2. Stewart Stevenson (Banffshire and Buchan Coast) (SNP):
To ask the Scottish Government what benefits Her Majesty’s Prison Grampian will bring to the north-east. (S4O-02503)
The Cabinet Secretary for Justice (Kenny MacAskill): HM Prison Grampian will be Scotland’s first community-facing prison and it will accommodate men, women and young people from the north-east of Scotland. It will provide offenders with the ability to maintain close links with families and communities, which is intended to help them to desist from offending and to better reintegrate with their communities in the north-east and elsewhere on release.
The north-east community will benefit by an additional 40 jobs, which will bring commensurate economic benefit to the local community. There will also be an improvement to the visual image of the area, an increase in local work placements where there is a need for them, an overall reduction in travel time to courts and reduced carbon usage.
Stewart Stevenson: I welcome the cabinet secretary’s comments. Given that the primary objectives of a prison are community safety and the reform of convicts, does he agree that the previous success of Peterhead prison’s specialist sex offenders unit is an excellent base on which HMP Grampian can build?
Kenny MacAskill: Absolutely; I agree with that. There was outstanding expertise at that unit. This morning, I was at the Prison Officers Association conference in Peebles, at which the unit was being commemorated and officers from Peterhead prison were present. Their expertise will be used and shared across the prison estate, and I say on the record that we should all express our gratitude to those officers at Peterhead prison for the outstanding expertise that they built up. I assure the member that those skills will now be shared across the prison estate.
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About Stewart Stevenson
Born in 1946 and brought up in Cupar, Fife, I was educated at the local school - Bell Baxter - and studied Mathematics at the University of Aberdeen, graduating with a modest degree in 1969. That's also the year Sandra & I married. Her family comes from the North East.Thirty years later I retired from Bank of Scotland as Director of Technology Innovation and was elected to the Scottish Parliament in 2001 as member for Banff & Buchan having first joined the SNP in 1961.
I then represented the new constituency of Banffshire & Buchan Coast Constituency in our Parliament. I retired as an MSP on 5th May 2021
I was also previously (2007-2010), Minister for Transport, Infrastructure and Climate Change and (2011-2012), Minister for Environment and Climate Change.
I hold the honorary posts of President of the Scottish Association for Public Transport
and Vice-President of Railfuture UK.I am a Fellow of The Royal Society for Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, a Member at The Institution of Engineering and Technology, a Professional Member of the Association for Computing Machinery, a Member of the Institute of Advanced Motorists and an Associate Member of the Highland Reserve Forces' and Cadets' Association.
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