Chamber and committees

The next agenda item is consideration of a paper from the clerks on a United Kingdom Parliament bill. I refer members to paper 4. Since we last agreed to publish a short legislative consent report on the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, the Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee has published a report and has highlighted a couple of issues, which are outlined in the paper. It is suggested that we update our planned report and publish it now.

We should note that the Scottish Government plans to produce a supplementary legislative consent memorandum in due course. We can consider the issue of extraction of information from digital devices then.

Do members agree that we should update our draft report, as is suggested in paper 4, and that we should ask the clerks to make arrangements for publication?

Members indicated agreement.

I ask that you keep your answer as brief as you can, so that I can let other members in before we close the meeting.

I will bring Pauline McNeill in that case.

We have slightly overrun. I would like to bring the session to a close with a question about your digital strategy, which we have not really covered so far. Your five-year capital investment plan includes continued roll-out and work in relation to your digital strategy. There has been some criticism of the call-handling side of the Police Scotland function. What will be the priorities and what will be the budgetary implications of ensuring that the strategy continues as planned?

Mr MacGregor, I was unaware that you wanted to come in.

I am delighted to welcome Mr Colin Lancaster, the chief executive of the Scottish Legal Aid Board. Thank you very much for your written submission, which is available online. I intend to allow about an hour for questions and discussion.

The session will be structured around a number of themes, starting with administrative costs, which Rhona Mackay will pick up.

Unless anyone has any specific questions on administrative costs, I would like to move on to looking at general trends around legal aid and the number of legal aid applications that are being granted.

During a previous session, we have spoken with you about how the trend has been downwards. There are reasons for that, such as the pandemic. I am interested in whether you think that there are other underlying reasons why we are seeing a downward trend. What might that mean in the longer term for legal aid budgeting and for legal aid firms offering legal aid work?

That is really helpful. I will hand over to Rona Mackay, who is interested in how to balance the budget.

Please do not.

Paragraph 33 of the judgment highlights the fact that the Welsh Government did not face a legal challenge on the provisions of the Rights of the Child and Young Persons (Wales) Measure 2011, which incorporated the UNCRC. That makes the point even more starkly that it was the UK Government’s choice to challenge the Scottish Government’s bill and not a necessity. Does the cabinet secretary agree that that only goes to demonstrate that the Tory Government at Westminster cares more about exercising unfettered power over Scotland than it does about the rights of children?