Hansard

I will happily come back to the member on that. Detailed negotiations are taking place at local level, and there are different policies in place across the eight different CJAs. I will respond to the member after the meeting, because there are sensitivities around the negotiations with employees.

I turn to transitional funding and the longer-term funding position. Ensuring that partners build their capability and capacity to work together to achieve improved outcomes is critical to a successful transition to the new model for community justice, so the Scottish Government has established a transition workstream and a post in COSLA is leading on that. To support the workstream, a working group meets regularly and is taking forward much of the work plan for transition. The group has representation from the Scottish Government, community justice partners, people with convictions, COSLA, CJAs, community planning partnerships and the third sector.

A wide range of transition work has been done so far. Indeed, I spoke at a national event for stakeholders at Murrayfield last autumn, where 120 people from all over Scotland gathered to discuss the common outcomes and national strategy for community justice.

At the end of January, one of the key milestones for CPPs was the preparation of transition plans. The transition plans are focused on the structures, governance and resource arrangements that the partners intend to put in place to implement the new model locally. The plans also set out each authority’s plans for engagement and involvement with the third sector, service users, people with convictions and communities on local arrangements, planning and delivery in 2016-17. That preparation work will help community justice partners to prepare their first community justice plans by January of next year. I am pleased to say that nearly all the plans have been shared, and comments will be provided with a view to further supporting a successful transition.

On resourcing, to help build capability and capacity locally, transitional funding of £1.6 million has been paid for 2015-16 and confirmed for 2016-17. That money is split equally, with each CPP receiving £50,000. I have encouraged COSLA and its members to supply us with evidence of how it is using that transitional funding, as that will reveal whether there are any bottlenecks or constraints that we can help to address. I invite them to do that, because it is important that we know whether they are experiencing problems in meeting expectations with the resources that we have provided. We have a one-year funding settlement this year, but after the election whichever Administration is in place will have the opportunity to take a longer-term view in light of the next spending review. Our intention is for the funding to be available for three years, commencing in 2015-16 and ending in 2017-18, but that position will be reviewed following the election.

The third sector also has an important role to play in the planning, delivery and evaluation of community justice and has been granted transitional funding of £50,000 per annum for three years through the criminal justice voluntary sector forum. Again, that is subject to the outcome of the next spending review.

As far as the on-going funding for community justice partners is concerned, the Government’s position is to consider and reflect on the evidence on how the three-year transitional funding is being used. I picked up the fact that members across the chamber want to ensure that we help the third sector in particular to deal with the year-on-year chase for funding, and we are looking to review that as part of the review of section 27 funding. A technical advisory group was established to consider the work of developing a new formula for section 27 funding to replace the current one. A move from an annual system of funding to a three-year funding model is one of the issues that are being considered by the main funding group. The advisory group reported to the main funding group in December, and following discussion between the Scottish Government and COSLA recommendations will be made to the joint Scottish Government-COSLA settlement and distribution group. It is intended that the new funding formula for section 27 will go live in 2017-18. We are looking at the context of three-year funding cycles in that discussion.

I turn to other points that were made. Alison McInnes, Elaine Murray and Graeme Pearson all spoke about the need to give the judiciary and communities confidence in community sentences. Community justice Scotland has a particularly important role to play in leading on the preparation of evaluation evidence, disseminating that evidence and giving confidence to all parties that community sentences have an effective outcome and can be more effective than custodial sentences in driving further improvement in that area.

I thank Graeme Pearson for his potentially career-limiting remarks on my engagement with Opposition members in the chamber; I am very grateful for his kindness.

To pick up on Alison McInnes’s point, I have very much tried to reflect the spirit of the amendments that were lodged and to ensure that we did not lose anything that was good in them in trying to tidy up the wording.

I thank Margaret McDougall again for raising the issue around victims and families. That was, of course, supported across the committee. That was an important intervention, and I hope that it will help to strengthen the bill and build buy-in from wider communities for the bill and its intentions.

The intention is certainly to continue to review the implementation. I assure Graeme Pearson that, if I am fortunate enough to have a role, the Government will take very seriously its responsibilities to ensure a smooth transition. My successors will certainly do that if I do not have a role.

I take the point about the marginalisation of primary prevention. I understand that Margaret Mitchell made a sincere point, and I hope that we can in due course convince her and others who are concerned about that matter that, through the guidance and the work through the justice board in ensuring that community justice Scotland works alongside other partners, how secondary and tertiary prevention work alongside primary prevention strategies such as the youth justice strategy will very much be looked at. Obviously, the justice board has a key role in ensuring the implementation of that strategy.

I certainly agree with Roderick Campbell, Alison McInnes, Graeme Pearson and Gil Paterson on the need for community justice Scotland to develop a rapport, to take a strategic view, to lead in a strategic way, and to provide advice and support where they are needed and when they are requested. I very much hope that that model will develop.

I welcome the support for the bill’s objectives from across the chamber. The bill provides the legislative basis for the new model for community justice in Scotland and establishes a new national body—community justice Scotland; places specific duties on statutory partners regarding the achievement of community justice outcomes; and introduces a national strategy and an outcomes, performance and improvement framework. It is a good bill, and members can be satisfied about the role that the committee and the chamber have played in making it strong.

The bill brings together a number of elements, but what we are really talking about is addressing the underlying causes of offending behaviour in a strategic and collaborative way so that people who have committed offences are supported, as Gil Paterson and others have said, to be responsible contributors to our communities. That, in turn, makes our communities safer and stronger. That is what matters to me, and I am sure that that is what matters to members across the chamber. I therefore urge members to support the bill so that we can begin the work to deliver its objectives of reducing future offending and making our communities safer.