 I have to just rush into this. I'm sorry, I have hardly got to sit down because we have to stop by 220 for the Parliament sitting. Can I welcome everyone to the ninth meeting of the Justice Subcommittee in Policing of this 2014? Can I ask everyone to switch off mobile phones and other electronic devices completely as they interfere with broadcasting even when they're silent? No apologies have been received. Item 2, independent custody visiting. This is the main item on our agenda session. Will we hear how the new arrangements are working in practice? I welcome the meeting, Andy Cowie, assistant inspector, HM inspector of constabulary in Scotland, Brian McFadden, who is national co-ordination manager for independent custody visiting of the SPA, Stevie Diamond, chair of unison, police staff, Scotland and Paul Laidlaw, independent custody visitor from Inverness. I appreciate that Mr Cowie and Mr Diamond have been here before, but I don't know if you've given evidence before to committee, Mr McFadden or Mr Laidlaw. It's simply when a question is asked if you feel you want to respond if it's not specifically directed at, just indicate to me and I'll call you and your light will come on, you don't need to press anything. Now as we go straight to questions because of the shortage of time. Members, John, Graham, Kevin and then Margaret, thank you. It's a question for all of you generally and although it's not bang on subject, it is relevant and that's the thematic inspection of police custody arrangements in Scotland, the HMI. I found that there are four references in there to the wellbeing of foreign nationals, so that is access to interpreting facilities, there's mention of reading materials and Police Scotland needs to work with partners to introduce robust and proportionate processes to ensure that foreign national offenders are managed appropriately. How does that touch on each of your jobs? I mean, there must be challenges connected with that. It's your report, Mr Cowie. Do you want to address that first? Mr Finnie, thank you for your question. The report, which was the most comprehensive study of custody in modern times in Scotland, certainly picked up the challenges of dealing with a population that becomes ever more diverse, so where that actually hits the road is in the issue of rights and booking in of the custody to make sure that the necessary information is gathered and that is a risk assessment because the custody may have medical problems, which they don't declare through language difficulties means the care plan by custody division wouldn't be addressing the actual risks there. So there's a very real challenge around that and we recognise that in the report and encourage Police Scotland to ensure that, as they plan moving forward, that they're fully cognisant of that. I'm certainly reassured from the Chief Superintendent in charge of custody division that she is fully aware of that and ensuring that's at the forefront of her mind. Of course, that won't just beat booking in period, there'll be an on-going issue if someone was, for instance, detained over the weekend, perhaps for Mr Diamonds. Absolutely. Police Scotland have already had a custody care and welfare of prisoners standard operating procedure, which staff would adhere to and that takes into account any custodies of foreign nationals. The concern from unison from that is that the difficulty and the number of staff that we have at the moment gaps in staffing means that there hasn't been a complete training programme around that care and welfare of custody standard operating procedure, so staff make themselves as familiar as they can with that. I think that's reflected in the HMICS report. However, in our view, there needs to be more training in that respect. Is that the L-Switch 2 per cent? Yes, Mr Leidlaw. For my experience as a custody visitor, the staff will usually let us know if we have a foreign national in. If they want to see us, they'll break that procedure to try to make them understand. If we get to see them again rather than asking a list of questions, we'll go around it to make sure that they're okay. That's very reassuring. Mr Leidlaw, you're the man that's at the coalface if we can put it in that way. Could you give us some insight into your view of the quality of the training that visitors, lay visitors, receive before the visitations? On a separate issue, your experience of how things have changed over the past year or so, and what do you think the issues are going forward? Training is going on, I believe, just now. We're trying to get more volunteers within the scheme, so I can't comment on the training. Not under the new regime. The training that we received under the old regime was more than adequate, and any issues that we raise now are answered. So, I hope it's your... Your experience and what are the issues going forward? Numbers. Numbers of volunteers. That's probably one of the biggest issues, and a secondary issue is getting into the cell area. There can be delays. Because they're busy, lack of staff. It's not an excuse, but that's an excuse that is used all the time. Personally, I don't come across it where we're based up in the north that very often. It does happen. You can wait 30 minutes to get in, which 30 minutes is totally unacceptable. You don't expect instant access, but usually you're in within about five minutes. If there are no staff in a police station, you wait until somebody shows up. They could be out in patrol. And in terms of the visitation and the issues that you'd raised, whether major or minor, do you record them in some kind of document, and does that document eventually find its way to Mr McFadgin? We have a sheet where we ask certain questions. If we note a concern, we'll speak to the person in custody and try to work it out there and then. If we have any concerns, it's noted in an official book, and it does make its way back to Brian. Whether or not it's resolved at the time, if it's resolved at the time... If it's resolved? Excuse me. If it's a minor issue, and sometimes they are, we try to resolve them there, some people in custody will not accept that as a way that nothing has gone wrong, that will never be resolved. There's never been a major issue that's come to your attention. Something