Justice Committee

Meeting date: Tuesday, May 30, 2017

Official Report 664KB pdf

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Domestic Abuse (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1

Item 5 is our second evidence session on the Domestic Abuse (Scotland) Bill. I refer members to paper 4, which is a note by the clerk, and papers 5 and 6, which are Scottish Parliament information centre briefing papers.

It is my pleasure to welcome Clare Connelly, who is from the Faculty of Advocates; Grazia Robertson, who is a member of the Law Society of Scotland’s criminal law committee; Andrew Tickell, who is a lecturer in law at Glasgow Caledonian University; and Lindsey McPhie, who is a past president of the Glasgow Bar Association. You are all welcome. I thank you for your submissions, which are helpful for the committee’s scrutiny of the bill.

I will start the questions. The Faculty of Advocates submission says:

“the criminalisation of behaviours, such as those listed in section 2(3) of the Bill, requires to be contextualised if the legislation is to achieve its aim.”

Will you tease out the distinction between common couple violence and coercive control, which you said needs to be looked at?

There is a substantial amount of international research on domestic abuse. Over the years and recently, an understanding has developed that distinguishes violence and conflict that arise within a couple from domestic abuse. Common couple violence is defined as violence and aggressive language that are used intermittently by individuals when a dispute arises in a couple but which are not underpinned by on-going coercive control. The distinction that has been drawn between such behaviour and domestic abuse has been very much welcomed.

Unfortunately, some people resolve interpersonal disputes by using violence, but such behaviour is different from the underpinning coercive control that is the main factor in domestic abuse. As members know, historically, people talked about domestic abuse as wife battering—that is how it was originally spoken about in the 1970s. Gradually, as time has gone on, domestic abuse—or domestic violence, as it used to be called in Scotland—has come to be understood as something much wider than physical violence that one partner uses against the other. The prevalent features are physical violence and sexual violence, but they may be episodic; what underpins domestic abuse in a relationship is a desire by one partner to control the other. Recognising coercive control becomes extremely important when we look at the victims of domestic abuse who are at the highest risk of homicide, which mainly occurs either when the victim leaves the relationship or after they have left.

In the 1970s, our understanding was that domestic violence was violence between partners to resolve disputes. We now understand that coercive control is the main feature of domestic abuse. That is why, for example, homicide risk heightens when the relationship is brought to an end—basically, it is because the controlling partner cannot handle that fact.

Our concern is that some of the behaviours that are listed could easily occur outwith a relationship that is underpinned by coercive control. Without accurate identification of the context of coercive control, it might become difficult to criminalise the behaviour that the bill seeks to criminalise and to maintain public confidence in what the Parliament is trying to achieve.

Is that linked very much to the provisions on a course of behaviour?

Those provisions certainly go some way towards addressing our concern. The normal lens of the criminal law is a narrow lens—it is single-incident focused. The bill has gone some way towards contextualisation by talking about a course of behaviour.

We realise that the point that I just made is difficult to legislate on. We recommend in our latest submission to the committee that, for the bill to be successful, it must be accompanied by a public and professional education programme. That is the best way to achieve recognition of the distinction that I refer to. Personally, I do not think that it is possible to legislate for it. In an ideal world, it would be great if we could do so but, practically speaking, I am not sure that we can.

Are there any other comments from panel members?

On behalf of the Law Society of Scotland, I agree with those comments, which are mirrored to an extent in our submission. It mentions the lack of clarity, which relates in part to the fact that, as Clare Connelly said, there is no distinction between situations that ideally we would not wish to be criminalised and situations where the criminal law should intervene. That is the difficulty.

As practising lawyers, we see difficulties every day in addressing issues of domestic abuse under the existing legislation. I sit on a committee that is full of practising criminal lawyers, and we are in the courts day and daily. We see difficulties regarding legislation that seeks to protect innocent individuals in a domestic setting. Difficulties that are being experienced even now include witnesses not attending; witnesses attending court and not speaking to their original statement, which seemed to support the allegation; and breaches of special bail conditions. All those situations result from difficulties in the current legislation.

Further investigation into that might shed some light on the dynamic of what is going on in those cases and the other cases that Clare Connelly referred to, which involve people who resort to violent outbursts because that is the only way in which they can respond to certain situations—that is how they are. I certainly do not disagree with anything that Clare Connelly said.

