Section two The third year – an overview Military detention Progress has also been made for the service custody facilities operated by the British Armed Forces. These facilities are used to hold military personnel who have offended against military or criminal law for up to 14 days. The government has indicated that it will invite HMIP to inspect these facilities with a regular programme of inspection commencing in 2013–14. This inspection programme will be limited to service custody facilities within the UK but, in the longer term, the NPM will be seeking to ensure that all such facilities, including those on UK military bases around the world, are monitored. Crown Dependencies and Overseas Territories We welcome the government’s proposal to extend OPCAT to the Isle of Man, a British Crown Dependency. Detention monitoring already takes place on the Isle of Man and the government is looking to designate the organisations responsible as additional members of the NPM. The government should now consider what role it should play in implementing OPCAT in respect of other Crown Dependencies or British Overseas Territories. Progress is being made towards the full and effective implementation of OPCAT in the UK. We urge the government to recognise that implementing OPCAT is an ongoing process and one that should be kept under review, particularly for places of detention not subject to regular monitoring by an independent body with statutory rights of access. Detention monitoring in Scotland There has also been a significant and positive development with independent custody visitors in Scotland, who visit detainees held in police custody. Custody visitors in Scotland were not designated separately as members of the UK NPM but instead were involved in the NPM’s work through their membership of the Independent Custody Visiting Association, an NPM member that operates primarily in England and Wales. Although operating with government support, Scottish custody visitors did not have a statutory basis for their work. This changed with the passing of the Police and Fire Reform (Scotland) Act 2012 by the Scottish Parliament. This placed custody visiting in Scotland on a statutory footing and set out visitors’ rights of access to detainees in police custody. The 2012 Act also explicitly stated that the purpose of custody visiting is to meet: ‘the objective of OPCAT, that is, the objective of establishing a system of visits … to places where people are deprived of their liberty in order to prevent torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.’ This is the first time that any monitoring body in the UK has had OPCAT referenced in its statutory framework. The 2012 Act also provides for visits to police custody by the SPT, another first. The NPM contributed to government and parliamentary discussions about the custody visitors and had recommended that they be placed on a statutory footing. We are, therefore, pleased at these legislative developments and hope that custody visitors in Scotland will be designated as a member of the NPM in their own right. The NPM has also contributed to discussions in Scotland about the monitoring of prisons and the role of prison visiting committees. In Scotland, each prison is monitored by a visiting committee made up of volunteers. These committees were not designated as members 15