Can I ask everyone to switch off mobile phones and other electronic devices? No apologies have been received. Item 1. Decision on taking business in private. The committee has a mighty degree, because in item 4 in our work programme in private, are you agreed? Item 2. As members are aware, the Intercepts of Communications Commissioner released a statement last week confirming that Police Scotland did not seek the judicial approval required when applying for communications data in five cases relating to one investigation. The committee has had an interest in the issue since it first emerged that Police Scotland might have been one of the forces under investigation by the commissioner, and we agreed to return to the issue once the findings became available. We have just agreed our work programme in private late at this meeting, and I would suggest that we have a detailed discussion, if you wish, on the witnesses that we can have and where we might fit any evidence sessions in on the work programme if we decide to take further action, because we will have to move things around, but I am open now to have your general views before we move on a moment, because they seem to be drifted back to you. No, we are not in private. No, we are not in private. Yes, Alison. Thank you very much, convener, and you will know that I wrote to you last week once this information was published to ask that the committee do make it a matter of priority that we consider this further. The commissioner said that he had uncovered reckless behaviour. I think that it is pretty outrageous, really, that the police force has acted above the law. The protection of a free press is really important in a democracy, and journalist sources are as important as journalists themselves. It is clear that there has been significant abuse here. I would urge the committee to think carefully about inviting witnesses, in particular I would want to hear from the cabinet secretary and from senior police officers. I responded to that and suggested that we have the SP and the chief inspectorate of police and IOCOO, if possible, so that we have a rounded picture. I think that we need to be absolutely clear who knew when and what action we were taking. Margaret. Just to back up what Alison says, it is absolutely essential that we have some transparency and accountability on this, so definitely call these people. There shouldn't be any problem with that, even if someone does go to tribunal because sub-utisy rules do not seem to affect tribunals. Hopefully, when we move into private session, we will be confirming which witnesses we want to hear from. Obviously, to move our agenda around in the coming weeks, the statutory obligations that we have. I will take Roddy, then I will take Elaine Roddy. Thank you convener. Just briefly, I think that it is important to note that, from my cocoa, there have been contraventions in respect of five applications relating to one investigation, but I agree that this is a matter of public importance. It is right that the committee should carry out some investigative work in relation to that, but I agree with the convener that any panel of witnesses that we might choose to call should be full and round and not just specifically on the piece gone. The whole past is at where. Elaine. I like to agree with other members of the committee that it is very important that we do some work on that. I also want to particularly concur with your suggestion that the SPA has to present evidence because we have had concerns in the past that the SPA has not been scrutinising Police Scotland appropriately, and I think that it is important that we speak to them. Are you therefore agreed that we continue—sorry, John. Thank you. I would certainly support everything that my colleague said. I think that there is an oversight role for this committee, and as Elaine says that people would anticipate that there was a similar role for the police authority. What I am not clear on is where—and it is not to discuss individuals—where we have to ask individuals, do we know, for instance, that there is no criminality associated with any of this, and what would be the implications if we asked people who were in other circumstances potentially they accused? I think that that is the issue that we have to resolve in private, whether, in fact, things move into that area and we find ourselves almost prevented from doing things. As I was saying in the FAI, if there was any criminality, the FAI would come to a halt because there would be a prosecution, there would be a right of people to silence and so on. Can we leave that? Those are important issues. If I just make one comment, that is not intended to say that I do not think that we should do something vigorously. No, no, no, no. It is rather that I do not want to do anything that would toad on another locust. That is my point. That is why we really need to discuss this fully, so we look at all the issues that are involved in here, but we will be doing something, John, it is the remit and the ambit that we can take in it. Thank you very much. You are agreeable that we discussed this further in the private session when we look at our agenda as well. Thank you very much. I move on to item 3. This is an evidence session to inform our consideration of the draft budget once published. I will hear from three panels of witnesses and I would ask the first panel please if they would take their positions. It is a bit like Strictly Come Dancing. Could you take your positions, please, on the chairs and you can see what I watched on the tell-in this Saturday night and I will just suspend for a moment to let the witnesses take their seats. We have three panels before us today. The first and the pleased budget, the second on the fire and rescue service budget and the third on the Crown Office and the Procurator Fiscal budget. I welcome to our first panel Detective Chief Constable, Neil Richardson, designated deputy for the chief constable and Janet Murray, director of financial services, Andrew Flanagan, chair of the SPA and John Foley, chief executive. I thank you for your written submissions and go straight to questions from members. Elaine Margwick, John Foley. The SPA is reporting a forecast budget deficit of £25.3 million at the end of this year. It seems to have been a failure to make the savings that were expected. I wonder if you could say a bit more about why that has happened. If you indicate who wishes to speak, I will call you and your light will come on automatically. Microphones are on. Who wants to take that one up from the SPA? Was that a question to the SPA? Yes, or to Police Scotland. Yes, as we forecasted our last authority meeting, we were forecasting a deficit of £25 million. However, since then, we have engaged collectively from the authority and Police Scotland with a view to reducing that £25 million in an attempt to get to a break-even position by the end of the year. Work is still on-going to identify such savings. We have identified some, but there is some considerable work required because it is a challenging target. I agree with that position. From my perspective, I would like to put a little bit of context around that to say that that is undoubtedly the position that we stand today. As John said, we are doing a lot of work around trying to reduce that moving forward. The fact that there is a gap, however, was no surprise. We knew that, as we went through reform, it was going to become increasingly difficult as we become leaner and as we make the changes and as we have delivered very considerable success over the first nearly three years of Police Scotland. It was always going to become more challenging in order to find the savings, although, at the same time, living up to the standards that we set out and complying with the various commitments that we had made around outsourcing, etc. Although, yes, there is a gap there, that is a gap that we did anticipate was likely to be the case and it has come to pass. The £25.3 million is a lot to find by the end of this financial year, particularly since 90 per cent of your costs relate to staff. Is it possible to do that? Well, again, that is exactly the work that we are embarked upon. It is difficult, but, again, it is set against the overall size of the budget. That is, in fact, a fairly small overspend. Again, we are in the process, as I said, of trying to look at every area to see where we can make the necessary savings to bring us on budget. My point is that it is set against all the dynamic arrangements that have been at the heart of the reform, which is not just the target that we are setting to achieve, but the dynamic change that happens around us and the environment and the need to shift policing needs according to that changing world, as well as, with any plan, things will never always come to light as you go through implementation that were not apparent from the outset. Again, those are fairly routine areas of change, and the fact that we have got an overspend, as I said, was something that we anticipated was likely to be the case from an early stage. Are the 1724 place officers set by the former First Minister prior to Police Scotland coming into being? Is that a problem? Is that constraining you the fact that you have got this limit? I know that there are different views on the police officer number piece. I have spoken about the reform journey on a number of occasions, and I have been consistent in my view. Although it might be described as restrictions and a difficulty for us, up until this point, it has been significantly helpful for two primary reasons. One is that it has enabled us to keep a critical mass of police officers to ensure that service delivery is sustained. Secondly, it has meant that we have provided our entire focus at what is arguably the more challenging areas of reform and the deliverables associated with reform rather than going straight to officer numbers. Again, the contrast of that is absolutely stark if you look south of the border, where you have seen dramatic reductions in police officer numbers to meet fairly difficult financial requirements. The fact that chief constable is down south is now in regular routine meetings with the public to determine which services will be stopped. We are not in that position in Scotland largely because we have had stability around that officer number piece. I would not subscribe to the view that that has been, as you described it, a set of shackles for us. That certainly was not the view of the former chief constable who has just retired from Stephen House. If I recall correctly, he said that it was made difficulties for him in that that was one part that he could not touch whatsoever. Therefore, it did not give him the flexibility that he required. Do you disagree with that view that he had? No, I am not suggesting that for one second it has been easy. Moving forward, it becomes harder and harder. I have already made that point in terms of trying to find increasing savings with a limited playground in which to operate in. However, has it been a problem or not? What I am suggesting is that it has been quite helpful over the initial stages of reform to ensure that the focus was on the longer-term and challenging areas. Equally, you have also lost a large number of civilian staff. That is where the cuts have fallen on the civilian staff who support police officers. That is correct, but again, that was always going to be so. In terms of the transition from eight forces and a national organisation into one, it was always going to be the case that there would be a reduction and a consolidation of numbers. Alison Eugar supplementary in this, have you? Yes, thank you. It is good that you respond to me and see what I call your name. I know that I am not dreaming here at best. This time last year, I asked the chief constable if he would tell us if the budget cuts that were expected of him were too much, and he said that he would tell us that, but last year he did not think that that was the case. Do you think that he should have been more open with us at that time? I ask you, looking forward into next year's budget, what are the implications for the forthcoming year? I do not want to comment for the previous chief constable. He had his own views on that. The savings are challenging, and they have always been challenging. We have been clear and consistent about that simple fact. However, we have, steadfastly, said that we would try as far as we possibly could to do that. For the first two years, we have done exactly that. There has been substantial change, and to bring us in—again, I have stressed the fact that we are still working on reducing that gap, and that is our ambition. However, the point that I am trying to make is that much of the commentary has been about failure and that this is surely a problem. I would take it from a slightly different lens to say that this is a mark of success. The fact that we have managed to sustain numbers and the commitments that we have made to communities across Scotland to ensure that, as far as possible, we do not compromise any particular geography in Scotland in terms of job losses and all the various things that make up the policing service. To be in the position still with some months to run, where we have a £25 million overspend against a £1 billion budget, I would suggest that there is quite a significant success story over three years. That is not to suggest that everything is rosy in the garden—of course, it is not—and there are some very significant challenges still in front of us. However, I do think that that represents a very considerable successful delivery over a three-year period. Forgive me, but I do not think that the staff in the control rooms would consider it a success story given the pressures that they are facing. What I am trying to get to and what committee is looking at here today is the budget that is provided for the police service next year sufficient for you to carry out your resources and your job properly. We need honest answers about that. We do not need people saying that we will do our very best to try to fit into that. There needs to be a point where the police officer tells us that we cannot do all that you are asking us to do with that budget. Have you reached that point yet? The simple answer is no. We are in discussion. We have a comprehensive spending review that is in train. We have provided a submission and we are in discussions. Once we know what our budget looks like, I would be in a better position to answer your question. However, as we sit here, I would take the view that we are still actively in discussion about that point. The point that we are trying to make is—understandably, I am going to use the word coi, but you are careful just now what you say, but the point about this committee is to ensure that we hold the Government's account so that you are not having to make shift and mend in the Police Scotland and that what we are doing, our job, is scrutinising that you have sufficient funding to do the job that we know you want to do and that we would want you to do. I would pace it if your negotiations are some difficulties, but we need to be told some bad stuff by you a little bit. I would help you in telling you that. You put your hand up, but as I suspect, everybody is going to go through the same kind of things on cuts and budgets and so on. I called you and think that it was going to be about civilian staff and it was sort of—I am going to take people under order because it is all about the same thing. It is all about cuts to the budget and will you have sufficient? If you forgive me, Gil, I have a list of people who want and who are probably going on the same thing, you are not a happy bunny. No, because there is an elephant in the room that I would like to ask. Can I leave the elephant just now? No, Gil, I am leaving