Chamber and committees

If such a thing could be done—the timescale could be two years following the death, which I do not think is unreasonable—and families felt that they would get answers within 24 months, they might feel less concerned about getting immediate access to information. Do you agree?

That is some good news.

The second question that I will ask relates to the recommendation for unfettered access to information following a death in police custody, which is critically important; it is a question that I put to the cabinet secretary at the time. Given what you said about the exclusion of the Crown—in the case of Alan Marshall, as you are aware, the Crown took a decision not to prosecute any of the 13 officers who held him down before he died in an attempt to get answers at the FAI, but it took seven years to get there—is it possible for that unfettered access to happen? Families want to go in and get information; they do not want to be told that they cannot go in or collect belongings or see what happened.

I thought that the recommendation was interesting, because, if there was a police investigation into a death, how could that commitment be made? However, the cabinet secretary made it. Is it possible to devise such a system? In this case, the family’s view was that there was a cover-up. They would have preferred to have found out exactly what had happened so that they would at least have had their own answers before the FAI. Would it be possible for that to happen without the Crown’s involvement?

Reading the letter takes me back to an issue that the committee raised previously, which was that the legislation felt really rushed. The relationship between football banning orders and the legislation should have been clear. Far be it from me to say it, but surely the role of lawyers and Government officials when they are drafting legislation is to match it up with all other legislation. There is an obvious relationship in this case, and we are asking the question with hindsight, and the minister is having to answer that question.

Although the minister is correct to say that it is a matter for the courts, it is for the Parliament to determine what it wants when it legislates. I would have thought that, to a party and to a person, what we wanted was to give maximum powers to arrest people for use of pyrotechnic devices at football matches, which is extremely disruptive. We are now trying to fix the issue with hindsight. It probably should have been drawn to the committee’s attention that the legislation might have a relationship with a pre-existing act. It would not have occurred to me.

Following what Rona Mackay has said, I would be interested in spending more time looking at the stalking charges. That offence is broader than domestic abuse and there are issues, with victims having reported failures in the system in relation to the law on that—but that is for another day.

Are we to assume from the paper that the changes under item 3 have already happened or been agreed? The list includes

“creating a standard condition of bail … placing a restriction on granting bail”

and

“allowing certain ... evidence”.

The paper says:

“The 2018 Act created a new offence of engaging in an abusive course of conduct ... For example, when a child sees, hears or is present during a domestic abuse incident.”

That is the point that Russell Findlay raised. It then says, “Further changes included” and lists changes. Are we to assume that those changes have all happened?

Thank you very much.

Good morning. What you said there is very concerning. With 350 deaths and numerous cases that members of the Parliament have taken on—such as the death of Alan Marshall, who was on remand in our care, and Katie Allan, a young woman who took her own life in Polmont—it is shocking to hear that.

All of the recommendations in the “Independent Review of the Response to Deaths in Prison Custody” seemed to be good ones, but what you told us—that very few of them have been pursued—is staggering.

There are two cases that I want to ask you about. I have had some involvement with Katie Allan’s case. I met her family and understand that, through freedom of information requests and meetings, they received a commitment from the then Cabinet Secretary for Justice on the removal of ligatures from the prison estate, but they are led to believe that cost is preventing that from happening. Do you have any comment to make to the committee about that?

That is what I thought. If the top ones in the list have not been implemented, they would require further discussion. The bottom three are:

“applying certain special measures aimed at protecting child witnesses … requiring the court to consider the future protection of the victim when sentencing an offender … and telling the court to always consider making a non-harassment order ... against a person convicted of a domestic abuse offence.”

That last one is really important because, until now, complainers in many cases have had to seek an interdict under one of the civil processes, which is costly for most people. It would be helpful to clarify whether those are just recommendations.

Yes.

Good morning. My first set of questions also follows on from what Rona Mackay asked about. We need to understand, in some detail, what David Page said about the reduction in head count of 800. That is a significant number. To be clear, is that police officers and staff?

But inflation is considerably higher than that. Are you projecting that it will come down to 2 per cent?