Chamber and committees

That is really interesting. When things were more people-based or manual, there was a sort of mystery shopping element: you turned up at the address, and if the individual was not where they should have been, you took appropriate action. Now you know in real time about every breach that occurs and have a duty to respond to that. Are you able to respond? Is it physically possible for you to turn up to the address of every person who is tagged and deal with the situation if they are somewhere that they should not be, or do you just have to compile reports and let them accumulate?

There is a parallel question about those changes. At the moment, one of the serious considerations for sheriffs in granting bail is the risk of interference with witnesses or victims. There are mixed opinions on what would happen if there were to be any changes to that. Some think that that ground for refusal is being diminished; others believe that it will still exist and will be protected under the new legislation. I am not sure that I know the answer. If there is a risk of that ground for refusal being taken away or diminished, what concerns might the police have about those accused of quite serious crimes who do not necessarily pose any immediate public safety risk but present quite a significant risk of interference or of prejudice to justice?

Unfortunately, we can deal only with what the bill does. We cannot fix the other issues.

I apologise—it is not in my nature to interject—but I want to get through my questions. I will pose a scenario that fits in nicely with the mention of children. Let us say that, over the course of a weekend, an adult male beats up his wife, partner or child and appears in custody on the Monday morning, which, unfortunately, is a scenario that arises. In your view, is it the default position that that person would be released on bail or, in scenarios in which it is clear that an act of domestic violence has been committed and a member of the household has been assaulted, should that person be held on remand? As a sitting sheriff, what would your default position be?

Your comments are on the record, and we can ask those questions of the Government when it appears before us.

Let us imagine that it was, though. You have to scenario plan because, presumably, there would be a knock-on effect on you, your resource and your ability to deal with any increase. If there were an increase, would that require additional resource or funding? I know that the police already have a heavy workload as it is, given that you deal with a wide range of emergency situations that, perhaps, other agencies ought to be dealing with. We have taken evidence to that effect, and it is already a matter of public record. Would it put increased pressure on the police to deal with that 17 to 19 per cent rate of reoffending by individuals on bail if the numbers increased? What would you say to alleviate the concerns of your front-line officers, who may have expressed concern through the federation rather than directly to the committee about potential increases in workload due to changes in bail conditions or the rules around granting bail?

That is interesting. I am keen to let others come in if they want, convener. I have only one question to ask at the end, if we have time, about serious organised crime.

Okay—no problem.

Good morning to our guests. We have spent a bit of time talking about input from social work and other stakeholders to inform bail decisions by sheriffs. None of that is unwelcome, but other parts of the bill deserve further scrutiny. In particular, I want to focus on the parts that deal with grounds for refusing bail and the removal of bail restrictions.

From the discussion that we have had, it sounds to me as though many of the issues in the system are practical ones around the provision of information and the knock-on effect that that has on resources for criminal justice social work or local authorities. I want to ask about the legislation. It is not obvious that you need primary legislation to fix what are clearly practical issues in the system; they could be fixed as it is. Why do we need a bill in order to reduce the remand population? The Government clearly thinks that there are too many people on remand—that is the whole point of the bill. Is the remand population too high, and does the bill deal appropriately with any perception that there is a high remand population?

That is quite a general first question. I will come on to a specific question afterwards.

I will come back to Joanne McMillan in a second; I want to move to the Law Society first. In your written submission, your response to that question is rather brief and non-committal. I get the impression that the Law Society does not really have a view on changes to the grounds for refusing bail; you just state the obvious in the sense that judges give careful consideration to such matters and that they judge each case on a case-by-case basis. We all know that already. You have not made any commentary on the proposed changes, so I wonder whether you could share a view, if you have one, now.