the elephant just now because somebody else might want to raise it. You have got it on the record and you sneaked it under the wire. Margaret, followed by John, followed by Rodriac, followed by Mark Medugol, followed by Gil and his elephant in the room. In his submission, HMI inspector of constabulary in Scotland says that he does not believe the Scottish Police Authority and Police Scotland have a fully formed financial strategy in place. Obviously, he says that he accepts that there are unknowns that can prevent such a strategy being completed, including the delay in the current spending review that you have already referred to to DCC Richardson. However, he said that that does not prevent the majority of public sector organisations having at least a medium-term financial plan in place. Could you comment on that? Yes, I am aware of the inspector's comments. We have a financial strategy in place that runs up until 31 March 2016, and that was the term of it, which was a three-year strategy that was put in place. As we sit at the moment, we are working on the next corporate strategy and finance strategy, and we will have that in place by the end of March, so that one strategy runs into the next one. I would like to be reassured that, in this interim strategy, certain things that have been highlighted on in the public domain have been taken account of. They overspend on the I6 project the increase in costs associated with more training with various legislative changes in the criminal justice bill, but above all, the concerns that have been raised about the possible developing threats that policing must consider—this is something else that the inspector of constabulary has raised—in future investment, both heavily on cybercrime and counter-terrorism prevention. Could you comment specifically on that? I do not think that it is good enough to come to the committee and say that we have a three-year plan and that we are looking at things. I think that we need some details here. The financial strategy will emerge, and the corporate strategy will, to a large extent, be a bottom-up strategy. What we will be doing is looking into the future to identify all the areas that you have mentioned and others, and we will build it up from that, so that we have a comprehensive picture that clearly articulates what the corporate strategy is and the finance strategy is as we move over the next three to five years. That sounds like double-dutch to me. You have not given me one concrete example. I would appreciate some concrete examples of what is in those strategies and budgets. Well, in relation to your specific comments, there will be elements of the strategy that will be involved with training, some of which will be associated with the changes to criminal justice, some of which will be associated with the implementation of things like I6 and other projects that are on the go. There are a large number of them within Police Scotland. We will be taking account of the requirements to increase capability for cybercrime. In some ways, that would be an investment in people, investment in technology. However, we will be looking across the piece at every aspect of policing to build up those strategies. The finance strategy, for example, will be supported by strategies in fleet, the states, workforce and, among other strategies, ICT. Therefore, they will all come together to form one corporate strategy. What conclusions have you come to? Do you have the resources to deal with those threats? Well, it is actually on-going at the moment, but we are going through the process, so we have not got a final position. We have no idea just now if you have the resources or not. Is that fair to say? We have an idea that we have resources to deal with the threats that we know about currently. However, clearly, as we look into the future, we will have to prepare ourselves to be able to address threats that will emerge. I am aware that the Police Federation in particular has raised concerns that they do not feel that the rank-and-file is adequately resourced to cope with terrorist threats. I am aware of the Federation's comments. One of the advantages of moving to a national force is to give us greater flexibility to deal with the very issues that we are now confronted with. We are in the process of making necessary adjustments and flexing arrangements to ensure that we meet that challenge. Prior to the events in Paris that have been articulated, we had anticipated and planned around a different kind of attack profile. Very clearly, what we are now doing is working towards an enhanced profile, and that involves a change in terms of capabilities and staff numbers. As I have said, I am not trying to be evasive around that. We are moving rapidly, and I want to give some reassurance that there is nobody hanging out in the wind here. That is not the case. We have capabilities, but they are being adjusted. Once we have a clarity about any expense or deficit that cannot be accommodated by the flexing that I have described, we will be in a position to articulate that, but I am not in a position to articulate the detail of it just now. I do think that we want you to tell us the detail of your security movements in public. As long as it is being considered. Can I move on now, Margaret? Yes, I would like to be chipped tonight. John, please follow me, Roderick. I will give you a morning panel. I have a question about staff costs. We have had a number of representations. I suspect that we are using slightly different terminology, but, for instance, ASPs in unison talk about 92 per cent of staff the budget being taken up by staff costs. Police Scotland says that around 94 per cent is invested in people-related costs, and the SP says that around 90 per cent in staff budget, and staff-related costs made up of 71 per cent police officers and 19 per cent police support staff. Is there a simple way that we can say what is it? Normally, with organisations, it is in the 90 per cent split, but, given the sums that are involved, it would be important to maybe understand what is going on. In terms of our submission, 94 per cent is police officer and police staff costs, and that also includes, as part of that, the pensions element that falls within the overall resource budget. Where we quote in terms of employee-related costs, we quote the 94 per cent. Right. If I can ask the authority perhaps, Mr Follett, is it at a different base that is it excluding employer costs or something that that figure is offered by the police authority? We take a slightly—it is not a different view, but it is at a different point in time. If there is a percentage or two different, it is just because it is measured at a different point. We are measuring the same thing, because given clearly the oversight body, and we would want to know that the oversight body would have the same understanding of the percentage of overall costs that are represented by staff. As the oversight body, when we report and when we scrutinise figures, it is actually the figures from Police Scotland that we scrutinise and monitor, so it is always those figures that we take. It is at a different point in time. I do not understand the difference two per cent. What is that to do with point in time? What does that mean? It would just be when the authority and Police Scotland are looking at the ledgers, so when they are closed off, the figures that we have sometimes can be slightly different, but they are never any more than a percentage or two. So their figures were later or earlier or something? Police Scotland figures would be later, more up to date. Right. It is now 94 per cent then. Yes. We do not actually have direct access to the numbers in the ledgers, so that is why they are slightly different. Sorry, John. No, no. It is helpful to try to understand, because clearly a single percentage point or two percentage point when we are talking about that global sum is a significant sum of money. Mr Richard, can I regretfully go back to the thousand officers and I stood in a party. It was not, of course, the 17234, is not the figure, it was a thousand additional officers that were the manifesto commitments. Has there been any discussion at all? I ask the Cabinet Secretary if there is any intention to review that. Has there been any discussion at all about looking at what the intention of that figure was? Because the intention was to provide the effect of a thousand officers and with the consummate loss of police support staff. That is not possible to deliver, not least because some of these thousand are now replacing. Have you made approaches to the Government about perhaps configuring the costs associated with that thousand in a different way so that support staff could be retained? Obviously, there have been on-going discussions about a range of things, and I suppose that going back to the original intention around reform, it was largely to try and ensure that we had an increased flexibility, as I would describe it, to make sure that communities are appropriately supported. If you look at the objectives of reform and take them as a collective, equal access to specialist function is a good example of where, when the need arises, we would search forward resource, whatever it looks like, in order to make sure that that community need is met. What we have always aimed to do is try and, over time, increase the flexibility more and more. Therefore, the whole issue around numbers becomes quite unhelpful and it sets in the minds of community members as well that the measure of success is how many police officers are permanently deployed from a particular base or station or whatever it may be. That is difficult when it is directly against the model that we are trying to deliver, which is if there is a need, that need will be met. Some of that need looks like routine presence, but sometimes it looks like a capability that comes in at particular points of the month, of the year, of the week, or whatever it might be. There is a bit of a contradiction here in relation to numbers, and I would extend that to support staff areas as well, where everybody knows that we had a dispersed set of arrangements in Scotland. We had eight forces, we had national arrangements. There was significant duplication, and that was all enshrined within the business case. Therefore, it was always going to be the case that we would seek to consolidate that. There were some areas that did not previously have police officer presence, but that was not an equal pattern across Scotland. As part of the changes, there are some areas that we have sought to put more police officers in. It was not simply that we could let support staff go. It was a deliberate move to try to make sure that the balance was in line with our experience and judgment and a need for consistency across Scotland. If there had not been a financial imperative, you would not have dispensed with the services of many people. People understand the issue of duplication eight times over, nine times over in many instances, but you would not have dispensed with all those police support staff had there not been a financial imperative. That is probably a fair comment, but I would stress that there would still have been significant consolidation and downsizing. If you have various people operating with different practices, approaches and duplication, that needs to be streamlined to improve efficiency. As part of the original intention and model, it was always the case that there was going to be a slimming down. A final question relates to the question. You were asked about a terrorist threat. Certainly what I heard from your colleagues last week was reassuring. I heard that the known threat had been assessed and there was resilience beyond that, which was fairly deployed, so I was reassured of that. It is not that we hear from constituents, we hear about routine response and response in relation to, for instance, scenes of crime. Is there sufficient resilience there, Mr Ritchardson? Again, this is an area that we are actively looking at because there is no doubt that things change. If you take our original model, there have been a number of adjustments that have been made to that model each in their own right, a substantive requirement in its own right, national units that have come together to deal with particular priorities. It is very clear, and we are certainly receiving the message from the organisation in various places that there is significant pressure in some areas. We are actively looking at the moment to review where we currently stand, where those pressures are and what we can realistically do about it. We have had representation made, for example, from the superintendents association, and we have commenced a superintendents review. That will not just cover superintendent ranks, it will also cover the ranks that lead in to the superintendent ranks to give us a better understanding of the pressures that are articulated by ASPs and whether or not there are meaningful actions that we can put into place quickly to address those. Those are pieces of work that are in train to try and make sure that, on an on-going basis, if there is a pressure that can be addressed, we will address it. I will ask about the PR response to those issues, because the 10 people who get a very good service—the vast majority of the public have a very good experience with the police—are not in touch with the local paper to share their concern. The one who is told that they will have to wait a few days to get a scene of crime in your house is, how are Police Scotland dealing with that? Public competence is affected by all those sort of things. We are acutely aware of that, and it has been incredibly difficult over the last few months. I do not want to be saying that we are doing a review of absolutely everything, but we are looking at our communications capability just now. We are actively looking to try and increase our presence in the digital area, trying to make sure that that is an area where you can get more coverage and you can target it to make sure that you have more of a balance of information going to the right places. There are a number of areas that we are actively trying to progress and move forward. It is disappointing to me, if I am completely honest, that much of the coverage has been very negative. I am not saying that some of it is not justified, and of course I am more than happy for the notion of accountability, and I welcome it. However, when the coverage is routinely negative and it feels as though it is combative in its nature, it has an incredibly negative effect on the organisation and the people within it. Again, if you take some of the bare facts, you will know that Cyprus created an opportunity to do benchmarking with all European countries that had gone through structural reform. We did some work to detail their experience, and some of those experiences were fairly negative, in the sense that, after change, complaints usually go up and performance drops and crime response etc. Without exception, the experiences of Europe have not been replicated in Scotland. In fact, the nearest comparator that we used, I went at a very early stage and then went back to Scottish Government colleagues to Holland to have a look at what they were doing and how they were doing it.  