Chamber and committees

Our next item of business is consideration of evidence at stage 1 of the Police (Ethics, Conduct and Scrutiny) (Scotland) Bill. I welcome to the meeting Michelle Macleod, the Police Investigations and Review Commissioner; Phillip Chapman, director of operations; and Sharon Clelland, head of legal services, and I thank them for their comprehensive written evidence.

I refer members to papers 3 and 4. I should say that I intend to allow up to 90 minutes for this evidence session.

I will kick off with a question for the commissioner. I was interested to note in your written submission your comments on the proposal for a duty of candour, specifically on the issue of officers timeously producing an operational statement to ensure that an investigation can continue without undue delay, or with as little delay as possible. We know that that can be challenging. You suggest:

“A legislative duty of co-operation for police officers—and police staff—would compel police officers to provide operational statements and attend within a reasonable timescale for interview.”

You then give an example of when that has been challenging. You go on to say:

“Taking into account a person’s right not to self-incriminate”—

which we have discussed in previous evidence sessions—

“the duty should apply only to officers and staff whose status has already been confirmed as that of a witness”.

All of that makes sense, but I am interested in hearing more about where that particular proposal comes from. What are the blockages that have created the timescale issue that you are dealing with? Do you think that compelling someone to produce a statement would work in practice?

There were a couple of questions in there, so I will now hand over to you.

Both.

That is an interesting response, which speaks to or is relevant to the potential for your role and the resource requirement around that to expand. The finance committee will look at the issue of models of commissioners.

I will go back to a question on the bill before I bring Sharon Dowey back in, if she still wants to ask a follow-up question.

In evidence, a lived experience witness spoke about the “weaponisation” of the system against those who are making complaints—perhaps through intimidation or obstruction. Is that something that you recognise? Is that a fair characterisation? That was commentary in evidence to us from a person who had been the subject of an investigation.

Forgive me, cabinet secretary, but may I put you on hold for a second? There is a slight procedural query that I am going to clarify.

I think that we have slightly jumped ahead. We will let you get to the correct part.

I will come in quickly before Russell Findlay asks his final question. On access to police information, we spoke with the PIRC about access to Police Scotland’s Centurion system. I take it that you have no access to that.

That piece of work would be timeous and worth while. The preparation period before coming to the committee today has been quite enjoyable for me, as I have been able to examine the landscape around commissioners. It is not a pick-and-mix situation, but a number of models came out in some of the evidence that you took. The landscape of commissioners has emerged organically. Perhaps we are at the point at which, in the spirit of efficiency and transparency, a fairly robust, overarching review is entirely appropriate.

I can speak only for the Criminal Justice Committee. A significant aspect of the scrutiny work that we do—that is, the work that does not involve the scrutiny of a bill—ultimately circles back to the experiences of victims and witnesses. An obvious example is the work that we do on violence against women and girls. However, we are currently considering the Police (Ethics, Conduct and Scrutiny) (Scotland) Bill, and you could argue that that bill is seeking to put in place arrangements to improve the experience of individuals who encounter Police Scotland officers and find themselves in a position where either they have made a complaint about a policing matter or a misconduct investigation is being carried out. You could argue that, ultimately, that circles back to the experience of victims and witnesses, too.

I would say that a broad range of work is already taking place, but, in the context of my committee, much of our work lands in the space of improving the experience of victims and witnesses.

Yes. I think that we set out in our report that one option would be undertaking a piece of work to evaluate the effectiveness of the commissioner over the period of the existence of the post. Obviously, that would need to be set against criteria that the Parliament considers are appropriate to measure what we are looking for the commissioner to undertake and to achieve. The success of that work could then be measured.

That is a really important point to raise. I am aware that Dr Plastow commented on his engagement with my committee. Without making excuses, I point out that the issue is the capacity of our committee. As you have acknowledged, we are a legislation-heavy committee.

We will be speaking to the Scottish Biometrics Commissioner later in the year, and I regularly follow his work, because it is of real public interest. I am aware of the compliance reports that he has submitted. Would I like the situation to be different? Absolutely, but the challenges of our workload make things difficult. That just reflects where we are with parliamentary work.

I will make one point in relation to the Criminal Justice Committee’s potential follow-up scrutiny of the role of a victims and witnesses commissioner. Perhaps there is a case for other committees having a role in scrutinising the work of that commissioner, given the cross-cutting and overlapping issues that they might be engaged with.

That is a big question in the criminal justice space. If I can go into committee mode for a moment, what came up in the evidence that we took across the bill—as you know, the bill is about improving the experience of victims and witnesses, which at the moment is not good enough—was that it is extremely difficult to effect positive change across that whole system. Take, for example, the proposals around trauma-informed practice. Lots of good work is going on now and we know that agencies are embedding that, but we are still not there yet.

The question that I would put back to you is, how, across separate agencies, do you effect a whole-system approach? You can do that in ways that do not cost money and do not involve passing new legislation or creating a victims and witnesses commissioner. An example might be post-legislative scrutiny, which might be an option if that process within the Parliament could be effected more frequently and more effectively.

We know that hard choices have to be made in relation to the public purse. Again, I suppose it comes back to taking provision from one area to enhance the provision in another area. In the criminal justice space, that is incredibly difficult.

I am not sure that I have given you a concrete answer, because it is such a huge question, but those are a couple of points that come to my mind that my committee would agree with.