of the cases to solemn cases. The imbalance that you talk about is not something that we have considered in detail. What we looked at in today's report is how the Government managed the backlog to the normal operating capacity level of around 20,000 cases that the Courts and Tribunals Service anticipates for less serious cases than 24. There is something of a split in the solemn cases, so there is a high court case backlog by 25, and then totality for the solemn cases, including sheriff cases by 2026. Much of that will come in about the transformation innovations that the Government is thinking, and Mark may touch on some of that, if he wishes. Thank you, Auditor General. I will pick up on the number of cases in each part of the system. The vast majority of cases are summary cases. In terms of the logistics of running courts, a case is a case to a certain extent that lasts for different degrees of time, and the focus on summary initially allowed the overall volume of cases to be brought down. Of course, the consequence of that is increasing case numbers and the additional complexity of the solemn cases that we have set out in Exhibit 6. Those numbers have continued to grow and only very recently have begun, and we all hope that the evidence supports have turned a corner and dropped back down from there. As Auditor General said, something that the court service was very aware of in its modelling and has taken action to try to address by redirecting resource and, as part of its overall plans, to try and bring those numbers down. More generally, the wider vision for justice and the ambitions that are set out for them, one of the things that we say in the report, is a need to translate that to specific plans. Specific plans will need to also address this sort of issue as to how those specific plans for the wider range of ambitions for the justice system translate to some of the issues that are continuing to be faced, and that is why we say in the report that it is really important that the Government sets out those specific plans as soon as it is able to do so. I am going to use very much lame in terms of saying that I am sure that Procurator Fiscals will be agastad of it, but is there any sense that Procurator Fiscals are going soft on those less serious crimes, and they are simply not going to go? There is a bit of jiggery pokery and deal making being done in order to bring those numbers down in a quicker fashion than might otherwise have been the case before Covid. I will be really careful with that. We have not seen any evidence of that. Importantly, there was not really a factor or part of the scope of our audit work that was really looking at how the courts and tribunal service and the Government worked to manage the implications of Covid-19 on the criminal court service in Scotland. As Lindsay mentioned a few minutes ago, there have been some innovations in the remote and digital evidence sharing that has allowed both sides of the criminal case to see the facts more quickly than they would have done beforehand. It is also a reason that some of those innovations, while triggered by the pandemic, the foundations were in place beforehand. Some of the factors as to why cases are growing volume are also relevant before the pandemic. There was a growth in solemn cases before the pandemic as well. Although the pandemic is the key driver and catalyst for most of it, there were legacy issues prior to that. However, the question that you asked, Mr Roy, we have not seen any evidence of that. No evidence of jiggery pokery. I am going to bring in the deputy convener, Sharon Dally, who has some questions. The report states that the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service was well placed to lead the early modelling work that informed decision making on tackling the criminal court backlog as it had access to large amounts of data and had the appropriate skills and expertise in-house. Can you tell us more about the in-house skills and expertise and how they were used? Good morning, deputy convener. We set that out in paragraph 37 of today's report. It is a key feature that the Courts and Tribunals Service used data well. I do not wish to overstate the point, but I think that this is a welcome departure from some of the reporting that we have done in previous years. I know that it has been a keen interest to the committee and your predecessor committee about how well public bodies are using data to support decision making in and of itself. At a time of crisis, investment and expertise allowed the Courts and Tribunals Service and their partners to use that modelling to forecast what the service would look like without intervention and to plan how they would sustain the provision of court service at the earlier stages of the pandemic. In terms of the skills, I will not turn to Lindsay to set out some of the history, if she can, for how the court service was better able to deliver services compared to some other public bodies. Ahead of the pandemic, the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service were already collecting large amounts of data on the numbers of cases that were coming to court, how many preceded to an evidence-led trial and how long those cases were taken. That allowed the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service to use their analytical team in-house to plug that into modelling to develop that. As the Auditor General said, in terms of looking at what would happen to the backlog if no action was taken and to show the impact of particular interventions on the backlog, the committee also did work with other criminal justice partners, which we mentioned in the report. The Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service was closely liaison to help to inform the modelling in terms of the number of cases coming through. It has been a collaborative effort, but we are well placed from the get-go. The modelling initially suggested back in 2021 that the target that the court service were aiming for to