Chamber and committees

Yes, it is supplementary to Russell Findlay’s line of questioning. It is about the decontamination issues, which I am very concerned about. It was shocking to hear what was said. Given the reality of the budget—we do not need to go over the cuts and all that again—how would the union react to the possibility of thinking outside the box and sharing premises? I am thinking about a large local authority building in my constituency, which is vastly underused. It is modern and could perhaps be adapted. Is that an option that could be considered in order to get decent conditions?

Thank you for that—I just wondered whether that was something to consider, in principle.

They come into the service.

I have a very basic question on something that has popped into my head. Is there a minimum age at which you can be a firefighter or apply to be in the fire service?

I want to ask—this question is possibly for Ross Haggart—about the false alarm issues that you have to contend with. The figures for 2022 to 2023 show that the service was called out to 56,000 false alarms. What impact does that have on your resources? I realise that raising a false alarm is a crime. I am not sure whether you would know what the impact of that is in relation to dealing with the police and so on.

Will you explain what call challenge is?

That certainly is progress. On the call challenges, if it is found to be clearly a false alarm, what about criminalisation? Do you pick that up at all, or do you just leave it? There is a law against making such calls, and I am trying to find out what the level of—

I thought that that was the case—that there was a different legal status—but I just wanted to check that. We know that a lot of women are remanded for less serious charges. Without that barrier, it seems that it would be logical to consider the matter.

You talked about community justice disposals being preferable to putting people on remand or sentencing them to a short prison sentence. The justice system and the judiciary are responsible for those decisions. Have they been brought into the scheme? Are they aware of the part that they play in trying to keep our prison population down?

Good morning, and thanks, convener. I will keep my questions brief. Teresa Medhurst talked about children being in Polmont and the capacity that that is blocking. Has secure care been explored as an avenue for those children?

The next subject that I want to drill into a wee bit is remand prisoners. Obviously, many of them will not be guilty of anything. For clarification, are remand prisoners being included in any of the decisions?