Meeting of the Parliament 12 June 2014
Christine Grahame made a comment about a turf war. There was no intention on our part to suggest that there was a turf war. A progression took place between the passing of the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 and March 2006, when Cathy Jamieson announced that £2 million of criminal gains would be reinvested in areas of Scotland that were hardest hit by crime. Those funds were targeted at local authority wards in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Inverclyde, North Ayrshire, Renfrewshire and West Dunbartonshire to show young people in those areas that crime did not pay. We are pleased that, in 2007, the SNP Government decided to take on that initiative and to build on it and expand it.
Seven years on, we need to ask whether the cashback for communities programme can be used in an even more effective way than it is being used at the moment and whether more proceeds of crime can be seized. As John Pentland pointed out, across the UK only 0.25 per cent of the proceeds of crime are recovered from criminals and only about 2 per cent of confiscation orders are paid in full, so there is a lot more that we could get our mitts on, as Annabel Goldie put it. As others mentioned, it is estimated that serious organised crime costs the Scottish economy about £2 billion per annum, but last year we managed to seize only £8 million of that. There is general agreement that we could do more in that regard.
A number of colleagues raised concerns about the lack of information and the correlation with communities in which the highest percentages of children and young people are living in poverty. I think that that is the point that Patricia Ferguson was making. One in three children in Glasgow lives in poverty, yet Glasgow receives only slightly more than the Scottish average per 10,000 young people. Surely an area where there is significant deprivation should get more than areas where a smaller percentage of children live in poverty.