Holland is now in considerable difficulties and they have lost their chief constable. They are having to revise a number of the plans that they put into place in the first place, and the costs have gone upwards by a considerable margin. Against that European and beyond benchmark of experience, what has been delivered in Scotland is not all-negative. In fact, there are some very strong successes that we are not managing to get into the newspapers and into the public consciousness. I absolutely take the point that we need to do more to try to ensure that that balanced picture is presented, and we are working on trying to do exactly that. When Chief Constable House gave evidence last year, he pointed out that there was an irrecoverable vat element in the budget of £23 million, which he said could roughly account for 680 officers. What is the irrecoverable figure at the present time? The irrecoverable figure is in the region now of about £33 million. Essentially, there is the resource element to the VAT plus any VAT that we incur in terms of our capital projects. That is a significant impact on our overall expenditure levels at this time. Presumably, he would cover the cost of even more officers than 680. It would be in the region of over 900 officers. In your submission, this is E. Richardson, you referred to the overtime budget, £17.5 million, which roughly equates to what was said last year. Could you give us some more information on the challenges to that overtime budget? We also had evidence last year of a sickness ratio of about 4.2 per cent. What is the current position in relation to sickness as well? In terms of overtime, that is a kind of on-going challenge. It is, to some extent, at least a discretionary spend, so it is an area that is legitimate to look at if we can make savings we should. Some of the pressures relate to the dynamic nature of policing. There are some things that you simply cannot plan for, but they need to be met. There are some areas that, for example, in the area of serious crime or the counter-terrorism kind of domain, events emerge and they need to be responded to. If they are out with the plan or the timescale, even where plans do exist, if the intelligence picture changes, we need to act on that. It is usually overtime that fits that bill. Overtime is not a luxury extra, it is a requirement to enable us to sustain and maintain an appropriate level of provision. In addition to that, some of the initial modelling of the policing resource across Scotland was predicated on a level of overtime. It is that blind between permanent posts and an ability, again following the concept that I described around flexibility, to surge resource in at appropriate times when required. What I am trying to describe is the fact that overtime is not just a luxury extra that can be pruned back, it is an important part to enable us to deliver what we have committed to deliver. We have reduced it by 48 per cent since we went live, so significant adjustments have been made in line with the pressures that we are under to live within our means. Within that, I would suggest that there is a level that is not discretionary, and please do not push me in picking a level there because it is not too easy to do. Is there scope to reduce it further? Potentially that is the case. We are in active discussions with the authority about those issues, as you would expect us to be. However, with all of that, it carries a judgment, a level of risk, and we need to look on an on-going basis, because clearly the dividend of making any adjustments now will be greater than closer to the financial year. We will continue to do that. It may be possible to make further savings in that area, but I do not want to compromise officers anywhere around making sure that they deliver what the public expect them to deliver. In your £23 million overspend at the moment, is there an element of overtime in that figure? Are you keeping to that budget or is there an element of overspend? In terms of the budget at the moment, we are more or less balancing online. It does vary depending on how an operation proceeds, but at the moment and time, we are remaining to the £17.5 million. I have not come prepared with figures on the sickness, but I can easily answer that question by correspondence. A small technical one. Last year, we established from Chief Constable House that 329 officers were funded by local authorities in Scotland. Is that position remaining at the present time? Is there an indication that that is going to change and put additional pressure on the budget? Those are active conversations, as you would expect, that are taking place just now. If you want my judgment, we are not operating in isolation, and I am very well aware that local authority colleagues are under the same kind of, if in some areas, even more extreme pressure for reduction. I am taking nothing for granted, and we have to accept that there may be some adjustment there, but I cannot confirm that just now. Cybercrime is a different area. What impact is that having in terms of police resourcing? In terms of people or money? Well, both, I think. Well, cybercrime is clearly an area that is very pressing. It is an area of which is undoubtedly a growth industry. It is a major threat not just for policing but for the whole of Scotland. We have, in consultation with the authority, made some investment in this particular area. We have plans to progress that over the next few years to make sure that our capabilities remain fresh and able to meet that threat. Again, when you are dealing with technology, that is a rapidly changing dynamic. So, very quickly, technology, memory space and all that kind of thing is superseded. It is an area of which we will continue to be a concern for us moving forward. We have had some cyberattacks from a policing point of view, which have been responded to very well. We have managed to effectively manage them in an appropriate fashion, but that is the type of uncertain risk that we face on a day-to-day basis. That is not just policing, it is any organisation attacks on their IT systems. It is important that our infrastructure is properly maintained and modernised to ensure that it is as resilient to those attacks as we can possibly make it. Again, in conjunction with the authority, that is an area of prioritised investment. We have made significant progress there. It is all documented within the corporate strategy, and we are well down the road of delivering what we set out to do in terms of modernising of the estate. From a Police Scotland point of view, I can give you some reassurance that is moving well with appropriate investment. From the general cybercrime response, we have an investment in the process of modernising that. We have a capability just now, but it is at the tail end of its life, so it is important that that investment is progressed. Finally, I have a question for Mr Flanigan. Mr Emory, when he gave evidence to the predecessor last year, talked about discussions that he was instigating on the nature of policing in the future, what policing will cost, what skill sets policing needs and what the balance will be between uniformed and non-uniformed people. He talked to that stage that he kicked off with a meeting with academics, Police Scotland and the Government. Where are we with those more general discussions? I think that it comes back to the longer-term strategy for policing in Scotland. There are a number of discussions and initiatives going on at the moment. My colleague John would be able to give you more of that detail, but I think that Vic had identified correctly that there was a need for a more extensive debate about the nature of policing as we go forward. In the absence of that debate, it is quite difficult to draw out some of the strategic changes that are required or the budgetary implications of those. Some of your earlier questions in terms of cybercrime are just an example of those kinds of changes that are going on. The police cannot be isolated from the nature of criminality or the social changes that are going on across society, but I will pass to John to talk about the detail of that. Yes, when Mr Emory made those comments, we were at the beginning of a process of looking into a longer-term strategic vision, taking us out to 2026, where we were going to incorporate matters such as demographics, geography, engaging with academics, which we have done. We have engaged actively since that time with cyber and with some other academics who have been involved in some reform collaboration work. We are pulling together a corporate strategy that will be quite cohesive and, as I said, we will look forward to 2026 and have all those elements in it. Clearly, we have been engaging along that process with Police Scotland as well, so what we are producing will be a very good product, I would suggest, and that will be available in spring. I do not understand any of this. I know that it is really corporate speak, but I do not really know what it means. I will be honest. I think that if somebody is sitting outside, they do not know what that means, what you have just said. No, to be rude, I mean to understand what it means to somebody else, but I do not know what it means. So, when you say about the nature of policing in corporates, what are we talking about? Well, I think that if I could perhaps be a bit more of a plain speaker then. Please, please, yes, I am a simple woman. Essentially, what we have done since Mr Emory made those comments is to pull together what would look like a strategy that understands society as we move forward to 2026. It would be in terms of demographics, things like people's age profile, people who are going into higher education, understanding what their needs are as we move forward, and then reflecting what a police service would be that would satisfy those needs as we move over that time frame. I have a little bit further forward there, but I do understand needs. Do you understand what you mean by needs? What do you mean by that? Sorry if you could just... Well, we know that we are projecting forward that we are going to have a more elderly population. The needs of elderly people in relation to how they engage with a police service would be different from how, for example, a student would engage with a police service. The use of technology and what their preferences would be in terms of how they would contact a police, for example, is something simple like that, but we would have to put it across the whole range and we would have to predict what the demographics and the geography looks like over that period. Rodi, do you want to come back? No, I have heard enough of them. I do not know what to make of that. Margaret Wake-Dougall, followed by Christian, please. Thank you, convener. Could I just continue on the VAT subject? In hindsight, would it be beneficial to have had exemption from VAT for the Police Scotland? We have been consistent in our view on that. The comments that have been made set out the position as the only policing organisation in the UK that is paying VAT. It does set us as something of an outlier and it is a matter that we have been pretty consistent about. What discussions are being made? Are they on-going to try and rectify that so that there is exemption? I think that that is the matter of the Government, Margaret, and I think that they have been doing it rather than for Police Scotland. It was a matter for the Scottish Government and Westminster. I will go back to the reductions in the number of police support staff where there has resulted in backfilling. What effect has that had on the service, and do you anticipate that there will be further reductions in support staff? To clarify again, our position has not changed on that. There is no backfilling policy. We are not putting people routinely and systematically into support staff roles in order to fulfil a policy position.  A judgment is taken and, on occasions, police officers will be required to come in and provide temporary cover for positions. That has also been the case that we have had short-term arrangements whereby to enable the flow of people to exit the organisation through voluntary redundancy. If we can speed things up with a position that we know is likely to be concluded in two months or three months, we have, in the past, taken up a position where a police officer has gone in to enable that member to leave the organisation. However, there is no policy around backfilling and we have no plans to introduce one as we... You just said that the word policy just says it is happening. Rather than using the word policy, it would be acceptable if there was no policy, but is it happening in practice? It is an important distinction. If you want to describe backfilling as police officers fulfil staff officer functions, then yes, that is happening, but it is not happening on a whole-scale level. It is not happening as a planned approach in order to... I think that the spirit of the question was heading towards, are we seeking to exit as many support staff as possible just with blanket backfill? That is not the case. However, we are living in a world where savings have got to be made and it would be wrong for me to say that there will not be further reductions in staff. What I cannot say at the moment is that the numbers involve... We are actively working through plans to look at how we can best balance the budget. Again, depending on what the settlement looks like, when that becomes apparent, we will be in a better position to determine what the size and scale of the organisation needs to be. I mean, I totally understand what you are saying. It is not a policy, but I think that we all know that it does happen and it is to what extent it actually happens. If we were to lose more support staff, does that mean that there will be even more police officers who will have to fill in in some cases? I think that that is a concern for the public. I am seeking to do. That has not changed. It has been part of the plan all the way through. The initial phase of reform was largely around trying to maintain core services but to consolidate. That was the part where it brought the various organisations into a single operating entity. The next stage of that journey is around what might be better understood as the really transformative activity, which involves changing the process, doing things differently and being slicker and sharper about the way that we do our business. When you are describing a loss, it is not happening in isolation because we are seeking to continually improve the way that we are doing our business. There is still lots of bureaucracy in the organisation and we are systematically trying to reduce that. Yes, that is a good word, lots of bureaucracy. Tell us about that. It is a national organisation that had eight different ways of operating. Forget that, but we have rid of the eight different ways of operating but we are just going to what is left to cull. That is the key point. We do not have eight organisations anymore but we could not change everything overnight. On day one, everything did not seamlessly go into a common single way of working. What we did was that we had a patchwork of process of policies, of ways of working, of cultures and we have spent the best part of three years working our way through that. You cannot do everything overnight, you have to be targeted and planned about what you are doing and to have a realistic expectation of success. You need to be fairly methodical about that, so that was always going to be a long-term endeavour. However, the point is that, as we seek to improve efficiency, it provides the opportunity to release potentially members of staff that no longer are required because the system is far more efficient. That is something that we have been working through with the unions and the staff associations on. It is a basic principle around reform and it just takes a number of years to work through. Elaine Ewing, you did a supplement on the same business of the civilian staff. This is what I was trying to drive at about the 17234,000 additional police officers, which was determined at a time before Police Scotland existed. It was determined at a time when we would make forces. If you did not have that constraint, if you are having police officers working at doing jobs that are the jobs of civilian staff who would not be paid the same rate of pay