where I would stop and say, you know, we've got a serious problem here. A minor issue just to advise us, and also this is a public session that you've come across that you've resolved. I haven't seen a doctor, I haven't seen a lawyer. We let them know, you know, you can ask to see a doctor, we'll pass that on to staff, they'll bring the nurses there. It's noted in the notes that they have seen a lawyer, or they have seen the doctor. It's just, they might have forgotten, they might just being, playing a little game. In light of the comments from Mr Laidlaw, from your point of view, Mr McFadden, about training, presumably it will be your responsibility to recruit new visitors. Can you give us some insight into what's happening in that domain and what the way forward is from your perspective? As you'll be aware, the eight legacy schemes that operated previously were brought into the national scheme to operate is one. The numbers that existed previously were sufficient for the custody suites that were visited at that time, but it was only about 60 per cent of custody estate that was visited under the previous regime or regimes. I had to widen the visiting areas for the existing visitors, which has now left gaps throughout the country. I've been running national recruitment now for about 12, 14 weeks. I've held two information days fairly recently, which has led to about 15 people, between 15 and 20, going forward to a training day, which is being held on 8 November for potential new visitors, so hopefully it will start to fill the gaps that I have. In respect of existing visitors, there is a training day being held on the 25th of this month. There has been a slight gap because the focus was on making sure that the national scheme was operating in the way it should. So there has been some neglect on existing visitors because the focus, as I say, was on recruitment training of new visitors to try and bring them on, but we're now starting to address that. Things are starting to settle down and hopefully getting to where we should be. In that business plan that you'll have in the office about where you would like to be, you indicate that you've got up to 20 people that you're putting through a course and you'll select from there if they're fit for purpose. How many would you like to recruit in order to fulfil your need and do you have enough finance to pay them all their expenses in whatever training if they all turn up? I have currently at the moment 133 visitors who are actively visiting. I have another five who are off-rota for various personal reasons. If I get 15 out of the group that's going forward, I would probably look for another 10. The difficulty that I have at the moment is geographical. The north of the country, the islands, western islands, it's fairly difficult to recruit locally. So whilst I'm getting people showing an interest in it, it's fairly localised, central belt as you would expect. The north of the country, we're starting to see gaps and I'm going to have to try and put a bigger push in there. Running between 150 and 160 would be a reasonable figure, my expectation. Your second point, the finance, yes, I have been provided with adequate resources to finance the scheme. From Mr Diamond's viewpoint, largely by members of your organisation that will be in the custody suites, presumably, there is comment about delays accessing and staff shortage. Can you give us some notion that I know that custody suites have changed and that there's been a centralisation of custody suites? What's the impact in terms of trained staff being available and the management of those prisoners who are in custody? Absolutely. Previously in the Strathclyde region, we went to a more centralised custody set-up with un-demand cells. The custody centres would be supplemented by smaller centres whenever demand required that. That's the model that Police Scotland seems to be moving towards just now. When I knew I was coming up here, I canvassed the custody officers that are members to get their opinion on the custody visiting scheme and, in a mean, it's very positive. The one thing that they did pick up on was the time, so the visits at times, to put them under extra pressure, literally because of staffing levels where they wouldn't be able to assist the custody visit at that particular time. That could bring some sort of tensions around. Generally, they smoothed out fairly quickly once they were actually in the custody centre. However, custody at the moment is severely understaffed. It's been backfilled by Police officers just now, and they are undergoing a review—I was at a meeting yesterday about that—so they are undergoing a review and there is a whole new look at that from that perspective by Police Scotland, but it's possibly something that we could liaise with the custody visitors here, to say that those are the concerns that our members have around that. Whilst the restructure of custody division is going on, we could have some sort of leeway around whenever the visitors are actually arriving at the place. One last question. The recommendations indicate that, although previously there had been a single occupancy policy that was attempted to be delivered, you acknowledge within your report that you feel that, moving forward, multi-occupancy might well be the case for the future. Did you consider what the impact of that might be for visitors to come in to sell passageways and seek to speak to prisoners? Will that whole process of that interview need to change if there is a multi-occupancy involved? The way that we have portrayed it is slightly different from that, and that is that the goal of single occupancy, i.e. one custody, one cell, is certainly to be driven towards that. That is the ideal to manage risk in the best way. However, the estate that has been inherited by Police Scotland was some of its Victorian and was based on multi-cell occupancy—large cells, six, seven, ten, twelve people in that. In driving towards having a consistent single-cell occupancy policy currently, that means that some cells have only got one person in it, whereas previously they had many. How has Police Scotland sought to manage that demand? To do that, it has to move custodies around the country. You will see from our report