Chamber and committees

Lynn, do you want to come in?

Time is against us and I would like to draw the evidence-taking session to a close. There has been some helpful discussion. I will ask one final question in follow-up to the discussion about body-worn cameras, kit and resources that Russell Findlay brought up.

The IT refresh plan that you spoke about earlier is a critical organisational requirement. I am interested to know whether the potential cuts will impact on progress with that plan, in areas such as the on-going mobile phone data triage work and the photo lab. Are there implications for that operational delivery?

I welcome our second panel of witnesses, who are from the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service: Ross Haggart is interim chief officer; Stuart Stevens is interim deputy chief officer; and John Thomson is acting director of finance and procurement. Mr Haggart will make a short opening statement.

Thank you. I will pick up on the point that you raised about staffing and the potential implications that you face with the current financial constraints. You were in the committee room earlier when Police Scotland outlined some of the scenarios that it could face. Will you provide any more detail on what considerations you might have to make on workforce planning and your staffing profile for the future?

I think that Russell Findlay has a quick follow-up question.

Our next item of business is to consider an affirmative Scottish statutory instrument. I refer members to paper 1. The instrument specifies the appointed day for the coming into effect of the code of practice that has been prepared by the Scottish Biometrics Commissioner under section 7 of the Scottish Biometrics Commissioner Act 2020. I welcome Keith Brown, Cabinet Secretary for Justice and Veterans, and his officials Ms Elaine Hamilton, forensics policy team leader, and Mr David Scott, policy manager, both from the Scottish Government’s police: workforce, equality and forensics department.

I invite the cabinet secretary to make a short opening statement on the SSI.

That concludes our consideration of the SSI. I thank the cabinet secretary for attending. We will have a short suspension to allow the cabinet secretary and his colleagues to leave.

Thank you very much. John Thomson, would you like to follow up on that opening statement?

On staffing numbers, we heard earlier from Police Scotland witnesses, who predicted that there would have to be a cut of around 4,500 staff over five years to service a 5 per cent pay award. Have you done any modelling that would allow you to consider the implications of a similar pay award?

Before I bring in Russell Findlay, I want to come back to the issue of where you make the cuts and how you configure that across your service provision. During Covid, fire death numbers increased, and I think that I am right in saying that there was a correlation between that increase and areas of deprivation.

Does that mean that you would have to think carefully and perhaps even use modelling or data to inform in a geographical context where and how you make the cuts? I hope that I am not straying too much from budget but, as Jamie Greene said, how those cuts might look is important in relation to public confidence.