return to normal would be a backlog of 390 high court trials and 500 share of solemn trials. The report that you have published now said that the targets have shifted to 567 high court trials and 1,892 share of solemn trials, which is quite a change in the goalpost. Do you know why the court service has done that? I think that there are a couple of factors, and as you can see a bit more about that, one is that the volume of more serious cases was increasing before the pandemic. I should say, Deputy Commissioner, that this was not so focused on by our audit today about what is considered to be the backlog of cases. Our overall judgment is that the backlog was reduced to around what it was before the pandemic, but there were some trends prior to the pandemic for why some cases were taking longer and an increasing volume of solemn cases. We refer Paragraph 78 to a couple of those factors. It talks about the availability of forensic reports, witness availability, parties appearing at court and some of the adjournment factors that are also a feature of the functioning of the court system. What we have not done is to do an analysis of the specifics of how all those factors interact with what that means for the normal operating capacity of the court service. The courts and tribunals service would be better placed to set that out for the rationale for what is a manageable operating capacity for the court service post Covid. The report highlights the use of data and early modelling work carried out by the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service. Is this modelling work still being used to inform decision making as work continues to try to address the backlog? A very short answer, yes. That is our understanding. This is going to be a sustained feature of how the courts and tribunals service will manage its operations. Do you know if any modelling work has been undertaken to help to establish what the backlog is likely to be if no funding is put in place to support that? I am not sure that we do. I might turn to Lindsay in a second to explore if there has been any further scenario plan, but it is a very important point, Deputy convener, that there is an assumption that £40 million will be used over the course of the current year's budget convener of 2324 to continue to make inroads into the backlog. As we have already talked about this morning, that is not going to be until 26, until the full backlog is finished. Like many public bodies, the courts and tribunals service receives an annual budget, so they will do medium-term financial planning. It is their assumption that they will continue to be funded to deliver their recovery programme and to work on the innovations that they have set out on the vision for justice. However, we also know that there is a really tight fiscal position and there will be difficult choices that the Scottish Government will have to make as it sets out its budget for next year in 2425. The Deputy First Minister, in presenting the medium-term financial strategy to Parliament in the past couple of weeks, set out that there is a challenging fiscal position and that will require prioritisation and choices for the Parliament towards the end of this year as it considers its budget. However, the assumption remains that funding will continue to be available to support the delivery of the Covid recovery backlog for criminal court cases. Lindsay, if she knows, can you say what has been modelling done if funding is or isn't available? I believe that the modelling reports to date have shown the impact on the backlog if no action was taken. The most recent modelling report that was developed was from September 2022 and it showed what the impact would be of switching the additional resources that were in place for the summary courts towards the solemn courts. Funding is in place for that for 2023-24 and that switch was made in April this year. Do you think that there is enough funding? Last year, it was reported that the court service was told that justice is no longer a priority with the Government ahead of the budget. Do we know if the court service has been told something similar in subsequent years and do you think that the current settlement represents the service being a priority? Ultimately, it is for the Government to determine its priorities. It is also said that not everything can be a priority. How that translates into individual funding allocations for different public bodies or public services will be a matter for the Government to set out to Parliament as it considers its budget later this year for 2024-25. Ultimately, it is not just about the continuation of the delivery of services as they are currently being delivered. Some of the innovations that are also planned need to be clear about what outcomes are going to be delivered. Are they going to produce efficiencies and so forth? As we set out towards the end of the report, all of the innovations that are planned also have to have that mapped through to what additional outcomes are intended from that and what efficiencies are going to be delivered from them. We would say that it is the funding as it is currently, but services do not remain the same. Building on some of the modelling and better use of data produces efficiencies as well. What does that mean for provision of services next year and the year after? The assumption, as we understand it from the courts and tribunals service, is that they will continue to be funded on the current basis. That allows them to project that they will clear the backlog completely by March 26. I am going to bring Willie Coffey back in now because he has got some more questions about some of the innovations that were developed during the course of the pandemic. Steering the remote jury centre model that you referred to in the report, there was an initial pilot and it was extended. That pilot cost £12 million to service that. A usual question from our audit committee about value for money around that particular initiative, have you