One concern of the GBA is that, if the bill is passed, prosecutors will be faced with a new set of legislative provisions. The GBA’s experience is that, when legislation is introduced, the Crown is understandably keen to use it. There are difficulties in the prosecution of such offences and there are issues of proportionality. Who will apply the reasonable person test? The Scottish Police Federation’s submission expressed concerns about police officers being the reasonable person, which the committee might explore in a later evidence session.

I echo Grazia Robertson’s comments that there are a lot of issues and complications even with the current domestic abuse provisions, which should be looked at closely before we tackle the very complicated area of domestic abuse that is being discussed.

A lot of issues were raised in those opening responses. The course of behaviour, the time over which that takes place and what such behaviour includes are matters that other members will tease out. The issues point to this being a distinct offence.

10:30  

Good morning. I will pick up on reasonable behaviour. Mr Tickle’s submission, in particular, talks about the reasonable person test. It says that that is not a “helpful approach” and that a

“key function of this Bill must be to discriminate between degrees of wrongful behaviour, not ... to distinguish wrongful behaviour from innocuous behaviour”.

Will you expand on those comments and give us a bit more detail on what should be in the bill to completely clarify that aspect?

At the risk of introducing “The Thick of It” this early in the proceedings, I say that my surname is pronounced “Tick-ell”. Everyone gets to call me “Tickle” once.

You have a difficult task in front of you in the sense that it involves discriminating between a wide range of behaviours. The abusive behaviour provision is broad and has to be so, because we are covering a range of behaviours that in one context would be innocuous and in another context would be profoundly problematic. The Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service and the Government have argued that there is a range of checks on that broad definition of abusive behaviour. The reasonableness test is one of those checks, and the accused person can offer that as a defence. I am not sure that defining criminal laws primarily in defence terms is particularly reassuring for the citizen because, to some extent, the burden of proving a defence falls on them.

The key aspect is ensuring that the thresholds for criminalisation are sufficiently high. In my submission, I directed you to the English legislation, which provides that the harm that is caused to the complainer has to be of sufficient severity and have a significant impact on their day-to-day life. There is nothing like that in the bill that would allow us to discriminate between more serious and less serious behaviour, but that would be the best way to ensure that the bill catches the right cases and criminalises those who are guilty, while ensuring that people who are behaving badly and not very pleasantly towards their partners are nonetheless outside the scope of the criminal law when their bad behaviour is not likely to cause significant harm to the complainer. That is the approach in England and it would be sensible to have that approach in Scotland, too.

Would the definition of a significant impact have to be detailed? Where would you start with that definition and where would it end? I am sure that there are many different views on how to define a significant impact.

One could say the same thing about reasonableness. Would a significant impact have to be defined exhaustively? Section 76 of the Serious Crime Act 2015 does not do so; it simply says that the impact has to cause significant or substantial harm or distress. To some extent, that is in the eye of the beholder, but it is a judgment about wrongfulness in context, because the pattern of behaviour is looked at. In most cases—summary cases—we would have to allow the judge to make that judgment; in jury cases, we would have to allow the jury to make it.

Such legislation cannot be exhaustively precise. It is powerfully difficult to define such things. All that we can do is ensure that the decision maker has an eye to certain principles. I suggest that one of the principles that should be taken into account is the seriousness of the harm, and not whether it might give rise to distress, which is the test in the bill. Distress seems to be an incredibly low bar for criminalisation.

Would the police be the first people who would have to judge whether something had a significant impact? If the police were called to a property where an incident had taken place, would they have to make the initial assessment of whether something that was of significant impact had occurred?

Yes, although, equally, under the proposals, the police would have to decide whether the behaviour—or the course of behaviour—that was alleged to have taken place was likely to have one of the listed psychological effects on the complainer. In such a context, that does not seem to be a particularly straightforward task, either. I am not sure whether the task is qualitatively more difficult for police officers to do if they are made to focus on the seriousness of the harm, as opposed to considering simply whether harm has arisen.

Does anyone else want to comment on that?

I imagine that the suggestion that the police would have to assess such a scenario if they entered it is probably less likely in this situation, because the bill’s purported aim is to deal with issues that are on-going over time. It is not supposed to deal with a single, dramatic incident, such as the breach of the peace or the assault scenario, which is more likely to be covered by police officers attending a scene and having to assess a situation.

In our submission, we made the point that gathering evidence about on-going behaviour is difficult. I imagine that it would be unusual for police who had suddenly appeared on the scene to be able to form a view at that time regarding the behaviour.

