Chamber and committees

Are you saying that, when you make referrals, you are told that no one is available to take the people concerned? Is that what you mean? How do you know that your partners are struggling?

Thank you for that.

I go back to the fact that the submission from Sacro and Shine says:

“63% of all prison referrals in Shine related to women on remand.”

That is a high number. Some of those women are seriously addicted at that point. Do you agree that prison is not the place for women who have committed low-level offences because of their addiction problem?

I am conscious of time so I will finish there.

Thank you, Natalie. That was a really important and informative contribution. Your story and the way that you have turned your life around is inspirational. What you have told us about your experience—in what you have been through and of the system—is very useful to us.

That is really interesting. I want to go back to the point about replacing existing cars with electric ones. I presume that those costs will come from your capital budget. Does that mean that you are looking for a big uplift in that budget?

No, I just wanted to get an approximate figure.

Administrative costs have remained steady for about 10 years, which you could argue is a real-terms cut. Do you have sufficient administrative resources to do your job? What could you do with more?

What you have been describing sounds quite labour intensive, which I imagine would incur additional costs. I guess that the most important thing is that you can evaluate and evidence the work that you are doing.

Would you like to say anything else about the general costs and your budget?

I want to ask about planning for spending under the new budget that you will get. I am interested in rape, sexual crimes and domestic abuse, and, at a wider level, the culture of police and corporate policies on bullying, racism, homophobia, misogyny and that kind of thing. Are you earmarking funds for those things? If so, can you expand on that?

Will the rise in the number of domestic abuse cases feature in that?