that, within a 10-month period, 2,300 custodies were moved around during their time under Police Scotland's care. The point that we are making there is that having a hard and fast rule about single-cell occupancy is generating or moving the risk from where it was in the cell to transportation and other resource demands. We are encouraging a bit more flexibility of thought around where it is appropriate to have three custodies, rather than one in a large cell, then consider that, because it could mean that two custodies do not have to be moved around the country. That is where we are coming from in our inspection report. To answer your second question about how would multi-cell occupancy impact on the visitors, obviously the important thing is about people's safety, whether it is the custody of the DT&E, the visitor, the police officers and the police staff that are involved. There needs to be a system of work that enabled ICV visitors to come in to be kept safe but still to do their job, which was to seek access to the custodies and to find out privately as to how they felt they were being treated to ensure that there was no abuse. That last comment is probably the key to any change that might occur that, presumably in many areas, the interview takes place in the cell area. That element of privately would mean that prisoners would need to be removed from the cell in order to have a private interview. There will be consideration about whether a visitor actually sees the cell environment to ensure that it is appropriate for detaining prisoners in our custody. We have looked at how custody visiting would evolve should that occur. I believe that there is a practice currently where the term is a toilet cell that is held in abeyns for the purposes of privacy and dignity, and that would be made available to visitors. If it is multiple occupancy and somebody chooses to accept a visit, the visitors would see the cell environment but, at the same time, they would be afforded the privacy to carry out the visit. Thank you. My first question is for Mr McFadden, who has pointed out that there are some difficulties in recruitment in the north. Obviously, in the previous regimes, there was a great difficulty in establishing a scheme in Grampian in the first place. Can I ask you what you are at now in terms of coverage in the Grampian area, in particular in rural Aberdeenshire and Murray? When I assumed responsibility for the national scheme, which was on 1 October last year, we had four visitors in Grampian. I have run recruitment, as I mentioned. We now have eight visitors. Two of them are located in the Elgin area and tend to visit locally to that area. The remaining five are localised to Aberdeenshire, to Fraserborough and now Kitty Brewster, since it opened previously. It was Queen Street, obviously. On looking at the analysis of throughput of custodies and detainees going through the more rural areas, is the balance of how often places are visited. At the moment, we are coping with the number that we have in that area. However, I would probably seek to have another two to four visitors in there to make sure that there is a degree of resilience. How do you go about advertising for visitors, Mr McFadden? At the moment, I have run an advert on the Volunteer Scotland website. I have an advert on Volunteer Aberdeen. I have a contact there who is giving me access to local universities, student unions, community radio, oil company, bulletins. We have quite a wide scope. At the moment, I am looking at localised radio adverts to see if I can boost it, as I said, because we have been running for 12 to 14 weeks. It has not been as good a response as I would anticipated or hoped. I am now looking at local radio advertising to try and, as I said, it is now becoming more localised geographically to try and fill the gaps that I know I have. Is that local radio as in commercial local radio, or is that some of the community radio stations which often have a greater outreach? We have a community radio reporter in here who's show reaches a massive audience, which I was quite surprised at. Often, the stations are probably more likely to get some attention paid to what's being said rather than an advert in between music. I'm looking to do both. Previously, it was done on commercial radio, but I've been made aware, as you say, that the reach of community radio sometimes is far better localised. So, at the moment, I'm working to realise how much was involved in scripting and voiceover and everything else involved in radio ads. I'm working on that at the moment for, hopefully, into the new year, because, I think, in the run-up to Christmas, they're likely to get lost within all the retail ad-vids that are going out in the run-up to Christmas. Can I ask if you're able to find a breakdown of independent custody visitor numbers per the, if you do it in the legacy, constabulary, legacy constabulary arrays? Is it possible to do that? I mean, you've discussed Grand Prix in the Northeast. It would be quite useful for the committee, welcome from different parts, to see the breakdown across the rest of Scotland. Would that be possible? No, I know you don't, but if you just send them to me as convener, it will also go on our website and the committee members can see it from different areas that they represent. It could also help us in terms of helping you and trying to recruit if we find folks who may be interested. If I could maybe turn to Mr Laidlaw, because you talked about sometimes some delay in getting into the custody area, Mr Laidlaw, for various reasons. Mr Finnie and I, in a recent trip to Elgin, went into the custody area for a short period of time, and it was suggested that we may not want to be in that area at that time because of a wee dirty protest that was going on. We decided that we would take the advice and not go in at that moment. Are there any specific things? Is there a pattern of reasons for you not being able to get in, or is it just that staffing reasons that you mentioned? It usually comes down to the 50-50 split. I would say that we were busy and we were concerned for your safety. It usually occurs when somebody is being booked in, so they are busy, or if that person decides to cause trouble, they do not want us to bring us