Agenda item number one is a decision as to whether we take business in private. Members agree that we take item six, consideration of our work programme in private. Agenda number two is supporting legislation and a frequent visitor to the committee. I welcome Annabelle Ewing, Minister for Community Safety and Legal Affairs, to speak on to an affirmative SSI, the home detention curfew licence, amendment Scotland order 2016 draft, and accompanying the minister are Quinton Fisher and Susan Bullock, both from Community Justice Division and Craig McGuffey, director of legal services, all welcome again. I remind ministers that officials are permitted to give evidence under this item but not to participate in the formal debate on instruments under item three in the agenda. Minister, do you want to make an opening statement? I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak briefly to this SSI this morning. The home detention curfew licence amendment Scotland order 2016 amends section 3Aa subsection 5 of the Prisoners and Criminal Proceedings Scotland Act 1993. It does this by repealing paragraphs F and G of that section, which in turn refer to section 16 and 17 of that 1993 act. Section 3Aa subsection 5 provides a list of circumstances where the Scottish ministers power to release a prisoner from prison under section 3Aa subsection 1, which is known as home detention curfew or HDC, so that provides a list where the possible discretion of Scottish ministers does not apply. HDC is a form of release from prison for up to six months prior to the halfway stage of the prisoner sentence. During this period, the prisoner is tagged and subject to a curfew condition that is remotely monitored. Paragraph F, at which we seek by the SSI to remove, permanently prevents HDC being granted to a prisoner where the prisoner has previously been released in licence but has then been recalled to prison for either non-compliance with their licence conditions or they are having received a further sentence of imprisonment before the expiry of their sentence. Paragraph G permanently prevents HDC being granted to a prisoner where the prisoner has previously been released from prison during the term of their sentence but has then been returned to custody during that time for committing a further offence. The repeal of those paragraphs will mean that those prisoners may be able to obtain HDC. Their release, however, will still be at the discretion of Scottish ministers, exercised in fact via the Scottish Prison Service. HDC is not guaranteed. In deciding whether to grant HDC, the Scottish ministers via the Scottish Prison Service are obliged to carry out a stringent risk assessment and to take account of the need to protect the public. The repeal of those paragraphs implements one of the recommendations made in October of this year by the electronic monitoring in Scotland working group. That consisted of experts from the prison service and the police, as well as independent researchers, social work practitioners and a representative of Scottish Women's Aid. In making that recommendation, the working group pointed to the fact that permanently excluding low-risk prisoners from applying for HDC does not recognise an individual's progress in terms of rehabilitation and improvements in compliance and motivation to desist from offending. Indeed, the working group considered that the fact that someone was recalled at 18 years of age for breaching their HDC licence should not preclude them from applying for it at a later stage of their lives. Finally, it should be noted that a number of exclusions from HDC will indeed remain.  I am happy to take questions. Does she expect that this is granted to use the powers extensively or sparingly? Well, the position with regard to any decisions that are made in terms of the Scottish Government Minister, as I said, via the Scottish Prison Service—for example, if there was a long-term prisoner involved, that would only apply in the first instance if the parole board made a recommendation for release at the halfway stage. Those decisions are decisions that are made by the practitioners on the ground, and it would be a matter to look at each individual case as to what happened in those circumstances. You are asking the committee to recommend to this Parliament to give the Scottish Government ministers more powers, and I am just wondering whether you anticipate using them a lot, a little or not much. As I was saying to the member that the exercise of the powers is, whilst in statute discretion of Scottish ministers in practice that is the Scottish Prison Service, but at the moment, in terms of the figures that we have, we would appear that there would only be 300 prisoners who could possibly fall within those categories that I have mentioned. Can I ask the statistics that back up the recommendation in the report that came to that conclusion? Where are those statistics? It says on page 50 of the report that the group therefore recommended that section 16 and 17 statuary exclusions are removed and will include statistics as evidence in the final report, but that comment is from the Scottish Government's own final report. I am unsure of where those statistics ended up. Are you referring to the electronic monitoring Scotland working group final report? Yes. The final report of which was drawn up by those who sat on the working group, which, as I said, comprised a number of organisations, including the Police, Prison Service, Social Work, Advantage Reduction Unit, Scottish Women's Aid, G4S monitoring, so those were the people that produced the report. The report states on page 50 that the statistic behind the recommendation will be included in the final report, yet they are not. Where are they? I would ask officials to clarify that position. I do not know if there is a further annex that is required to go along with the report. There is no further annex, as far as I am aware. We can follow up on that and let you know if you wish. What quite an omission, though, for a minister and Government officials to come to this committee asking us to support this instrument and referring to a report that says the statistics are in the report when they are not? I apologise if there is a reference to something that is not added to the report, but I would say that this was a report drawn up by the expert working group, comprising all the members that I have cited. I would imagine that the minister is not trying to suggest that they are basing the recommendations on evidence that they do not regard as fussed and satisfactory. What I am trying to suggest is that those experts felt that it was important enough to write in the report that the statistics will be included in the final report, yet that is said in the Scottish Government's final report. There is no mention of the statistics, which, apparently, back up the proposal that you are putting forward to the committee and the Parliament. The proposal that we are putting forward in relation to the SNSI follows on directly from recommendation 7 of the expert working group, whose membership I have referred to. I think that all members would accept that membership is independent and comprehensive. If I could perhaps just intervene here, minister, it is important evidence in looking at this whole SSI and I would reasonably expect it to have been looked at in the first instance by yourself and your officials and to come to this committee prepared with that information. With respect, I have come prepared having read in detail the electronic monitoring Scotland working group report. If there was an addendum in terms of any stats that we would be happy to provide that to the committee whether on page 50 or any other page. However, what I am saying is that the SSI that we are proposing and putting before the committee today takes up directly recommendation 7, one element that they are of, proposed by the expert working group, who have been considering their work, I think, since 2014 over a period of some 16 months. There has been a national conference comprising some 150 experts working in the criminal justice sphere and there have been some 12 national events. All this work has been built on together, which has culminated in the experts and representatives from a comprehensive section of the criminal justice fraternity in Scotland producing the recommendations, one of which we are proposing to take up in the SSI before the committee today. Minister, I would expect you to attend this committee with the statistics here for the committee to see now when we are considering it. It has been referred to by the working group, Douglas Ross. Can I ask for more information on the 300 potential people who would be subject to this removal of the conditions? What sentences are they currently serving? What offences are they serving sentences for? There will be a mixture of sentences, but, of course, as I have said, it is very important that I just answer the question. As I have said, it would be important to restate, I think, for the committee's benefit and for those listening, that a number of key exclusions will remain from the HDC system today, as they will tomorrow if the committee sees fit to approve the SSI.  It is very important to restate that those will remain exclusions ab initio from the HDC system. As for any other potential prisoners to whom this would refer, there will be a whole cross-section and it will be looked at on a case-by-case basis. I hope that that answer is helpful for the member. Well, no, because you had earlier told me which ones were not included in this, which I fully understand. I basically want to get on record. It is a range of issues, a range of offences which affect communities, individuals, et cetera, et cetera, who will, if that is agreed, see those people released into the community, which, for the last decade, they have not been released back into the community on a home detention curfew. The people who will be… SSI is designed to deal with are those who committed a breach on licence and, in effect, those who committed a breach on licence of licence conditions, passed on licence, and those who committed another offence on a community sentence. Those are the categories of prisoners who would be eligible for consideration, but it is by no means an automatic grant, and it is dealt with on a case-by-case basis. It is subject to a very stringent risk assessment, which, of course, includes, above all, the interests of public safety. Those conditions pertain today, as they will tomorrow, and the key exclusions will remain in place. Ultimately, you are saying that up to 300 people, potentially based on your figures, could be released. The reasoning behind it is to give them hope, where they have not had hope to get that detention curfew in the future. Therefore, there could be a negative impact on the communities who see people who are serving community sentences, etc., who commit crimes while they are doing community sentences, almost getting… not having a further deterrent from doing these crimes and offences, because they know that this exemption will now be taken away from them, and they would still be liable or acceptable for them to be put forward for a home detention curfew when that was not the case. I worry about the negative message that sends to our communities who are already suspicious about some of the efficiency and effectiveness of some of the community sentencing. I mean that brings in a wider consideration of, I think, the HDC approach as one of various strands of approach in terms of community justice. HDC, I think, from memory has been going since around 2006, and it has applied to certain categories of prisoner. This SSI today would seek, as I say, to bring within the possible grant, but not the automatic grant, of HDC those who have committed a breach while in licence and those who have committed a crime, whilst serving community justice sentence. I think that, as the point has been made by practitioners in the field to take an example of an 18-year-old man, a male, who has breached a condition in licence and some years down the line finds themselves before the criminal justice system. The question that needs to be asked, as a fundamental question, is should that person be excluded from the possibility of an HDC that is seen as being useful in furthering rehabilitation, furthering reintegration into the community and reducing, thereby, reoffending, which I think everybody wants to see. This is seen as a useful tool in that regard, but, as I say, it is always with the stringent risk assessment that would be applied on a case-by-case basis with public safety at the very heart of the process. I wonder, minister, if you could give us any indication of, in practice, what level of oversight ministers would have when making the decision. Would they simply be acting on recommendations that were made, or will the ministers be the one that will be doing the recommending and in detail looking at each individual case? The actual position is that, although it is in statute a Scottish ministers' decision, it is, in fact, exercised through the agency of the Scottish Prison Service. Perhaps a community justice official would like to give an example of how that process then would work. On an individual basis, once they have served the quarter stage of their sentence, the Scottish Prison Service would ask criminal justice social work for a home assessment. That report would include circumstances about the home address that they are going back to, who lives in that address, are those people happy that the prisoner is released back into that address? That would go back to prison service, who would consider that along the risk of the public safety, the risk that might be posed, and, if they are happy that the person can be released, they will be released on a tag to serve the last quarter of their prison service in the community. I might be able to understand that, just in terms of practicalities. The tag is that it can be a curfew of 12 hours, for example, and that any breach is that the monitoring of compliance on the part of the operator of the service is very rigorous and is 24-7, and any breach can be immediately seen. That is why, for example, I mentioned that Scottish Women's Aid sat on this expect working group. It sees going forward the opportunities for electronic tagging of whatever kind as a means of better control in terms of where the perpetrator might be, having exclusion zones and so on. That is further work that is in scope at the moment and has been seen as having benefits, in fact. While I am grateful for the explanation, it does not quite answer the question that I opposed, which is that, if someone is out on licence and a breach occurs and at a later stage the ministers have the opportunity to recommend that they are released again on a home detention curfew, the point that I am trying to get at is that the ministers that actually make the decision or do they endorse a decision that is made somewhere else? It is the SPAS, the Scottish Prison Service, that makes the decision in terms of there being an agency in that regard for the Scottish ministers. In what guidance and criteria will be applied to allow ministers to then overturn, do you see any instances where you may overturn a decision that is made in relation to those specific 300 prisoners? I would ask the legal department. I do not think that ministers have a… The decision taken by the Scottish Prison Service would be the decision of the Scottish ministers. The Scottish Prison Service is an executive agency of the Scottish ministers, so their decision stands as the decision of the Scottish ministers. It would not be a case of the Scottish ministers overturning it. That may happen at an administrative level before a decision is taken. If a decision is intimated to the justice directorate at the