Chamber and committees

What was the motive?

What was the motive for reconsidering something as important as data protection around what is a very controversial public policy area?

It would be helpful. I am just trying to understand, for completeness. As parliamentarians, we are trying to do our jobs and scrutinise this very important area of public policy. Whatever views we take on it, the change will deprive us of information that we used to have. It feels like a sword coming down, because yesterday we could get the information, but today we cannot. I would like to understand why.

I am trying to tease out what those exceptional circumstances are. You did not say that to Russell Findlay. Does that mean that there would be no requirement for any transgender woman to go before a multidisciplinary panel if they have committed such an offence, given that, effectively, you have said that there is more or less a blanket ban on any transgender woman who has committed such an offence going to the female estate?

The association did not sign off on it. I have read the minute, which says that it did not sign off on the policy.

Further to John Swinney’s important question on the SSI, I understand the discretion that prison governors will have. However, I want to make the situation real in my head. If a female prison officer does not wish to search a transgender woman prisoner, what is the route? Can she opt out of that? Does she tell her line manager? I understand that the discretion lies with the governor, but I would like to understand the bit in between.

No, it is about something else.

The Scottish Prison Service has said that it will no longer give any data on where transgender prisoners are. We can debate whether transgender prisoners can be identified and whether some high-profile cases will get into the press anyway, but given that our job is to scrutinise the policy, it seems a bit unfair that it is okay for such information to be in the Daily Record. I presume that the SPS would still have to answer a freedom of information request as to where transgender prisoners were. As the Cabinet Secretary for Justice and Home Affairs, are you not concerned that the committee cannot do its job if the SPS is no longer willing to give us data on where transgender prisoners are?

Before you answer, cabinet secretary, I will make one point. I fully recognise that a balance has to be struck in relation to the privacy and dignity of transgender people—I am not attacking that at all—but there have been many very difficult and publicly controversial cases, including the one involving Isla Bryson. How can we do our job if we do not know whether those people are in the female estate? Are you content that the press will just be able to report such things but we, as parliamentarians in a democracy, cannot know where a transgender prisoner is in the estate? That seems absolutely crazy to me. Are you comfortable with the SPS’s decision?

Can you say which law you are referring to?

Why did that not apply before now, in that case? Until now, we got that information, but now we cannot.