in. They are worried due to our safety. Those are the two reasons that I would say for delays. Do you visit various areas or is it normally the same place that you are doing your visiting at? Inverness, Nairn, Aviamore, Dingwall, Alness—that was the legacy stations that were covered. Now we are Wichthyrsos, Dornaway, Fort William, the Western Isles and the Orkneys. Forgive me, because I do not know those places particularly well in terms of the various establishments there. Are some of those modern custody holding areas and some of them old, or do they all tend to be old there? Inverness, Aviamore, Nairn—literally brand new—could not fault them. Dingwall is a little older, same with Alness, but they tend not to keep custodies in there. Wichthyrsos have been there for years, but they are not run down. They are not Victorian by any stretch of the imagination. Have you found that there are no delays in some of the more modern facilities that you are getting in, and maybe the delays are in the older ones or is that not the case? The vast majority of custodies that are held in the five stations that I mentioned are taken through to Inverness, so that is where the delay is. If you go to Aviamore, sometimes the station will be closed. When there is an officer in, you are in within a couple of minutes. The delay is not a criticism but nine times out of ten in Inverness. That is where all the custodies are taken to. I do not know how long you have been doing this. Why did you decide to do it? There is a man looking for recruits. Why did you decide to be an independent custody visitor? I used to be a police officer and I saw the ad. Do you tell Mr McFadgin where you saw the ad? Press and journal, I think. Oh, I did not mention the PNG. It just interested me having had police experience and having worked in a cell area. I thought that that sounds interesting. It has been. There you are. You could have plugged it. You are now committed to plug it to get more recruits than to do it if you find it interesting. My question for Mr Diamond is about modern custody areas compared to older ones. Kitty Brewster, which is in my constituency, is easier for staff to deal with the custodies and visiting in those more modern facilities such as Kitty Brewster than it was previously in the likes of Aberdeen Queens Street. Absolutely. Kitty Brewster is a purpose built facility. To be honest, there has been some redundancy built into the building because we know that there are going to be changes in criminal justice act, for example. That has been taken into account whereas some of the older facilities, even the ones that have been modernised, do not have that. Recently, the Scottish Police Authority, the Finance Committee, put a fairly large amount of money, I think, over £2 million, to accommodate some of the changes that are required to some of the custody centres to bring them up to legislative scratch, if you would like to call it that. There are difficulties in there, but there are possibly things for the future at the moment. We are dealing with what we are dealing with at the moment is purely down to staffing levels and considerations for the safety of the visitors when they come in. How is it blaze? In terms of staffing levels, do you think that it is safer in modern facilities than it is in older facilities if there is not at any one point the required amount of staff that is on the go? I think that you are absolutely right, because safety has been built into those new facilities where the other ones could be adapted from whatever building has been there. I will give you an example of one of my local areas, which is Coatbridge. Coatbridge had, I think, 10 cells before. There is now a custody holding centre. There are 20 cells, and they have modular cells. What has happened is that the old cells, which were cold, wet, damp, you name it, have been upgraded in line with the new modular cells, which have come in, which have been specifically built for that purpose, and they are much safer. Again, it comes down to the cells of multiple occupants, or single occupancy—a completely different ballgame whenever you are dealing with prisoners, and much easier to deal with. Similarly, with charge bars, where the prisoners are initially brought, the older ones are much less amenable than the more modern-designed ones. There is no doubt that Police Scotland inherited a very disparate landscape of facilities, some of which, as I said, were Victorian, and have evolved rather than been designed to the new enlightened standards that have come out over the past 20 years or so. There is no doubt that a purpose-built custody block now bears very little resemblance to something that was built 100 years ago. The issue, then, for Police Scotland and others is that the custody estate needs significant investment to maintain or improve the standard of health and safety, both for the custodies and for the people who are working within them. The recommendation 14 of a report says that, as a matter of urgency, Police Scotland should finalise the custody estate strategy, where it is taking it, and work in partnership with the Police Authority and the Scottish Government to prioritise investment in the custody estate because of that very disparate standard across Scotland. Is there an argument that spending capital sums on those kind of things, which are probably often not very popular with some members of the public, would lead to savings and revenue budgets in the future? There is absolutely no doubt that the business case would have to be made around that, but one of the non-negotiables is the standard of health and safety to keep people in custody. Very few of any of the 200,000 people kept in custody want to be in custody. It is around that these facilities are required, they need to be modern and enable staff and the custodies to be kept safely. That investment needs to be prioritised against many other competing demands, not only within the police service but across the public sector. We are encouraging Police Scotland to come up with that estate strategy to say where the investment is needed, how much is required and obviously they will have to negotiate that amongst many other demands with Government. That is very useful gentlemen, thank you