Samber's house by the SPAS, there might be some involvement of, for example, that the cabinet secretary might say that if there is a certain prisoner who is going to apply for his DCE, I do not want to let out. It could be a high-profile prisoner or whatever, but the decision is ultimately taken by the SPAS headquarters. It says in this paper that ministers will have discretion to release those prisoners from prison on home detention. It is not actually ministers, it is the Scottish Prison Service. It is ministers that the decision is taken through delegated authority. The example that you gave Minister of the 18-year-old male that commits a crime and then later in life commits a crime is currently excluded, and if SSI is granted, it will no longer be excluded. Will offenders have the opportunity to apply once, or can they apply to ministers for the discretion to be released on home detention curfew once, and then five years later, if they are in prison again, do the same thing again? How many opportunities will they have to do this? I think that it works in the other way round, but going back to Susan's point about how the assessment is made as to who would be eligible, it is for those who are considered short-term or automatic if they are long-term, it is a decision of the pro-board that they can be released halfway through their sentence, and then it kicks in six months prior to that. I am not entirely sure that it would be the prisoner that would apply, rather it would be the criminal justice services that might start the process where they feel it might be appropriate. Could the person be made more than once for one individual if they were someone that offended regularly? Could that application be made more than once for one person? Yes, the HDC is taken in the six months up to the halfway stage of the sentence, so there is only a very short window that the prisoner can apply for it, generally if it is refused once, it is only to be considered again for that sentence, but in future sentences the prisoner could apply again. I do not know how the application process works, but the prisoner kick-starts it or the residential manager in the prison or wherever, but the grant can take place once in that sentence. In this case, if somebody has been recalled from licence for a previous sentence, those amendments will mean that they could then apply in future sentences. If they are sentenced three, four or five times in the future, they could apply each and every time. The information that can be considered by ministers would include that previous release on licence and that previous recall, and that could count against that prisoner in the Scottish ministers' consideration of the decision. Thank you. Minister, of course statistics are important, but it is the individual that matters here and the individual prisoner that matters now. You have said that there are certain categories that will be excluded, and it would seem to me that we are a danger of cutting off our nose to spider face if we exclude the group. I am very supportive of this direction of travel. Can you confirm that, in addition to the comprehensive risk assessment at the time that the recommendations made for the individual, there is an on-going risk assessment, including the community impact? If a decision to grant has been made, there is compliance by the service operator on a 24-7 basis. If it is a long-term prisoner, there will also be supervision by the criminal justice social work as well. There is on-going monitoring, and the possibility to revoke can be done immediately, and immediately can be immediate if there is a breach of compliance. There is a very robust system, and I think that the statistics—although statistics we can see have different elements to them—but I understand that, in the first six months of this year, some 90 per cent of HDCs granted have met with six items in the sense that there has not been a breach in those circumstances. I think that that is quite a high figure. I also have the question of support, because it is not automatically going to be the case that the resource that would have meant this individual would have been retained in prison is going to be transferred to the community. Are you content that there is sufficient resource in the community to address that? Yes, but one of the elements of the expert group's report was to raise issues of wider support as we look forward to the opportunities that further electronic tagging monitoring presents, and that is a very important element that the member raises. That would have to be considered very carefully as we consider further opportunities along those lines, so support is very important because we have got to make this work. It is to work also, of course, for victims, and that is very important indeed. We have been working with victims organisations, and we will continue to do so on those subjects. We question about the monitoring technology and its development. In the context that we know from extensive research that sentences served outside prison are much more successful in reducing re-offending than people who spend a lot of time in prison, albeit that the categories of prisoners may be slightly different. However, I just wanted to ask a general question as to whether the technology that is used to monitor HDCs is continued to improve and, therefore, it is a more effective way of keeping track of people who are serving sentences out with prison. I am not an expert in technology. I imagine that, like all technologies, we go in a very exponential curve in terms of improvement, but perhaps one of the officials could care to give some further information. Yes, certainly. The technology that is currently used is radio frequency RF technology. One of the recommendations of the working group was that steps be taken to introduce new technologies, of course, and GPS being the obvious one. In order to do that, however, we are going to have to legislate and legislate and change primary legislation to introduce the GPS technology, so that is all on-going work as far as we are concerned about taking that forward. I am just a thanks minister for attending. I am just wondering if the minister thinks that the report and subsequent decision on recommendation that we have in front of us reflects ever-grown body of evidence that Stuart Stevenson touched on as well, that, of course, apart from in the most serious cases, does not lead to a reduction in free offending and whether that decision will bring us into line with other, more progressive, if you like, European nations? Yes. The report refers to some international comparison studies that have been made, and I think that work has gone on at Stirling University in particular, and also looking at Council of Europe countries. I think that it is correct to say that what the member suggests is right, that for those who look at robust alternative options in terms of community sentencing—rebust, properly monitored, properly resourced—that exclude the most violent and heinous criminals, that is a way to ensure that we make some progress in tackling community justice issues and re-offending. If we can make progress in those ways, then we reduce re-offending, which presumably is the goal that everybody wishes to see, including for the individuals who are caught in this cycle themselves, and certainly for communities who are blighted by it, so that is certainly the direction of travel that we would hope to proceed with, absolutely. I wonder if you could clarify the discretion of the minister. That sounds quite straightforward, yet your evidence seems to suggest minister that it would be at the discretion of the SPS, and the minister would not overrule that. Is that the case? Well, the Scottish Minister's discretion set forth in statute is exercise via the executive agency of the Scottish Prison Service, and has been since HDC was brought to book, which was 2006. That has not changed, and that is exactly the same today as it would be tomorrow. Well, did I misunderstand Mr McGuffey then when he said that there may be a case where it is a known criminal and the minister may in these circumstances intervene? Ultimately, the SPS is an executive agency of the Scottish Minister, so the Scottish Minister still has some element of control. Whether that control would be welcome by Mr McConnell, I do not know, but certainly if there was an issue where, for example, a high-profile prisoner wanted to get HDC, the cabinet secretary was aware of it and thought that that was not a good idea. The cabinet secretary could exert some influence over SPS, but ultimately the decision would be for SPS to take on a delegated authority, and that decision would be the decision of the Scottish Minister, SPS being an executive agency of the Scottish Ministers. I suppose that I am a bit nervous of getting into the situation that we get into all too frequently with Police Scotland, where any problems are always deferred to us in operation matter for Police Scotland, and that sounds similar to me. I am going to ask you not to move this at this time. I would very much like to see the statistics that, quite reasonably, the committee should have had them in front of them today. They were referred to in the working group, and I think that, for the full consideration of that, the committee should have the opportunity to see these before we move on it. If you are prepared not to move, then that would be enough. I would still quite like to move, because I do feel that this is a very detailed report. I do not know if every member has had the opportunity to read this report today, and it is the culmination of 16 months' work. If members had wished to proceed with individual research beyond the report itself, they could have proceeded to do that. It is a report that is very comprehensive. The composition of the expert group was very comprehensive across the criminal justice system and included experts in their fields of independence of minds. I am not quite sure why we are putting into question this report. You have come today and your officials have come to the committee unprepared without statistics that are referred to in this report. I find that unacceptable, and it is for that reason that I am asking you not to move this. I hear what you say, convener. I do not want to disrespect the office of the chair of the committee. I still feel that, in the circumstances that I have just explained, just one moment ago, it would have been for members to pursue in their own time their individual research. However, I am told by officials that it would not be a critical moment if the SSI did not get moved today. On that basis, I am prepared to not move the SSI today. If the convener could clarify what it is that the committee would be seeking, that would be very helpful indeed. To that, statistics are referred to during this discussion. I am grateful to the minister for the confirmation that she does not intend to move today. I thank the minister and officials for attending today. The fourth item is two negative SSIs. The first is community justice outcome improvement plan and performance report, Scotland regulations, 2016, SSI 21016, oblique 309, and act of sedent, fees of solicitors and shorthand writers in the court of session, sheriff appeal court and sheriff court amendment, 2016, SSI 21016, oblique 316. I refer members to paper number two. In particular, I refer members to the spice briefing on the act of sedent, particularly page two. I am going to take the liberty of reading exactly what that says, because it refers to a very strong recommendation from a previous justice committee, which was as follow. The committee seeks assurances that there will not be a substantial rise in the level of court fees to pay for the reforms in the bill and will monitor closely the outcome of the next consultation on fees in 2015 and consequently statutory orders. With that, I invite members' comments from members. I remind members that the SSI proposes a 24 per cent increase in court fees. It was very much the opinion of the last justice committee that there should not be a substantial rise in the level of court fees to pay for the reforms in the bill. John Finnie. I am more concerned with the actual figures than the percentage figures that we are talking about, £18. The reassurance that I take is that those in low incomes are exempted and the regime covers those in income-based social security benefits such as income support and those in receipt of civil legal aid that is exempted from court fees. It is notional available to those with disposable incomes of up to £20,000. However, there is a caveat with that, so I am relaxed about the proposal, I have to say. Any other comments, Douglas Shaw? Is it possible—I do not know how this works—to get more information on some of the comments that were previously made? We were told that two years ago, the Scottish Government said that it would take some time to get full-cost recovery, yet just two years later, it is saying that it is there. It also states that the Scottish Government has indicated that it intends to look at fees again in 2018. At this stage, it has hoped to have better data. Does that mean that it is proposing this with poor data, if you look at the negative to that statement? Fair point. Any other comments, Stuart Stevenson, Mary Fee? It is part of a 10-year programme that started in 2006 to recover the full costs, and it is appropriate that we proceed with this at this stage. I would agree with the comments that have been made by John Finnie and Stuart Stevenson. The paper clearly says that court fees are a small part of the cost of taking action. I am inclined to look at the figures rather than the percentage, and that is a sensible way to go ahead. I do not want to hold us up in any way. I am not familiar with the background to this, although John Finnie is right to pick out some of the safeguards that are in the system. It would be helpful to understand what that trajectory is if, as Stuart Stevenson says, the process has been on-going since 2006. I am not clear why any undertaking would have been given to a previous committee that the direction of travel would not have continued along the path that appears to be part of. The point is made about the overall levels of fees, and the safeguards that are in place offer at least some reassurance, but I am at a disadvantage in not knowing what the earlier undertakings were that ministers appeared to have given to the committee. I think that the principle was access to justice and that that should remain in looking at court fees. There shouldn't be a substantial increase. I take on the word John Finnie's point that it is relatively small in monetary terms. There is an important principle that has been laid down today. If it is the will of the committee, and it certainly seems to be, to approve the SSI, then I am so minded to move that we do that. Any other comments? Are the committee agreed there, for it does not wish to make any recommendation in relation to either of these instruments? Agree? Okay. I suspend briefly to allow witnesses to take their seats. It is my pleasure to welcome the first of today's panel of witnesses. This is the committee's third week of taking evidence in the Crown and Procurator Fiscal Service inquiry. I welcome to the committee today a chief superintendent, Gordon Croson, president of the Association of Scottish Police Superintendents, Rachel Weir, vice-president and Fiona Eadie, secretary of the Procurator Fiscal Society section of the FTA and Stephen Murray, branch executive committee member of PCS Scotland and Calum Steele of the general secretary of the Scottish Police Federation. I refer members to paper 2, which is noted by the clerks, and paper 4, which is private paper. All witnesses have provided written evidence, and we are very grateful to them for doing