been able to assess the value for money element of that? On that narrow point, that is not something that we have considered in isolation, Mr Coffey, in terms of the delivery of value for money from the remote jury centre. What we have reached is a wider judgment that some of those innovations allowed the courts and tribunals service Scotland's justice system to continue functioning effectively over the course of the pandemic. We also think that it is fair to say that that was a welcome innovation built on some of the foundations that we have touched on already today, use of data prioritising the cinemas because of their physical space capacity to support social distancing and some of the data security factors that were relevant in cinemas. That as part of the wider investment of £100 million over the course of the pandemic allowed the function to perform well and significantly reduce the backlog, but we have not made that narrow value for money judgment on the use of cinemas. The cinemas worked perfectly. The cinemas indeed has worked perfectly set up for this purpose to envisage cases in the future appearing at a cinema near you. Or is that experiment done and dusted in that site? Lindsay can set that out any further in sight, but the use of the remote jury centres in cinemas has now ended, so we have seen that as a necessary component of the provision of justice while there was restrictions in terms of people being in confined spaces over the course of the pandemic. If we have any further insight that Lindsay can offer, if not, we can come back to you in writing. The Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service started to decommission the remote jury centres in the summer of last year. I believe that two are being retained for the next couple of years just to help in terms of reducing the backlog. They were seen as a temporary recovery measure, if you like, but the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service is a model that is ready to develop should there be a need for social distancing again or perhaps in trials where there is a risk of jury intimidation in the future, where it would be beneficial to keep the jury remote from the courtroom. There is the potential to use them again, but there are no current plans. The issue about remote balloting of jurors seems to have been very welcomed by everyone who participated in that. Is there anything else as a result of the pandemic that was done that you might suggest could also be made permanent? You are right about that, Mr Coffey, in terms of remote balloting. That is also now a permanent feature in terms of bringing in further efficiencies. Those are the two examples that would be the most uncontested in terms of some of the innovations that were brought in over the course of the pandemic. Our report also refers to the use of virtual trials. It highlights some pilot exercises that took place in the northeast for domestic abuse cases, but there is more mixed feedback on those. There are some reservations from the legal profession about the appropriateness of entirely virtual trials, the amount of preparation time required for solicitors, and other views that are expressed about how well justice is served in an entirely remote environment. Those pilots were relatively small-scale in terms of entirely virtual trials as part of the suite of innovations that the court service intended to bring in at the start of the pandemic. I think that that feeds into some of the wider considerations about justice reforms and where next. Some of the reforms, there are a range of views about how appropriate those are, how effective they will be, what efficiencies they will bring and how that may, in some views, rub up against the effective delivery of justice. Those are the types of factors that the court service and the Government will really need to consider and consult widely before taking forward those next steps. You also talked a few times about up to 20,000 outstanding schedule trials. It seems quite a high number, but you have explained that there is a norm around that volume and level that there certainly was not a year of. Is there any consideration in keeping the 10 hubs going to try and reduce that faster, quicker or will we revert back to the 39 sheriffdom applications that you mentioned earlier in your report? That is lincey to pick that up if we get any further insight. I do not have much more to say on that. The 39 sheriff courts are still an operation that they reopened in June 2020. In terms of the potential future for hub courts, we do not have that information to hand, unfortunately. Just the last query from me was about the impact of adjournments. It is a part and parcel of the justice system. We all know that, but were there any particularly significant impacts due to Covid that meant frequent or more prolonged adjournments taking place and how did we solve that? It is not something that we considered in detail as part of our audit, Mr Coffey. The impact of it, we refer to, from a mention to the deputy convener a moment or two ago, as one of the factors about why cases are growing and some of the rebasing of post-Covid capacity levels. More directly, it has got a significant human impact of adjournments. We touched on some of the experiences of people's interaction with the justice system that the repeated trauma that can be caused from an adjournment as witnesses, accused victims, prepared to give evidence and then are stepped down because of an adjournment to then be brought back into that scenario. It is a factor that, as part of the Government and Court Service and stakeholders' consideration of reforms, is why adjournments happen and if there is anything that they wish to consider as part of those innovations. From our work, it was not a detailed focus for us this time. Do you think that others are going to look at that specific issue, but whether that created a negative impact that is going to be examined by the service system? Probably not much else that we can