Chamber and committees

We are heavily skipping pages now, but I wanted to raise the issue of access to court transcripts. I do not know where that fits in.

Thank you, convener, for allowing me the chance to raise this point. I put on record my thanks to Ellie, who contacted me as well on the matter, for the very public work that she is doing. It cannot be easy for her, as a survivor of a crime of that nature, to talk about it in the public domain and in the media. It is important, because when people do that, others listen.

The issue that I have with that letter is that, at the end, it says:

“In a proactive effort to improve transparency”,

the SCTS will publish information, including costs, depending on

“what type of transcript is required.”

The only thing that is becoming more transparent is how onerous and expensive the process is. If nothing else, that ambition has been fulfilled.

However, I have a question, which the letter does not answer, about the contract and tender, and I take real issue with the second paragraph of the letter. We have been raising this issue since this committee was set up after the most recent election. It came on to the agenda quite early and we have raised it numerous times. The letter says:

“The current contract is due for renewal imminently and ... the procurement timescales do not allow for adjustments to be made to the tender on this occasion”.

How on earth did we get into that scenario? We have been flagging this issue with the cabinet secretary for more than a year. We have now discovered that the contract is being renewed, presumably on the same terms and at the same costs. Nobody knows what those costs are, we do not know what the tender is valued at, we do not know who operates the tender and we do not know what the procurement process was. Had that been identified to us a year ago, perhaps we could have asked the Government to change the criteria of the tender or to be a little more transparent about the process. All that the letter says to me is that either the contract has been extended or renewed without any due tender process, or, if there has been a tender process, it has been on the same terms as the last one, which is completely unacceptable.

The letter says:

“The product of this work will then be reflected when the contract is next out for tender.”

When is that? How long is the contract? Is it for one, two, three or five years? Will we have to wait until the next session of Parliament to revisit the issue that we have been banging on about, simply because the Government has shooed through another contract with no questions answered? I find that unacceptable. The letter raises more questions than answers. It is a shame that the cabinet secretary is no longer here to answer the questions, because I would like some answers about how on earth we are in a situation where the contract has been renewed at exactly the same onerous costs, so that we are back to square 1 and we have kicked the issue back into the long grass. That is all that we are going to get any time that we raise the issue again. It is unacceptable.

Therefore, given the current policy and any future changes, as that individual is no longer in that location, were you in effect overruled by Scottish ministers on a decision that you were ultimately in charge of?

I am looking for clarity on funding and on whether they would be a feature of every institution.

I understand that, but I do not think that it really answers the question. I will put the question directly to the cabinet secretary. Is that a temporary measure, or will it become a permanent feature of how the process works?

Who is headquarters? Is it a person or a chain of command?

Somebody must have signed off the decision.

Okay, so the buck rests at the top—I understand that.

I understand. Ms Medhurst, are there currently any trans women prisoners in the women’s estate who have been convicted of crimes of violence against women?

Thank you.