Chamber and committees

I appreciate that, Mr Findlay, but the point that I am earnestly trying to make is that it is not necessary.

Furthermore, the amendment would also have the effect of broadening the court’s discretion to refuse bail. It would allow the court to refuse bail where one of the grounds in section 23C of the 1995 act applied and the court considered that there was a risk that any bail condition would be breached, whether or not there was a risk to public safety or the delivery of justice.

As far as possible, we want to have parity between systems, notwithstanding the fact that the children’s hearings system is fundamentally about addressing the needs of children, as opposed to punishment.

The bill will increase the obligation on the principal reporter, who will now have a duty, rather than discretion, to inform victims of their right to receive information. That information could relate to the fact that a hearing has taken place or to the outcome of the hearing. For young people who are progressed through the criminal justice system, a victim notification system is currently in place.

I contend that this very specific bill increases the rights and protections for victims, but it is not our only intervention in this area. As, I suspect, Mr Findlay will be aware, we have undertaken other consultations on what else we can do within the broader system to ensure that victims’ needs are met. We have also consulted on initiatives such as a victims commissioner.

We are actively engaged with regard to what we need to do to enhance the rights of victims. As we move forward, there will be other policies and legislation that will help to address the matter.

It is important to highlight that, over and above the financial memorandum, there is a national resources group, because some of these issues need to be unpicked further. I will come on to talk about the cross-border transfer issue separately, but I recognise that there is a need for a clear pathway. Over and above the issues that are detailed in the financial memorandum, we are engaging intensively with stakeholders on this.

My understanding, from work that Scotland Excel has done, is that there is capacity in the system to meet Scotland’s needs. If you remove the cross-border transfers—just for argument’s sake—we have the capacity here in Scotland to meet our needs now and to meet our expected needs in the future, notwithstanding the fact that we could get further information and those expectations could change.

I have also pointed to the beds that we are now funding, which came off the back of a pilot. I think that I mentioned earlier that, in terms of Scottish Government funding, the number of beds in the estate will increase to ensure that we have stability and certainty.

It is fair to say that a place of safety is always preferable to a police station. I would want to avoid police officers feeling stuck in a particular situation and ending up not taking a young person to a police station because they have worries that go beyond that being unsuitable, leading to even more risk-averse practice. The current provision is that someone is taken to a police station when that is necessary and proportionate, and when not doing so might be impracticable, unsafe or inadvisable.

We have live engagement on that issue, particularly with the Scottish Police Authority. The committee might be aware that a conference on children in conflict with the law, in which a lot of attention was focused on the issue, took place last year.

On the basis of my portfolio interests, I am keen that we give the matter further thought. I do not know whether there are any quick and easy solutions through the bill necessarily, but we are just at the beginning of the bill process. I know that there is interest in measures such as multi-agency care settings for children who are in conflict with the law. I suppose that I am trying to convey to the committee that that is definitely an area on which we must have more focused activity and thinking.

We need to be crystal clear on that point. We need to look at issues of reform around young offender institutions, but 16 and 17-year-olds are being moved from the criminal justice system into the children’s hearings system, albeit that, for some of those children, that will be done on a temporary basis for the purposes of their care while they are 16 and 17. The children’s hearings system is for children up to the age of 18 and, although there could be approaches, interventions or work with young people in a secure setting that could provide learning for an adult setting, we need to be clear that extending secure accommodation that is for children in order to meet the needs of offenders who are adults is not an option.

There are a number of legal issues, as well as physical issues, around that. That does not mean that we do not need to constantly review and challenge ourselves on the care of young people in young offender institutions—hence the work around refocusing the use of custody for adults, as well as the need to focus on and improve, for example, mental health support and opportunities to reduce reoffending and to tackle the issues around the heavy use of remand in Scotland. However, there needs to be a clear line.

I will start, and the minister might wish to come in later.

