Chamber and committees

Would the ultimate aim be, when the time is right, not to have floating trial diets at all?

It goes back to what Mr McInulty and everybody else has been saying about the importance of good, thorough training to give officers confidence, and so on.

Has there been a change in the nature of crisis calls? Are you finding that there is more need to respond to issues that are related to drugs, alcohol and homelessness? Has that been increasing over the years, or has it pretty much always been like that?

Sure. Dr Chopra?

By working together.

Mr Naylor, you used a phrase way back in your opening statement that intrigued me a bit, and I wonder whether you could expand on it and put it into context. I think that you said that the officers responding should be “discrete” in their thinking. What did you mean by that? Was that in response to inquiries? Would they have to take a more nuanced position? Is that what you were saying?

Yes—I just wondered whether you had that information. Clearly, that work could be on-going to find out—

Good morning, cabinet secretary, and thank you for that helpful overview—a lot was covered in that. I want to pick up on one part of it, for clarification. You said that it is possible that the role would be open to an existing commissioner. I wondered what you meant by that. Do you mean that another commissioner would take on that aspect as an additional role or as part of their portfolio, rather than having an individual victims commissioner?

Thank you. That is interesting.

Does the four-monthly basis that you just mentioned mean that you are monitoring the situation? If you do not see an improvement, is there a cut-off point at which you will say that things have not improved?

My other question is about GEOAmey staffing. Do we know why it has reached such a crisis point? Was it due to Brexit or not paying its staff enough? It is a private company, so it does not seem like a satisfactory arrangement—or at least it has not been satisfactory. You said that you have been in discussions with the other justice partners. As you say, it is quite a complex picture, but are you confident that things will improve with GEOAmey from now on?

Can you say how that lines up with the Istanbul convention, which was passed fairly recently, with regard to its estimation of what is needed?