I presume that, as Grazia Robertson said, it is envisaged that there will have been a continuous course of abusive behaviour. There are issues with gathering evidence in such a situation, because the people who have experienced such abuse will perhaps be extremely reluctant to come forward.

When will the trigger occur? Will it be when another party reports the abuse to the police but, meanwhile, the two parties still live together? What is involved is not like the current situation in which there is a single episode, the police arrive and, if there is a sufficiency of evidence, they immediately detain or arrest the person concerned, who is inevitably kept in custody overnight or over the weekend. It is hard to envisage a situation in which the police will be aware immediately that coercive control is on-going.

There will be difficult and, as we called them, marginal decisions for prosecutors. They have specialist training, but the GBA indicated that it is quite concerned about what the guidelines will be and that it would welcome input from people who represent those who are accused, if that is feasible.

The evidence that we took from people who had experienced such abuse was that the trigger time always seemed to be the point at which they left the relationship. When they reflected back, they saw that a substantial body of evidence had built up.

Yes.

Mr Tickell, paragraph 4 of your submission says:

“Entering into any relationship inevitably restricts the ‘freedom of action’ of both parties.”

That goes to the heart of some of the decision making. Is that surrender of power voluntary or involuntary? Is that where you are trying to take us? Is the voluntary or involuntary character of the surrender a sensible way for the criminal justice system to think about the matter? Relationships are multifaceted; they change over time and are different in different instances. The degree of surrender or trading in of power and exchange for benefit will differ in every household in the country. Does that go to the heart of some of the difficulty?

You could argue that it does. It is certainly worth reflecting on the fact that the definitions of abusive behaviours in the bill run through a spectrum. There are some at the high end of the spectrum—degrading behaviour, for example—that it is hard to see any healthy relationship participating in. Then there is behaviour at the possibly lower end of the spectrum—such as monitoring-type behaviours and making one person dependent on the other to some extent—that even the Scottish Government recognises might capture behaviour that is perfectly commonplace and sometimes benign, although it is sometimes not benign.

I see no way of capturing the broad gamut of behaviour that the bill aspires to capture without having a very broad definition of what abusive behaviour might look like. Unlike the Law Society, my core submission is that, to take that on to an appropriate level of criminalisation, we should have additional tests of sufficient severity. Given the range of behaviours that domestic abuse and coercive and controlling behaviours cover, from doing and saying things to not doing and not saying things, I do not see how we can have a straightforward, clear definition of abuse.

The committee should really think about whether the thresholds in the bill are sufficiently high. I suggest that they are not.

We come to the heart of it: do we need a definition in the bill or should we simply leave it to the courts? I am not sure whether anyone who is in the room was present when we debated curtilage in the Land Reform (Scotland) Bill in 2002. Ultimately, after many months of deliberation, we concluded that it was not possible to define curtilage; we had to let the courts consider the individual circumstances and specifics of each case. Are we back in that territory?

That question is directed not just at Mr Tickell but at other panel members.

I do not think that you necessarily are back in that territory. I am not suggesting by any means that you try to define abusive behaviour exhaustively.

It is worth emphasising that it is the Scottish Parliament’s function and your democratic legitimacy to make the laws. The procurator fiscal is not elected by anybody. It would be inappropriate to insist on a very broad definition of the crime that gives substantial discretion to prosecutors. I suggest that that would be an abrogation of your functions.

The issue of definition raises fundamental questions about European convention on human rights compliance, because the bill as a whole is a significant intervention in the private life of citizens of this country. Under the European convention on human rights, any intervention in people’s private lives must be sufficiently clear, pursue a legitimate aim and be proportionate. In many cases that will not be a problem, but the named persons case in the UK Supreme Court should remind us of the importance of having laws that are sufficiently clear, such that the citizen can understand them.

You said that they should be “clear”, but do you mean “certain”?

I am a lawyer and so I am allowed to quibble. What distinction do you see between the two?

“Clear” means understandable and “certain” means delivering a certain legal outcome. They are rather different things. Clare Connelly is nodding at that distinction and might want to come in.

I would use the term “legal certainty”, because to be convention compliant, a law has to be legally certain. I would use the term not only for that reason. Since its creation, the Scottish Parliament has made huge inroads in improving our legal and social response to domestic abuse: one of the first pieces of legislation to be passed by the Parliament was the Protection from Abuse (Scotland) Act 2001.