that. I now invite questions from members. Stuart Stevenson, John Finnie. I apologise. Can I just declare an interest before we start, if that is possible? My partner works for the Victim Information Advice Service, within the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service. In the interests of transparency, I would just like to declare that. I have previously declared that. My written evidence that I have submitted and evidence that I have provided today is solely the information that is given from a member. One of the threads that has come through the evidence that the committee has taken so far, and is repeated in the written evidence that we have in front of us today, relates to the operation of the centralised marking system that is now used by the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service. I have not yet got a sense of the overall effect of that in terms of efficiency. I get the sense that it may well be that it has made the marking process a more efficient, less resource intensive activity, but that the effects on other parts of the service may more than overbalance that and increase the overall effort. I am not saying that because I have directly been told that at this stage. I just want to get the sense of the panel as to whether that suggestion on my part is one that it would agree with, or could it lead me to the path of salvation and tell me that the centralised system, the savings there, are not offset by costs of effort and time elsewhere in the system? I think that that would be a good place to start today for me. I would be happy to hear from everyone, I suspect, unless anyone wants to dim it. I think that there are always advantages and disadvantages in any system. The principal advantages in centralising are undoubtedly to bring together a core of specialist experience with routine marking. There is some anecdotal evidence within our organisation that when you are repeating the same task over a period of time, then you build up a degree of expertise and that in turn builds up a degree of efficiency in terms of processes. It is early days for that team. It was only recently introduced. There is some work being done in relation to it at the moment, which I think the committee members have already heard from the department in respect of. My position in relation to it would be that there are advantages and disadvantages to it. The advantages, in many ways, outweith, but it is important that we keep under review and we keep evaluating what is working within the organisation and what is not working. That is one of the things that we do very closely with the department in our discussions with them from the trade union perspective. I move on to others. You said that it is a balance of advantage and disadvantage, but you referred only to the advantages. Do you give me a sense of your view of the disadvantages, where the other activities might be effective? If I could look less to my own view and our organisational view to the evidence that the committee members have had in writing from a number of organisations that have pointed to concerns about loss of local relationships, I do not necessarily agree with that. I think that local relationships still exist. There are ways for that local information and local input as to the impact of certain crimes on communities to be relayed to a national unit. After all, Scotland is only a people of six million. It is not the largest country in the world and it should not be beyond our gift to be able to share that information. The challenge is in reassuring communities locally that we are able to do so. That is one of the things that our members are very much focused on, but that becomes somewhat harder when you have a national unit located in two specific locations, because they cannot be everywhere at once. Thank you, convener. I think that, to some extent, the advantages have yet to be realised. I think that it is conceptually easy enough to understand why the advantages would exist, but the biggest challenge invariably from the members that I represent perspective is the ability to get access to local ffiscals and to get information from them on cases that are marked elsewhere. That invariably causes difficulty, delay and problems. Anything that adds additional time into the criminal justice system is problematic. I think that, with much that is discussed in the criminal justice arena, looking at any element of it in isolation tends not to give a realistic picture of what the wider issues are and, undoubtedly, to my mind, in any event, one of the biggest challenges that faces the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service in the round is that of resource. If there was a sufficiency of resource in terms of the centralised marking and, indeed, a sufficiency of resource to support local ffiscals, then, possibly, the benefits of the centralised marking units would be realised in a much more immediate and apparent way than is currently the case. I suppose that I will echo a lot of the points that Calum raised. Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal is part of a cog of justice, as we all understand. We all have tight and budgets at present, so I suppose that, if you look at sharing resources within offices, etc., it is going to save money if we get that. In fact, we do the same ourselves within policing. The disadvantage of that, as Calum has alluded to, is trying to get a hold of a fiscal criminal problematic, which, when they are so busy in the morning marking case papers, is that, at times, we need to get warrants quickly and we do not have the ability to do that. To get justice delivered quickly and efficiently, that becomes a problem for us. The biggest thing is just about that whole local relationship that Rachel has already alluded to. Previously, we could go and have a good meaningful conversation with a Procurator Fiscal prior to case papers being marked. Sometimes, that could assist with the movement of justice when we have that trusted relationship where we can have conversations. John Finnie? Can I pick up on that last remark that you made? I am not conscious that it is featured before the issue around warrants. Can you clarify what that is, please? Members, both from Calum's and my own, regularly speak about their frustrations about trying to get warrants quickly. Some of that comes from inconsistent practice, but more often, it is about access to a Procurator Fiscal who has the time or the ability to make that decision there and then. Quite often, when we come in the morning, there will be a series of crimes over the course of the last 24 hours, which may lead to a warrant and requiring it quickly. Our members often get frustrated that the Fiscal's are too busy marking papers, and there is not that resilience to take somebody away from that to sign warrants for us. Can you clarify for the record why speed is of the essence in those instances, please? If we have taken an example of them, we have had information overnight about drugs in a particular place. If we want to get that, we need to get them quickly before they get moved on. We often get housebreaking, taking place at night, where we get information on where the property might be. It is fundamental that we get warrants quickly to move on that, so we make the approach to Procurator Fiscal to get access to Sheriff to get the warrant. Thank you very much. I have a question to Calum Steele. In addition, in the written evidence that you talked about, the centralisation problematic in terms of marking and process, and one of the processes that you alluded to is—in fact, I will just quote your evidence, which is, simple tasks such as the reciting of witnesses at adjournments could be easily resolved at court if Fiscal's officers had the ability to produce new citations. We have heard a lot about the perennial problem of the number of witnesses cited, multiple citations, and very few people have been called. Is that something that you think could be resolved? I do not mean the global issue. I mean the issue if there was the ability to recite locally. Well, that ability used to exist, and by virtue of its former existence, we know that it worked. The removal of the ability to effectively cite locally in its own right creates additional bureaucracy and additional delay. Whether that remains insurmountable, I suspect, the answer is no. Like a lot of things, even if I look at the organisation that I work for, the police officers of Scotland, we see that things have been set up and they get tailored and tweaked us as they settle in, and maybe some of the conceptual ideas of what might have been better achieved in one central place develop into realising that maybe the way it was wasn't so bad in the first place. Okay, thanks. You also talk about the additional administration costs for the Crown Office Procurator Fiscal Service and the police service in terms of processing and service. Are police officers involved in the service of citations? That was historically the position and then changed to, as it has been reinstated? Yes, police officers have always, to some extent, been involved in the service of citations. It is just the question as to what degree—and that degree at this moment in time—whilst it is not enormous, it does exist. Thank you very much. Rona Fawr, followed by Mary. I clarify a point in relation to some of the evidence that has been given in relation to warrants in the NICP. The national initial case processing unit that marks the cases that are received from the police is not engaged in consideration of search warrants, which I think is what Mr Crosman is referring to, and is being submitted by the police. The indication, ac mae'r ddweud o ddod o'r walch nafod o bwysig ar gyfer ofer martwg? Mae'r ddaf yn hyn oes a ni'n gwybod o'r ddod o'r gwaith yn cymdeitio'n cyfnogau i ddim yn gweithio'r ddod o'r ddod. A gwybod, mae'n ddod o'r ddod yn ddod o'r ddod o'r ddod o'r ddod, ac mae'n adegu i ddim yn digwydd i gael o'r ddod o'r morddau uchgei'r dDIGED-US i'r ddod o'r ddod o'r ddod o ran gwasiol ffrosigol particles across the service. Moff on to Rona Daftal, then Mary Macomenaéchel. Hi, Asino Foylldd. I'd like to ask a question for Fiona Eidy and Steven Murray. Please. It's about financial constraints affecting staffing levels. Is more work formally or would be taken on by legal staff on digital services but not wrth gwrs, o pan ddoddo'r cwmpas, oherwydd y ddefnyddio'r cymhiliadau lleol yma ymddai'r cyhoedd. Ond yn rwyd y cwmpas maes ymdeg, yn dod i'r cyfreithiau sydd ynddangos ei ddechrau, Felly, mae'r cwmhysgwyl yn ystod y llunio'n ddod i'r llunio'n ddod i'r cwmhysgwyl. Mae'r cwmhysgwyl yn ystod i'r ddod i'r ddod i'r cwmhysgwyl, ac mae'n gwneud i'r cwmhysgwyl yn ddod i'r ddod i'r ddod i'r ddod i'r cwmhysgwyl. Mae'n gweithio ddim i'r cyflym yn gwneud i'r ddod i'r cyflym. We have a duty as an organisation to properly train the solicitors of tomorrow. The difficulty is that they are being relied on very heavily in a way that is unfairly referred to as court fodder. We are struggling in terms of our staff resource to cover all the court commitments that we have, and it is not uncommon in those circumstances to see trainees doing sort of back-to-back courts frequently. I do not think that that is something that is appropriate in the circumstances. They need to have the adequate time for proper training. I think that the other part of your question was about the admin involvement. I will perhaps let Stephen answer that particular aspect. I would be happy to take that on board and answer that. As a union PCS, I have grave concerns about the number of fixed-term contracts within the service. There are good reasons for that. We have a constant training programme almost taking place because the fixed-term staff do not stay for any longer than two years. The experience tells us that many of them move on because those are not full-time permanent posts that they have, so they are obviously applying for jobs in other areas. The turnover is very high, and that is something that gives us a problem in terms of training. There is also a lowering of quality of applicant. In the past, the civil service, particularly in the COPFS, has been seen as a good employer and an attractive proposition. We are now finding out that no-one is going to give up a full-time permanent post in order to take him as a fixed-term, who will only be kept on for a maximum of, say, for example, two years. I do not think that we are doing any favours to the young people who have done the fixed-term work because there is no security for them. They know that they are only going to be there for a definite amount of time. In terms of getting on in life and getting mortgages, it is getting harder and harder now to get mortgages, and many lenders will not give to people unless they have full-time permanent employment. From that point of view, the PCS union has concerns about the number that we have and the reliance that we have on the fixed-term staff. I will ask you on the timescale of that. How long has this trajectory been? How long has this been happening? The gradual process is getting more and more now, because I think that the last, certainly since I have been involved in the level of union work that I am doing at the moment, the last two years have seen an increase in fixed-term staff, certainly in the admin grades. The only permanent jobs that are on at the moment for the admin grades is the modern apprenticeships that the department takes on each year. Just to clarify, do you believe that that is down to financial constraints? Absolutely. After discussions with senior people within the service, I do have sympathies, because it is really difficult for them to basically juggle so many balls in the year with a decreasing budget or a stagnating budget. They have to do what is best, but they also have to get the work done, which is why they are turning to fixed-term staff to that degree. It is contained in some of our written evidence, but in terms of the staffing for legal staff within the organisation, since 2009, we have seen an almost 8 per cent drop in the number of legal staff that we employ. That is something that we would like to see reversed. I do not think that you have put in record yet the cut in monetary terms, have you? It is in your written submission, but it would probably be helpful to have that on record. Absolutely. In terms of the overall budget for COPFS, in this financial year, the budget is £113.45 million. In 2009-10, it was £118.3 million. We have calculated that if our budget had kept pace with inflation, that would have amounted now to £144.5 million, which means that, in real terms, our budget has been cut by more than 21.5 per cent. That is nearly a quarter of our budget. That is good to put on record. Mary Farreld by Douglas. Thank you, convener. My first question follows on from the questions that Rona was asking in relation to staffing. I suppose that my question specifically is to Stephen. The briefing, the paper that you have given us, talks about specialised units. Are there fixed-term staff in the specialised units or are they permanent staff? Yes. When you come in as a fixed-term person, it is down for the senior manager to decide where you go. That could be in one of the specialised units. I do not have any definite information for you in terms of how many or what the ratio would be, but a fixed-term person coming in would be expected to do the same work as the permanent staff. There is no reason why they would not go into one of the specialised units, although, as I said to you, I do not have any definite information at hand as to whether that is the case or numbers. However, in terms of where new staff go when they start, it is just decided that which section has the greater need. If one of the specialised units was under staff for any