convener. I just wonder if any ECHR implications if facilities were not suitable for people in custody? What we are saying is that to maintain or improve them there needs to be a significant investment. What we saw in our visits, we visited 22 of the custody stations unannounced. We spoke to 94 custodies during our inspection and we examined over 100 records to look at those things. What we found from that is that there needs to be improvements throughout there. Things such as stairs in custody areas, which are not ideal, we know that 68 per cent of custodies have either mental health, alcohol or drug issues. Therefore, we do not want to be moving around with somebody who is inebriated or intoxicated, or under the influence rather, up and down stairs when you are dealing with that. That is in nobody's interest around that. Clearly, there needs to be prioritised investment around that. We are not saying that it is an easy thing to solve, but there are implications that if that investment is not made, then obviously a state like anybody's house goes downhill if there is not that money spent on it year after year. I believe that there would be revenue savings. At the end of the day, everybody who has taken into police custody has just been arrested. That is all there. They are not guilty. Any of us could be arrested. You were saying about human rights. None of us would want to be put into the Victorian cells that we are hearing about. If investment has to be made, it is very difficult to justify it to the taxpayer. From what I have seen of custodies, that message has to be put across. That investment has to be put in to bring standards up to a decent level. Bearing mind, as we all do, the pressures on all budgets are balancing it against what the public may perceive or think, and the rights of people who are quite rightly as you say have been arrested, not even being necessarily through the court, not being through the court process in any way. Just across my mind at Margaret, Alison and John again. Good afternoon, gentlemen. If I could direct my first question perhaps, Mr Cowey, you mentioned that a lot of the detainees have mental health problems and, in your report, it is highlighted that the referral scheme for access to mental health is very limited. Could you tell us what is being done to try to address that? You can see from our report that we have certainly suggested for improvement that training and awareness of staff around mental health issues is one issue and the other one is about access to the services that we know are out there. There is a real goal to be had there or a prize is that many people of the 200,000 that come through Custody's live chaotic lifestyles and might not necessarily engage with their GP or other people. You have them as a captive audience if I can use that term and therefore there is an opportunity to join up work to access those services for individuals who may be amenable to doing that at that time, whereas it won't be when they're out and about in the community and perhaps living in that kind of chaotic lifestyle. There is an opportunity there that we are encouraging Police Scotland to take. That is work in partnership. It is not within the gift of Police Scotland themselves. I know from briefing from Police Scotland that we are receiving an update by the end of this year as to the progress against the recommendations, but I know that they are engaging with partners to see how that could be moved forward. I am not going to be an overnight solution. Is it better for some areas of the country? Generally, you are talking about the lack of consistency and just the kind of thing that a detainee could expect in one area of the country. That is a general comment that could be made about the custody arrangements in that we welcome the fact that there has been greater consolidation of access to those services, but you still cannot get around the geography of Scotland and the difficulties of offering services across a massive part of Western Europe. Those challenges exist, absolutely. If I could perhaps ask Mr McFadden, you talked about the training of new volunteers and existing volunteers, a one-day training. I think that the SPA website says that that would consist of practical and theoretical exercise. Could you elaborate on exactly what training it is? If you think that it is sufficient for the volunteers to feel confident in interacting with detainees who may have mental illness and who have abuse issues with alcohol or drugs? Certainly. The training day for new volunteers, the initial information day, provides a background and information on the scheme to allow people to judge whether it is something they wish to participate in. The training day we move on and it is more in-depth training around the legislation that governs the scheme and any other legislation that may be relevant to them in their role. There is a large input from Police Scotland who come in and explain the training that they receive, the procedures that they use and then we move on and its scenario-based exercises within a custody environment, which is custom-built at the Jackton training centre outside East Kilbride, which allows the scenarios to be run whilst being beamed back to the classroom to allow everybody to see it. Thereafter, it is a group discussion on how the issues were dealt with. The detainee, the officer who is doing the role-playing, is primed with various responses depending on how the visitors react with them. As I say, everybody can see what happens when we return to the classroom and it is just a group discussion as to how people felt it was dealt with, how they would have dealt with it differently and then just some guidance from myself and Police Scotland training department as to what we think would have been the best way to deal with the situations as they arose. After that, it is basically the finer detail of the scheme and how they would carry out the visit, the reporting mechanism and how that operates. It is really just to ensure that they are comfortable with the knowledge that they have before they start the visit. We then do a familiarisation visit to a local custody centre to let everybody see a real live environment and then they will be partnered with an experienced visitor