Chamber and committees

Thank you very much for those opening remarks. I will kick things off by picking up on your comments about management structures and wanting to see a different approach across not just Police Scotland but the whole justice system. I will reference some of the key findings in your report under the heading of leadership and vision.

For the benefit of members, I will tease out some of your points in the key findings. You say that there is

“a perception among officers that senior leaders focus”,

as you have outlined,

“on safe outcomes, seeking to minimise every possible threat, risk and harm. This is normally achieved by police officers remaining with the person in crisis until they are either accepted into the care of the NHS or a family member. This approach to organisational and reputational risk results in a lack of focus on reflection and opportunities for improvement, often to the detriment of the individual concerned.”

You go on to say that

“Police Scotland cannot wait until a review of the whole system is undertaken before developing and implementing its own mental health strategy. We believe the current situation is unsustainable.”

In the following paragraph, you say that

“Police Scotland must now develop and implement a mental health strategy and seek to understand its legal and moral position and role within the whole system”.

I think that we all understand and relate to those remarks. Will you expand on the last point about understanding the legal and moral position and help us understand what you were thinking about in those comments?

Before I bring in Katy Clark, I will pick up on the comments that you have made. I am really glad that Pauline McNeill asked a question about psychiatric emergency plans. Having been part of the review of the Grampian plan many years ago, I know about the spirit of psychiatric emergency plans in underpinning that collaborative approach to poor mental health, whatever end of the spectrum that might be.

Should we be looking to develop the role of psychiatric emergency plans to underpin all the challenges that we have been discussing today? I am interested to hear your commentary on that. Am I right in thinking that psychiatric emergency plans sit within mental health legislation? Should we be using them much more robustly?

Thank you to all of our witnesses. The session has been really informative. I am sure that we could have continued to ask questions.

That concludes the public part of our meeting. Next week, we will review the evidence that has been taken so far on the Victims, Witnesses, and Justice Reform (Scotland) Bill, consider a draft report on our pre-budget scrutiny, and consider correspondence that has been received about deaths in custody and about the Domestic Abuse (Scotland) Act 2018.

Thank you—that is a really helpful update.

I have a couple of supplementary questions that I might come back to later if we have time, but first I will open up the session to members. I will bring in Rona Mackay and then Fulton MacGregor.

I will bring in Fulton MacGregor and then Sharon Dowey.

Our next item of business is to continue to take evidence on the Victims, Witnesses, and Justice Reform (Scotland) Bill. I remind members that we are at stage 1 of the committee’s scrutiny of the bill. Today, we will focus on parts 1 to 3 of the bill.

I am pleased to welcome to the meeting the Cabinet Secretary for Justice and Home Affairs, Angela Constance, and Scottish Government officials. Heather Tully is from the criminal justice reform unit, criminal justice division; Lucy Smith is from the victims and witnesses unit, criminal justice division; Simon Stockwell is from the family law policy unit, civil law and legal system division; and Kirsty Anderson is a solicitor in the legal directorate.

I refer members to papers 1 and 2. I intend to allow around 90 minutes for this session.

I invite the cabinet secretary to make an opening statement.

Thank you very much, cabinet secretary.

We will move on to questions. I intend to invite questions on part 1 of the bill first. We will then move on to parts 2 and 3 in turn.

I will begin with a general question on part 1, which proposes the establishment of a victims commissioner. We have heard mixed views on that proposal. Some witnesses are clearly very supportive of it, but others have raised concerns about, for example, whether that is the best use of limited resources, whether we need another commissioner, and a possible conflict with the role of the Lord Advocate. I ask the cabinet secretary for her reflections on some of the concerns that have been raised.

Although I appreciate that decisions such as on the pilot project in the north-east are for the chief constable, how does the Scottish Government continue to support Police Scotland to ensure that local priorities are met and relationships with local communities, which the cabinet secretary alluded to a short time ago, are maintained?

We are conscious of time. I do not know whether you want to move on, convener.

Good morning to our panel members. It is nice that you have been able to join us. I am interested in exploring a little the importance of domestic policy in Scotland, for example, and how important that is for sub-states such as yours when it comes to scoping investment opportunities for businesses.

I will give you an example. I am an MSP in the north-east of Scotland, which has an opportunity to shift from oil and gas production to renewables production. There can be some challenges in and around, for example, planning and consenting policy in Scotland, and, with particular reference to timescales, that may have an impact on the attractiveness of Scotland for international partners to come and invest here. That is just one example, but I am interested more broadly in how domestic policy is scoped or considered when our global colleagues, including those in Europe, may be looking to develop in Scotland.