as a police officer and have a different skillset, because the police officers skills are not being properly used if they are behind a desk doing the jobs that a skilled civilian member of staff could be doing, can you get the right balance of workforce when you have that sort of imposition of a number on you? It is harder to do. I think that it is fair to say if you have the constraints, but everything, as I have tried to describe, sometimes having those constraints provides a sharper focus in the other areas that need to be progressed. The reality of that, as I have described through the European examples, there is more complexity than you can possibly imagine associated with a change on this scale. To try and simplify things as far as possible is quite welcome. It increases your chances of success and delivery. I suggest that the officer numbers as an example enable the degree of simplicity in that area to enable the focus to stay where you need it to be. The reality is that we need to find a balanced workforce. That is not something that you can craft straight away. It is partly the learning experience to determine what does that balance look like? What is the best asset that you need to bring in? Is it support staff or is it a member of a warranted officer? As we make the improvements that I have just highlighted in terms of the change process, that changes as well. The fact that we are now in a position—again, that will be linked, I am sure, with the on-going requirement around savings and the CSR settlement—will undoubtedly drive another opportunity for us to determine what are we required to deliver, what service do we require to deliver across Scotland, and therefore what is the best mix of staff and police officers to meet it. The question is, if Father Christmas was to bring you a present, would it be that you do not have to stick with 17,234 police officers so that you could have some flexibility with the civilian balance? That is the question that we are trying to get you to answer. You have been very careful in your response. We understand why, but if you want the committee to do its job, you have to tell us. Is it a case that having that fixed number of police officers is really an impediment to having the skillset that you want and the balance that you want? Pretend that we are Father Christmas and tell us. I am sitting here in front of you as a senior police officer, and my duty is to get as many police officers as I possibly can. That is not my question. We agree that we would love you to have as many police officers on open budget. My direct question is, does that figure, which is what everybody has asked you around this table, prevent you from having the correct skillset? You might want more at some point, you might want fewer, but let us have flexibility. I absolutely want as much flexibility as I can. I think that the debate is in the wrong place. The numbers part is less important than the money part. I am more interested in seeing what settlement I can secure and from that determine how best to deliver necessary policing services across Scotland. I come back to the point where I have seen my colleagues down south having very dramatic reductions to police officers. We understand that. We know all that stuff, so we appreciate that and we appreciate your caution, but somewhere in there there was an answer, detecting an answer to that question, which we have been pressing. It is important that we ask it. I am not finished with my question.  I am just back to police numbers. Has that finished on that particular? No, I am not finished with the numbers. I am going to the supplementary on that. Mr Richardson, you would have us believe that the backfilling is ad hoc and is transient and temporary. If we look at, for example, what has happened with firearms licensing officers, that is not ad hoc. That is a deliberate decision to remove civilian staff and replace them with police officers on a permanent basis. Well, I hope that it is not a play on words, but it is about a determination of demand and how we best meet that demand. That was an area that was determined that we would do things differently. We would address the demand in a different way. It is not a case where you have a member of staff and, like for like, you switch them out for a police officer, which is how I would interpret a backfilling kind of question to be. Well, I think that it is semantics then, because I think that it is not an ad hoc thing that is happening. It is a quite deliberate thing. And HMICS recognises that. In his submission, he says, I notice an increased use of police officers in corporate functions and in other settings with no real business case rationale. And it goes back to what the convener was saying, that you are not able to test the business case rationale for keeping civilian staff in the post, because you will not challenge the fact that you have to have this 17234. Is that not the case? Well, no, I mean, I understand why you are asking the question and I understand why people would take that view. But in the vast majority of conversations that I can recall around the board table, where we are looking at potential ways forward, when we had eight variations of how different forces did things, there was a real diversity there. There were some areas that there was no police presence and some of these are corporate functions. But actually, a corporate function with a knowledge of how it impacts and applies to the policing requirement is actually quite important. And so, there was a deliberate move in a number of areas to say, we would like to ensure that there is a police knowledge and understanding in that area to make sure that we get a better product, a better delivery and an informed outcome from that endeavour, whether it is corporate function and there were other areas as well in terms of service delivery, where some forces had moved to a point where there were no police officers at all involved in certain areas of delivery and we believed that, as a new national organisation, we needed to rebalance that. So, there are a number of areas where we have deliberately moved to a position where we now have police officers. It is not a sinister or a Machiavellian plan in order to compromise support staff. It was a deliberate move to try to ensure that we deliver the best possible services to the people of Scotland. I am going to move on to Christian, please. I thought that you said you know what has been asked to do, so she indicated. I am looking after her, you are all right. Christian. Thank you very much and good morning. Talking about using police officers into function that they may not need, we heard last year about some experience to try, for example, football matches not to be covered any more with police officers. Have we progressed on this? Have we progressed on events that police officers might not be required to do? In that area, the vital overwhelming imperative is public safety, but that can be met in a number of ways. The historic way to approach this was to have lots and lots of police officers there, but we have moved on in our thinking. It does not need to be a police officer. Security, people can do it. The internal events can hire their own stewards to make sure that the safety of the public is optimised. What we do on every event that we are asked to support, we will do appropriate planning work, we will do risk assessments and we will put forward a view as to how we think that safety can best be managed. In the majority of occasions, we have seen that that has led to fewer police officers so long as the organisers make sure that they put in the appropriate stewarding. Where we put police officers in, we have also moved a policy of ensuring that we get cost recovery on that. Again, it is in the best public interest to make sure that the policing budget goes as far as it possibly can. On cost recovery, I had exchanges of letters with Police Scotland and it looked like some political parties, for example, we never recovered the money. Can we change the tack instead of talking about cost recovery? It is maybe deciding right from the outset what should be covered and what should not be covered by police officers and trying to reduce the amount of events covered with police officers. Have we tried to go in that way? Have any part of the savings that we have seen already been achieved or not? That is what I am suggesting to you. In relation to the assessment that is done for every event, that is looked at from a lens of making sure that the policing footprint is as small as it can be. Do we still ensure bills to our organisation? We would not know if Police Scotland will get the money back or not. We have a policy of cost recovery. If somebody goes into default, we will pursue that, but ultimately our state of intention would be to recover cost. I thought that we would have been a lot better ahead compared to last year when we talked about it. In football clubs, have we had a decrease on police officers at football clubs? I am just checking to see if we have any information, because that will be available. I did not bring it with me, and I am not sure if Janet is aware. Certainly in terms of overall billing to football clubs, we have seen a reduction in some areas in terms of the dependent on the game or the nature of the game or as the DCC has outlined the actual requirements, but overall figures I do not have with me today, but I can provide that. It would be good if you could. A second question, and we talked about cybercrime and terrorism. You talked a lot about co-ordination with other forces down south and across Europe. Of course, we have got a lot of budget challenges in other forces, but we have got a lot of budget challenges in Scotland, but across. The saving that we are making has started to influence the collaboration that we have with other forces on cybercrime and terrorism. Have we improved our collaboration? No, I just want to know if the collaboration has been affected with the cuts that we have in Scotland down south and in the rest of Europe. It is fair to say that there is pressure on the collaborations, but in key areas of policing business we have maintained all the necessary collaborations. It is true that the closest ones, colleagues down south, have gone through some fairly dramatic change, and so the entire operating arrangements north and south of the border have shifted. Under legacy arrangements, when we had twice as many chief officers as we have now, we would all routinely take responsibility for linking in with our counterparts down south and we would attend meetings and make sure that that flow of information was there. That has moved to a different place, because we simply could not support that same level of activity now with far fewer people and the expense of the continued travel and everything else has to be borne in mind. The operating arrangements have provided a more streamlined opportunity with the National Council of Chief Constables, and we are engaged with them, but it is probably fair to say that we are select and more selective in terms of the groups and the forums in which we actively and more routinely participate in. I do not think that that generates any weakness in any particular area, it is just a more streamlined way of doing business. Do you think that we would be part of the strategy as well to try to make sure that there is no weaknesses in the future with more cuts down south and more cuts in Scotland? Undoubtedly. Those are active, on-going discussions. There is a great deal of change that is extremely dynamic. We are involved. I, at personal level, have been involved in discussions with the Home Office and colleagues, chief officers down south, around those planning arrangements. They are interested and inviting my view and our experience in Scotland to make sure that that is properly integrated to their emergent decisions. I can offer you a reassurance there, whilst it is active, that they are certainly not ignoring the Scottish need, and we are at the table at the various places that we need to be. Last question. If you had a Christmas present, it would be the amount of VAT that you could recover. If you could recover some money next year, you would not need to talk about cuts. If you want to give me a Christmas present of the VAT, I will thank you very much for that. I apologise to Gil Paterson about preventing you from asking that. We have since explored it. There is a question that has not been asked, which is of concern from the Police Federation. I will quote, whether by accident of design, there are many parts of the service that operate in silos. Each of those silos may well be able to satisfy itself that it is delivering value for money in its own particular area of policing business. Unless we are able to see how they contribute to the totality of policing, it is difficult to genuinely gauge if that contribution is needed, or indeed if it could be done without. One of our members recently described the situation as, quote, those who have never existed in the past have created an industry to justify their existence now. That looks like folk creating jobs for themselves and looking busy and not really, nobody can work out what they are doing, what it is costing, there is no monitoring. That seems to me quite an indictment when you are talking about efficiencies, streamlining, tightening things up. Here we are. It is a growth industry since Police Scotland came into being. If I can answer that in two ways, the first one in relation to that final comment, I suppose that my experience is, and I have been to seven divisions over the last two or three weeks, and generally what you find is that things are locally relevant or people are involved from a delivery perspective. Their levels of awareness are very high. When you start asking questions about what they perceive to be national requirements, it is not so high. What I think is probably a fair reflection is that colleagues may very well have that view and it is not that it is wrong, it is just that they will not have a knowledge of the value that is being delivered from some of the capabilities that I think are being described there.  