for six or eight months until they are comfortable again. We see that they are performing as we would have anticipated after the training. I am also looking at a more structured mentoring scheme to ensure that the individuals that are bringing on new visitors are doing what they should correctly. I will not go up on that anyway, but when you have been doing it for 14 years and the training is intermittent, there are habits that may be picked up. I want to ensure that, because I have heard fairly recently that there are a couple of discrepancies around the country from previous training environments, so I am just looking for standardisation to ensure that everything goes forward properly. Mr Laethlaw, do you have any comments on that? We have obviously got vast experience of custody visiting. Is there anything that you would incorporate into the training or any comments that you would have on it? Listening to that, it all sounds very good. It is going into a very strange environment. It might be that if you are a volunteer, you are not just walking in off the street. The more training is very good, but it is actually going into the cells. That is where you learn and take from your training. However, I am very heartened by what I am hearing. After 14 years, you follow certain practices possibly that you should not be. Is that a confession that we are about to have, Mr Laethlaw? You might get mentored if you were watching. You get very used to dealing with certain officers and you get to be able to read people. You ask certain questions and they may give you the wrong answer, but you know that certain things have happened. They have been advised of the rights. When you ask them, they say, do you know why they are here? Some people will say no. They are stonkled sober, but they know what they are. However, you know within your own mind that they know. I think that even politicians evolve with experience. I think that it was very helpful, Mr McFadge, especially when you talked about being partnered, because I was wondering if you just did your training and were sent forth, which is excellent to hear that. Margaret McFadge was just one further question for Mr Diamond. In unison's submission to the consultation on the reforming police and fire rescue services, you were very much in favour of ICV being put on a statutory basis, but you also recommended a role for local authorities to review and report on custody visiting as appropriate. There should also be a place to cover court cells. Have either of those two things been followed through or acted on? I am not aware of that. There is obviously a reason why we want to keep the locality in things, which is why we spoke about local authorities. However, as for courts, that is outside our experience, so I cannot really comment on that. That is one of the recommendations, I think. The report, Mr Coway, makes reference to community initiatives to secure the wellbeing of individuals under the influence of drugs and alcohol, such as street pastures and safety buses. It also specifically references Alpine House in Aberdeen. Can you tell the committee a little bit more about what the benefit of those services are via custody cells? As I said, it is a high-risk environment dealing with custodies for all concerned. We see a number of initiatives that are aimed at giving the best care for the individual and the state that they are at that time. Our clear view is that if somebody is drunk, a place cell is not the best place for them. If they have not committed any tangible offence other than being inebriated, they can get better care elsewhere. Some of the schemes that I have sought to address that are similar to Alpine House, which looks at trained individuals looking after somebody while they sober up. In our view, that would be an ideal world. That would be much better. We see that parallel in Vernes in our report, where the Ambulance Service will assess almost a triage basis on the street with police colleagues, if they are called to somebody who is found slumped in the street through alcohol. The paramedics will say that it is better to take them to hospital to treat them rather than take them to a police cell. If you think about the inefficiencies there, not only the way of dealing with them, but you have an individual that is inebriated that has to then go through the checking-in procedure with all the delays that are there, then a nurse or a doctor might have to be called out to access them and, ultimately, they end up going to hospital anyway. Therefore, it would seem to be more efficient for the whole system to have an alternative around that. Street Pastors was probably earlier upstream, as it were, where the whole point is that people should be allowed to enjoy themselves. Even in Scotland, we should be able to do that. Therefore, people go out and street pastors cannot have a word with folk. Perhaps if they are straying over the line or getting close to the line where their behaviour is impacting on others adversely, they can have a word with them, they can hand out flip-flops to young ladies who feed or hurt them because of the spikes that they are wearing. All those things can help people not end up in police custody or making themselves vulnerable when either becoming a victim or a custody, neither of which we want in the police service—not speaking for Police Scotland, but generally—as a police service. There are some really positive things that can add value. Many of those projects have been developed in partnership with health services, local authorities and the police themselves. Albin House, in particular, was funded in that way as a three-partner process. It is now at risk of closure because of the police service withdrawing its funding from that, or it was threatening to withdraw its funding from that. Does that seem to you a short-sighted way to go about it? As I say, I cannot speak for Police Scotland. What we would encourage is that the business model for dealing with custodies on those issues has to be sustainable moving forward. I think that one of the positive benefits that we have seen from having one custody division across Scotland is that engagement with partnerships is an awful lot easier from the partnership perspective. That is the feedback