Chamber and committees

I will come back to you now, Kate, because I asked quite a lot of questions.

I am interested in what you have said and the way that you have said it. You said that, overall, crime has reduced but the prison population has gone up. However, I want to look at what has happened when policy decisions have led to legislative change, for example with the presumption against short sentences, which you mentioned in a previous answer. In the year when that presumption was passed, there were 68,000 violent crimes. I know that that is a wide category but, under the same definition, that figure rose to 69,000 last year. Over the same period, the prison population fell from 8,200 to 7,400. Despite a rise in certain types of what are perceived to be more serious crimes, our prison population has actually been reducing.

I know that we can divvy up statistics in a number of ways in order to get what we want out of them, but that leads me to the importance of proper statistical and data analysis. I think that that has been severely lacking, and it probably still is. There are some massive gaps. Such analysis might help to inform some of the decisions that we make in future. Does anyone have anything to add on that issue or have I covered it? I do not think that anyone wants to comment.

I turn to the other issue that I want to raise. I appreciate that you have made your views clear. You think that it is completely appropriate for legislation to be used as a mechanism to narrow the grounds on which bail can be refused, but it is interesting that you state that that cannot be done in isolation. Views have been expressed on bail conditions, and we have heard that services around bail could be improved. Equally, however, alongside that, access to public services must be provided for those who are released on bail.

Perhaps Hannah Graham could explore that. It is easy to focus only on the bail aspect, which, in fact, is all that the bill does. It does not meaningfully address any of the other perceived failings in the system, but some of you, perhaps including the victims organisations, might feel that that is necessary alongside the proposed intervention.

Thank you. I will leave it there.

That is fascinating. I appreciate that time is tight, convener, but there is so much to cover and I have not even started on part 2 of the bill. Thank you for your time. The problem is that section 1 only suggests that input from criminal justice social work will inform decisions on bail. We have not even delved into the implications on resource and time and what effect those will have.

There is nothing that I can see in section 1 that says that victims have to be consulted or that their voices or views will be heard. Are the witnesses aware of Kay’s law, which has been introduced in other jurisdictions? It flicks the emphasis on to consultation with the victims of the crime of which the person is accused as a primary factor in consideration of whether bail is granted and then the perpetrator’s circumstances and needs are taken into account. Is that a better balance?

I will keep my substantive questions until later, convener.

Good morning to the panel—I am checking; it is still morning. I am intrigued by something that you said, and I also want to pick your brains on another point.

It is widely expected that if bail is unopposed it will be granted, and that if bail is opposed and the prosecution seeks to maintain such opposition, the judge has a protocol and a process to follow. Is it your understanding or belief that opposition to bail is being overused? By that I mean the following. Clearly, bail is being opposed for good reason, based on the information that is available to the Crown and the prosecution. Why are we seeking to resolve the problem by limiting the judge’s discretion in the scenario where bail is opposed, rather than by educating the Crown on the parameters that it should use to oppose bail? There are two sides to the coin, but which is the better way to address the issue?

Thank you. I appreciate that other members want to ask questions, convener.

The question is, though, how do you resolve those issues? The question that faces us all is whether there should be a centralised approach of removing power, authority and, probably, funding from the current structure in which services are delivered locally by local authorities through ring-fenced grant budgets from the Scottish Government and giving it to some form of nationalised service. We need to consider the implications of that.

It is still very unclear where the money will flow from, where it will be diverted to and which cohort of people will deliver the service. You talk a lot about lived experience, but I get the impression that we are not listening to the lived experience of front-line social workers, who are telling us, and have given us evidence that, to quote one Aberdeen city health and social care partnership,

“it is leadership not structure that is the most important.”

COSLA is concerned that removing justice social work from local authority responsibility will impede multi-agency working with other local authorities. A local approach is the best one, because those services are best managed and delivered locally.

There is a concern that nationalisation will result in, effectively, a privatisation of the service, whereby work that is currently being done by people who are paid and employed by the public sector will be outsourced through a national procurement process to a third party—perhaps a commercial or private one. Is that a genuine risk?

In that case, I am happy to give way to other members. If possible, I would then like to come back with a summary of what I would like to say.

I am all for ministerial accountability, but that does not address any of the practical questions that have been put to the committee to which we do not have answers. It seems that no one has answers to practical questions such as whether all the social workers who are currently employed by local authorities will be transferred, under the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations, to some form of other Government agency. All those things remain known unknowns.

Given that we have issues with retention and churn in the social work sector and massive problems with resource to deliver local services, it is unclear how any of what you describe will address the clear current shortfalls.

Before you come on to that point, I will respond to the financial issues regarding the bill. At the end of the day, in all this, money talks. You will be acutely aware of what I think was a highly critical, and unanimous, report from the Finance and Public Administration Committee on the weakness of the financial memorandum to the NCS bill.

Will the money follow from the current status quo of grant funding to local authorities and be redistributed to another agency or body, or will it continue to flow as is, with—as you said—only the lines of accountability changing?

And stress—there is a huge amount of stress.