That said, I think that the criticism is fair. I mentioned to you earlier on that I tried to breed simplicity in as far as I could. One of that started right at the very beginning where I was responsible for some of the planning for the Police Scotland model, and one of the approaches that I took was to develop effectively silos. It was a group of functions to enable us to make headway and cut through the business. As we have moved forward, the silos have broken down, but I think that it is probably a reasonable criticism, because it is coming through from the staff survey and other bits of feedback as well, that there are some areas that are perhaps not as integrated to the force or the awareness of their capabilities are not as well known as it should be. I take that challenge and, as part of the work that we are doing and will do in response to the staff survey, I am seeking to break that down. We are actively in conversation—I believe that there is a session tonight—on the follow-up from the staff survey. We are engaging members of staff and this is the kind of territory that we are trying to get into. What will flow at the turn of the year will be an action plan and where it is possible to continue to break down the silos and to increase the understanding and the appreciation across the organisation, and then we will do exactly that. I see that HM Inspector of Constabulary says in its written submission that inspectors reserve, again, an increased use of police officers in corporate functions and other settings with no real business. It seems to me that there is no point having those 17,000 and what not police officers if they are sitting talking about stuff and doing strategies and what not and everything, but not policing. It seems to me that that is a point that is being made here. Certainly, if anybody is aware of people who are employed in police officer functions and have got nothing to do, I am more than happy for them to bring that to my attention. That is a quote from when your real business is the quote from the Inspector of Constabulary. I do not know what lies behind that. It is certainly not my understanding, but I am more than happy to act on any information that people want to give me. Margaret MacDonald has a further follow-up point from other members' questions. The VAT exemption does not apply to Scotland because there is not any local funding of taxation. That is why it differs from the rest of the UK. I think that the decision was taken that the savings would outweigh the loss of VAT. That has not materialised. Therefore, it is not now time to look at a different structure rather than the centralised funding, which means that we cannot access the VAT. Also, the problem is about local taxation. That Christmas present that you are talking about for the budget could be realised by looking at that. Is that something that we can look at? Yes, indeed. We would like to carefully consider all options, but in relation to VAT, all that we can do is to consider options and perhaps make suggestions through Government officials. It is not something that we can directly affect. On police numbers, I do not think that there is any doubt that the general public are very supportive of more police in the VAT. I think that DC Richardson suggested that you would rather have the money and choose how to spend it. However, business is not a big aspect of that money. For example, how it is spent on salaries and some exorbitant salaries that sometimes the public feel cannot be justified? Do you like to comment on that particularly? It is an important aspect of looking at the budget in front of us. Clearly, on the money and distribution of that money, yes, a great big element of that goes in staff, so it is an important component. On the salaries across the board, they are all determined through convention and process, so that is not a matter for me to comment on. I thank you very much for your evidence. That concludes the session, and I will suspend for five minutes for the next panel of witnesses. I want to do the staff to say that they apparently do not need a break. I welcome our second panel of witnesses to the meeting. We have Sarah O'Donnell, who is director of finance and contractual services, and Pat Waters, chair of the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service Board, and Alastair A, chief officer of Scottish Fire and Rescue Service. I know that you were sitting through the previous session as well. I thank you for your written submissions, and I will go straight to questions from members. You said in your written submission that you could manage a flat budget settlement, but that cash reduction would be extremely challenging. There hasn't been the equivalent of the £17234 in the fire service. There's not a set number of firefighters which you can't drop below. Has that been of assistance to the SFRS in terms of managing your budget that you've had additional flexibility? Do you have to press a button? We have system all go. In simple terms, that flexibility has been an assistance to us. The way that the eight legacy services crude the front line appliances varied. Every service had a different approach to it. We have put the safety of communities and the safety of firefighters at the forefront of our thinking and every change that we've actually made. We have agreed a resource-based coon model with the Fire Brigades Union, which requires us to have 3,709 firefighters. At this moment in time, we are 54 above that, although they're not all in the right place across Scotland and we're using overtime to smooth out that curve to get people into the right places. We've got a recruitment campaign that will be kicking off for the north of Scotland early in the new year and we're actually going to recruit 33 additional whole-time firefighters in January of this year. We get to that sustainable model, but if we hadn't had the flexibility, if we'd had a fixed number, we'd believe that it would be more difficult. If you're also looking at our submission, it points out that although 79 per cent of our budget goes on staff cuts, costs only 58 per cent of the savings that we've achieved have actually come from reductions in staff. We appreciate staff that won't make the difference and we appreciate that community safety and firefighter safety are priorities for us, but flexibility has been essential in our opinion. Do you agree with the Fabricated Union, however, that no further reduction in front-line staff is possible? Is that part of the challenge that you would face if you had a reducing budget? It is our front-line staff that ultimately deliver the improvement and safety outcomes for the people of Scotland. We would also say that there are real opportunities for the fire and rescue service to contribute to the health and social care reform agenda, to improve outcomes for the people of Scotland. We are all responding to the new risks that the country faces at this moment in time. I would urge caution in any changes to the fire and rescue service at this moment in time. We have to realise the future potential and understand what the risks are and what they are changing. We have to consolidate the real gains in efficiency and effectiveness that we have achieved through the reform process. Do you agree with the FBU that the savings are exhausted? You have done as much as you can in terms of the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service and you have saved as much as is possible. We have been set a target of £328 million through the reform process. We are on track to deliver that. If we were to go beyond the target that was set for us, it would mean that we would have to re-examine our delivery model. At this moment in time, my recommendation would be to consolidate it, to look at how we can add additional value in other ways and to understand what the change and risk is to the country and the contribution that the fire and rescue service would make to that. There must be pressures on your resources too with terrorism, as much as there is with the police. Are you the capabilities to deal with this in terms of your budget and your manpower and women power? Of course, our heart goes out to the people of France, particularly in Paris, following the very recent terrorist, co-ordinated terrorist attacks that we all witnessed. I think that you will see if you watch footage from that, that our colleagues in the Sapres Pompeii in Paris are absolutely in the front line of this. If you remember, there were 343 firefighters who were actually killed in the Twin Towers attack in 9-11. Firefighters are absolutely in the front line of any response to this. We have an ask of us in terms of our preparedness. We are prepared to meet that ask, however, similar to our colleagues in police, this is not a static risk. It is changing. The terrorists continually modify how they may reign terror upon cities. We have to prepare and change all the time to meet any potential threat to the country. Is there an opportunity for you to have additional resources, if required, from the Government, rather than just what you have here, if those additional demands are put upon your front line services? It would be difficult for me at this moment to quantify, but having observed and had an initial consideration of the way that terrorism is emerging, we can definitely see areas in which additional resources coming to the fire and rescue service would be usefully deployed. Can I ask about the retained service, Mr Hayley, and the challenges with that? We have gone into that in the past in social patterns, people's work patterns, lifestyles and the rest. That remains a challenge, and not one simply of budget, presumably, or not? It remains a challenge. I am happy to report back to the Justice Committee that we, as was stated, we have initiated two major pieces of work. One was to consolidate and harmonise the processes from the legacy services that has come to an end, and we have some efficiencies in there in terms of the period of time between people initially being attracted to the fire service, going through all the necessary selection processes and actually taking up their employment, things like that. We have harmonised, we have streamlined that and we have some really positive feedback in relation to that. However, the second part of the project that we are doing is to ask the question if we were to redesign a retained service for the 21st century, what would it look like, because it was designed in the 1950s, when lifestyles, as we have discussed before, were completely different. We have three significant pilots running, one in Aberdeenshire, one in Scottish Borders and one in East Lothian to learn lessons from that. Fundamentally, we think that it needs a complete redesign and it has to be looked at not as a separate part or an adjunct to the fire and rescue service, it is a core part of it and it has to be redesigned in conjunction with a redesign of the whole of the fire and rescue service to answer that question. We will be bringing forward recommendations to our board earlier in the new year that presents it with a series of options as to how we might be able to achieve that. If I can be parochial, because I know how the convener likes me being parochial. The example of the excellent training facilities that you have put in the islands, is that an example of spend to save, because there will be the added bonus of being able to recoup people who might otherwise have had to go on for a considerable period? Having listened to some of the barriers that exist to people either joining or remaining within the fire and rescue service, the fact that in some of the rural parts of the country they were having to travel to centralised points, taking three days out from their work, three days out from their families, it was a significant barrier. We are in the process of putting significant training facilities across Scotland so that firefighters can access those things locally. It is a spend to save, because there are significant costs involved in bringing in from the islands firefighters to the mainland in terms of travel, accommodation and subsistence. We have done a business case, so financially it stacks up, but also the indirect costs by losing committed staff, because they just cannot meet the commitments that all stacks up as well. Are there other examples of elsewhere in the country where that approach has been adopted, or will that come from your three pilots that you are looking at? In terms of the training, we have a significant need and infrastructure in the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service. There are 46 generic risks that firefighters may be expected to attend. What we have done is that we have mapped out all the training facilities across Scotland, and based on the risks within a locality, so what are firefighters likely to attend within our capital investment programme? What we intend to do is to make sure that they have adequate training facilities to meet the risks in that area within a reasonable travel time. We have put that at about one hour, so the training facilities that you witnessed were opened last week in Stonaway. We are investing in similar training facilities in the Shetlands, in Orkney and also in other parts of the north of Scotland, because those are more remote and brutal areas. I will not be parochial and ask about the Scottish borders that I am itching to do, so I will not do it. Roderick, please. The £7 million worth of recurring car savings that have yet to be found by 2019-20, am I right in considering that this is mostly from control room rationalisation in the source space crewing model? How is that £7 million put together? How are you approaching managing change in relation to the control rooms, bearing in mind the experience of the police control rooms? If I can open on the first part to that and then allow Sarah to come in, then I will deal with the control room questions separately. We have the ask in terms of the savings that are expected of us through the financial memorandum that supported the Police and Fire Reform Act £328 million. Taken as up to 2020, we created a critical savings pathway. That critical savings pathway identified four main areas. It was a reduction in staff and associated costs that go along with that, but it was also about a property and contract rationalisation. It was also about streamlining processes and looking at additional shared services. Over that timeline, taken as up to 2020 on that critical savings pathway, we have identified specific initiatives, specific projects and have quantified how much we expect to save from each of those projects along that critical savings pathway. That is our medium-term financial strategy for the organisation. If you want some of the specifics around those headline areas, I am sure that Sarah could identify them to you. In addition to the resource-based crewing model and the control room rationalisation, we also have savings accruing in relation to what we described as our property strategic intent. We went through a process of reviewing our corporate buildings and identifying where we could create an infrastructure that was fit for purpose for Scotland. There are a number of savings due to come through in relation to that. Further asset and contract rationalisation and savings accruing from the implementation of our HRPRO system, which is a single system across Scotland. All of that enables us to improve our processes and save money on multiple contracts. Clearly, we have a programme of rationalisation with our control rooms. We are coming down from eight control rooms to three large regional control rooms. As I have given evidence before, we have modelled this on Johnston control room, which covered 12 local authority areas and covered roughly half the population of Scotland and range from remote island communities through Scotland's largest conurbation all the way down now to the Scottish borders. We are modelling on a model that we know works and we know is safe. We have clear leadership on that. We have put in appropriate governance arrangements, including having an effective programme, an individual project management to ensure that we do that safely. We have engaged closely with staff in relation to that, specifically our control room staff. We have expertise in those areas. Today, we have merged the Dumfries control into the Johnston control. Only last week, we have the new control room in Toll Cross up and running. Our Edinburgh staff have moved into that and are in the process of migrating staff, firstly from Maristyn and secondly from Thornton into that. By this time next year, it would be an intention to do the third part, which would be to bring Inverness and Aberdeen into the Dundee control room. Clearly, we have read with a lot of interest the reports in relation to the police control rooms. I have had a verbal assurance from the assistant chief officer who is responsible for this project that he has reflected fully on the findings in there. This week, I will get a full written report from him. If there are any lessons to improve what has to be a safe and secure transition, we will absolutely assure the committee that we will learn them. So far, in terms of the reorganisations that are taking place today, have there been any teething problems that you would like to share with us? There have been no teething problems that have caused us any significant issues. The way that we have tried to do it is that we have had the new