Chamber and committees

Our next item is consideration of two affirmative instruments. I welcome to the meeting Ash Denham, the Minister for Community Safety, and from the Scottish Government legal directorate Susan Black, senior policy officer, civil law and legal system division, and Jo-anne Tinto, solicitor, constitutional and civil law division.

I refer members to paper 1 and invite the minister to speak to the draft Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (Immunities and Privileges) (Scotland) Order 2021.

The next item is formal consideration of the motions to approve the two affirmative instruments. I invite the minister to move the motions.

Motions moved,

That the Criminal Justice Committee recommends that the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (Immunities and Privileges) (Scotland) Order 2021 [draft] be approved.

That the Criminal Justice Committee recommends that the European Union and European Atomic Energy Community (Immunities and Privileges) (Scotland) Order 2021 [draft] be approved.—[Ash Denham]

Motions agreed to.

I invite the committee to delegate to me the publication of a short factual report on our deliberations on the affirmative Scottish statutory instruments that we have considered today. Are we agreed?

Members indicated agreement.

Our next agenda item is a round-table discussion about prisons and prison policy. I refer members to papers 3 and 4. We will take evidence today from a round table of witnesses, who will be joining us virtually. I am sorry that you cannot join us in person, which is due to the current rules on social distancing.

I welcome our panel of witnesses. Alan Staff is the chief executive of Apex Scotland; Mr Bruce Adamson is the Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland; Wendy Sinclair-Gieben is Her Majesty’s chief inspector of prisons for Scotland; Dr Katrina Morrison is committee secretary of the Howard League Scotland; John Watt is the chair of the Parole Board for Scotland; Mr Phil Fairlie is the assistant general secretary of the Prison Officers Association Scotland; Professor Fergus McNeill is a professor of criminology and social work at the University of Glasgow’s Scottish centre for crime and justice research; Ms Teresa Medhurst is the interim chief executive of the Scottish Prison Service; and Allister Purdie is the Prison Service’s interim director of operations. We very much appreciate your taking the time to join us this morning. I thank witnesses who have provided written submissions, which are now available online.

I intend to allow around an hour and 15 minutes for questions and discussion. I ask members to indicate to which witness they are directing their remarks. We can then open the floor to other witnesses for their comments. If other witnesses wish to respond, I ask them to indicate that by typing R in the chat function in BlueJeans. I will bring you in, if time permits. If you agree with what another witness is saying, there is no need for you to intervene. Other comments that you make in the chat function will not be visible to committee members or recorded anywhere, so if you want to make a comment, please do so by requesting to speak.

We will move directly to questions. I ask members and our invited guests to keep their questions and comments as succinct as possible. I am keen to encourage a free-flowing discussion.

I start by inviting Ms Pauline McNeill to ask some questions. I will then bring in Rona Mackay.

I believe that Alan Staff would like to respond, too.

I think that Mr Adamson is also quite keen to say a few words on the subject.

I ask you to be as brief as you can, Mr Watt. I will then bring this evidence session to a close.

I know that we probably did not get through a lot of the questions and responses that we would have liked to, so I extend an invitation to the witnesses: if you wish to raise any outstanding points with the committee, please feel free to contact us in writing, and we will very much take your evidence into account.

I extend my thanks to all our witnesses today. Thank you very much for your contributions. We will now take a short break before we hear from our next set of witnesses.

I have a follow-up question for Ms Fraser and Ms Dyer. How can the important principle of judicial independence be implemented throughout Scotland instead of only in a few areas or sheriffdoms? As we have seen from Audit Scotland’s work, sentencing data show some geographical variation in the use of community sentences. For example, in 2019-20, the number of community payback orders per 10,000 of the population ranged from 16 in East Renfrewshire to 69 in Clackmannanshire. Do you have any comments on or response to that?

Do you have any further questions, Mr Greene?