say on it. Within the report, we do recognise that the pandemic increased the number of adjournments and delays, which has obviously increased the feelings of uncertainty of victims and witnesses, but in terms of further work that is planned, looking at adjournments by partners, we are probably not in a position to say. One of the issues that you have already alluded to this morning, which jumped out at me in the report, was what you described as a failure to consistently apply equality impact assessments. You have already mentioned the recovery and new transform advisory group, which included organisations such as Rape Crisis Scotland, Victim Support Scotland and so on. First of all, why were they not involved in equality impact assessment work? And was there simply no equality impact assessment work carried out at all? I think that I can answer that up to a point, convener, but it's probably a feature of question that may be better directed at the court service and the Scottish Government. Why didn't feature prominently what we've reported is that it didn't feature, and the engagement that we had with Victim Support Scotland and Rape Crisis Scotland really points that out. We also draw attention to the fact that some of the crimes that are considered most regularly, the most serious of crimes, disproportionately affect women and children and other minority groups. Therefore, we would have expected that equality impact assessments would have featured more prominently, really, as they are expected to do so, as part of significant policy implementation and policy development. We make recommendations and conclusions to that effect that that needs to feature much more prominently as the vision for justice and the publication of the three-year delivery plan that comes into place. We spoke earlier on about the prioritisation of cases, and when it went from 39 courts to 10, there had to be some kind of prioritisation exercised. Was there no equality impact assessment or was there no equality sieve to the prioritisation work at that point? I can just find my paragraph reference for a second, convener. We've noted in the report, convener, that both for the overall justice system, to deliver some of the court service arrangements, there was a criminal justice board set up that drew on partners from across the justice system but still didn't have the full consideration of equality issues that we would expect. Both the prioritisation and the future innovations did not feature as prominently. There is some mitigation for that at the earlier stages of the pandemic when there was an inherent focus on pace and delivering and sustaining a service. However, as we move forward, that did not feature as prominently as it needed to be. It is something that we make a judgment on that it really needed to, and there is some surprise at that. Do you get a sense that that is now factored in and is going to become much more of a feature of the work that is being carried out? Ultimately, that is our sense, but what we want to see is evidence to that effect through the delivery plan and future arrangements that the Government and its partners and the court service will take forward. You mentioned other weaknesses in the report as well over and above the failure to carry out equality impact assessments. If I look at paragraph 83, you set those out. Again, they stand out in the report as being areas of significant concern. You said that the Scottish Government and the criminal justice board did not agree clear plans, outcomes and success measures for the Recover, Renew, Transform programme. You said that the RRT advisory group was not given the opportunity to sufficiently engage in that programme. The advisory group did not seem to get full access to decision making. You said that wider public reporting of the programme was limited, that there was inconsistency and that minutes of criminal justice board meetings were not produced. Those are some fairly bit lessons learned exercise that does not appear to have been adopted. Those are some fairly rudimentary elements of operation that we would expect to be met. From the report that you have produced and the findings that you have, that simply will not happen. Could you elaborate a bit more on why that is? You are right. Those are fundamentals of good governance that we would set out in any project and especially one of transformation, given the importance that the justice system can have on people's lives. We reach a judgment, convener. Those are weaknesses in the delivery of the Recover, Renew and Transformation programme. We spoke earlier this morning that, although the project was moving at pace in the early stage, you would allow for some mitigations. As we moved into delivering services over the course of the latter stages of the pandemic, there were still gaps in governance to support decision making and to map through to outcomes the effective recording of decisions that are minute taking. Really important, the vital role that advisory group plays that it was not sufficiently engaged with and the lessons learned exercises that were not applied has led us to the judgment that those are weaknesses that need to be addressed so that the public and stakeholders can have confidence both in the delivery of the justice system but, most importantly, given the context of some of the innovations that are planned that are supported by good, clear and transparent decision making. Has work now begun on addressing those weaknesses? That is the understanding that there is a recognition from the courtservice and their partners that this is accurate comment. It is for the courtservice and their partners now to satisfy themselves that effective governance is in place and weaknesses have been addressed. We expect to see that as they publish their three-year delivery plan and take forward future decision making. As we spoke at the start of today's meeting, that is something that we will follow up on. We might follow up in considering what our next