control rooms up and running, as we have with Edinburgh, whereas the other control rooms are still operating, but we are shadowing the operations that go in there to ensure that everything is fully functional, making sure that the staff are supported in terms of the training that they require to operate within the new control rooms before we move them in and go live. The final question is about a recruitment campaign in the north. Other evidence that we have seen has talked about recruitment freezes. Can you clarify when there has been a freeze and how recent the recruitment campaign has been? I am not sure that we have ever spoken about a freeze. We have been reducing the number of whole-time firefighters. We have been actively and continually recruiting into our retained stations across the country. Initially, in terms of the whole-time, we offered 40 whole-time firefighters posts to support staff, because we wanted to give them assurance office when we said that there would be opportunities to retrain within the service, as well as offering volunteer servants in early retirement, plus people moving into the same role but within a different location within the service. We wanted to give reassurances that our promises of retraining were realistic and tangible. The first thing that we did was offer up 40 whole-time firefighters posts and support staff moved into those. We ended up with a public national recruitment campaign. We took on just under 40 people—I think that we intended 40—but at the end, some people filled medicals and so on. We had 39 people on a holding list. When we went back to them, we had 33 of those who were going to come back and start with us in January. We have some specific issues in the north of Scotland, predominantly in the north-east of Scotland, if I am being honest, where we have had to compete as the whole of the republic sector has with the challenges of the oil industry. The fire brigade union has suggested that there is a worrying trend of increasing response times. Do you have a particular concern about the services in this area? Have I read the fire brigade union submission, to be fair, to have shared those concerns with me previously? This is something that has been looked at across the UK. There is a slight increase in the response times, but a lot of the evidence for that would show that it is because of changing traffic patterns across the UK. That has really happened at a UK level. Within Scotland, we have no evidence of specific increases in response times. The time between a fire is starting and the time when the discovery has started. One of the biggest things that we have focused on is prevention activities. We have delivered a close to a quarter of a million home fire safety visits since the inception of the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service, and we have installed in many of those premises smoke detectors. On that response time, we have to look at the whole response window. It is not just to travel time from alert to arriving at the instant. One of the most significant parts is the time from ignition to alert. We believe that, if we look at that whole window, the programme of prevention that we have put in and early detection is making the people of Scotland significantly safer. We have evidenced that by the first two years of the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service, there was a two lowest years ever for fire deaths in Scotland, and we are not complacent in any way in relation to that. However, when we talk about response times, we have to look at that whole window. Is there a target for response times? Are we talking about reducing that? Or is that unfounded? We do not set a target for response times within the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service. Previously, the whole of the UK fire service was predicated on response times. A risk, B risk, C risk, D risk and R risk, which was a centre for big cities, was to have two fire appliances within five minutes and a third within eight. Then slowly it went down to remote rural where there was no defined time. That was changed about 10 years ago, 2005, when we introduced integrated risk management planning, where we had to first and foremost identify what the risks were, quantify that and then take measures to reduce that risk and then have sufficient emergency response to be able to deal with the remaining risk if and when it manifests itself as an actual incident. The approach changed significantly with a much greater emphasis on the prevention side of that, and having that greater focus on the prevention side, looking at the whole system, is that a isolating individual part such as response times has contributed significantly to the reduction in the number of incidents that occur, not just here in Scotland but across the UK. Gil, please follow by Christian. It's a follow-up to John Finnie's question in relation to training. I wonder if you could tell us about training for your rescue service. My experience in the motor trade and accident damage and professionalism and the on-going training that's needed for that is a highly, highly skilled people that are involved in that but they need continual training. I wonder if you're able to provide that or if the budget constraints that you're working under has had any impact on that. We, as I said earlier, there's 46 generic risk types that we prepare firefighters to respond to, a significant one within that is responding to road traffic collisions. We have a significant investment in the equipment, the tools that firefighters require to actually rescue people from collisions between vehicles, but the tools are no use without skilled operators. We have a continual programme of maintaining the skills that firefighters have. We also have road traffic collision instructors courses at our central training establishments so that those people are continually getting the latest input and they can cascade that out throughout the organisation. In terms of budget constraints, we do not wish to compromise at all in terms of training. Firefighters are working in an inherently dangerous environment, not just at road traffic collisions and we have consciously protected the budgets around training and the training time within the organisation. Any cut in our budget, those are the types of areas where we would try to protect and it would be an extremely difficult decision for us to make to reduce the amount of training that firefighters actually receive. In most industries, training would be seen as a soft option, something that in times of financial constraint they would look to issue cuts in training. Because the Fire and Rescue Service has been so successful in its prevention mode, not just since in the past three years but in the past 10 years, it has been extremely successful in that protection, our crews need more training and no less as a result of that. If our crews are unsafe when they get to an incident, our constituents are unsafe when they arrive. That is not something to be consoled so it is not a soft option in the Fire and Rescue Service but in an extremely hard area that we want to maintain and improve. I appreciate the comments. While part of the waters is on the floor at the present time, I think that it would be madness for a committee like this where we are talking about the budget, not to bring up VAT and the impact that it has on it. If we do not mention it, how are we going to send a message that something has got to give here in relation to the vaccine? I wonder if you could make any comment on that, Mr Waters? The whole situation in VAT, as you heard previously in the police service, we are the only fire service in the country that has to pay value-added tax to provide emergency services to communities in Scotland. As a matter of fact, if you think about it, for every pound one of your constituents pays, we provide them with 80 pence of service. If that was happening in Tesco's or Morrison's or in Marks and Spencer's, there would be an outcry about it. It is not right, it is not fair and we should do something about it. We should be fried in a full pound of service to our communities, not a 20 per cent reduction in that. I understand that the Scottish Police Authority received some funding from the police reform allocation, nor to assist with the VAT bill. Has the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service had the same sort of treatment? Have you had any explanation? Have you had to find that all yourselves with no reform allocation? I just wanted to know where we were on the aging of the service personnel. Have we managed to reduce the number of young firefighters, so we still have a problem on that particular thing? The second thing would be on recruitment. You say that you have pilots, you have pilots in the office, for example, and I hope that the downturn on the oil and gas will maybe help you there. What about gender balance? Are we progressing in the right direction on this as well? In relation to the aging profile of the Fire and Rescue Service, I think that the Fire and Rescue Union makes that comment in relation to changes to the pension schemes. In fact, firefighters will have to work longer and they question whether firefighters are able to maintain the fitness levels to do what is a physically demanding job as to progress to their 50s, perhaps to their 60s. That is where they express the concerns around an aging workforce. It is not really specifically got anything to do with the recruitment. When people are as old as me joined the Fire Service, you had to be under 30 to join the service, but clearly there is age discrimination issues in relation to that and those regulations were removed. It is now for people from 18 to any age where they can demonstrate the competence that is required to be a firefighter to join and other processes encourage people from the full spectrum of ages, but processes are also positive action initiatives to encourage people to apply from underrepresented groups. Because we are not recruiting in any great numbers, we are not seeing any significant change in the profile. Only 4 per cent of our operational workforce are women at this moment in time. When you are recruiting low numbers, you are not going to see in the short term any significant change in that profile, but that is not because the Fire and Rescue Service is not committed to giving everybody a fair and open opportunity to join the Fire and Rescue Service. We are using all the best practice recruitment techniques so that as new people come in that profile we hope will change, but we would also suggest changing the offer of the Fire and Rescue Service. There are great opportunities for us to make a bigger contribution to the health and social care agenda. Professor Sir Lewis Ritchie published a report yesterday that was commissioned by the Cabinet Secretary for Health, Well-being and Sport looking at primary care outdoors cover and, within that, he comments that one of his recommendations is for a more significant contribution, both in terms of emergency response but particularly in terms of prevention aspect. There is a role for the Fire and Rescue Service. Changing that type of offer of what the Fire and Rescue Service is all about will clearly appeal to a greater diversity of people. We believe that that is another invest to save. If you look at the evidence from Manchester, every pound that the Fire and Rescue Service is spending in this particular area, it is getting at least four pounds back in terms of public value taking money out of the system. It is a complex issue of recruitment and ageing workforces, but it cuts across a lot of the areas that we are looking at now in terms of the potential for the future of what the Fire and Rescue Service does to improve the lives of people of Scotland. Would you consider some share budget with the health and care and with the Police Scotland as well in the future? We are already actively in discussions. We believe fundamentally that we work for the public. We work for the public through the Fire and Rescue Service but through a wider public service. We have commitments through community planning and other areas where we sit down and look at how the collective resource that we use on behalf of the public can be spent to best effect. We are always open to that type of discussion and we are actively involved in it at this moment in time. Do you think that that would help as well as recruitment? You seem to have a problem with a lot of pressure and you spend a lot of money on your budget on recruitment and trying to recruit the people and the right people. Having a different role for firefighters will help that as well at the same time. If you have a diversity of career opportunities within any organisation, you are going to appeal to a wider group of people. If people within a service get opportunities to grow within their roles and move into other areas, that clearly helps with the retention of staff. I am still a bit worried about this pressure on recruitment. If tomorrow you get all the VAT that you are due, you will be able to recruit 355 fighters as we had last year. You will not be able to recruit 355 fighters because it is a pressure on recruitment that is so difficult that you would struggle to recruit 100. We could easily recruit 350 firefighters if we had that VAT money, because that is whole-time firefighters. We do not struggle in any way, shape or form, to attract whole-time firefighters. The last time I had figures for it, we had 54 applicants for every single vacancy that we have within the whole time. I would suggest that that number will have increased. Where we have difficulties is within the retained service in remote rural areas. It is good to hear about 355 fighters as extra. You can do manage it if it needs to be. I have two different areas that I want to question. I will go back to the vacancies in the north-east. It is reported locally that the staffing is so short that it is the equivalent of one appliance down. Can I ask you to comment on that and perhaps for the board to tell me when they were first alerted to the scale of the staff shortages in the north-east? We have more firefighters in Scotland in the need for the model, that 3,709, that we are moving towards. We are absolutely supportive of the no-compulsory redundancies. We would not have achieved the success that we have in terms of the reform without the considerable support of the representative bodies, but particularly of individual staff members within the organisation. That means that, within a budget, you have to pay all the staff that you have. If you have shorties in given geographic areas, it is difficult to find a resource to pay for that. We have a balancing act going on there. The number of people who have exited the service in the north-east has been greater than other parts of the country, because the economy has been so buoyant. You would hear the same from Helf, local government and everybody, who seeks to employ staff in that area. What we have been doing is making use of two things. First, when we did the recruitment campaign for the national service, we specifically highlighted that the predominance of vacancies would be in the north of Scotland. Even though people may live in Glasgow, Edinburgh, it was clear that that is where we would be recruiting them. We are joining on that basis, and many people relocated up there to join the Fire and Rescue Service. What we have also done is that we have made a judicious use of overtime to make sure that we can keep as many appliances as possible available. We have been doing those two things, but we are at the point where we consider that there would not be any economic use of overtime in the north-east of Scotland, and we are going to do a very specific targeted recruitment campaign for that particular