If we are trying to both protect individuals and empower them to seek legal protection that was not previously available to them because of the limited domestic abuse behaviours that have been covered by the existing criminal law, legal certainty is very important, in terms of making law that is enforceable and convention compliant and empowering individuals and giving them the knowledge that their lifestyle and the behaviours that they have endured and suffered are not condoned by law, but criminalised by it.

You have an extremely difficult task before you, as I said in my submission. I am by no means suggesting that it is easy. There has to be some guidance, and using a general term, without offering any definition or examples, is problematic. I come back to the point that for the bill to achieve its aim, context is everything.

You used the word “guidance”, but do you mean that in a specific legal sense? Should there be extra-legal writings that inform the courts and the procurators fiscal when they make decisions, or should the guidance be incorporated in the primary legislation and supporting secondary legislation?

It cannot all be incorporated in the legislation. As the Faculty of Advocates has suggested in our submission, an education campaign for the public would be helpful, and front-line professionals involved in enforcing the legislation would have to receive some sort of training. That is something that is well understood by agencies such as Scottish Women’s Aid and the Women’s Support Project, and it is internationally evidenced in research on domestic abuse. For the legislation to be fully effective, it must be backed up by an improved general understanding of the importance of context of behaviours.

I echo Clare Connelly’s comments. I appear daily in the domestic abuse court, and the response from the Scottish Parliament in improving awareness and understanding the dynamics of domestic abuse, the provisions for vulnerable witnesses, the ASSIST—advice, support, safety and information services together—project and specialised courts and training for sheriffs are all hugely welcome.

I wonder whether we are yet at the stage where we should be assessing the impact of the Abusive Behaviour and Sexual Harm (Scotland) Act 2016, which has just come in. It is only in the last two to four weeks that I have seen domestic aggravations appearing on the face of the complaints. The 2016 act says that section 1(1) applies where it is

“libelled in an indictment or specified in a complaint that an offence is aggravated by involving abuse of the partner or ex-partner”.

The offence is so aggravated if

“(a) the person intends to cause the partner or ex-partner to suffer physical or psychological harm, or

(b) in the case only of an offence committed against the partner or ex-partner, the person is reckless as to causing the partner or ex-partner to suffer physical or psychological harm.”

We are talking about contextualisation of offences, and provision has just been enacted for sheriffs to give cognisance to whether the motivation behind the contravention of section 38 of the Criminal Justice and Licensing (Scotland) Act 2010 or the assault is in fact to perpetrate physical or psychological harm. There are many provisions at the moment that are working well. Perhaps those could be refined further before we introduce yet another piece of legislation, which I think that everybody agrees can be problematic.

10:45  

We will cover the definition of psychological harm. We might assume that the coercive aspect is subsumed in that, but, given the discussion that we have had about coercion, perhaps that is where the gap is.

I want to ask about the impact of the bill in relation to children and, in particular, the concerns that the Glasgow Bar Association and the Law Society raised about clarification of the statutory aggravation in relation to a child. Will you expand on those concerns?

The Law Society produced an example. The law needs to be clear in its terms so that everyone can understand it. It is a criminal law, and people should not be able inadvertently to contravene that. The bill must be quite clear about what kind of criminality it is seeking to address, to attack and, hopefully, to form a solution to.

One example that my committee came up with was the fact that the bill acknowledges that children can sometimes be used as a weapon by one party as a way of hurting the other party or controlling their behaviour. Above all, children, as eminently vulnerable people, must be protected. There are other protective and child welfare measures that can come into play in a scenario in which children are being adversely affected by the behaviour of one or both of the partners—both might be at fault. Those protective measures should always be properly in place and working well to protect the children. That is the front line. Those scenarios require not a criminal standard of proof, but a civil standard. People can become involved in helping children in such domestic scenarios without worrying about whether they reach the required high standard of proof for criminal matters.

In the bill, a child is defined as anyone who is

“under 18 years of age”.

When my committee was chatting about that, we wondered what would happen if the couple were 17-year-olds, or their friends were. We could have a scenario in which there was an aggravation because a couple’s young friends were in the house during an altercation between the couple. We assumed that that was not the aim of the bill and that it was to do with younger children, but that is not expressed in the bill. There could be a scenario in which a 17-year-old is on the periphery of a situation—perhaps they have not been given money to go out or something—and are then captured in that aggravation. What are the terms of the aggravation? Are such situations really what the Parliament is looking at? Will people be caught up by chance in a situation where there is an aggravation involving children?

