Chamber and committees

I am trying to understand how long it has taken you to get from realising and accepting that the organisation has to change to where we are today. How long has that been? Is it a year, two years or three years?

Is that process resulting in changes to operational practice and procedure within the SCTS of a tangible, practical nature?

I have a brief follow-up question on the point that Mr MacGregor has raised. It is possibly for Laura Buchan and perhaps David Fraser as well. Have we exhausted all opportunities for reforms such as evidence by commission as alternatives to what I will call existing practice? Have we exhausted all opportunities, or is there more that could be done in the style of evidence by commission that would be consistent with delivering the aspirations of trauma-informed practice?

That has not endeared you to me. [Laughter.]

I tend, for obvious historical reasons, to steer clear of an awful lot of budget discussions, but I am struck by two things about the submission and what you have said.

First, your slice of the pie is small—even your share of the justice pie is small—but what you do has the potential to avoid much greater cost. In the previous panel, Sue Brookes from the Scottish Prison Service made the point that the Scottish Prison Service is, ultimately, the destination for all failure, but it is an expensive destination for all failure. You offer a much cheaper alternative to that. That is my first observation.

My second observation is that money is incredibly tight everywhere. Nowhere in the Scottish public finances is doing fine, and everywhere is under pressure.

That takes me to the challenge for reform. I accept that you have a small part of the pie, but others have big resources and they would also say that they are under pressure. Within the justice family, is a reform conversation going on about shifting the balance in favour of preventative and—forgive my crudeness—lower-cost interventions, and are there conversations with the wider public sector? You made the point a moment ago that a large proportion of the prison population has mental health challenges. Where is the health service in all this? Given how tough things are for everybody in the public sector, are conversations happening that would enable some tilting of the balance, which might—I contend that it would—end up with better outcomes being achieved for everybody?

I will stop speaking after this, because I am going to end up sounding defensive. I do not think that the situation is due to a lack of policy focus or attention from ministers. I was one of them, so I sound super-defensive here. The experience that you have recounted about youth justice gives me hope, as that is an incredible transformation in performance that is long overdue. I am interested in why we have not been able to get a necessary focus on shifting the balance across the wider public sector. Is it because there are too many players involved? Are we too stuck in the groove of what we have aye done.

Let me stop you there, Mr Fitzpatrick, because that is an interesting observation. You sit on the justice board with all these players and there is no serious discussion of that point. That makes my point that, somewhere, there has to be an impetus and a priority to realise that the model has to change. I appreciate that others will say that the police budget cannot possibly ever be less than a certain amount plus some more. This committee hears those representations but, ultimately, there has to be some conversation if we are to shift that balance.

At the risk of appearing as the spokesman for the Government, the important point here is about the political discourse. It is not all about the Government. Colleagues know that I am not in any way personalising this, but there is a limit on the amount of money available. In that context, how do we try to reshape outcomes by the better use of money? For simplicity’s sake, let us say it that the split is 96 per cent to 4 per cent. If we keep on with 96:4 for ever, the chances are that we will get roughly the same outcomes or perhaps, as Katy Clark has rightly said, worse outcomes, because the numbers incarcerated are rising exponentially. The 96:4 might inevitably become 97:3 or 98:2, because we will get worse outcomes.

I am interested in Dr Bruce’s comment about everybody in all the different elements of the system needing to know what to do. That feels to me easier said than done. I am wholly supportive of the focus on trauma-informed practice, but I am not naive about the scale of the challenge in turning that into a practical experience that individuals will face. Can our witnesses help us with how we might see good practice turned into effects? It is all very well for Parliament to legislate for this, but it then has to happen in practical reality if it is to have any particular effect. Can our witnesses help us on that point?

That is very helpful. The committee might benefit from seeing some further correspondence to help us to formulate a view on that point. I certainly do not want to see legislation emerging that is not effective for its purpose. If we do not get the foundations of it correct, we are better to hear that now rather than later on.