Chamber and committees

Precisely. That was helpful.

I support Mr Torrance’s recommendation. I will add something that is hot off the press and has arisen since the papers were provided to us for this meeting. Last Friday, in response to an inspired question, the Scottish Government noted that a new depopulation action plan has been published, which contains an apparent new approach to be taken to areas with chronic depopulation, notably parts of the remote Highlands—although one is not allowed to call remote areas remote any longer, apparently—and Islands. The plan says that the approach will be

“local by default, national by agreement”,

which suggests to me that local decisions will prevail, unless I am missing something.

I raise that because I wonder whether the clerks, in drafting our letter, could draw the attention of the minister to the plan—a different minister is responsible for the plan—and ask if the new approach will influence the response regarding community engagement. On the face of it, at least for those areas suffering depopulation, which are the areas where many of the windfarms are proposed, that seems to me to be a new factor that the Scottish Government has brought in as, apparently, a new approach and a new policy.

I am sorry to go on at some length.

Longer-term funding is needed, because year-to-year funding is the death knell of schemes given that, by definition, it takes longer than a year to do anything worth while, by and large.

I do not know whether Inspector Watters wants to answer the question about what the police role is or should be. What more could the police do, if anything, on diversionary activity?

Out of fairness, I will follow suit and play devil’s advocate. One mother provided quite harrowing evidence of an assault on her young girl. I will not mention names, but the mother said:

“Doing my homework afterwards, I learnt this girl had attacked no less than 20 children and was well known with the police and in fact I still continue to get videos or stories of attacks weekly.”

I mention that because, over the years, I have quite often heard it said that the police knew well that an individual had been involved in many other crimes and had carried out many other assaults. I appreciate that that is just a general claim with no particular evidence behind it, but I mention that case because it is probably not an isolated experience. Many people, perhaps those living in areas of extreme poverty, find that a young hoodlum is causing endless mayhem but that nobody ever seems to do anything about it.

That is extremely unfair to the police. Even if the police do their job, there is the question of what happens when the case goes to the justice system. I am aware that some argue that not much happens.

Inspector Watters, what would you say to this mother whose daughter was attacked by another female in a horrific way that left her almost unrecognisable as a result of her facial injuries? She is now scared to go out at all. Can the police or any other authorities do anything more to identify youngsters who plainly cause serious injury and harm to other young people in Scotland?

We might close the petition under rule 15.7 of standing orders on the basis that the Scottish Government’s position on the ask of the petition remains unchanged, that the scope of the home report survey is set out at the beginning of the report and that members of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors who carry out home reports must have a complaints handling procedure in place. They must offer independent third-party recourse to complaints, including alternative dispute resolution by the Property Ombudsman, and they must carry professional indemnity insurance. In light of all that, I wonder whether members consider that we can close the petition.

I want to make one suggestion and to put one point on the record. The suggestion is that, because drones are fairly widely used for various purposes, many of them legitimate, we could also ask NatureScot—I accept Mr Torrance’s recommendations—whether it would involve disproportionate costs to introduce such a licensing scheme. I am concerned that such a scheme may be difficult to operate in practice on grounds of cost, not least because NatureScot’s budget is, apparently, to be slashed. Therefore, will it even be able to carry out the workload that it has? Franky, I think that it might not be able to.

The point that I want to put on record, convener, is that these stories have another side. I have a constituent who was extremely concerned that drones were used, apparently at the insistence of a wealthy voluntary body—in fact, the wealthiest in Europe—with an interest in birds to carry out surveillance of locals who live near an area where that organisation felt that wildlife crime may be going on. The person felt that drones were being used to invade their privacy. I have raised the case with the Lord Advocate.

I make no judgment about the merits of that case or of any other—it is not for me to do that. However, it is for me to say that this story has two sides; it is not all one-sided. People in the countryside are quite concerned about the inappropriate use of drones by pressure groups with particular campaigning interests.

I do not think that they are extremely profitable businesses.

Some years ago, from 2007 to 2011, I was community safety minister and, along with the Cabinet Secretary for Justice at that time, Kenny MacAskill, we worked very closely with John Carnochan and Karyn McCluskey. I was struck by their passion but also by their practical approach.

In talking about preventing youth violence, we have heard from Inspector Watters about diversionary activity. It seems that one of the key ways—Inspector Watters has confirmed it this morning—to take young people on to a different path of life and thinking and away from mindless violence is to provide diversionary activity. At that time, we introduced the idea of cashback, investing money that was taken from criminals—drugs money, for example, or other property seized—in diversionary activity. Is that still one of the main corrective approaches? If so, is it being supported sufficiently?

I am not just talking about taxpayers’ money or resources, as people tend to call it, as if it were a type of mineral. It is not; it is money, but it is not just money. It is also a will and a purpose among Government agencies to get things done and not pass them to somebody else’s desk. I do not know the answer to this question, but I want to hear from each of the witnesses. Are we doing enough? Should we do more and, if so, how do we go about that? What do we need to do more of or do better that could help to divert some of these young people away from some of the acts of mindless violence that we have heard about in what were extremely harrowing cases, as the convener has pointed out?

I am sure that you do a lot of good work. As you say, sadly, much of it is invisible, which is a shame.

In the distant days when I had an executive function, we sometimes used the Army and Army facilities such as barracks as well as outdoor activity establishments to take youngsters from Glasgow who, as I think John Carnochan said, had been identified as about to go into serious crime. They had started on criminal activity and John’s view was that, if things took their course, it was just a matter of time until they got involved in more criminality, went to Glenochil, ended up in Barlinnie and so on.

John’s idea was to get them in a room and give them one of his typical talks, which I imagine would make most people’s hair curl. However, he also wanted to take them out of their habitat and the place that they were happy with, which was maybe out in the schemes somewhere, and go somewhere entirely different such as the Cairngorms. The Army was very good at that, because that is what it does. It takes young men—they are mostly men, although there are women as well nowadays—and turns them into stronger and better team-playing people. That is what Army training is all about, and it is very good at that.

Maybe that sounds old-fashioned to some people, but I think that that strand—although it is not the sole answer—would help young people, particularly boys in their teens, from becoming hardened criminals. The minute investment that is involved would repay itself in spades, by avoiding all the misery that such criminality would cause throughout their lifetimes, for other people and themselves.

Is that happening now, or has it been dropped?

I support Mr Golden’s suggestions, but will add one inquiry that should be made, although I am not quite sure of whom. Obviously, we have legislation on sprinklers in domestic flats—I think that that was introduced pre-Covid, around 2018. It has been drawn to my attention by a constituent of mine who is a builder or renovator of flats that, at that time, the estimated costs that were given for installing sprinklers were very modest. He told me that, for various practical reasons, those costs have risen astronomically such that, in his instance, they might even make the construction of flats unviable.

I thought that I would mention that because, if costs have risen several times—not just by £1,000 or £2,000, but by huge amounts—and we are to pursue the proposal, at an early stage we would need somewhere to get advice from about the costs to kennels and other establishments that Mr Golden mentioned. I thought that I should throw that in out of fairness and balance.

Just last week, I got a quite alarming letter from a constituent. We all want safety, but would a £100 smoke detector be as effective? That was his argument, rightly or wrongly. I voted to pass the sprinkler legislation, but it has turned out to be grossly more expensive than was estimated at the time.