As criminal lawyers, we know the shortcomings of the criminal justice system—it is quite a rigid system, as I was saying to colleagues. It can go for the extremes of behaviour, but it is not good with the subtleties. That subtle behaviour can have a bad impact on children. Civil remedies such as the involvement of social work and the children’s referral system should be the front-line safeguard for children, given that they do not require such a high standard of proof. My hope would be that social work and the children’s referral system would always be rigorous and well resourced and that that side of the situation would be dealt with by well-trained professionals who can enter into an environment and protect children, even in a scenario in which no criminal conviction would succeed against anyone.

Thank you. Would anyone else like to comment?

The GBA also addressed the point that Grazia Robertson mentioned, on which I am sure that the committee will have had submissions from the Scottish Children’s Reporter Administration.

My understanding is that currently there are fairly rigorous provisions. As I mentioned, under section 67(2)(f) of the Children’s Hearings (Scotland) Act 2011, there can be a ground of referral without there being a criminal conviction; it only has to be established, on the balance of probabilities, that the child has been in a house in which domestic abuse has occurred. For example, I understand that in the situation where a partner leaves a relationship in which there have been recorded incidents of—though not necessarily convictions for—domestic abuse and forms a relationship with a new family, the fact that there have been previous recorded incidents will form an automatic ground of referral.

There are fairly strong provisions at the moment. However, the children’s reporter might feel that there is a gap, and in its evidence to the committee it might say that the current provisions are not stringent enough.

In their submissions, some of the children’s organisations said that the provision about the child being in the house was not strong enough. They asked whether that meant that the child had to be in the room or whether, for example, it was enough that they were listening in the bedroom and could hear the abuse happening. Would you like to see specific clarification on such points?

Clarification is always welcome. I know that this will probably not answer Rona Mackay’s question, but we observed that, even without specific legislation, a prosecutor will always draw such things to the court’s attention. Where children were in the house, sheriffs will certainly take a very strict view of an incident occurring in their presence, whether or not they heard the abuse or were even in the same room, and that would always influence a sheriff’s disposal.

Thank you. To go back to your point about 17-year-olds, would you advocate putting a limit or threshold on the age?

I am here on behalf of the Law Society of Scotland. In our discussions, we did not go into suggestions as to how the bill could be altered. We looked at it from the point of view of perceived difficulties, problems and anomalies.

On the point about children being present in the house, there would presumably have to be some way of establishing that the perpetrator of the crime knew that they were there. It would be invidious to have an aggravation that could conceivably mean an increased punishment for someone without their being aware of that scenario. Regard must be given to how a case would be presented in the course of a trial in a criminal court setting, and what evidence would have to be led to establish the aggravation. We took the pragmatic view that the protection of children in such scenarios is paramount. We asked ourselves how we would best protect them, and our view was that front-line measures such as social work involvement and referral to the children’s panel would be best suited to dealing with such scenarios, rather than there being an aggravation in the form that is in the bill.

Okay. Thank you.

I want to add one thing. There is substantial research that has shown that children who hear domestic abuse are often more adversely affected by it than are those who see it. What is evidenced is that children who hear but do not see abuse become much more distressed, because they cannot see how badly their parent is being injured. If we are trying to control children’s distress at exposure to abuse, the value of making a distinction between their being in the same room or not is not supported by the evidence.

Rona Mackay touched on a couple of the questions that I was going to raise, and she has made important points on them. In other legislation that we have looked at, we have discussed the definition of a child, and the panel has just answered my question on that, too.

I found the submissions of Children 1st and the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children interesting. They said that the aggravation should go further, to recognise that, where children live in a domestic abuse situation, they are inevitably victims of that abuse. Regardless of whether they see or hear it, it will have an impact on them. The submissions also list all the studies that have been done on that. Would the wider impact that they mention be recognised under the bill?

The aggravation provision in the bill allows that to be taken into account. The information required as to whether it is appropriate to have the aggravation—such as knowledge that children were present—will be before the person who marks the papers and the person who will prosecute the case. The bill can make only so much detailed provision for that aggravation and, as drafted, it allows flexibility. I agree with my colleagues about the civil provisions, but I would expect agencies that represent children to be keen to have an aggravation attached to the criminal offence where children were present. The research results on the impact on children certainly support that because, although children are not direct victims, they are consistently secondary victims of domestic abuse in a household.