part of the country. That means that you have been relying heavily on overtime in the interim, and perhaps you have put a lot of pressure on staff? I would describe it as having a structural deficit in the organisation. We have enough people, but they are not necessarily in the right place. Over the long-term viewing it for four to five years, we will get that structure right. We are three years into this. The use of overtime to smooth out that demand curve is a judicious use of resources within the service. It is voluntary overtime. We have operated in the past. Firebuggies Union maintained a 25-year overtime ban, so we have operated without overtime and without overtime in the past. It is voluntary, and we do not seek to put too much pressure on staff. Many staff members welcome the opportunity, particularly with the high house prices and other cost pressures in the north-east. However, I accept that there is a balance, and that is why, at this point in time, we have made the conscious decision that we need to do some very specific targeted recruiting for the north-east of Scotland. Alison, the board has been acutely conscious of the situation in the north-east of Scotland and the problems that we face in the north-east of Scotland. As a matter of fact, we have advertised on six occasions now for mechanics to cover our repair-based in Aberdeen without success on any of those occasions. The board has been acutely aware of it. I might just add to the point that the chief officer was making. Part of the problem that we have had is that we had staff who were given protection about where they worked at the time of transfer, so we could not transfer people outwith their original area where they worked. We have recently come to an agreement with the FP trade union that, within a reasonable area, we can transfer people, which will ease the problem elsewhere, and we can maybe see an awful effect going up the country. That was a major give from the trade unions, and we appreciate their co-operation very much. That update is helpful, because I understand that the situation has become acute and there are concerns in the north-east, so I am grateful for the detail that you have given this afternoon. Assurances that we had during the reform legislation, when the Government said that it would be for the Fire and Rescue Service to determine where its headquarters were, and we will know that, last week, there was an announcement that the headquarters were not going to be where their first choice was. Can you tell us some more about the process, and when the Government first asked you to think again about that, and whether there have been any abortive costs of changing tack in the middle here? Can I let me come in first and then come in at the chief officer? Certainly, when we looked at where the headquarters was going to be, we were very clear about what we were looking for. We were looking for somewhere within a triangle that was taken in the centre of Scotland. We were looking at Perth, Stirling and Falkirk in the areas surrounding that. It was very clear that that was ideal for us. When we looked at the facilities that were already there, we did not, as a service of anything suitable, move into without major impact on one spend into revamp an older building or an existing fire station. When we looked at other Government properties within there, there was nothing there, and we even looked at sharing and Stirling with the police, and that was no option for us either. We opted for a new build and we put forward a project that was there. I think that came at the exact same time as the Government in Westminster on a continuation of the tightening of expenditure. Given that we had been spending something like £11 million on a new build property, the Government asked us to look again. It relaxed one of the areas that it said that we should not use any existing premises, existing headquarters premises, and it relaxed that. We could understand why that was a disaster at the first point. When we did the NICS exercise, we looked at the facility that we have at Canvaslang, and it is a first-class facility that we have at Canvaslang. If it was an option that we could move into an existing building without any major alteration to it whatsoever, the matter of fact that we had very little money spent for us to establish that headquarters in the first place, and it seemed a really good option. It also gave us, freed up some of our capital money that we could use for other necessary projects that we wanted to see develop as a priority on going. I am now behind the chief officer if there is anything else that he wants to add. I think that Pat is giving a very comprehensive answer there. It was maybe just to remind everybody that, within the act, it always said that final approval had to be given by the minister in relation to that. Our colleagues within the Scottish Government and the Sponsored Department worked with us to set the initial criteria to meet ministerial aspirations. As Pat has just described, during the process, the operating environment in which we all exist does move on. Some decisions and thinking that was established three years ago in the light of where we are today, sometimes you have to say that a more sensible use of public money would be to not spend it in that way but to use it in another way, and we fully accept that decision. I think that the line behind it was the real desire to make sure that, as a national service, we did not operate in a centralized fashion. We used the benefits of a major organisation to offer people not just services but also potential employment opportunities across the whole of Scotland. When we look at our model that we are setting up, we absolutely want to operate in a decentralized way in which people at the lowest possible level feel empowered to make the right decisions to improve outcomes. If you break that down into hard numbers, we have 356 fast stations across Scotland. When we have created our enabling infrastructure in terms of the control rooms, workshops and service delivery headquarters, we have tried to create a footprint as best as we possibly can across the whole of the country. Only 2 per cent of our staff will work in the headquarters. Around 73 per cent of our staff work in the fast stations, which leaves about 25 per cent of our staff working in all those other locations. Yes, there has been a change. I think that it was understandable, but in terms of the desire to create a decentralized organisation, when you break down the work locations that give people opportunity, perhaps in the future to gain employment with us, we are very much sticking to that principle. My question is about abortive costs. In developing the new build proposal, the £11 million project, what has been spent on working up that proposal? We do not have the exact figures to hand today, but we can certainly supply that to you. I would say that the work that was done in relation to looking at possible options for headquarters, including option appraisal, techniques and so on, has gained a lot from the work that we can take into the rest of our organisation and applying techniques that have been useful throughout the headquarters process. There is also information that we have gained in the process around some of our estate in the areas that we looked at that we will be able to make further use of, so it has not all been wasted. In terms of the new build, have you got as far as commissioning architects, drawings and planning applications? We have commissioned the first stage of design, which would be appropriate in order to get a costing for it, but we have not gone further than that. Okay, if we could have the cost, I would appreciate that. Thank you. Well, that concludes the questions. I thank you very much for your attendance, and I will suspend for two or three minutes to allow me to raise for meeting's sake. Right, thank you very much. I move on to our last session, and I call Catherine Call—I think that I was in court—that you would be happy with that. I welcome Catherine Dyer—I didn't say I called you to the witness box. I welcome Catherine Dyer, Crown Agent, Chief Executive, Crown Office and Procurator of the Fiscal Service. I thank you again for your written submission, and again I will go straight to questions, please. Who wants to come in for us, Margaret? Good morning. It's still morning this time. I wonder if I could refer to the late submission that we had from the FDA, which raises some concerning issues about performance indicators in the High Court, where 40 per cent of the cases, approximately 240 cases, are being indicted less than four weeks, and the vast majority of those in less than four weeks, the day before or on the day. The Sheriff's Court, only 71 per cent, are meeting the target of four weeks before indictment taking place. Our point is, together with the national initial case prosecuting unit and the pressure it's under, that there are huge staff shortages and that the Fiscal Service is clearly under quite a bit of pressure over times available, but there's life work balances. Well, certainly life work balances is something that we're very aware of for our staff. I think that, on the basis of both these things, the indicators that she's talking about are internal ones that we use. I think that the committee will have seen the report from the Inspectorate of Prosecution in Scotland on the very tight time bars that we have in custody cases and, in what we call solemn cases, ones that have to appear before a sheriff in jury or High Court. That report indicated that we should move to a performance indicator of inditing within seven days of the target. We've met 100 per cent of the cases being indicted. It's always a very pressurised area of work. As I say, it's the tightest timescales in the western world for inditing custody. A lot of the High Court cases now, as you'll know from the rest of the papers, are dealing with sexual cases where people are not being granted bail or, unfortunately, homicides as well. The staff do have to work to very tight timescales. I don't accept that the figures that she's quoting mean that we're not dealing with our work properly. We deal with it internally to make sure that we make the statutory targets. That's been happening in 100 per cent of cases. With regard to the initial case processing, that's where summary case reports come in from the police and the decision is made whether there should be prosecution action or not. That is a new unit that we were setting up, centralising that to try and take the pressure off staff in the local offices who sometimes were finding that they had to go between making a decision on cases, what we call case marking, but if they were going to court, that obviously put pressure on them. What we did this year was centralise that. It's now in two locations, and we've had an interim sort of transition into that. So yes, we have used overtime. We had to take one of our essential people out of that for another serious matter where he was the best fit. It's much like speaking, listening to what my colleague Alastair was saying in terms of fire and rescue, I think it's judicious use of overtime. We've recruited additional permanent staff this year. That's the first time that we've been able to do that for quite a significant time. So I absolutely accept that it's not everything rosie in the garden. These are very difficult times within which to manage all of this, but I have to say that the staff in the fiscal service are dealing very well with it. Can I just check? This was a late submission that we had. You have seen this. I got it at 12.24 last night. I wasn't awake at that point, so I got it first thing this morning. If you have a copy with you, it's just fine. Thank you so much. I got it this morning as well. We just got it this morning as well. I think that the point to be made is that I appreciate some additional staff coming in, but I don't think that it seems to me that it isn't sustainable at this level. I wonder if, for example, trainees are trained up in the fiscal service every year but not retained. No, that's not correct. A lot of the people that we have, what we've been trying to do within the constraints to be ready for whatever's coming in each year as we try and work out our budget, because that's the difficulty for most of us in the public sector is trying to anticipate that we don't know what's going to happen until very late on in the next financial year. It doesn't allow you to plan very much, so what we've been doing is having temporary staff in terms of legal staff until we were sure that we were going to be able to afford going forward to make them permanent. Now, a lot of these people, we have to do open and fair recruitment for that. People would expect that. A vast number of them are people that were trainees with us, and throughout this period, despite the financial constraints, we have not faltered in terms of taking on trainees, because we think that it's very important for the whole of the legal profession in Scotland that, as a big public sector employer, we continue to have trainee solicitors, and not just that, but also modern apprentices. We've had over the past couple of years over 60, and we were able to take on most of them into permanent positions again this year. We've got another 32, I think, of the modern apprentices starting this year. It's not as it was in the heady when public spending meant that you could always anticipate that the next year was going to be more, so you could just immediately do your recruitment round that fitted in with your trainees finishing and, more or less, unless they'd flunked completely at the interview, they were probably going to get a permanent post. That's long gone, but what we have done is made sure that people who are well versed in what we require for prosecution get the opportunity to apply for fair and open competition fixed-term contracts, and then, when we're able to say that we know that we've got money to make them permanent, that's what we do. While it's welcome that the fixed-term contracts are becoming fewer and these are now permanent staff, which helps to take away from the necessity for overtime, I still don't really accept that if you train someone up, it seems to me ludicrous that you then let them go, prosecutors don't grow in trees, they have a very specialist knowledge, and therefore it seems to me a little bit of a waste of money not to keep them on, given that there are still, even with the fixed-term contracts and with the other additional staff there, still being let go and then maybe coming in later at a later point. You want to speak to the legal profession as a whole because everybody that trains up trainees, they can't guarantee that they're going to give them a permanent job at the end of it. I think that Crown Office in the Fiscal Service is actually recognised as a very good trainer in Scotland. We've got our prosecution college, they get an excellent training, they're well-fitted for court work anywhere, but obviously particularly prosecution and we're very keen to have them if we can afford to have them. In the past few years I think our record of being able to retain trainees by giving them fixed-term contracts and then moving quite a number of them on to permanent contract has really been very good for the profession and for Crown Office in the Fiscal Service. That's not at all to say that this has not been a difficult time to manage through for people and for staff. If I could just get this in perspective finally then convener, last year when you came then I quote I would not expect you to think I should ask for things when I do not have work to carry out with them. In other words I got the impression that yeah there were some problems but we're managing quite well. I think I detect a slight movement this