particular reason, there is no reason to suggest that they would not be put there. I mean, would you agree that if you are putting fixed-term staff in a specialised unit, the very nature of it being a specialised unit would depend and rely on the staff building up in expertise in that area? If someone is only there for two years, it would be difficult for them to build up a real expertise in understanding. If they move on, I would suspect an impact on the unit itself. As I alluded to previously, the problem comes with training, because there is a constant training process when you have such a high turnover of staff. In terms of the specialised units, I do not think that I would put any more importance on what they do than on what they do in the other units. It really is just a case of managing your staff as best you can. As long as you have a hard core of experienced staff, they should be able to take on the fixed-term people and have them up and running in the normal manner as any other employee that we have. You also mentioned in the paper the high percentage of reworked cases. You said that PCS believes that we have a high percentage of reworked cases. Do you have any idea what the exact figure is? No, surely anecdotally, rather than rather than the exact figure, for my experience, I work in the Sheriff and Dury unit, and we see a lot of cases getting adjourned for a whole number of reasons. To be frank, there are too many cases getting into court and too little court time. The legal people have a very difficult job in terms of taking the cases. First of all, they would take the cases in terms of time bars, because that would make sense. Also, they have to take the severity of the case and prioritise which ones are going to go through, because quite frankly, as I said, there are so many cases and there is so little court time to get them heard in. However, cases can get knocked on for a whole number of reasons, and very often it is out with our hands because it is the defence agents who are maybe coming up with reasons for getting cases moved on that we do not have any say in. I want you to now ask another question if that is all right, convener. One of the other pieces of evidence that we have heard as we have been doing this, and it is a thread that is ran through, is the lack of information about the process in the court. We have heard it mostly from witnesses that they were unsure what was going to happen when they got to court, they were unsure what was going to happen after they had been in court, why there had been delays and what the actual process would be while they were in the court. We also heard that there was not always, but sometimes, a lack of joined-up communication between different services. I would be interested in the panel's views on that, and how they think that side of the service works. Do you think that all the services work together well? To some extent, that is probably a slightly unfair question to ask probably police officers, because we are more than familiar with the vagaries of the court system, and our understanding and appreciation may not necessarily tally with that of others, but certainly from the other witnesses that we see in court, and indeed the victims and complainers that we deal with. Again, it is only anecdotal, but their conveyed experiences to our members when we meet in court corridors, when we meet in the streets is often bewilderment. I think that, to some extent, the victim information advice service has tried to address some of that insofar as it tries to at least provide information in advance for a small number of people. I do not believe that it does it adequately for everybody by some stretch, but certainly for those who are going to court in particularly difficult circumstances. I am not saying that anybody relishes being in court in any event, but my sense is that, in that regard, the VIA is providing more information than was ever the case in the past. Where I think that there is a degree of unfairness is that, whilst in fact this committee gave scrutiny to the victim and witnesses bill when VIAs were being born, the public does not really have an appreciation of what VIA is and how it is meant to work. They tend to look at the agencies that they know for the provision of that information and that is invariably the police service. So much of the frustration of the courts gets expressed towards the police as if we have the capability to do something affected. There is perhaps a different experience between those who are involved in the serious types of cases and those who have an experience of the summary courts. I was very pleased to read in some of the written evidence submissions the experience of many of our criminal justice partners who said that the work, the liaison, the communication that they had with staff in COPFS who were dealing with homicide cases, with sexual offence cases, was first class and second to none, I think, with some of the descriptions. However, there is a difference when it comes to dealing with the summary courts. There has been an understandable focus on serious crime. However, what blights local communities and what will fill your post bags—and our members are part of those communities as well—is that sort of lower-level anti-social behaviour type of offences. I can absolutely confidently say that our members, time and time again, are going into court without adequate time to prepare the cases that they have in their courts. Had they had more time to prepare, they would be in a better position to be able to liaise with those victims and witnesses who are attending at court. Is that down to timetabling in court or the number of cases? To do with a lack of staff resource. If we have so many cases, let's say that we have 10 cases, 10 courts running in a given court on a given day, and you maybe have nine staff in your unit to cover those courts, so you're borrowing somewhere from within the organisation to get somebody to come and fill that additional court. What we also know is that there's been an increase in the number of trials that are running. There's been about, I think it's eight point, it's over eight per cent over the last four years, the number of cases that are running to trial. We also know that the length of the courts that are running the trials courts are finishing much later in the afternoon, so it used to be. I think it was always a matter of some kind of disbelief people thought that the people involved in the criminal justice system were working a half day that they were finished at four o'clock. That's not the case. They were coming back to the office and they were preparing their courts for the next day. What's happening now is that the courts are running on much longer, so that time that they originally had to be able to prepare for the next courts, bearing in mind that you don't have that staff resilience, somebody else sitting in the office preparing for tomorrow's court, they're going back and they're either having to stay late in the office or take work home. We are meeting our obligations, but it is at a human cost to the health and welfare of our members. You could quote that too then. Rachael Hamilton could probably help you better with some of the information on some of our courts. I think it varies depending on which jurisdiction you're talking about. I can speak from personal experience in Glasgow that it is not uncommon for courts to run past 4 p.m. and sometimes past 5 p.m. I think the worst example that I've experienced certainly in the last two years was a trials court that sat till 6 p.m. That obviously has a knock-on effect on, as Fiona said, the health and welfare of our members and their ability to prepare, because you're talking about them preparing a trials court for the next day of between 10 p.m. and sometimes up to 14 or more trials. If they are to give the attention to them that they deserve, they require more preparation time for that. Do any other panel members want to comment on the original question about the lack of information about the process, but it's very helpful what you've said. I'll just back to what Fiona and Rachael were saying there. Someone who is an admin manager within the section, I see first-hand experience each day of deputies having cases in the morning when the trial is starting and they have to read that and prepare themselves before they get into court. That's not because of bad preparation in anybody's part, it may be because somebody is off sick, it may be that somebody hasn't come to work for a bit of a reason. There's such lack of resilience and lack of, in terms of the staffing but within the legal ranks as well, although I'm principally here to defend the admin sections. I can give you first-hand experience of the difficulties that they face by having to get into a very important trial in which you have victims there at court and witnesses have all taken the time to come. I think that the public at large would be alarmed if they knew that that was happening through no fault of their own because they're trying their best to get into court and to see justice done with very limited resources. I suppose that the impact on staffing and the pressures will also have an impact on the amount of information that can impact on the people that are appearing. I again could perhaps just get on record the sickness leave absences and attributable mental health and also the stress. It would be good to have that on record, it's in the written submission from the unions. Yes, I'm happy to do that. The committee will have seen that across the civil service, the average working days lost due to sickness is 7.2 days and within COPFS that figure is 10.3. Of those on sick leave, 27 per cent of those are due to mental ill health and 76 per cent are recorded as being due to stress. That reiterates the points that we've been keen to make, which are about the health and welfare of our staff, the pressure, the stress, the lack of resource. Has the Inspectorate of Prosecution in Scotland, the independent statutory inspectorate for COPFS, picked up on that and dealt with it and highlighted that in any way? The staffing levels, sorry, the sickness levels. I'm not aware that they have, as a specific point, no. That would be something that seems to me fairly germane to the operation of the ground procurator physical and something that perhaps would be helpful to pick up on. My understanding, and I'm not certain that it's correct, is that the focus of the inspectorate is more on the operational work of the organisation, so whether that's something that they would focus on within their scope of responsibility, I'm not sure. Certainly it's something that we are committed to working with the department to seek to address. It's in nobody's interest to have high levels of sickness within any organisation. We want our staff to be at work, but we want them to be well and healthy at work. For example, one of the things that we have been looking at and trying to work with the department on is trying to agree what reasonable preparation time might look like, because we know from a former staff survey that the union carried out that the lack of preparation time was seen as being a significant stressor to our staff. We know that workload in itself is an issue that features highly in relation to work-related stress. So, all those resource workload preparation time, all those issues are factors that we believe are significantly impacting on those sickness levels. It seems to me that there's certainly a link there to be investigated. I'm not sure that Mr Croson wants to come in on something earlier. I'll just come back to the support for victims. One of the things that we need to recognise is that many of our victims are extremely vulnerable and they'll be traumatised by the crimes that have been involved. Some of those cases are extremely complex, so when we're providing information and guidance, it's not easily picked up, and quite often it's getting people needing to go back and get more and more support, so there's more and more pressure we're getting put in services to provide that information so that we're victim-centred. Thank you for that. Is that supplementary, Oliver Mundell? I just wanted to come back on the previous point about sickness absence. I think that it is worrying that it's creeped into the double figures, and it is a bit of a warning signal. However, I just wondered how you felt that related to some of the figures that had come out of the civil service people's survey results. I think that it's quite concerning that, effectively, one in 10 people want to leave the service as soon as possible, that 15 per cent say that they're being bullied at work and that a fifth of people say that they don't have the tools to do their job. Those two things would seem to be quite heavily related. Certainly, in terms of anecdotal evidence from our members, there is undoubtedly a connection at least in the minds of our members. On the ground, it certainly feels that there's a connection between those two elements of it. Again, it comes down to us having enough to do what is required of us and what the people of Scotland expect of us. It's clear from the evidence that the committee has received in writing and so far some of the oral evidence, and we have some way to go in terms of oral evidence, but it's clear that the expectations on us as an organisation are high and properly high. However, that is an expectation that weighs on our members when they find themselves in a position where they are often struggling to deliver to the standard expected of them. I think that some of that is borne out by the survey results that you've mentioned, but in particular it's borne out by the sickness levels. One of the other concerns that's come up is that a number of staff, particularly at a junior level, don't feel that they've got the discretion or the authority to do the job that they're being asked to do and find it very difficult to navigate their way through the system. I wonder when you've got a fifth of people saying that they're not able to fulfil their duties, is it because they don't feel supported or empowered to take the decisions that are in the best interests of justice? I need to be careful here not to stray into matters of policy because that wouldn't be appropriate in that forum. There are undoubtedly members who have fed back to us that they feel a loss of discretion. I think that it's important to say that there has never been an unfair to discretion on prosecutors across Scotland. We have always worked within guidelines given to us from the Lord Advocate and through his commission to local commission holders as procreators fiscal, but certainly there is a sense of that on the ground amongst many of our members. I will ask if there is anything from the PCS's perspective on the issues given that they are highlighted, so clearly in your evidence. The 10.2 or 10.3 days is rather very, very high in terms of the civil services norm. I see first-hand experience from my members that people come in and they are very, very stressed leading to being sick. It's not always short-term sick leave that very often what's put in these figures so high is people who are often long-term sick leave and we do have attendance management policies in place to try to attract them back to work as best we can, but it's very often difficult because it's not just about having a sore leg, the sore leg will improve through time, but going back to work when you feel so pressurised and I share the concerns of the FDA representatives as well that they are to confess also that they have got the pressure at a higher degree because they go on to court, they are very much the public face of the department, so our guys in the admin side are basically behind the scenes if you like in the main, but there is no doubt that there