I would also like your views on the requirement to consider non-harassment orders. A lot of the written submissions that we have received agree with that requirement. The evidence that we have had so far indicates that non-harassment orders are not issued frequently. What are your views on that? At the moment, a lot of people have to resort to the civil process to get action.

I was an academic before I went back into practice and went to the bar, and at that time Kate Cavanagh, Jane Scoular and I evaluated the Protection from Abuse (Scotland) Act 2001. As part of that, we looked at access to, and breach of, civil protection orders, and it became clear that the provisions that existed at that time meant that, before a prosecutor could move to get a non-harassment order, they had to be able to show a course of conduct and behaviour. Because the narrow lens of the criminal law meant that, generally, one incident of domestic abuse was prosecuted, it was not possible to show a course of conduct and therefore the prosecutor could not move for a non-harassment order. When I later worked with Rhoda Grant on the Domestic Abuse (Scotland) Bill, we suggested that the requirement for showing a course of conduct be removed from the bill, and that was done.

I believe that a non-harassment order should be available. In fact, it should be compulsory for sentencers to consider granting a non-harassment order, because women routinely cannot secure civil protection orders because of the contribution levels that are required under civil legal aid. A person who perpetuates domestic abuse, who is charged and who goes to court might access legal aid more easily than someone who is seeking protection. Given what we know about the trigger for increased violence and the increased risk of homicide where a person has left or is trying to leave a relationship and is taking formal steps to seek protection, it becomes extremely important that we join up our legal response to that in criminalising behaviours and, at the same time, offering the necessary protection.

Clare Connelly and I have discussed the issue of non-harassment orders previously. Clearly, they can be a very effective measure, but one of the issues that the Glasgow Bar Association raised in its written submission is how the measure will operate in practice. At the moment, there can be many situations where people appear from custody and plead guilty immediately. I think that it is envisaged that, as part of the inquiry and investigation that the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service and ASSIST—the advice, support, safety and information services together project—will have carried out, the complainer will be asked whether they wish to have a non-harassment order. However, there could be a situation where that view has been sought on the Friday night and the accused appears from custody on the Monday and pleads guilty in court. If the view at that point is that a non-harassment order is welcome, the question is whether it should be put in place immediately without any further inquiry.

Often, the complainer’s views are the most persuasive issue, and that is very problematic when a non-harassment order is made. We said in our written submission that, as far as we can see, there is no provision at the moment for the recipient of a non-harassment order to ask for a variation of it. On numerous occasions, we have received letters from solicitors acting on behalf of a partner who has been the victim of domestic abuse to say that they wish the non-harassment order to be removed. However, there is no provision in the Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995 for them to make an application; it has to be done by either the prosecutor or the solicitor acting on behalf of the accused person.

11:00  

Sheriffs will obviously be very considered in their approach, but issues could arise when there has not been sufficient time for the views of the complainer to be sought after a period of time. Clearly, in cases where there is a record of domestic abuse, it might be immediately apparent that an order is appropriate or that the complainer is seeking one. Quite often, an application is made after a criminal justice social work report has been prepared, and the prosecutor and sheriff have time—as does the accused—to reflect on whether an order is appropriate. I worry that, if sheriffs are to be faced on every occasion with the decision on whether to make a non-harassment order, they might work on information that is new without even the complainer having had the chance to consider whether he or she wants it. Once an order is in place, it is strictly enforced. That is more a point about the practical application.

Clare Connelly is right that a domestic abuse interdict can be achieved under the Domestic Abuse (Scotland) Act 2011, and for that there does not have to be a course of conduct; one incident is sufficient. However, there are issues of funding for that.

The written evidence that we had from the charity Children 1st said that it would

“welcome an amendment to the Bill to include a mandatory duty on the court to consider whether to impose a non-harassment that includes the children in all cases where the statutory aggravation in relation to a child is applied.”

Evidence that we received from the NSPCC says that it heard from the bill team that

“there has been at least one domestic abuse case in Scotland where a court ... made a non-harassment order covering children”,

but the order

“was subsequently overturned in a civil child contact case.”

The NSPCC was of the view that

“it must be in the authority of the court within this legislative instrument to consider making a non-harassment order in respect of children”

and that, when that order is made, it should be recognised by the civil courts as well.

