Chamber and committees

Yes, that is fine.

Do you want to ask a follow-up question, Mr MacGregor?

The next agenda item is the first in a short series of evidence-taking sessions on spending priorities in the justice sector for 2022-23. I refer members to committee papers 1 to 3.

I welcome our witnesses, whom I am delighted to see in person for a change. We have, from Police Scotland, David Page, deputy chief officer, and James Gray, chief financial officer; and, from the Scottish Police Authority, Chris Brown, acting chief executive and accountable officer. We very much appreciate your taking the time to join us this morning.

I thank the witnesses for their written submissions, which are available online. I intend to allow an hour and 15 minutes for questions and discussion.

Before we move to questions, on behalf of the committee, I put on record our best wishes to Lynn Brown, the chief executive of the Scottish Police Authority. We all wish her a speedy recovery.

I ask that members indicate to which witness they are directing their remarks. We can then open the floor to other witnesses for comments. If other witnesses wish to respond to a question, please indicate to me or the clerks that you want to come in and I will bring you in, if time permits. If you agree with what a witness is saying, there is no need to intervene to say so.

We will move directly to questions. I ask that members and our invited guests please keep their questions and comments as succinct as possible.

I plan to structure the discussion around a series of broad themes. I will start by looking at the budget requirements as we come out of the pandemic and, in particular, at what is needed to return to pre-Covid levels of working.

Police Scotland’s written submission makes specific reference to the implications for the service arising from the anticipated increase in court delivery, including in relation to witness scheduling and broader summary justice reform. In the context of budget scrutiny, I am quite interested to hear you outline that in more detail. What opportunities might there be to offset some of those costs? I am thinking in particular about the implications of the commitments on police officer time to attend court. I address that question to Mr Page and Mr Gray.

I know that other members want to look at individual areas of the police budget and, before we move on from COP26, I have a quick question. A lot of overtime will arise from COP26, so will the provision include overtime costs, or will that have to be managed separately?

If members are happy, we will move on from COP26. A number of members would like to look at specific areas of policing and policy. I will bring Rona Mackay back in, then Collette Stevenson.

Yes, but I ask that you respectfully confine your questioning to budget provision and considerations.

Does Collette Stevenson want to come in? I have a final follow-up question.

I thank you all for your attendance. It has been a really useful session. If you have any follow-up information that might be helpful to the committee, that would be welcome, and we will obviously take it into account.

We will have a five-minute break before we move on to our next agenda item.

I have a follow-up question. We have been looking at custody provision. As a former officer, I know that there is good custody provision and not-so-good custody provision across the estate in Scotland. Was custody provision looked at specifically as part of the survey? Could you comment on any particular plans from a budget perspective for improving some of the custody provision that needs to be improved?

That would be helpful—thank you.

If there are no more questions on the capital budget side of things, we will move on to look at Covid and the 26th UN climate change conference of the parties—COP26—on which Russell Findlay has some questions.