is still a considerable amount of pressure on our staff and I think that that's reflected in the figures and also within the opinions of people in the staff surveys that you mentioned. I think just going back to the staff survey, the one that you're quoting from I think was the 2015 survey. We have just completed, it's an annual one, and we've just completed the survey for this year. We don't yet have the results published for that yet. I think what the committee may wish to bear in mind however is that in the course of the last year we've had significant change in terms of the senior leadership within the organisation, we obviously have a new Crown agent and we also have new law officers in terms of the discretion that you talk about and the pressure that that puts on to individual members. I think that Rachel is right to make the point that there never has been an unfettered discretion there, we've always operated within guidelines. However, the committee may be aware of a speech that was made recently by the Lord Advocate where he's signalled that they want to empower staff and to instill in them a sense of confidence about their decision making and certainly from the sort of anecdotal evidence that I've heard from members is that that's been very well received. It will take I think some time to filter through because a change in culture and approach and that skill needs to be redeveloped with our members as well will take some time. It may be useful to look at not just this year's staff survey results but the one that will be published sort of or carried out next year as well and we were hopeful that we'll start to see a sort of an improvement in that regard. We may have other questions then on policy and how that impacts on judicial discretion. Mary, was it a supplementary on staffing and sickness levels? It was supplementary to Mary Fee's question earlier so I'm a bit behind there so I don't know if you want to continue with that and then I can ask those questions. Douglas Fodd pan Liam Mr Crossman, you both represent the same profession. I presume that you've read each other's submissions. Do you think that it's a fair reflection that I took from the two submissions that these are quite starkly different given that you are both representing police officers and could you maybe give your views on that? I can probably start on that. Although we represent the same organisation, we represent different members of that so the engagement is at a totally different level. The evidence that I have provided is showing that at a strategic level is that my members are confident that they have an excellent working relationship with the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service and other stakeholders who are trying to better the delivery of justice. We absolutely recognise at the front end of policing the impact of some of the changes within the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service and how that has affected some of our officers. However, I have tried to balance our submission that is round about our members and how they feel that efficiency and effectiveness has taken place. Perhaps I will put a bit of context round about that. If you look at some of the work that is being done by the justice board to try and have processes in place to actually make us more efficient and effective across the partnership, a lot of that work is on-going but it is unseen by our front-line police officers just now because the processes haven't yet been developed. The IT structures are in place to do that. There are challenges round about finance to deliver some of those efficiencies, but the feedback from my members is overwhelmingly that they are comfortable that they have a good working relationship with the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service. Just maybe before we come on to Mr Steele, your superintendents are the level that some officers would go to to raise their concerns. Are you saying from your submission and from what you have just said that superintendents aren't receiving some of the stories that we get from Mr Steele's organisation? No, absolutely not. We are absolutely familiar with the fact that we understand that our officers get affected by not being able to sit or go into court and get encountered mandate at the last stage. That affects them and their families having to readjust that. We do recognise the fact that Procurator Fiscal Service does not seem to have enough court preparation time, so that there is an attendant court that is potentially unprepared. Therefore, what we do recognise is that the staff who work there are very professional and very dedicated working under extremely difficult circumstances. Although I recognise the challenges there, I appreciate that Callum's submission would give you it from a front-line officer's perspective. I am trying to balance that from the operational leaders of policing to say that, at a strategic level, we feel that there is good engagement. I think that we agree with the quality of engagement that we have with the staff when we meet them and deal with them on a one-to-one basis to use the term that I have written evidence that has been used today as second to none. We are dealing with highly dedicated professional public servants that want to do the best under very trying and difficult circumstances. However, let there be no doubt that the issues that were identified in the written evidence that I submitted are absolutely the experience of our members. Of course, they are not represented of a homogenous police service, and that is why we have different associations representing different views. However, as I am sure you appreciate yourself, Mr Ross, the experience of the rank-and-file police officer is generally not the same as that of senior officers. Excuse me, one of the issues that I thought was quite stark was the use of digital technology. You are saying in your submission that you do not think that it will make a great deal of difference, whereas the superintendents are saying that the digital vault is a great way forward. Perhaps you could both discuss that, but I wanted to ask you about your point. You say that a digital evidence vault is most welcome given the significant increase in cases where there is a digital footprint. When we had our very first panel here, we were speaking to defence advocates from across Scotland, and I was questioning them on digital evidence, and one of them said—Steven Manifield—forgive me if I do not get the terminology absolutely right—a virtual evidence vault, and then he went on to explain it, and he said, if that can be brought into existence and it is very much only at the talking shop stage, it would help. From your submission, you would almost read it to say that it is operational and it is working well, yet we have defence agents coming to this committee saying that it is just a talking shop, it is something pying the sky that has got good intentions, but they are not using it. Do you understand that difference? Absolutely, and I can just clarify. I am not saying itself and running the fish at what I am saying is that we welcome the fact that we are moving to a digital vault. I am sure that the committee members will absolutely understand that more and more of crime now has a digital footprint across it, whether that is the taking of CCTV, or it is the taking of people's mobile phones, their computers, their tablets or whatever. A common frustration that comes to us from members of the public is that we take their telephones off them, which can be their only means of contact for other people. It costs them a lot of money because they are in contracts and we do not have the ability to give them it back because it becomes a piece of evidence. Anything that can make that easier to stop taking phones etc away from people and also to get the evidence from that in a format that can be easily produced in court because that is one of our biggest challenges has got to be welcomed. Now that works on-going under the Justice Board sub-committee. I think that it is the digital, something that I cannot remember exactly what it is called. So there is work on-going to do that and we absolutely welcome that because that has been a challenge that has been here for a number of years and whilst it is still working progress, I think that we have got to recognise that that is the kind of stuff that is on-going in the background. I think that it is important to clarify that in the written evidence that is submitted by the Scottish Police Foundation in my name, when we were talking about the technological challenges, we did not specifically go on to the digital evidence vault. It was more about the practical experiences of what we are dealing with today and as opposed to some extent we may be getting on to that question shortly, I suspect. I took the quote, it is difficult to envisage that any technological advancements could expedite the current processes. I think that that was specifically relative to the question of fate. On any lies, okay. I was not sure from the evidence that that was the case. The final one to Mr Crosman and Mr Steele before I come on to the rest is again a very different opinion in terms of officers being cited for court to give evidence. Mr Steele, you mentioned how it is very disjointed. There is not a particularly good way of doing it. It has been a problem for many years and it does not seem to be addressed yet. Mr Crosman says that better use of the police witness scheduler should lead to a reduction in citing officers for court during days off. Do you think that that is progressing well, whereas Mr Steele is saying that we have tried a number of things to change police witnesses being called and the feelings therein and it has not improved over recent years? This is an issue that I ask nearly everyone, because it is an issue that I get from a lot of front-line officers very close to home sometimes about the number of officers who are called, who are then taken off our streets. Our communities then do not have the bobbies on the beat with a very visible presence because they are stuck in a room at the back of a court or potentially in the police station, but they are certainly not out on our streets. Really, what can we do to address this problem? Is it more about agreeing evidence? Is it more about being realistic in terms of the cases that we are calling? What can we do to ensure that all witnesses are treated well but that we are not wasting so much police resources with citing so many police witnesses that are never called to give evidence? At the risk of incurring the wrath of sheriffs, I believe that we need to have our court system working at times that are more attuned to when the demand on the police services. The attempts at dealing with police witness scheduling was being trialled, I suspect that it was being trialled a long time before I joined, but certainly it was being trialled when I joined 23 years ago. There have been various iterations of it over the piece, and the problem still continues unabated. I think that for reasons that are being referenced or alluded to today, when we have got a preparation that is taking place as little as 24 hours before the trial for entirely understandable reasons, that points to a service, in fact points to wider justice, criminal justice, PLC, the need for a significant investment of money. The peak police demand invariably incurs between the hours of 6 o'clock in the evening and 4 o'clock in the morning, yet the peak abstraction for police for courts takes place between the hours of 9 o'clock in the morning and 5 o'clock in the afternoon. That is not, to my mind, logical. Invariably moving resources from one point of the day to service another part of the criminal justice system and another part of the day is only ever going to create a medical round of disturbance. To my mind, and this ultimately comes down to what Scotland wants, do we want a justice system that is invested in and carries the confidence of our communities? If so, then it is time someone put their hand in their pockets and do some difficult decisions about the investment in courts, about having a court sitting beyond the hours that they currently sit, and about putting investment in both police, prosecutors, sheriff, sheriff clerks, the whole shebang. I would echo that, Calum's points. I think that I come back to the police witness, Schegler. The issue just now is an IT solution, so a lot of the stuff that we would hope would work well is not just now, because the police IT system cannot support the Crown Office Procurator Fiscal system. If we could get a solution for that, which there is one there, which will cost, will take an investment, but for me it is probably an investment that would realise a benefit. What that could do is that the witness Schegler could go online and datamin into scope, which is the database that we use for personnel, and it could see what shifts people are on, so that he could get real-time information rather than it going by email and paperwork, which is clearly inefficient. I think that it is also important to recognise that within policing, we are doing our bit to try and reduce an amount of witnesses who are actually excited for court. Traditionally, police officers have named every single person that they take a statement from within a police report and called them a witness, when the reality of it is that they probably are never going to be a witness and have already heard evidence from our colleagues that there is insufficient time for Fiscal's to read some of these cases in advance to actually take out the unnecessary witnesses. There is work between herself and the Crown on going to educate officers to put people in, name them, but putting brackets that they are non-witnesses or non-witnesses, and that itself should reduce the amount of people who have to attend court. I will also put an example on that point before I come to the other witnesses where they might want to come in. If so much work has been done at the very last minute because of the lack of resources, if there is any plea bargaining or anything like that, or if there are cases that maybe, once you get all the evidence, you decide that it is not going to go forward or that you might be able to come to another conclusion, that is on the day that these people have already been cited. They have been taken away from their leaves, their days off with their family, they have had their shifts changed already, so even if you get the IT system, and I always worry when we speak about IT systems because Scotland seems to have a particularly bad way of doing this at the moment, even if we got that IT system sorted and we looked at that as a focus, that is not going to solve the problems of a lot of the cases just being looked at in the last 24 hours because the IT system might work, but we still have the backlogs there. Maybe on that, because my question to PCS and the FDA was about technology, and you both briefly mentioned technology. PCS, you had quite an interesting point about the contractors that come in to work with some of the technology, but then do not seem to share that information. Did I pick up correct that there was maybe a wastage of funds there in terms of paying quite a lot of money for these contractors to come in to deal with the technology and then only train some staff, but maybe not all staff? The FDA was saying that the benefits may not be realised for months or years, so what is your view on more technology within our court system? Is it the big thing that we are looking for that could address many of our concerns, or is it just a side issue that might make some improvements but not the big change that we need? That first, excuse me. The concerns that we had as a union concerned the IT side of the organisation, and I think that for