My personal impression is that there is an issue with non-harassment orders to do with when they are and are not granted and how they are implemented and enforced. I have spoken with the agencies who are keen to have the provision in the bill, and their main complaint appears to be that not enough orders are being made and, when they are made, they are not effective enough.

My initial view, as a criminal lawyer, is that we should look at what is happening and whether there is an issue regarding the orders, rather than seek to incorporate them into another act when more offences may come to light. I wonder if there is an underlying problem in how the orders are being implemented. People think that there are not enough orders, yet when they are there, people do not find them effective. If there is an issue with the orders, the bill will not necessarily assist matters.

The question of the effectiveness of civil protection orders is complex. What do we mean by “effective”? Do we mean that the orders are effective in stopping an abuser being abusive, or that they are effective in empowering the recipient of the order? Quite substantial international research shows that the main benefit from civil protection orders is that they empower the recipient, because a formal external process has said that the behaviour is wrong and should not happen again. Women—it is predominantly women—report that that is one of the big benefits for them.

In the worst or most extreme situation of an estranged partner who, as a result of having lost control, is going to carry out an act of homicide, a non-harassment order will not change that. Let us be honest: an order will not change that extreme violence.

When we interviewed women, they told us that the difficulty was that they went to court and tried to get a protection order, but they could not afford to pay their contribution to civil legal aid because they were bringing up the kids on their own with no financial support from the estranged partner. In such situations, it is difficult to justify to someone why they cannot get protection under the law.

Undoubtedly there will be mixed views on how effective non-harassment orders are. Certainly, some time ago, we were told that, when orders were breached, police officers who attended would say that there was no corroboration for the event that breached the order. There has been a bit of misunderstanding there. As I said, if protection orders are not being granted when they should be granted and breaches are not being appropriately responded to, that is a training issue rather than something that requires legislation.

To respond to Mairi Evans’s question, if the aggravation in relation to the child is there and children are to be regarded as victims, they should be afforded the protection of a non-harassment order, for the same reasons as those that I gave for protecting other victims of domestic abuse.

Thank you.

Victims of coercive behaviour more or less told us that non-harassment orders were pretty useless, because if children were involved there would be contact orders, which would inevitably bring them into contact with the abuser. Perhaps Ms Robertson is right. The issue is complex and there needs to be further investigation—probably outside the scope of the bill—of how non-harassment orders are operating in practice.

My colleagues have probably covered the principal issues in relation to the bill.

Concern has been expressed that the Government has not taken the opportunity in the bill to acknowledge the wider context of violence in a domestic setting. Violence can be perpetrated by children against their parents or grandparents, for which we use the generic term “elder abuse”. Is there justification for excluding that type of abuse in a domestic setting, because it is different from the abuse that we have been talking about this morning? Would its inclusion complicate the implementation of the legislation?

I understand that there is a distinction between domestic abuse among partners who have or have had an intimate relationship and violence that is perpetrated by children against parents or elder abuse.

Elder abuse would not necessarily mean violence; I presume that the term covers controlling behaviour and all the rest of it—that is, all the serious abuse that happens and the distress that is caused between partners who have an intimate relationship. I wonder whether we are missing a trick by not including elder abuse in the bill. Would doing so make implementation more difficult, because such abuse is regarded as very different from abuse of a partner with whom there is an intimate relationship?

I understand that one reason for the bill is that the national definition of domestic abuse in Scotland includes a lot of behaviours that are not yet criminalised. My mind is turning on elder abuse, and I think that things such as misusing money are covered by the existing criminal law. They are not the same issue. Perhaps you can assist me by identifying specific behaviours that would arise in respect of elder abuse and which are not already covered by the criminal law, as there are in respect of domestic abuse in intimate relationships.

The concern came through in the evidence that we received. I think that the overwhelming majority of respondents to the broad consultation on the provisions supported a narrower focus. That might be precisely for the reasons that you suggested. However, we are opening up the scope of the law to deal with controlling behaviour, and I am not sure whether such behaviour is currently covered in the context of elder abuse, when it is not covered in the context of abuse between partners in an intimate relationship.

Let me suggest an example. Let us imagine that two maiden aunts live together—I used to have a couple who lived together and who had a happy relationship. If one such person was systematically coercing, controlling and otherwise abusing the other in a way that was outside the scope of the criminal law, that would not be covered by the bill.

Perhaps you also have in mind the English definition, which is broader and covers family members—not just children, but cousins who may be living in the same house. The fundamental question is: if coercive and controlling abusive behaviour is worth criminalising in relationships of an intimate character, why is it not worth criminalising in other contexts, too?