that we have from agencies that say that we now have one point of contact to establish process, procedure, see the knock-on effect of one agency doing something differently, etc. There are some real benefits around having that in one division. The challenges of partnership working and who pays for what, who is the net donor. Again, our report, unfortunately, does not wave a magic wand across that, but I know that it is something that actively Police Scotland are engaged in discussing the way forward around the best way to deal with people that come into custody. That is helpful. If I could turn to, no, not chapter, sorry, paragraph 82, you talk about children and young people in the report. Of course, it should be only under exceptional circumstances that children are held in custody. You have said that there has been a 25 per cent reduction in the number of young people held. Can you quantify that place for us? I do not know what the numbers are. I am afraid that I cannot do that off the top of my head, but I will endeavour to get those figures to you from Police Scotland. That would be useful. Could you outline the procedures that are in place to ensure that vulnerabilities in young people are identified from the outset? The issue—this would not be peculiar to young people, but to everybody who came through the door in a custody facility—is that that first part of what is called colloquially is booking in or checking in the custody. When they are initially presented to the custody facility, an assessment is done of themselves. Is the evidence justifiable that they are detained or arrested? If so, we have this individual. What are their needs? A large part of that is requesting them to disclose medical conditions or have they taken anything. There is a long and detailed checklist of that. Police Scotland would expect the staff to pick up any cues from that that may indicate that somebody may need an appropriate adult to aid that communication process, or if there are particular syndroms that would be reflected in their behaviour. There is a amount of guidance in standard operating procedures that are married up with training and experience to assess what people's needs are. The vulnerability aspects of that may require a nurse who is present or a doctor to be called out to assess the individual. Quite often, the staff will use their own initiative and say, the vibe that I am getting off the custody is that they need an appropriate adult or we need to get medical attention or assessment to them. When it comes to vulnerability as to on-going abuse in their lives—I do not know if that is also what you are referring to—that again is much similar. We have found in our inspection that both the PCSOs, police staff and police officers are very good at developing a rapport with the custody. Quite often, they might come in fighting and screaming—that is a custody. By the time they leave custody, they are actually thanking the officers and staff for the way that they have been looked after. It is about building that rapport sometimes with the repeat customers that they can pick up those things. Sometimes the custody will confide in a member of police staff, particularly if they are not a police officer, or with an officer to say that something else is going on in my life and that I want to make an allegation of abuse or whatever. We are relying on our highly skilled and dedicated staff. The other thing that I would like to get across is that we found that staff were very professional and really wanted to give a caring service, which might be contrary to the public perception of custody and grumpy jailers. We found a much more enlightened approach to that on real dedication. Can I just ask— Why are you referring to that, because it is useful that you have sent it? Because you have got a recommendation, sex, which would seem rather alarmist, police Scotland should review its approach to the use of force in custody. Against what you are telling us to develop, especially the people that you call rather sweetly repeat customers, to put that into perspective what that means in your recommendation. Obviously, what you have said is that custody officers get used to dealing with things and know how to deflect and heighten the tension and bring it down rather than up it. The recording of the use of force. The use of force is on a continuum from perhaps just holding their arm and guiding them from charge bar to cell or to applying handcuffs to having to have three officers restrain somebody who is biting, fighting and spitting, so it is on a continuum there. What we would like to see is more consistency about recording of that. Are you once concerned about the incidents that I am taking? No. The reason why we think that that is important is that the UK signed up in 2003 to the UN opcat that is called the optional protocol for the Convention Against Torture, and there needs to be an audit trail to show that people are not being abused and tortured within custody. An ICV, with our 720 visits every six months and HMI every couple of years going round there, that is a really important part of convincing and showing that members of a community when they are locked up in Scotland are being well looked after. Thank you for that, just expanding on it. Can I ask a supplementary about very specific things? Are you on a different point? I am following up the child, but it is a different point. You can tick over Alison, so you want to allow him in. That is all right with Alison, it is all right with me. Mr Cowie, on that particular point, Mr Stewart and I met officers, and it was about the different arrangements that applied in the previous forces. The example given to us was that officers are engaged with someone who is to be taken into custody. It had all been very amicably transacted. There had been no hands-on, a totally compliant individual, but because of revised guidelines, they were then told that they would have to restrain the individual at the charge bar, and what they were saying was that this fundamentally, thereafter changed the relationship. What had been a very consensual engagement, compliant, had changed. Is that in any way what you are alluding to at all? We were discussed with Police Scotland about the risk-aversion