Nicola Sturgeon has accused the Scottish Tories of "hypocrisy" over their stance on early release of prisoners across the country.
The SNP leader faced stiff questioning on the prison service from Shadow Justice Secretary Jamie Greene, who stood in for Douglas Ross who fell ill before First Minister's Questions.
Greene, member for West Scotland, used his questions in the chamber to probe Sturgeon on the issue of early release in prisons in Scotland.
He accused the FM of ignoring justice and saying the system is "stacked against victims".
However, Sturgeon hit back at the Tories accusing them of hypocrisy for voting against a change in the "reformed release arrangements for prisoners serving long term sentences" back in 2016.
Greene asked Sturgeon: "The First Minister says she doesn’t have a view on this today, but she used to have one.
"In 2015, she said, 'Our objective remains to end the policy of automatic early release as soon as we are able to'.
"So what’s changed?"
"The system that the First Minister now presides over is stacked against victims from the very start. They can’t even get their case heard in court in the first place."
"We now have the worst court backlog on record. It is now sitting at over 43,000 trials scheduled in Scotland, which the Scottish Court and Tribunal Service say may not be cleared until 2026.
"Covid has made this worse - but there were tens of thousands of court cases awaiting trial before the pandemic began, so it can't be used as an excuse.
" First Minister, is justice for the victims of crime even a priority for this government anymore?"
In response, Sturgeon said: "We are investing in a recovery fund investing more than £50 million to tackle the backlog caused by covid.
"We'll continue to work with the court service and indeed the whole justice community to do that.
"Let me go back to the issue of early release because I think the Tory hypocrisy on this utterly breathtaking and let me set out why.
"Back in 2016 this government reformed release arrangements for prisoners serving long term sentences. What that meant was that the most dangerous prisoners no longer received automatic early release and that ended a system that was introduced by a Tory UK Government in 1993.
"So that's the background.
"Why do I think the Tory position is hypocritical today is because when we did that, in 2016, the Tories in this chamber voted against that change.
"They voted against that change that scrapped automatically early release for the most dangerous long term prisoners and that change is not affected by the proposals that we have consulted on.
Greene replied: "The only hypocrisy in this chamber today is the First Minister who said, on record, that she would end automatic early release and now refuses to rule out letting people out of prison after just a third of their sentence."
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