Chamber and committees

Finally, I have what you might call a simple A, B or C question. Would it be your preference to pause the bill in its entirety in order to go back and perform that much-needed consultation that you spoke of; scrap it completely because you think that the whole idea is completely bonkers; or remove the criminal justice elements from the bill and let the rest of it proceed? I guess that all those options are open to Government.

I think that it falls somewhere between A and B. Thank you very much for that. Does COSLA have a view?

Thank you. That was very helpful.

No, I will let others come in. I have had a good run.

Thank you.

I apologise because I was not on the committee when this sort of matter arose in the past, so I am new to the subject. I have a simple question: is the cabinet secretary aware of whether the organisation concerned has any employees or offices, or undertakes any activities, in Scotland? The reason why I ask relates to the point about income tax. If an employee of the organisation was ordinarily resident in Scotland, would they pay the taxation that was appropriate south of the border or the local, devolved income tax, which might differ?

I have wider questions on budgets but, as we are on the topic of prisons, I may as well carry on with that theme.

We heard stark evidence from HM Inspectorate of Prisons on Barlinnie and Greenock. The warning was clear that if, on the next inspection of Greenock, the inspectorate is unhappy, the prison faces the real potential of being closed due to health and safety. Some of the descriptions of it were disturbing.

From a budget point of view, Wendy Sinclair-Gieben made it clear that

“the cost of maintaining Greenock prison outweighs its value.”—[Official Report, Criminal Justice Committee, 09 November 2022; c 2.]

She also said that it costs a fortune to maintain Barlinnie because it is old, and that it is only a matter of time before the building collapses. Rather than look at that in the silo of this year’s budget, is it not part of a bigger picture of chronic underinvestment in the prison estate that has led to a situation in which they are expensive to run and therefore any factors such as rising energy prices affect them more?

In your opening comments, you said that this year you are looking at a real-terms budget cut of 10 per cent due to inflation. I want to probe you on those numbers and on how you came to that figure. My understanding is that the 2021-22 core block grant budget was £36.7 billion and that the 2022-23 block grant is £40.6 billion. That is roughly a 10 per cent increase, so although I understand that the effect of that might feel negated, I do not understand the 10 per cent cut. Could you explain the numbers?

Perhaps we can ask our colleagues in SPICe to verify my figures versus the ones that you used, cabinet secretary. I am just trying to get to an understanding of how you came to the assumption that your budget is 10 per cent lower in value this year than it was last year, which is the opposite of the figures that I have and is notwithstanding the £16 billion-plus in Covid consequentials that was given to the Scottish Government, which has been spent on various issues.

The issue of pay rises is important. The financial problems that you face over the next few years are largely due to an expectation that the Government will have to increase pay across the public sector. We heard from Police Scotland witnesses, specifically, on the effect of that in numerical terms. They forecasted that even a 5 per cent pay rise per annum over the next four years would cost £220 million, and that paying for that would equate to the loss of around 4,500 officers. In other words, every 1 per cent that is awarded to the force equates to the loss of around 1,000 police officers to fund it. Is that of concern to you, and how will the Government approach the issue of pay rises, given that it is largely outside your control?

Cabinet secretary, it is interesting that you said that these are operational matters for the police. Deputy Chief Constable Will Kerr told the SPA in a meeting a couple of weeks ago that he was “professionally embarrassed” by the slow roll-out of cameras, which he described as a

“very basic bit of kit”.

It sounds as though those cameras are not nice add-ons but are must-haves, so I ask the cabinet secretary to reflect on his comments on the matter.

Speaking of incompetence, we have learned through freedom of information requests over the past couple of years that nearly 2 million calls to the 101 service have either gone unanswered by operators or the caller has hung up. We had a frank and robust discussion about the state of the 101 service in this committee, and evidence was given to us. Is the cabinet secretary content and happy that that service is working well, to its full extent? Can he commit to it remaining in operation for the foreseeable future?