Chamber and committees

I was not going to comment. However, I am currently dealing with a lot of casework from constituents who have not been released from prison, who do not have addiction issues, who are not prescribed methadone and who are waiting three or four weeks for a GP appointment.

What will happen when that five-day prescription runs out? That is the crunch point. After they pass those five days, a person’s medical issue might become an emergency. At that point, if they cannot be seen by someone and they cannot get a prescription, where do they go? My fear is that they will revert to illicit drug taking, rather than continue with a prescribed methadone programme, as they will have done while in custody.

We need more detail. As we know, the NHS runs the service; the prison service no longer provides that service. Therefore, the matter has moved from the justice portfolio to the health portfolio. The health secretary needs to respond on the issue.

In addition, we could keep the Parliament’s Health, Social Care and Sport Committee abreast of what we are doing. It might be something that it wishes to consider quickly in its agenda.

That all sounds quite concerning. It sounds as though you are saying that a flat cash settlement would lead to Covid-like conditions within the prison estate in relation to the services that could be offered. Of specific concern would be the loss of rehabilitation services, purposeful activity and interaction with other services to deal with mental health and addiction problems, for example. Would all of that activity be scaled back to allow you to simply maintain basic safety within the prison estate?

I will let others come in. I may come back to the issue of pay later, though, if that is okay.

This is probably something that we should have asked Teresa Medhurst about while she was here, as there is a budget element to it.

Although Teresa Medhurst has answered our question in her written response, we were not just looking for the numbers. One of the things that came up in our discussion on the topic was about the ability to compare costs across the different estates. I have no idea whether £5 million is good value or poor value for money. Given what those premises are doing—we have seen them—I am sure that that is all very worthwhile. However, we know that they can facilitate quite a substantially lower number of people. Are the £5 million costs for housing 10, 30 or 100 women? How does that compare with the estate historically or to other types of custody units?

It would have been helpful to get more detail around that to make that comparative analysis. That was the reason for the question; we did not just want to know about the numbers.

Good morning, gentlemen. I want to follow on from what you have just said and ask about the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service.

In your submission, you go into some detail on your scenario planning for a flat cash settlement. Can you elaborate on some of those potential scenarios, particularly with regard to the 25 per cent reduction in sheriff court sittings, which sounds like quite a lot; the 10 per cent reduction in tribunals; and the potential closure of three or four court buildings? I am concerned about the effect of those reductions on what we already know is an immense backlog. What would the implications be in that respect?

That is according to the current funding scenario, but with a flat cash settlement, would we be talking about 2026, 2027 or even 2028?

That does not sound very positive.

I want to ask you about one other issue—maintenance, for which you use your capital budget. We have talked a lot about the large chunk of people’s budgets that goes on resource and pay and, indeed, future pay increases, which is a whole other ball game that we have not discussed yet, and the complications of the effect of that on your budgets, but capital budgets are also important. For example, you say that if you receive no increase in your core capital funding, that would run the risk of safety-related incidents and also make it virtually impossible for you to meet your carbon reduction ambitions. Will you elaborate on that?

On the modelling of a potential 5 per cent annual pay rise for the next couple of years—it sounds as though that has been rejected at this stage, so it could be more—and with a flat cash settlement, you would be looking at a reduction of more than 780 full-time equivalent firefighters and around 30 full-time appliances out of 120. That is quite a big reduction. What are the consequences of that?

I presume that the 17 per cent would be what we would classify as front-line officers—people who are out in the communities and on the streets responding to events and interacting with the community.