Chamber and committees

On the point about women being put off by the backlog of court cases, I do not know whether they even realise the extent of the backlog.

You do not have to answer this, but it was interesting that Thomas Glen said that the asylum seekers in Perth and Kinross are predominantly male. Do you have a combination of males and females in Inverclyde? In other words, is it possible that you might have people who have been trafficked? You might not know about it, but if that happened, do you have the appropriate services available?

We know that the number of incidences of human trafficking has increased dramatically. Can the witnesses provide examples of how their local authority or organisation is working to tackle modern slavery through preventative measures and raising awareness? In the earlier session, we heard particular examples of that, in which traffickers were bringing vulnerable women into the country with the promise of employment. That might be particularly relevant in Perth and Kinross, so I will go to Thomas Glen first, if I may.

There is not a human trafficking statement, but a human trafficking strategy was published in 2017, so it was a while ago that that was put into this domain. I wonder whether there could be some development of that. There is not a statement as such on modern slavery, but there have been calls for one. As Bronagh Andrew said, there have been court backlogs because of Covid.

First, I want to ask Police Scotland about the preventative strategy. We know that human traffickers are bringing women into Scotland with the promise of employment—you talked about them filling employment gaps on farms, for instance. Is there a preventative strategy to allow employers to understand that that is happening and how to look out for the signs?

Secondly, on the point about court backlogs, what is the percentage of successful prosecutions? Obviously, human trafficking cases are very complex. Are women who are being trafficked aware of the backlog and, if they are, does that put them off?

I have asked two lots of questions. I will start with Police Scotland.

It would be great if you could provide those figures because, as I understand it, there has been little progress in prosecutions since 2019. In that year, the number of human trafficking cases increased by 50 per cent. I am interested in the preventative element of this, rather than letting women go through this terrible trauma.

I am wondering how the Dogs Trust and the RSPCA concluded that there should be a phased end to greyhound racing and that the concerns about animal welfare cannot be resolved. I have looked very quickly at the summary of the paper, despite it being given to us only 20 minutes ago, and it does not give concrete evidence regarding the specific cases in Scotland, and nor does the SAWC report. Some of what I read in the SAWC report was anecdotal evidence. It also says that the conditions met those set out in the Animal Health and Welfare (Scotland) Act 2006. How did you reach your conclusion regarding animal welfare? I cannot find anything to suggest that you had concrete evidence to prove that.

You are not to know which bit of the document I was looking at, but my question was specifically with regard to the reference to positive interaction with family members outside the kennel, the housing conditions and the way that the dogs are kept as a domestic animal would be kept.

Roughly, on average, how many complaints do you get? You do not have to be specific.

The report says there would be 20,000 dogs.

If there was a ban on greyhound racing, as you have proposed, how many greyhounds would have to be rehomed and how would that happen?