I am aware of the history of the issue—it goes back many years—and it is imperative that we have the right provision at the right time, which requires resources. Going forward, we need to be confident that we have the capacity to meet the needs of children who are being displaced and shifted from the criminal justice system into secure accommodation.

We know that there has been a reduction in the number of young people—16 and 17-year-olds—who receive custodial sentences. Over the past decade or so, that number has fallen by 93 per cent. Therefore, we are talking about a comparatively small cohort of young people.

The most recent figures that I have seen, which are just a few days old, show that we currently have six under-18s in Polmont YOI, and there are currently 12 vacancies across the secure estate. I do agree with Ms McNeill that we need a vigilant eye, because absolute predictions about the circumstances in which a young person will go through the court system are always hard to make.

I think that we are starting from a good baseline position with regard to our understanding of current capacity and the likely demand. I do not need to repeat what is in the financial memorandum and the work that underpins it, but I would just highlight to members our work on secure care plus, which is about our having the correct contingency plans in place to ensure that, in all circumstances, we can meet the needs of any child at any time in an establishment.

This is a complex area, with many issues to do with funding, and I would also highlight the longer-term work that is being undertaken to reimagine the secure estate. I will continue to keep an acute and keen interest in it.

The minister might have something further to add from her perspective.

I will pick up on a few points in and around community justice services. We invest in community justice services to the tune of £134 million. Of that, £123 million is ring fenced for local authority criminal justice social work services, and some of that—around £3 million—is ring fenced again in relation to bail assessment and bail supervision.

I acknowledge that prison is expensive and that secure care is even more expensive. If we use either secure care or prison inappropriately, it is a very expensive way of making matters worse. We invest in community justice services not because they are cheaper but because the evidence tells us that we should be investing in them. I will not deny that there is pressure on the public pound. Many of the challenges that local government is experiencing are the same as those that the Scottish Government is experiencing across the board.

I will never demur from the importance of investment. However, while acknowledging the challenges, I point to the fact that the local government settlement went up in real terms while there was a real-terms reduction to the Scottish Government block grant. Nonetheless, I recognise the pressures that mean that we need to work even harder in relation to those shifts in culture, policy and practice that are first and foremost based on the evidence. I assure Katy Clark that investment in community justice services will continue.

I point to the statistics that I quoted to Ms McNeill earlier. We are seeing the number of prosecutions of children and young people decrease, the number of custodial sentences for young people decrease and the number of referrals to the reporter on offence grounds decrease. That would indicate that we must be doing something right around supporting young people, reducing reoffending and focusing on the best disposals for them and indeed for the community.

There are always competing demands around shifting resource from acute care to community services. For example, even if we reduce a prison’s population, we still need to keep that establishment up and running.

Historically, the ring fencing of funding for criminal justice social work has not always been popular, but it is there for good reasons. It came about more than 20 years ago because criminal justice services were not getting their fair share of resource. Because it is quite a small service in comparison with, say, children and families or community care services, it had been sidelined. I will certainly want to protect the position of community justice services as well as community justice social work services.

I will do that in general terms. In the old days, what we called community service was a kind of fine on the person’s time. These days, community service sits within the broader panoply of community payback orders, within which there can indeed be requirements for rehabilitation measures to be in place. We have arrangements in and around electronic tagging and monitoring. There are also arrangements around sex offenders registration and multi-agency public protection arrangements, or MAPPA. In some instances, courts can ask for report-backs in order to review a situation.

A range of disposals and approaches are available to the court, and some of those rehabilitative measures can be intensive, whether they involve one-to-one work or group work.

It is important to consider the financial stability of the secure sector. We know, for example, that it needs to be at 90 per cent capacity—that is its financial stability vector, if you like. The system has capacity for Scotland just now, but there is reliance on cross-border transfers. That is why we have started to fund beds, and there are plans for us to increase the funding of beds so that we can ensure that children who are resident in Scotland can be cared for in secure if that is required.