what we can gather, £730,000 to be exact, it may actually be more than that, from what I'm led to believe, because this is only contractors, including other specialists that they're bringing in in different areas. Our concern has always been to get good value for money for the department, and the difficulty that we have is that there's no knowledge transfer being passed on to the in-house IT staff. We think that there should be contractual obligations to the contractors when they're coming in. We want them to come in and fix the problems that we face, but we also want them to show our guys how it's done, so that that can cut down in future budgets that can maybe bring the levels spent on contractors down. The way I would describe it is that if somebody came in to fix your telling that it was them working, you would ask them what's wrong, and if it was a fairly simple solution, you wouldn't be phoning them out a second time, because you would hope that you could fix it yourself. That's all we're asking for, and for whatever reason, and I don't know why, we do have concerns about this, and I think that the answers that we're getting back aren't sufficient, because the IT guys, dare I say, tend to have a high opinion of themselves and think that they're above other areas of the department, so that's something that we definitely have concerns about. My understanding, we meet quite regularly, both trade unions meet with the director for IT and ISD within COPFS, and the information that he has given us is that and my understanding is that there is a requirement on the contractors that come to us to impart that sort of knowledge transfer that you're talking about. I can't comment about whether in practice that's occurring, but as I say, my understanding is that it is a requirement of the contractors who are used. The other aspect of all that is the use of a contractor for some of the specialist tasks that are required is because there will be certain aspects of the day-to-day running of any IT system that you require to have people on the ground and available every day to be able to respond to. There will be other things that don't crop up every day and it's therefore not considered to be essential to retain those staff on a permanent basis, so you bring them in on an as-and-when needed basis. I think your question about whether we think that the benefits will be realised quickly or not. I think that the part of our submission that you might be referring to were some of the other structural reforms and changes that have occurred in recent time. For example, one of the big introductions that we are awaiting is the introduction of iPads into court. Rather than taking big bundles of files, first of all, we will be taking in an iPad instead, where all of the information will be. In some respects, that may be a different method for them to access that information. Probably the savings relate more to the admin staff who have to spend a lot of time physically putting together bundles of papers for court on any given day. The idea is that that will take place electronically. There are a number of dependencies on all of that operating effectively. I can speak about some of those if you want. I think that, just for the record, it was page 5 of your submission where you said, we know that work continues within COPFS to exploit new technology solutions and streamline work practices in order to deal with the challenges that we have outlined. The continued difficulty for our members is that such a strategy is that any benefit felt in such changes may not be realised for months or even years down the line. I suppose that that maybe goes back to all those people on short-term contracts as well. Why would you come up to speed to develop your use with those new technologies if you are not sure that you are going to be there to use them in the long term? We have welcomed the recent recruitment, which has seen some additional permanent appointments having been made. However, there remains an element of reliance upon fixed-term contractors. Unless and until the organisation is sufficiently resourced to have an adequate full-staff complement, that is likely. Although the pressures remain on their overall budgets, that position is likely to remain. Liam McFulton? I hope that, after his comments about the IT team that Stephen does not go back to the office and find that he is locked out of his email system. I want to go back to some of the remarks that Calum Steele was offering in relation to some of the problems that Calum Steele faces. You have been, understandably, complementary about the professionalism of those in the COPFS system and have acknowledged the constraints that are under in terms of budgets and personnel. However, where you are critical in your evidence, you suggest that COPFS policy decisions directly impact on the capacity of the courts and, by extension, COPFS staff. It primarily relates to cases that are usually, but not exclusively, domestic violence cases, where it is known from the outset that there is not a sufficiency of evidence to secure a conviction, yet the cases proceed regardless. I wonder whether you could expand on that, because it seems to be in no-one's interests for cases to be brought forward, where there is no prospect whatsoever of a conviction being secured, not in the interests of bringing the cases, the witnesses, the victims themselves, or indeed those who find themselves accused. I welcome your further views on that and what we might be able to do to address it. Certainly, and again through the convener, the issue with cases coming to court, and I appreciate that this gets into the policy area of the COPFS, which, for understandable reasons, was not wanted to be touched on earlier on. From a police perspective, we speak with police officers, and we have conversations with them all the time. We know that, in some cases, the police officers were the arresting officers, and they know that, at the time of the arrest or the tension that there was a problem with the insufficiency of evidence, because we are dealing with crime to Lord Advocate's guidelines, not to the Scottish crime reporting standard, which, in its own right, is problematic. Now, these are policy decisions that impact on police demand from the very beginning, and then impact on court demand, and certainly the demand of the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service staff, in marking cases that have no prospect of ever going to court, and then citing witnesses and getting witnesses to court to go through our process that's never going to see a conviction. Now, would I be able to point to specific cases of that? I suspect that the answer is yes. If we look at even some of the reporting now, I think that there was a fairly comprehensive editorial piece undertaken by one of the reporters for the Sunday Post over the past couple of weeks, and that reporter had comments from sheriffs indicating that they have cases that come before the courts, that they know don't have the evidence, that they know they're not going to get prosecuted, but everyone goes through the charade of getting them there because of what appears to be policy decisions. That, for a service, and I mean all services involved in this, is that staff are under pressure for time to go through that rigmarole whilst that might suit a policy objective. It does not seem very pragmatic in terms of utilising the resources that you have to the best. See of discretion, because in terms of point to guidelines, and guidelines by any definition are open when we're assumed to a level of discretion, but from what you're saying here, that discretion doesn't appear to be being exercised by people who are in possession of pretty much all of the facts and therefore should be able to make a judgment that doesn't result in this sort of outcome. Clearly, it would be inappropriate for me to speak for ffiscals, and that would be wholly inappropriate, but I think we heard earlier on that there was a perception, at least that there was a lack of discretion, but if I was to draw a parallel with the police service experience for some of these cases, there is absolutely a lack of discretion. I don't want to distract this general issue along a specific aspect to do with domestic violence, but we have got to a stage now in Scotland where couples, for example, can't have a row in their house or if they do on the police are formed. There is a very strong likelihood that one of them is leaving in handcuffs. There are understandable reasons why the police and Crown Office focus on domestic violence has changed massively over the years. Of course there are, but I suspect I'm seeing tomorrow's front pages already, but are we really saying that we're best served by having situations where families and relationships have the interference of the criminal justice system just because someone happened to phone the police on overhearing race voices? Fiona Ritchie wants to come in on that. I think it's worth saying that in the almost 19 years that I've been a prosecutor, I've never once initiated proceedings in a case where, number one, I didn't believe that a crime had been committed, and number two, I didn't think that there was a sufficiency of evidence. There is not a policy in the world that would direct our members to do such a thing, and there's not one of our members that would do such a thing in those circumstances. I think sometimes there's a misapprehension between the difference between sufficiency and whether or not we might get a conviction is not the role of a prosecutor to secure a conviction in a case. There are many reasons why a conviction might not be the final outcome, but proceedings are still in the public interest. I think it's also worth noting that we have an adversarial system of criminal justice. There are no right and wrong answers in the world of criminal law, a bit like medicine, it's something out of an art rather than a science, and therefore there are often disputes between the crown and the defence as to the sufficiency. There can sometimes even be disagreements between the crown and the police as to the sufficiency. We're all working towards the same goal of ensuring that the interests of justice are served, however, and a suggestion that prosecutors in Scotland are initiating proceedings in cases where there's an insufficiency of evidence certainly is not matched by my experience or that of any of our members and is in many ways an attack on their professional dignity. We've heard this not on one occasion, we've heard it on a multitude of occasions from different witnesses, so I'm really concerned that there is this variance that you're representing. So many people who apparently were hearing feel under pressure to prosecute even when there is an insufficiency of evidence and continue it to court with that insufficiency of evidence for, we are told, to be able to avoid them throwing it out because they don't want to complain. Now that's a culture and it's a culture that we are hearing evidence that's running through the service from defence lawyers, from people who are in the court, from the third sector, from the police and yet the union representing the Crown Procurator of Fiscal don't recognise that? If I might comment here as well and I would support what Rachel has said here and I think there's two issues. I think first of all it's worth noting that our policy on the prosecution of domestic abuse is supported by organisations such as Women's Aid, Rape Crisis and others. It is effectively a zero-tolerance policy and I think in a modern Scotland that's absolutely right that we should have such a policy. I think the crucial difference in what's being described here though is where there is a situation of insufficient evidence and I agree with Rachel, I don't believe our members would mark a case to proceed where there was insufficient evidence. That is different because there is a different test for prosecution in Scotland about whether or not there is a realistic prospect of succeeding in getting a conviction. That may be to do with any number of factors. The attitude of the complainer may be one factor but there are other reasons as well. It would be true to say that there may be cases which proceed to court where there is not a realistic prospect of success in getting a conviction. That is different from saying that there is insufficient evidence. I beg your pardon, the public interest test. That is a matter of policy. You have to determine whether, as a matter of policy on zero-tolerance and tackling domestic abuse, you want to proceed with a prosecution because it's considered to be in the public interest to do so or are you saying that you're only going to proceed with a prosecution where you think there is a realistic prospect of getting a conviction? That's not something that I can comment on. I'm conscious of the time that we are going to have to watch at this point in time Rachel Weir. I'm conscious of the time that I've interrupted you. Is there something that you want to say after Ms Weir has commented? Then I'll bring in Oliver Mundell. But this is absolutely, I cannot stress this enough, fundamental. I don't think the unions can come here on one hand talk about resources, talk about the pressure that their members are under and not recognise what is being told to the committee from such a variety of people who are working on the coalface. Rachel Weir. Thank you convener. Just to follow up on the point that Fiona was making in relation to the correlation, in fact lack of correlation between the tests for sufficiency of evidence and convictions, I think it's also important to remember that prosecutors cannot and should not usurp the role of the court. There are cases where there are questions as to the credibility and reliability of witnesses' evidence and that there might be concerns as to how that evidence might be presented. There might be concerns as to how that evidence might be challenged by the defence where that matter to go to trial and there are questions of very fine judgment that require to be carried out so as not to usurp the role of the court in determining where that assessment of the credibility and reliability of that evidence lies. Those are properly matters in summary proceedings for the presiding judge and in jury proceedings a matter for the jury and it would be wrong of prosecutors to usurp that role and that may be where some of the disparity is seen. Liam, do you want to continue on all of our on this and then the rest of the questions will have to be quite short and short answers? Very good. I wanted to go back to something that Rachel said earlier in relation to the decentralised market and you talked about building up an expertise because of the number of cases that are seen. I suppose that another way of looking at that is that because you are seeing so many, perhaps there is more of a tendency to gloss over the individual differences between those cases and therefore I suppose the question for us in terms of coming up with an ideal system is not to move away from having that central expertise but whether or not you have local marking with the central expertise and put it into it or you continue with the central marking system that better embeds local input then appears to be the case at the present time and I just wondered whether or not you would have a preference for how that gets taken forward because clearly something needs to change at the moment. It is not working as intended and that is not from anybody that has a particular agenda here, just that that local expertise or that local insight in those local relationships is being lost at the moment and I do not think that there is any doubt that we have heard evidence from a wide range of stakeholders on that front. It comes down to a question of resourcing so it is a