Chamber and committees

That brings us to the end of the session, so many thanks for your attendance this morning. If there are any other issues that members want to raise, we will follow those up in writing.

We will have a short suspension to allow our witnesses to leave.

I was quite heartened to read that it sounds as though the release process has improved. However, as the Wise Group articulates in its letter, the difficulties outwith prison gates seem to be the challenge and, as you have all articulated, access to GPs is an issue.

I am aware through contact with NHS Grampian in my constituency role that there is an endeavour to encourage the general public to embrace new ways of working in terms of their not necessarily always requiring to see a GP for a health concern. There are other options, such as nurse practitioners, that the public can be signposted to and can access. In the context of this issue, might that be considered so that people who are vulnerable, have addiction issues and are on release from prison can similarly be signposted elsewhere?

On that note, as per the recommendation in the committee paper, should we write to NHS Scotland? We could copy the Wise Group’s letter to it and raise some of the concerns that we have discussed this morning.

Absolutely. We could perhaps also keep Angela Constance, the Minister for Drugs Policy, informed as well.

Do members agree to that approach and to share the information with relevant committees?

Members indicated agreement.

That completes our public business for today. Our next meeting will be on Wednesday 9 November, when we will continue taking evidence as part of our pre-budget scrutiny process.

Thanks very much.

Thank you very much.

I would like to come back to a comment that you made in your opening remarks, Ms Medhurst. It relates to the growing proportion of the prison population who are vulnerable in terms of age, complex medical and personal care needs and so on. I am interested to hear more about what the likely impact of that might be on that group of prisoners in terms of resourcing the necessary staff, training, case management and trauma-informed approaches. I am interested in a bit more commentary on the implications of pressure in that regard.

When we visited the Lilias centre, I think that it was mentioned that an evaluation process was potentially going to be undertaken. I suppose that that would be to monitor outcomes and to look at the effectiveness of the unit. Jamie Greene raises a good point. I am certainly keen to understand the cost benefits arising from the two new units.

Welcome back, everybody. I welcome our second panel of witnesses: Teresa Medhurst, the chief executive of the Scottish Prison Service, and Gerry O’Donnell, its interim director of finance. I invite Ms Medhurst to make an opening statement.

The second letter is from the Wise Group on the issue of medical prescriptions on liberation. Would members like to make any comments?