Chamber and committees

I am conscious that many organisations, including the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service, have submitted their evidence to the committee and much of that is based on the resource spending review of May 2022. I point to the fact that the current year’s budget was in a better place than the resource spending review that was published in May last year. I will continue to do my best to argue and negotiate for the best possible deal for all justice organisations.

As with any estimate of savings that will have to be made, they are based on various assumptions, whether around inflation, pay increases, future financial commitments and budgets, all of which are variables that can change. We have seen that with this year’s budget, because we have seen some of the highest levels of inflation in more than a generation, which has had an impact on the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service and other justice organisations.

It is important to acknowledge that this is not so much a resource issue and is much more an issue of recruitment, which exists across the UK. When I visited Inveraray fire station a month or so ago, people there spoke about the challenges for rural communities, particularly with recruitment and retention of retained firefighters. We are actively engaged with the SFRS on what more can be done on recruitment and how to more effectively recruit and retain staff.

I will not argue with you that we have had a decade of austerity, which has had an impact on the decisions that we could make and decisions that we will be able to make. As I pointed out in an earlier answer, I will always do my best to negotiate the best possible deal for all justice organisations. Our discussions within Government are intense on these matters, particularly bearing in mind the volume of pre-budget evidence that has been submitted to the committee.

I think that there are very pragmatic arguments in favour of enabling, as you have suggested, voluntary organisations to be put on a more secure and stable footing. Indeed, we have adopted that approach with the victim-centred approach fund, which is worth £48 million over three years.

However, I want to be up front and direct with the committee: the fact is that multiyear funding is somewhat challenging when you have to operate with single-year budgeting. Perhaps I can give you an overview of the justice portfolio budget. Well over 70 per cent of it goes towards staffing costs, and we have had what are obviously very welcome pay increases for front-line staff. That leaves us with around 15 to 20 per cent to meet our statutory commitments, and around 5 per cent going towards voluntary organisations.

Well, Ms Clark, I am always a woman in a hurry, but there are obvious financial constraints that inevitably mean that choices are made around the implementation of legislation. That is nothing new. In broad terms, Government should be up-front about our anticipated implementation timescales when legislation is going through. Sometimes, for good reasons, there has to be a phasing in of reforms and legislative changes. Particularly with the pandemic, there has had to be a phasing in of reform to ensure that we do not overwhelm systems.

I know from my previous posts the importance of the delivering equally safe fund. That work is still of paramount importance to the justice sector, although it sits in another portfolio. The delivering equally safe fund is worth £19 million a year and supports 121 projects from 112 organisations. In my portfolio, the victim-centred approach fund, which I mentioned, is worth £48 million over 23 years. A big part of that—£18.5 million—is for specialist advocacy in response to gender-based violence.

In a previous life, I advocated for the incorporation of the Istanbul convention and worked closely with Westminster colleagues to pursue that at UK level. The Istanbul convention is looking for action around prevention to combat all forms of violence against women and girls, and, in particular, for policies to be integrated across Government, and for the impact of those programmes to be measured.

We have a generous legal aid system that compares well with those of many or most of our European counterparts. Our civil legal aid has a wide scope, and there have been four uplifts to legal aid since 2019, and an additional resource of £31 million since 2021. The latest uplift of £11 million, from memory, equates to a 10 per cent increase. We invest heavily in legal aid and we also support the Scottish Women’s Rights Centre. We also support, with up to around £400,000 over a period of three years, a pilot project that has been established through the Scottish Legal Aid Board to support Scottish Women’s Aid with regard to the provision of legal advice to women who are affected by gender-based violence. That is being taken forward in collaboration with Edinburgh Women’s Aid and a firm of solicitors.

On the point about solicitors, the Minister for Victims and Community Safety jointly chairs a working group about the future of the legal profession, which, of course, is about diversity but is also about capacity.

The programme for government made a commitment about beginning to roll out body-worn cameras, and said that this Government will support Police Scotland to begin that process in summer 2024, rolling them out to, I think, 14,000 police officers.

What I observe and am part of across Government, and in my dialogue with the new chief constable as well as the previous one and through my involvement with Police Scotland, is that, at strategic level, Police Scotland is focused on community policing but its focus also applies to the threats that we experience globally and nationally. The advantage of having a national police force is that we have more flexible deployment of resources.

John Swinney is correct to say that the nature of crime is changing. We need only look at cybercrime as an example of that. Tackling that will, of course, require different forms of expertise. That is why it is important that I secure the best deal possible for the chief constable, who is, I say with respect, better placed than anybody sitting at this table, including me, to make decisions on how best to combat the threat that we face at community or national level, and how to deploy our resources to best effect.