matter then for the department within the resources allocated to it to ensure that in having a team of that nature it has sufficient resources not only to do the job at hand but to ensure that it has the time to take to spend with communities to hear the local input if that model were to continue, that model were to discontinue, there are any number of options but our organisation has been through a number of periods of change and it is important that we would take time to allow what is a relatively recent change to bed in properly evaluate it before rushing to judgment on what to replace it if anything at all. Was it a supplementary on that, just very quickly in briefing? I just want to go back to the point around insufficient evidence and repeatedly mentioning time and resources and I do not always know that it is through an awareness that there is insufficient evidence. I think that sometimes given the way that the case management systems working behind the scenes, you know, ffiscals have been giving cases without the time to do the full due diligence and are just having to make the best of bad circumstances, which means on occasions they do not have time to properly look at CCTV evidence, they are not having the chance to speak to defence solicitors about defence evidence, they are not having the time or the opportunity to speak to the police about other evidence or information that they might have to contribute to that process. I think that there are definitely cases off of what we have heard that are slipping through the net, where through lack of time, rather than a lack of skill, ffiscals are not able to consider all of the relevant points in deciding whether or not something goes to court. To look at everything really? To look at all the information that is presented to them, you drew an example there about information given to them by the police or might be available that is not in the report. I might question why that is not in the report that is submitted to them, that might be due to other factors not immediately beyond that officer's control. It is also important to remember that the circumstances of cases change over the life of them and what might have been the case. We have had evidence from you today that prosecutors are going into court and they are not prepared because of the volume of cases that they are being asked to take on there. What Oliver Mundell is asking you, could that be one of the reasons that it has not been looked properly? If there is a sufficiency of evidence, so just to make a time limit target, then it is going ahead when it shouldn't. When we talked about preparation time, we were talking about preparation time in the context of preparation of a court for trial or for intermediate diets or other diets of court. What I understood the question to be here, and please correct me if I am wrong, is around drawing from the police federation's evidence, is about the initial decision taken to initiate proceedings and sufficiency of evidence at that stage, which is reliant on a police report and, yes, often is reliant on CCTV, which may or may not be available and may not be available because of factors beyond the police's control because they may not have been able to seize that evidence or reformat it in a way that allows anyone to view it. So we work with the information that we have at that stage, but what I can say and what my evidence is today is that on that evidence, procurators' fiscal would not initiate proceedings if there wasn't a sufficiency. You recognise that there's just as severe a pressure on that process as there is at other stages of the trial, where you've got ffiscals who are trying to juggle multiple cases which are calling alongside the process of reviewing some of that, and when you've got police officers and defence solicitors actively trying to phone ffiscals and are unable to get hold of them, and we heard in another evidence session where they are often trying to go above their head and find someone else within the organisation because ffiscals are coming back saying that they don't have time to make those calls or that they are unable to track down their superiors in the time frames required. Is that not a worry? I think that it's correct to say that the experience of our members is that there are pressures at every stage in the prosecution process, and I wouldn't want to leave members in any state of disillusion in relation to that. It's quite clear that that is a position across the board. That could lead to some cases where the evidence is insufficient just through sheer pressure and volume of cases. Is it not possible at least to conceive that there might on occasion be cases that make it to court where the evidence isn't as it would seem when you've only got a few minutes perhaps to review that? There are cases where the circumstances change over time and new information comes to light. My experience is not the case that prosecutors are taking the wrong decision deliberately or negligently at the end of the case. I wouldn't say deliberately. That's where we are. I think that we're going to have to move on. Mary Fee, if it is very brief, then full convene. I'm grateful, convener. Some of the evidence that we heard before from prosecutors was that they were not allowed to use their discretion and there was almost a direction to prosecute. Is that a scenario that you're familiar with? Perhaps it depends on what particular situation and circumstance you're talking about.  If on the face of a police report there is a sufficiency of evidence, then our instructions are that we mark that for prosecution. Mary Fee, can you keep your questions very tight, please? Thank you, convener. I'll give it just a one question. It's following on from points that others have made anyway. I suppose that's one of the things about coming in a wee bit later on. It was picked up on what Callum had said earlier. I don't think that there can be any doubt at all that this committee has heard from a large number of stakeholders about the increase of domestic violence cases in the court. However, that said, I have to totally agree with Rachel and Fiona that that is what we would expect in a modern day Scotland. I'm wondering particularly probably for Rachel and Fiona to keep the answers as brief as possible what you would think about more robust diversions in terms of those particular offences and what the public would expect in possibly even looking at rehabilitation programmes being brought in at an earlier stage so that certain individuals aren't getting brought through the whole court process and witnesses aren't being brought through the court process at that early stage? I would completely agree. I think that we know that the evidence suggests that there are a number of diversion schemes that can be very effective and have very good results in terms of lowering rates of re-offending. I'm right in recalling that you may have some experience of criminal justice social work. My impression is that criminal justice social work is an area of the criminal justice system generally that has suffered in relation to funding. Our members are willing and able to exercise their power and discretion to divert cases reported to us for systems of diversion, but that relies on adequate resourcing within any given locality to be able to do that effectively. Two very quick and specific points. In relation to the discussion earlier, Fiona Heddy, on a capacity with junior frescals and trainees, I just wanted to clarify one point. It's my understanding that, in recent years—last three or four years—there has been that constraint around secondary trainees being at the forefront of the process, as is necessary for their development, but perhaps overly so. However, there are then not being positions for permanent contracts thereafter. It's my understanding that now there are more permanent contracts available and that expertise is being preserved and developed in a more advantageous way. I would be interested on your comment on that in relation to building capacity going forward. Very quickly, I noticed in your evidence, Gordon Cross, on the reference to your concerns around any exit from the European Union, as that will undoubtedly decrease our capability to deal with cross-border policing investigations such as the use of European arrest warrants and sharing of intelligence in a timious manner. I just wondered whether you could comment further on that. Those are just those two points, convener. Yes, I indicated earlier that we welcomed the recent permanent recruitment of legal staff. Our view, however, is that we simply do not have the necessary staff resource and resilience for us to be able to provide the service that we would wish to provide. I fully expect our senior management to come here and to give evidence and say that they can probably just about manage to deliver the same service again with the same money next year. I have to say our position. I make no criticism of that. That is his job, to manage the department within the budget that he has given. However, if the committee wants to see the sorts of improvements that we have spoken about today and for the standard of service that we would all wish to be able to deliver, and the people of Scotland I think expect, our view is that additional resources are required. We spoke earlier about domestic abuse in particular and I note that our current budget includes an additional element for tackling domestic abuse cases. My own view is that that additional element suggests that the resource would not otherwise be required and we reject that view. I want to clarify that the fixed term contract concerns are primarily around administrative staff. Although there are still concerns around fixed term contracting among junior fiscal, there has been a development towards more permanent positions available. Is that the position or is that not the case? Our members are still recruited on fixed term contracts as well and we continue to have a concern about the use of fixed term contracts for any staff, whether that be legal or administrative. I think that a former Lord Advocate previously said that you cannot just knit deputes. I think that that is true. We need to recruit, we need to develop, we need to train the staff and you can only do that effectively if you have permanent members of staff and not temporary staff who may leave the organisation. That, as I say, does apply to legal staff too. I am sorry that we are going to have to wind up a 12 o'clock deadline. Could you ask the question and the witnesses will give it in writing? I have already asked the question. I have already asked the question. Oh, sorry that someone else wanted to come in. If you are very, very brief. Obviously, thank you for the question. As we can see in Scotland now, we welcome a lot of foreign nationals here and quite rightly so, that itself brings its own challenges in relation to criminality. A lot of the people who come here, we do not know what their backgrounds are. By an exit from the European Union, that could significantly hamper our ability to deal with foreign nationals who deal in crime and also to share intelligence in relation to that. If we put it into perspective, there are a number of cases in Scotland just now that through that good working relationship we have through Europol and Neurojust, we have been able to bring people back to Scotland very, very quickly, which is a victim focus way of dealing with it. If we do not have those mechanisms, and I cannot underestimate the power of a European arrest warrant, if we do not have those mechanisms in place, then the delivery of justice will be significantly hampered across Scotland. Stuart Steane, can you give your question and a written response would be appreciated, thank you. My question is your homework and it is a deliberately naive question. Why do sheriffs allow cases to be scheduled at all in advance of knowing that both sides of the case have indicated that they are ready to proceed? In writing, that would be appreciated. That concludes our questioning. Can I thank all the witnesses for what has been a very comprehensive evidence session? I now suspend to allow for a change of witnesses. I welcome our second panel of witnesses, comprised of Michael Meehan, law reform committee member and Derek Og. You see both from the faculty of advocates. The faculty has provided very helpful written evidence and perhaps I could start off by asking you about some concerns about the de-skilling of the Crown and Procurator physical service, as some senior prosecutors are diverted to serious sexual abuse cases and homicide cases, perhaps to the detriment of other cases in the court, perhaps complex fraud ones. If you could comment that, that would be very helpful. Thank you for inviting us to give evidence. Disclosed interest, I am a former head, indeed, was the first head of the national sexual crimes unit in Crown Office and finished in Crown Office in 2011 as the assistant principal advocate deput. I have experience on that side of the fence. I am currently also today the chair of Justice Scotland, although I do not appear on their behalf. Justice Scotland is the Scottish division of justice UK, a member of the international commission of jurists. With that declaration, you are asking convener about de-skilling by specialising some people in advocate deputes in Crown Office. I suppose one of the starts of specialisation in Crown Office came with the national sexual crimes unit for the very good reason that we wanted to be able to train a cadre of people exclusively in very sensitive investigation and prosecution in difficult cases, so that we built up very quickly a level of expertise. People would be rotated out of NSCU then into the general pool of Crown Office, Crown Council, trial council, but they could be called upon at a later date to do criminal trials in rape cases. So we never allowed any woman to be examined in chief by a prosecutor in a rape case who had not been specifically and expertly trained in that field. Even after they left our little nest and had flown away, we would still have to go back to them because they were badged effectively in that area. For the best of intentions, we were creating a specialist cadre, but we were feeding it back into the system again. I am not sure that de-skilling occurs a great deal at the advocate-depute level. An advocate-depute is a generalist by nature and we should be expected to prosecute any crime that comes along. As any advocate who is defending should be expected to defend any type of crime that comes along. There is concern, though, by the faculty that there are specialist areas of crime that advocate-deputes and prosecutors are not being trained in. It is a stand-alone failing due to lack of time, lack of training resources and that advocate-deputes are not getting their in-service expertise either updated or new expertise given to them. It is fair to say that, as the police have observed, there can be a disparity and perhaps a frustration where the police forces have very specialist, highly specialist units dealing with highly specialist crime and they are not finding an appropriate read across in Crown Office. In terms of non-homocite and non-sexual cases, which are of course specialist cases, the feedback from speaking with advocate-deputes is that they have noticed a deterioration in the quality of cases that come to them to prepare for primary hearing stage. It had been envisaged that primary hearing would be the fine-tuning, but there is more that needs to be done now compared to cases that came across their deaths years ago. One of the things that we have touched upon in the faculty response that echoes what has been said earlier to the committee is the lack of time to prepare cases so that there is no more work to be done, but advocate-deputes are