Chamber and committees

It is about outcomes, performance and improvement.

That needs to be measured, and it needs to be measured in a meaningful way.

Earlier, we mentioned the governance and accountability lines, particularly since the passing of the Community Justice (Scotland) Act 2016. Colin Beattie has a series of questions about that.

I was not suggesting a target for the prison population; I was referring to the whole basis of the conversation this morning, which is about the proportions and how we get a shift from custodial to community-based justice options. That is not about a cap on the prison population; it is about how we shift from disposals that are custody based to disposals that are not custody based. My question is: are you set any targets for that shift in balance from one to the other?

The third item on our agenda is evidence from Audit Scotland on its briefing paper, “Covid-19 vaccination programme”, which was produced recently. Our witnesses will give evidence on the research and audit that has been carried out by Audit Scotland. I welcome Stephen Boyle, the Auditor General for Scotland, and Leigh Johnston, who is a senior manager at Audit Scotland. Joining us remotely is Eva Thomas-Tudo, who is a senior auditor for performance audit and best value at Audit Scotland.

If Eva Thomas-Tudo wants to come in, she should put an R in the chat function. If the witnesses in the room want to come in, they should simply indicate to me or the clerks, and we will do our best to bring them in.

I ask Stephen Boyle to give a brief opening statement.

It does include that cost. That is good.

You mentioned recent announcements. An additional £482 million was announced, to include funding for personal protective equipment, test and protect and the delivery of Covid-19 vaccinations. Does the Auditor General or any member of the team have a sense of how that will fit the expected likely demand?

One area that is highlighted in the report is digital access and the use of digital tools. Craig Hoy has a number of questions on what is an evolving picture, and I think that Willie Coffey might want to ask briefly about it, too.

I am not sure that we want to dive into a full-scale debate on vaccination passports at the Public Audit Committee.

Willie Coffey is next. Willie—you have questions on the digital stuff and on population reach.

Colin Beattie has questions.

The second item on our agenda, and the main purpose of the first half of our meeting, is to discuss the Audit Scotland briefing, “Community justice: Sustainable alternatives to custody”. We have with us three witnesses from the Scottish Government. I am delighted to welcome to the committee Joe Griffin, who is the director general of education and justice; Neil Rennick, who is the director of justice; and Catriona Dalrymple, who is the deputy director of community justice and parole.

We have a number of questions to ask, but perhaps Mr Griffin would like to begin by making an opening statement.

Thank you, Mr Griffin. As I said, we have a range of questions that we want to ask and ground that we want to cover.

I will begin by reflecting on the briefing, which put in fairly sharp relief the picture as Audit Scotland saw it. When we received evidence from the Auditor General, he said that there was

“a fairly static level of progress”,—[Official Report, Public Audit Committee, 30 September 2021; c 37.]

which was an interesting—and perhaps a polite—way of describing what could best be described as a zig-zag in the outcomes of custodial versus non-custodial sentences.

It is important to emphasise that the findings of Audit Scotland were that, if people with sentences of one year or less were put in custody, there was a 49 per cent chance of reconviction within the next year, whereas if they went into the community justice system, there was a 30 per cent probability of reconviction.

We also know that there is an enormous cost to the public of people serving time in prison. Audit Scotland came to the figure of a cost of more than £37,000 a year for somebody to be kept in jail, compared with a cost of around £1,894 a year for an equivalent community sentence. That is a massive discrepancy and, as the Public Audit Committee, we are interested in such figures.

Do you accept those findings and all the other findings in the report?