Chamber and committees

Thank you. I will come back to the submission from the survivor in relation to a specific point that is made in it.

When we took evidence separately from the Minister for Drugs Policy and the United Kingdom Minister of State for Crime and Policing at the joint committee meetings that we held, there was quite a bit of discussion about safe consumption rooms. That is relevant to that point.

We move on to violence against women and girls—[Interruption.] I beg your pardon, Jamie.

Thanks for that. We will move on past page 13.

That takes us on to pages 14 and 15. I am conscious of time. I point to pages 16 and 17. We have spoken about the review of service standards, and I am pleased to see reference to the stalking and harassment SOP and the training from the Suzy Lamplugh Trust. That is of value.

Thank you. We move on to page 22 and the section on “Reducing youth offending” and “offering community justice solutions and alternatives to custody”. Does anyone have anything to raise on that? If not, we will move on to page 26 and the section on legal aid.

Thank you.

Are you content with that, Pauline?

That brings me on to paper 5, which covers the final two related instruments—SSI 2022/101 and SSI 2022/103. Do members wish to make any comments over and above what we have already discussed? Otherwise, we will consider the SSIs as coming into force, while agreeing to consider further offline the potential unintended consequences of the measures.

Are members happy with that? Are we in agreement?

Members indicated agreement.

I have the same note on my action plan. I would be very interested to hear more about that provision, and I think that it is appropriate to ask for more detail on the women’s justice leadership panel.

Your remarks are noted. I am certainly not going to attempt to anticipate any of that, but we can take what you have said forward.

Do members have any other comments about the submissions, or are we happy to move on? I found the Police Scotland submission quite comprehensive, and I was very pleased to see reference to the draft strategy that it is developing with regard to violence against women and girls. I would quite like to hear a little bit more about that, but I am sure that that information will be provided down the line. I was also pleased to hear about the multi-agency seminar on the draft strategy that was convened by the Scottish Police Authority and which included a broad range of stakeholders.

It is good to see that some progress has been made on Police Scotland’s stalking and harassment standard operating procedure and that training has been delivered to police officers—I could be wrong, but I think that it was provided to detectives—by the Suzy Lamplugh Trust. I am interested in knowing whether that training will happen regularly or whether it is just a one-off, given that it would be of value and relevant to officers as they change roles and responsibilities. I was pleased to see those updates from Police Scotland.

Agreed.