finding that they are being taken away from primary hearing preparation to do other areas. pH preparation is so important because that is when the case is ready for trial. If the time is not ring-fenced, there is a risk that cases that are coming to them and not as good a state as it would in previous years, they will not have the time to bring it up to the standard required. Does that inevitably lead to delays? I am not sure that it does, because given the delay that there is in the court system where trials are fixed six or seven months down the line, work could be identified to be done in the next month or two that would bring it up to speed. What could be said to the primary hearing judge is that the case at this stage is not ready for a trial to be fixed. Had the statutory time limits been met, that trial would be within a month's time. We know, for example, that the forensic report and the phone report would not be ready in a month's time, but if one is operating in a system where there is a six-month delay, the fact that work is being instructed late does not matter, so advantage can be taken of the failure to meet the statutory time limits. John Finnie I would like to ask a question about the role of the prosecutor, presumably, PFR, advocate and deputy, particularly with regard to how much you have made about discontinuing proceedings, where you said that this can be used to a number of factors, but a recurring theme is the blurring of the public interest with the perceived interest or expectations of the complainer. From other sources, we have heard a suggestion that, increasingly, the prosecutor has been seen as the complainer's lawyer. Could you comment on that area and what the implications are, please? John Finnie I think that that is one of the concerns expressed in fact by the Dean of Faculty and an open letter to the Lord Advocate, and we have had a change of office, of course. I think that there is simply a perception problem very often in the part of victims of crime that the prosecutor is their person in court, they are there to get justice for them. The prosecutor has a different role, however, and it is not readily understood, and it might not even, if you put it out to referendum, be agreed by the public as the role the prosecutor should have, but it is, in fact, constitutionally correct. The prosecutor's job is to prosecute fairly in the public interest. If evidence does not match up to the requirements of evidence, by its quality or its reliability or its quantity, so that there is no substantial prospect of a conviction at all, the prosecutor is not there to represent the victim to get the case limping into court under any circumstances. A judgment has to be made in the interests of justice to say that there is no public interest in prosecuting this further. The process of prosecution must not be a punishment in its own right. There should only be a punishment of a person who is convicted following a fair prosecution. Prosecuting people, we mentioned these domestic abuse cases. Again, I have to beg to differ with the representative who made remarks about that. I have had personal experience as counsel where I have been told by fiscal, we simply have to proceed with this. We have been told that we have to proceed with it, and they do not even bother now going to their senior. That might be part of the culture. You do not go to your senior because you have seen, in fact, causing a bit of trouble if you say that that is not going anywhere. However, the real problem is in the failure to precognise complainers very often. Precognition, as you all know, is a process whereby the prosecutor engages precognition officers—not police officers—to take a further statement and say, well, we know that you gave a statement on the night in question when you said this. Now we have heard from your next-door neighbours, and we have got the CCDE camera when you left the grocery shop. What do you say about that? Of course, a person might say, well, I do not remember that.  That would allow the prosecutor at that stage had the precognition been taken to make a judgment as to whether it is in the public interest. Indeed, sometimes to say to the complainer, do you really think that this is a matter that you wish to complain about? Given what you have just told me about, those are the pieces of evidence that we have now discovered. The complainer might well be the first to say, do you know what? Let us just forget this. It has been a terrible mistake. Not taking of precognitions was a purely economic decision by Crown Office of complainers and other witnesses. That was a purely economic decision, because, in my view, precognition officers were being moved on to the task of doing disclosure work, looking at whether matters should be disclosed or not, and preparing disclosure documents in important cases. That is one of the difficulties. There is definitely a perception difficulty. Crown Office needs to advertise more freely to say, we are not a complainer's solicitor, we are the public prosecutor. It is perhaps the issue of the terminology, because politicians like to talk about victims' rights. Of course, it is accused of rights, too. I do not think that the term alleged victim would be very popular, but complainers are the technical term. It is the right term, given that we operate under a system of presumption of innocence. The person can only be a complainer. We call the indictment the libel, and we call it a libel for a reason, because it is a libel until it is proved to be true, because the presumption of innocence exists. So complainers are as good. Sometimes I have had complainers, and I have spoken individually to them, and they have taken offence at it, because they think that I am just saying, you are just complaining rather than you are the complainer about a crime. I think that terminology might sound a bit old-fashioned, but it is constitutionally correct. It relates to the question of disclosure. A very succ phrase where your evidence says, it is hoped that a regime for early disclosure of evidence would obviate the need for consequent delays. Disclosure is still not working correctly. Is that correct? That is the feedback that there are still issues with disclosure. One hears about situations in the course of a trial, matters being disclosed or being disclosed late, so that there does seem to be continual feedback with regard to disclosure not being as good as it could be, and items being added by section 67 notice. That is probably as good a way as any certainly in some cases to test what is happening, because often those are items that, if they are being added to the court bundle late, have been disclosed late. It is not very often where something has been disclosed in good time, and then there has been a delay in lodging it as a production. There is an on-going feedback of an issue with disclosure. Just for the purposes of the record—I know that it may seem self-appart—disclosure of evidence may indeed affect how an accused would plead if it is done timely, with all the avoidance of the consequential process. The legal requirement on the Crown and the separate standalone requirement on the police to disclose matters that might undermine the Crown case or materialist the defence case. We have discovered a lot of decisions on what to disclose are being made at precognition officer level. It is bear in mind that precognition officers are not legally qualified, and I think that it is an enormous burden upon them to require them to make decisions of legal significance, as whether something should be disclosed or not. I simply cannot believe that ffiscals have got the time—the precognition officer having done the exercise—to then look over the precognition officer's work to see if they have been full disclosure. I cannot think that advocate deputies have much time, either, when that case—in serious cases—goes up to Crown office to look at it and say, has this been disclosed, has that been disclosed? It is all being dumped on the precognition officer at the low level to do it. It is critical, and it can result in cases coming to a complete stop when it is done properly, or it can result in people putting their hands up and saying, the game is up, and with exhausted every avenue, there is nothing there for the defence. Forgive me, I do not know where it is and I cannot recall who has told us, but at some point it has been suggested that, while there is a requirement to disclose statements, if the fiscal has sought further clarification from the police service and that exchange has taken place, not by way of a further statement, but by an exchange of emails, there is no requirement to disclose that. And the requirement is on both parties, the police and the fiscal. Thank you, that is helpful. You have highlighted the issue of readiness and touched on the fact that prosecution shouldn't be a punishment in itself. I just wonder, from some of the other evidence that we have heard, whether not just that there are cases that are being delayed as a result of a lack of preparation, but whether there are cases coming forward for prosecution, whether there is insufficient evidence, or where it probably would not have gone to court in the first place if the fiscal or deputy had been fully aware of all of the facts? There is no getting away from the fact that, to master a case and to make a judgment on whether to prosecute a case or not, you need to master it. You have to sit down and spend some hours reading through page after page of sometimes pretty horrendous stuff. I can understand all the comments made about how stressful that job is, but you have to read the evidence to get a flavan to get a judgment for that. The second part of the test is that sufficient evidence is the first part. Is there enough corroborated evidence? The second part of the test is that a realistic prospect of a conviction in this case, and there is an overarching issue in the public interest to proceed with the prosecution. There is no substitute for sitting down and reading the papers. If you are not even going to precognise witnesses to get a deeper flavour drilled down a little bit into the statements that are made at the time, then I do not see how you are able to make effective judgments. Also, people who are overworked do not make good judgments anyway. There is a tendency to say things like an arrow leaving a bowl. Once someone has made a decision somewhere about it, no one wants to interfere with the decision and it just rattles on down the track to ending up in court by accident sometimes, rather than design. I think that there may be a suggestion that because of political correctness or because of zero tolerance that prosecutors were deliberately putting unsupportable prosecutions into court just to punish the man, if you like, by having him experience the prosecution. I do not think so, but I think that there is a culture that does not allow for deep penetration of the case discussion with the complainers, good recognition and good making of judgments. That is not exactly the point that I am getting at. I do not think that it is deliberate. I think that there are a number of people throughout the process who are under such considerable strain that, as you have said yourself, do not have the time to even properly read through a case for the first time. We do not have time to personally review all of the evidence and therefore they are effectively looking at something on face value and taking their best judgment call. However, as part of making that judgment call, there is certainly a possibility in what then becomes a significant number of cases where they are taking the wrong pun effectively based on what they are seeing. I just wonder whether that has a wider ramification in terms of justice. I think that I would super-add to what you have just said. I think that all those considerations that I am expecting to say so are correct. However, if you super-add to that, the default position is generally to say prosecute because then it becomes someone else's problem rather than me having to explain as a prosecutor why I have made a decision not to prosecute. It is easier to say prosecute and it will make its appearance sometime in the future.  There was a little piece of blue paper this size and you would read a rape indictment folder, for example, and you would put it closed. You would put a paper clip on it with this blue piece of paper and write pro-HC rape. That is all the instruction it would be. Pro, proceed, high court rape because you would not want to then do the next step if you decided it should not be prosecuted, which is to do a lengthy note to the Lord Advocate or this list of general for the personal approval of abandoning of prosecution because you might be supported in that, but what happens if you are not? If that is what senior advocate deputies were trepidatious about, imagine that filtered right down through the system. It becomes kind of like defensive social work used to be, you know, that let's not make decisions which could be risky. The same kind of thing can affect Crown Office, I think, where people don't want to make decisions that are risky. It's easier just to prosecute and, as I've heard so many times, some's the cliche, let the sheriff throw it out, not us. One just final question, just to clarify for the record, do you think there's a definite presumption towards prosecution? You're clear that that's the culture that exists within the Crown Office and Procure to Fiscal Service as a whole? No, I wouldn't. Prosecution of... It's a presumption towards prosecution in general when cases are being marked. You were talking about the post-it follow-up... The assumption for domestic justice... Just a culture that is a presumption towards prosecuting in order to, you know, avoid having to make a decision and pass it on. I wouldn't say that, I would say, and I think sexual crime is such a hot potato and it engages so many different of our stakeholders in the system. I think that we've got to take that to one side, but I think in general, certainly at Crown Office, if there's an insufficiency of evidence, that's it filled at the first fence. Unless we can instruct, we can say, well look, we want you to go back, we send a note down to the fiscal, we want you to go back and look for more fingerprints or this kind of DNA or go abroad and see if they've got information on this guy. We can make further inquiries, but if the case is half dead, then kill it. You don't think there's a scenario in which, where people are under time pressure and aren't looking at the case in sort of detail you were talking about before, where they say, you know, it's in the balance or it sort of leans towards proceeding with prosecution, do you think there's a sort of culture there where people would just say, prosecute, let the sheriff decide and sort of not take on that additional workload or? Certainly the Dean of Faculty, and I would agree with him, has expressed the view that that to some extent depends on the level of public interest in the case, the public profile the case has, the political interest that might be in the case and as we've identified the type of case it is, whether it's sexual offences or domestic abuse, zero tolerance type cases. So if there are sensitivities about it, as I've indicated, I think the default, we've observed the default is to say, let the sheriff take it away, let the judge take it away and say there's insufficient evidence. In some cases, as regarded as a win by some prosecutors, if they get it to the jury, they feel, well, we've done our job, we got it to the jury. And it doesn't matter if the jury is out for five minutes and comes back 15-0 for an acquital. We've heard from other people, they will let it go to court to decide rather than take the decision themselves in certain cases. And I u