Chamber and committees

I will bring in Mr Lancaster, as he is keen to come in.

I know that Mr Lenehan would like to come back in. Before I bring him in, I would like to bring in Miss McPartlin, as I am aware that she supported the SSBA’s written submission.

I will bring in Mr Lenehan—I ask him to make his comments as brief as possible—followed by Jamie Greene.

A number of people want to come in. I am conscious of time, so I ask for questions and responses to be as succinct as possible.

I will bring in Dr Scott at this point.

Agenda item 3 is an evidence-taking session on a Scottish statutory instrument. I welcome to the meeting Keith Brown, Cabinet Secretary for Justice and Veterans; Tom Fox, head of corporate affairs, Scottish Prison Service; and Jamie MacQueen, Scottish Government legal directorate. For the committee’s information, Fulton MacGregor will have to join us online today because of travel disruption. I refer members to paper 4.

When we considered the instrument last week, we agreed to write to the Scottish Government and the Scottish Prison Service with some questions. I thank the cabinet secretary for his written response, which we received earlier this week. We thought that it would be useful to invite him to the meeting to discuss the instrument further and to answer members’ questions, and I thank him for his attendance, which is much appreciated.

I invite the cabinet secretary to make some brief opening remarks before we move to questions from the committee.

We will also write to the inspectorate.

That is helpful and will be noted.

I am happy with that. Does anybody want to raise any other points?

I suggest that we ask for an update from the Scottish Government on its plans and whether it intends to take forward any of the Public Audit and Post-legislative Scrutiny Committee’s recommendations that fall within the criminal justice remit. Are members happy with that?

Members indicated agreement.

That is really interesting—and a bit concerning when it comes to the backlog issues that you have highlighted.

From what you have said, one of the challenges involves recruitment, which is something that we have been conscious of. I will touch on that briefly. What do you see as some of the priorities in addressing that?