steps are going to be. We have a final series of questions that Craig Hoy wants to put to you. Thank you, convener. Mr Ball, the report states that the three-year delivery plan is, in a quote, critical for ensuring that work continues to modernise the criminal justice system and that it both meets and reflects the needs of people in Scotland such as women and children, which is something that you alluded to earlier, given that the system does appear presently to disproportionately negatively impact women and children. The plan was due to be published in August 2022. Can you say why it was not published then, as you alluded to in your opening remarks, what is the revised timetable for its release and implementation? I am not sure that we have terribly much more detail, Mr Hoy, as to the reason for the delay in the publication of the delivery plan that underpins the vision for justice. We know that there will be factors in terms of capacity alongside consideration of some of the wider justice reform, some of the bills that have been published, which will be relevant. However, it would really be for the courts and tribunal service to set out why there has been a delay. On top of that, the need for this to be transparent, monitored up and mapped to outcomes as part of the publication of the delivery plan. We checked before today's session whether there is any further detail, but, as far as we understand, it is still summer of this year that the delivery plan is due to be published. Obviously, if the delivery plan is still a work in progress, it is probably fair to assume that the proposals within it have not yet been fully costed and that process may be on-going. Given that there is £40 million in this financial year allocated to recovery, renewal and transformation of the criminal justice system, to what extent should we have reservations that this money might not be allocated or spent in the most effective or appropriate way? We would always want to be assured that public money is being spent effectively in myself or at Scotland. The committee has a key role as part of that assurance arrangements. As you rightly referred to, the delivery plan does not just set out ambition, but it maps what is going to be spent and what the outcomes are going to be achieved from that and any associated financial implications. Sometimes we have seen that and many times we have not seen that. There has to be that consistency of publication so that users of the justice service can have their expectations met about what it means for them. For all the stages of the justice system, until we see the publication of the delivery plan, we will reserve judgment about how effective it looks. Paragraph 91 of the report states that advisory group arrangements for the transformational projects supporting vision for justice in Scotland are still being discussed. The report goes on to emphasise the importance of ensuring that the views of a wider group of stakeholders continue to inform decision making and ensure that equality issues are fully considered throughout that process. Can you provide any narrative or update on what stage the discussions are presently at? I am not sure that we have much more to add other than to perhaps make a point. There are a range of views among stakeholders about the appropriateness of reforms in our report and the important role that advisory groups will play. There are significant representative groups among the legal profession about some of the changes, some of the reasons behind some of the changes and how appropriate those will be. What matters is that all those voices are heard through detailed, clear consultation arrangements. Particularly those of victims groups that represent people's experiences of the justice system that they are playing into the reforms and innovations that are being proposed. I am assuming that all the views and experiences of a wide range of stakeholders are going to be important to mitigating the risks within the system. The report states that the Scottish Government, the Scottish courts and tribunal services and partners recognise the key risks to reducing the backlog and to achieving longer-term and much-needed transformation. The report states that, on-going and effective involvement of a wide range of stakeholders will be important to mitigating and managing those risks now and into the future. Are you aware of what steps are being undertaken presently to mitigate those risks, whilst all those other interventions are taking place? We understand that engagement is happening across the different stakeholder groups between the court service and the Scottish Government as part of the consideration of the reforms, but that is at a high level. In terms of the detail of how those discussions are progressing, the courts and tribunal service is probably better placed up to the committee. Just in terms of the three-year plan, if for any reason it did not come out during the summer, what do you think the risks that would pose to the transformation agenda within the Scottish Prison Service and the Scottish Court Service? Yes, we make the point in the report that this is a vital component of the detail of how some of the ambitions and vision for justice will be implemented. We would expect to see, as both some of the finances set out more clearly, the anticipated longevity of some of innovations and the associated outcomes. The two ought to go hand-in-hand with it. We reference the strategy and the delivery plan to be published closer together than is currently. We have a delay in that. The longer that delay continues, the more challenging it will be to set out in a clear, transparent way what the intended outcomes and benefits from the vision for justice will be, so we make the call that that should be published urgently. That concludes our questions this morning. I once again thank Auditor General, you for your evidence this morning and also thank Lindsay Davis and Mark Taylor. We will now move the committee into private session.