Chamber and committees

Katy Clark has questions on the SFRS, too.

Good morning and welcome to the 34th meeting in 2024 of the Criminal Justice Committee. We have no apologies this morning and Pauline McNeill is joining us online. Our first item of business is to ask the committee to agree to take item 5 in private. Are we agreed?

Members indicated agreement.

A wee while ago, you mentioned public safety, which made me think about public awareness of all things biometric. In your annual report, you refer to the publication of easy-read versions of the code of practice and the complaints procedure. I presume that your doing that is to make sure that the public understand the implications of the use, storage and retention of biometric data.

We spoke about children and vulnerable witnesses. As a constituency MSP, I feel that I am getting more inquiries from the public about the use of cameras, say, from a bedroom window, that encroach, potentially, on someone else’s property. I know that that is not biometrics, but I am surprised at people’s limited knowledge about such practices and the legislation around them, which is really important to understand. I am interested in where you see scope to develop public awareness even further, so that we are not vulnerable to not fully understanding the implications of the use of biometric data.

Fulton MacGregor has a quick supplementary before we move on to the subject of prisons.

The next item is consideration of paper 3 from the clerks on the written evidence that we have received in advance of the Parliament’s consideration of the proposed prisoners (early release) (Scotland) bill. I am grateful to all the organisations that have submitted their views at relatively short notice. I hope that their submissions will prove useful to committee members when the Parliament considers the bill.

I advise members that, next week, the Parliament will be invited to agree to treat the bill as an emergency bill. If that is agreed to, the stage 1 debate will take place on Thursday 21 November. I hope that that is useful for members to note.

As members have no questions or comments, we will move to the next item of business.

Thank you. That is very helpful indeed. I will open up the questioning and pass over to Liam Kerr.

I will bring Liam Kerr back in for another follow-up question. We have time.

Our next item of business is consideration of a paper from the clerk on revisions to the Scottish Government’s revised national performance framework and national outcomes. I refer members to paper 3.

If members have no comments, is the committee content to note the developments in and around the review of the national performance framework?

Members indicated agreement.

That is really interesting. I was going to pick up on the situation with the community custody units that you have just mentioned.

However, I think that what you are describing is a real need for—and the importance of—probably quite specialist training, depending on where staff are deployed and their roles and responsibilities. I presume that that will, as you have said, mean quite a significant abstraction from day-to-day business that you will have to cover, both in terms of managing the workforce and covering the costs. Is it fair to say that that is a really important aspect of managing the prison population, particularly given the challenges with numbers at the moment?

As members have no more questions—and in the interests of your voices and vocal cords—we will bring this evidence session to a close. Thank you very much indeed for your time. It has been a really interesting session.

I suspend the meeting briefly to allow our witnesses to leave.