approach to custodies. Discretion has to be used, and force can be applied on that continuum. Therefore, common sense, to a certain extent, has to be built into the standard procedures. We are encouraging Police Scotland to do not necessarily have one-size-fits-all, but to have the principle that people should be kept safe. Therefore, we would encourage them to be discretionary on that. That is very reassuring. Thank you. I want to hear from the independent custody visitor side of things, if you specifically always ask if there are children in custody and if there are, if there are particular processes that you would want to check on? The process that we work to now, because we have to fill in an official form, we ask male, female and if there are any children. The old legacy that you did not ask, but I always did, we cannot force a person to see us, but I would, if there was a child, and it is only being a handful of occasions, but if there was a child in custody, I would always encourage the officer to forget the preamble and ask the child, almost demand that they see us. Again, you do not go through the same question and answer because there are children. If I come across a new officer in a police station, I will inevitably ask them, will you allow me if you had a child? Would you allow me to see a child if it was in custody? Some of them still wonder what they would say and then I tell them that we are allowed to see children. Children are high on the agenda, very high. That is a very brief question to Mr Lidl. Are you allowed access to NHS staff working in the custody areas? Are you able to speak with them? Yes, we speak to them, they walk by, they know our face, we know their face. Yes, we can speak to them. That is lovely, thank you. A very quick one to Mr Cowie. Firstly, thanks for recommendation 9 about the solicitor access recording form and particularly the letter of rights. I think that it is good that that is highlighted and I hope that it will be picked up on. Are more people detained now than used to be, Mr Cowie? That is certainly my perception of things. It is a very difficult question to answer because you know the challenges of Police Scotland's ICT systems and benchmarking against that. We are clear in this report that there are records of 192,000 custody going through Police Scotland's hands in the period that we are talking about. That seems to be broadly similar with previous, but we cannot say that statistically because the challenges of marring it up around ICT systems. Will you be able to say that are more people detained to appear in court rather than release for citation? I do not think that Police Scotland could give you those figures and certainly we could fire the question to Police Scotland. It would certainly be able to provide you with the data of people that they currently call very much more difficult to give you that historical comparison. Would it possibly be connected to the different nature over the decades of the state of some of the people who are brought into custody because of various substance abuse that they might be in custody and otherwise they might not have been in custody just because of their physical state, either mental wellbeing or the fact that they are drunk or they are in drugs or whatever? Do you think that maybe you cannot answer that? Is that anecdotally just wondered if that may have something to do with figures? Anecdotally, that will have an impact on how many people have been arrested. We also see declines in some drug use, different patterns in alcohol use. People are drinking more at home because it is too expensive in the pub, so it is more about private space offences rather than public space necessarily. There are also changes in policy around who should be kept in custody before appearing in court, so there are all huge numbers of variables there, which I could not answer off the top of the head. So maybe if we got the figures, we would also need to have all the other stuff that led to the figures as well to give clear picture? I think that the causal relationship is very difficult to prove. Aha, right. Sorry, John. The very final one is the question of legalised cells. I know that there was a change to reduce the number recently. Excuse my ignorance and I do not recall if it is mentioned in the report. Is that touched upon because you could literally have the same cell discharging a different function? Would the scheme apply if it was being used as a legalised cell as distinct from a police custody cell? I can perhaps answer around what I believe the police position is. A legalised cell would be subject to inspection by Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Prisons, having been previously an area commander and gone through that thankfully very well. However, as to the ICV aspect of that, I would have to defer to Brian's knowledge around that. I suspect that it would be outwith scope. If I may, the report last year was recommended at the reduction in the number of legalised cells and also the transfer of responsibility for legalised cells from prison visiting committees across to custody visiting. My understanding of the timescale is that that is likely to be into next year. The number has reduced from 12 to 5, as it stands just now. I think it is Kirkwall, Lerwick, Royke and De Stornomay. They are still under the remit of the prison visiting committees, as it stands at the moment. I understand the responsibility that they will come across to custody visiting within the next six to eight months. That concludes our question. Thank you very much for attending and for the reports and the evidence that you have provided. I am going to move, if you will forgive me as you leave, I am still going to move straight on, given the time of the clock. I will go on to item 2. It is a quick one for you all here, the decision on taking business in private or next final item days to skidder a work programme in private or next meeting. As members know, it is standard practice to consider those items in private, but we will publish any decisions on future work on the website as soon as it is agreed. I will agree that we will consider a work programme in private or next meeting 13 November. Thank you very much. I formally close the meeting.