year, there is at least an acknowledgement, there is some pressure under resources and staffing. To what extent is that met by the increase and then offsetting that with the inflationary cost which I estimated came up to about £3 million deficit shortfall? No, I mean obviously I think we can all accept that all of us that have been coming to these committees over the years from 2010 onwards have been coming with decreasing pots of money as we go through so I think the position is that it gets tougher all the time as the reality of it in terms of do we have enough money, do we ask for money. I think I've made it clear and I'm sort of just maybe take this opportunity to say it. I see the letter inviting me said that it was an informed session with the cabinet secretary for justice. Crown Office in the Fiscal Service 6 completely independently from that is the Lord Advocate who is the minister for Crown Office and the Fiscal Service and who negotiates directly with the cabinet secretary for finance because the prosecution service has to be independent. Now as a result of that over the last few years we have been able to go and ask in-year when we've had extraordinary cases that we really didn't think we would be able to absorb and we've also had the joint working and additional funding which has been confirmed for this year again and is supposed to be for the next few years to allow a work programme to make sure that the court delays are brought in in summary courts and so it is a case of that we do ask for money when we have the work to do it. Certainly as I said I think a previous time there's no chief executive on earth is going to come and say that we want more money because they could do more things with it so that's the position we're in we're trying very hard to make sure that we keep up and improve the service delivery against very tightening budgets and that's just the reality of it. We also got evidence from Michelle McLeod, HM chief inspector and inspector of prosecution and there's some startling figures on there if I could maybe just refer to one of them. 80% of cases of sexual crime, 80% an increase of 80% of cases of sexual crime being reported between 2010 and 2013 and also in your own evidence you talk about the number of domestic abuse charges marked for court and an increase of more than 50%. That's against an overall budget cut of 14% between 2010 and 2014. On one level it's very good news and it's confidence in the police and the prosecuting services that these historic cases of childhood abuse are coming forward. Has anything had to drop off your agenda to deal with that? No, I mean what we've done with it I think again members will be aware that there was a lot of legislation passed in the sort of the early parts of the 2000s where there was summary justice reform and where that enabled the police and the procurator fiscal to deal with matters without having to bring them to court so there's been a lot of movement of appropriate cases in that direction. Crime overall has been falling so it's a mixture of things so no we haven't had to have anything drop off what we have done has changed around what our staff are doing and I think the reality of it is that nowadays from when I joined in the early 1980s to now it's a very different job people are having to deal with the more serious end of case work that's what we're dealing with and that's what the courts are dealing with and so it's a movement of resource by sort of dealing appropriately by fixed fiscal fines or other direct measures or by the police dealing with a measure that they can deal with. The number of cases reported to us is going down and what we're left with are these ones that as we all agree are the ones that need to be dealt with. I was going to ask about diversion for prosecution but are you able to, I know this is a very challenging area, but are you able to predict ahead then if there has been this growth in the last three or four years presumably built on public confidence around the police and the prosecution? Is there an anticipation that that will continue? I think the position that we're in that we talked, we work very closely although I'm sort of indicating obviously that we need the independence of the prosecution service that's got to be a complete requirement in any sort of proper constitutional position, we work very closely with the police and the courts and all the other justice agencies when we sit on the justice board and that's very much what we try and do is look forward and I think a few years ago we sort of realised that there was going to be the increase, we worked with the court and that's why we've got the additional work programme with the courts to try and make sure that that increase of cases going into court didn't cause too many delays for people in getting their case to trial, whether that's the accused or the victim or witness, but at the end of the day we think it's probably a plateau, this is the new norm is what we're talking about. Whether it will go up again so much depends on what it is that causes public confidence. We're obviously going to have the inquiry into previous sexual abuse in institutions and whether that will bring forward more people who we are currently now then able to sort of deal with the case as yet to be seen, so as far as we can say I think our predictions were that we were going to come into a plateau of a new norm, we're sort of there and we'll just have to wait and see if there's anything else that crops up that makes it that people come forward in greater numbers to report any particular type of crime. Is there a danger then with with alternative prosecution and we're hopefully moving to situation where there's a presumption against short sentences and there'll be implications connected with that, that the police discontinue your reporting matters to you that they should be reporting to you? I don't think so, again we work very closely with them, we actually share the statistics that they have and can have a look at things, we can go in and ask about individual cases. I think there's a very good understanding, the Lord Advocate in Scotland is in a particular position which doesn't apply down south where it's the crime prosecution service or whatever in that he instructs the police about what they have to do with certain types, that's enshrined in statute as well as what was in the common law and so there's sort of a quality check always going on between ourselves and moving quality check for our own staff when they're doing direct measures that they're appropriately sample, we have filters where we look and say you know that charge type doesn't look right for that kind of direct measure and go in and look at the case and the police do the same thing. Help me here, what can the police do short of reporting to you? Are we talking about a system of formal warning? They can do formal warnings and they can give fixed penalty notices that are police issue ones for certain types of crime, again if the committee is interested in that, quite happy to provide the information of the type of crime, it's all aimed at the stuff where you think it could be dealt with out with a court. We want courts to be there where it's a sentence that can be imposed by a court for that particular offender, it's got to be now that really we're saying we're hopefully using courts for what they're supposed to be used for and not gumming them up with things that otherwise would be seen as administrative or minor where a warning would do. And we are obviously discussing the budget and prediction that if there was a move this way the police might come back and say we need more resources to do this. Is there a danger of that approach that you're therefore aren't getting people with formal convictions and that might have implications if they're applying later down the line? It would never be for something that was significant enough, it stays on people's records if it's a warning or a direct measure for two years and therefore if the person offends again in two years the police know that, we know that, if it needs to go to court we can show the court that that's the history of offending. This is something that I think we're acutely aware of from when this legislation came in to extend the powers of fiscal fines really to pay up to £300 in a fiscal fine or to £5,000 compensation but if it's serious enough it really still has to go to court. And finally please, where does the money from a fiscal fine go? I think it's into the consolidated fund, I'm not sure, it's certainly not to the fiscal service and I know talking about the impact, there are changes and that's why we need to discuss around the justice board table because I know that there has been an impact on Scottish courts revenue from the fact that when they absorbed the district courts into the JP courts and became responsible for that they then didn't get some of the money that the district courts had went to councils so you do have to be careful if you adjust one but you're not doing something bad to the other. But the fiscal service relies entirely on the grant of parliamentary budget, that's it, we have no other revenue source, we're not like, the courts have got fees that they can charge, they've got areas where obviously they can ask people to fill out forms and you have to pay a fee, we don't have that and the police obviously can't gain money from different sources and for events, funding etc, the fiscal service relies entirely on what the grant of budget by parliament is. Many thanks. I think it would also, would it not look unseamly if fiscal fines went straight back to the fiscal service as you had a little revenue source? We talk about you don't want to be sort of incentivising, criminalising people of whatever which it might be, characterised as. No, no, I told you to make it plain that that would not be a good idea. Elaine. Thank you, convener. Both your submission and the submission, the right submission from PFS, describe a number of additional pressures, including the prioritisation of domestic abuse and stalking cases, housebreaking cases, abuse in institutions and the requirements of the victims and witnesses act. Given that these pressures are increasing and there's not much expectation that your budget will also be increasing, what efficiency savings have you been considering? We've been doing a lot of work again. I think we've anticipated from 2008 on that this was likely to be the position that would be an ever-tightening amount of public sector money. We've done a lot in COPFS. I think that we're one of the, I'd have to say, world-leading in terms of the digital strategy that we've got in terms of the fact that the system in Scotland allows for electronic transfer from the police to ourselves, that we can then electronic transfer the work around COPFS. So listening again to what Mr Hay was saying in terms of having needs to have the right people in the right place, we've solved some of that to some extent by being able to move work electronically, which is why when we've got the initial case processing setup that we're talking about that's a new one just now, we're saying that we can move work that we traditionally have had to be done in that individual office to a centralised place where people are doing nothing but that and are getting very quick and efficient at doing it. So that's the kind of efficiency that we've been looking for. A lot of savings, obviously, we've moved out of some buildings. We have to have a presence every single place that there's a court, so that's where the fiscal offices are. We've done a lot in terms of working with, we have a shared common service with the Scottish Court service in terms of our facilities management, which has been very substantial and I think it's about £250,000 a year that we've saved on that while improving buildings. We look for things, for instance, we've got a building in Glasgow that at the moment is getting solar panels, et cetera, and the windows renewed in terms of that we've got a business case for that, which shows that it'll be a substantial saving in terms of heat going out of the building. Anything and everything is really what we're looking at. You do also say in your written submission that your room for manoeuvre is becoming much more limited. I wondered if you could expand on that a bit. As I was saying to Miss Mitchell, there's no way on earth that you can say as it gets tighter and you've got to be able to say there'll become a point where really you've not got much room for manoeuvre. We've had an awful lot of legislation, all of which is very welcome in terms of taking things forward for victims and witnesses. We obviously have to constantly be looking then at where we're moving resource about and what we need. We've got a workforce planning group that's looking, trying to anticipate the questions as to what it's going to look like within five, ten years to make sure that we've got the right people because prosecutors don't grow in trees. We've got a lot of other things where we think we've done what people would expect in terms of cold case and double jeopardy where it's cases if it's a homicide, it doesn't matter how old it is, if we get sufficient evidence, we're looking for evidence for that with the police to get closure for families. It's tight, it's a very crowded landscape with a lot of things. I don't think anybody would want us to give up. We have no plans to give up anything at the moment, but we're working very hard to make sure that that's what the reality is. No, I'm not trying to suggest that you should give up doing anything, but what happens when you run out of room to manoeuvre, what happens then? Well, that's going to then be a situation where we would be saying we can't go ahead doing this. We need to discuss if there's something further that we can get, which we've done, of course, in terms of, as I say, there's a number of big sensitive cases, and cases like the Lockerby case keep taking resources as a movable feast, you never really necessarily know from one year to the next what the developments are going to be. That's the kind of situation where we would come back and say that we need more money for this, and that's been given in years past.  The Lord Advocate goes to the Cabinet Secretary for Finance. Justine, we've put forward on some of the legislation that you've mentioned, victims and witnesses put additional pressures on it, and even the current bill that we're doing on domestic abuse, abuse act and sex offenders and so on on the internet, that's going to add again surely to, you know, aren't the Governments financial predictions realistic from your experience about the workload that then comes to yourselves? We have the opportunity to put in financial memoranda where we're trying to estimate what it is. In some years I think there's expectation has been that you would absorb that, and in some years we have absorbed it. In other years we've been able to say that we can't actually absorb this. We're not going to be able to take this on without having additional funding. I think the trick with it all is to look and see. It's quite right that the public would expect that you spend every pound as well as you can, and that was interesting listening to the last presentation in terms of that. What we try and do is say that we have to prioritise things, we have to move around, we have to look at systems of being more efficient, which is why our initial case processing is a good example of that, of saying that we've got fewer people working on it, but they're actually doing nothing else. They're very targeted, they're quicker, they've got special screens that would cost us a fortune if we were doing that, and it wouldn't be necessary throughout the country, but we can do it in these two specific places. We're looking very much—we've go