Scottish Government civil servants told the committee that they felt that it was appropriate that domestic abuse should be a distinct category of wrong. From a purely personal perspective, I am not really sure why. If abuse is very serious but it occurs between people who happen to live together and do not have a sexual or romantic relationship, I am not sure why that should be categorically different, and not criminalised by the criminal law, from abuse in a domestic partnership, which would be criminalised.

Are there current examples in which the nature of a relationship has impacted on the way that the courts have dealt with a case?

I do not know if this will assist you at all, but the Law Society has considered the issue of a specific focus on intimate partner relationships, and we came to the view that, in the spirit of equality, the English approach of narrowing the focus is really to be preferred to the Scottish approach. As Andrew Tickell said, if coercive and controlling behaviour is wrong and is to be criminalised, it should be criminalised equally in other domestic settings in which it appears.

I presume that the difficulties in gathering evidence are the same in a close domestic relationship as they are in an intimate partnership. The issue is the distinction that is made, with special pleading for special cases of people. I know that some organisations feel that that is an appropriate way forward, and that domestic abuse is a special case that requires its own tailored response. I understand their view, and they are representing a particular group of people—that is their function. However, should not a provision of the law apply equally to others who may suffer from the same type of behaviour under other circumstances and who also find themselves in a situation in which evidence is difficult to gather?

In the way in which the English law is currently being implemented, are courts approaching different instances in different ways? Are there issues with the thresholds, as we discussed earlier, or have those been resolved in relation to the law as it applies in England and Wales?

I guess that it is too early to be able to comment. One issue that we raise in our submission is the difficulty, when a number of legislative provisions come in one after the other—for example, the provisions in the Abusive Behaviour and Sexual Harm (Scotland) Act 2016 came in last year—of assessing the efficacy of one individual provision rather than all of them together. Simply by getting cases through the courts, it would be a bit premature to form any view as to how the English provision is working out.

My understanding is that the English legislation came into force in December 2015. Thus far, as far as I am aware, very granular data has not been reported. Overall, looking across England, one comment that has been echoed in the media is that the provision is not being used very much. It has been used in cases that are not predicated only on the complainer’s evidence but in which, for example, the police find a tracking device in the complainer’s car and there is strong corroborative evidence or communications data that reflects regular contact between the alleged abuser and the complainer.

In Scotland, of course, corroboration issues are even more important—as a matter of law, we have to produce corroboration for a prosecution to proceed. Those are the kinds of cases that are being taken under the legislation in England, but it is difficult at this stage, for the reasons that were just set out, to undertake a systematic review of its use.

We should not forget that section 76 of the Serious Crime Act 2015 extends to those who

“live together and ... are members of the same family”.

My final point is on definitions. Lindsey McPhie spoke about the references to intent and recklessness in the Abusive Behaviour and Sexual Harm (Scotland) Act 2016. You have all, in your submissions, expressed concerns about the definition of reckless behaviour. Do those concerns remain, despite the fact that it appears that existing legislation refers to those things, or is it again too early to tell how the provisions in the 2016 act will be viewed by the courts and implemented in practice? Are there particular concerns arising from use of that definition in the bill?

11:15  

I think that you said that most of the submissions are concerned about the definition of recklessness. Section 38 of the Criminal Justice and Licensing (Scotland) Act 2010 mentions behaviour that

“would be likely to cause a reasonable person to suffer fear or alarm”

and a person who

“is reckless as to whether the behaviour would cause fear or alarm.”

Sections 38 and 39 of that act deal with threatening or abusive behaviour and stalking. Glasgow Bar Association’s particular concern is about the bill criminalising even omissions, and people potentially being convicted of recklessly failing to do something. That encapsulates our concerns about the very broad nature of the types of behaviour that could be captured, including even “reckless” omissions. I know that we perhaps focus on the most extreme minor examples, but the difficulty is that the umbrella of the legislation would cover all those situations.

Could the bill avoid opening up situations that could be viewed far too broadly?

The straight answer to that is that the bill could be made to say that the offence would have to be committed intentionally rather than recklessly.

Is that view shared across the panel?

Yes.

I go back to the offence in section 76 of the Serious Crime Act 2015. The mens rea component of that is that the accused

“knows or ought to know”.

It is maybe worth stressing that, in Scots criminal law in general, mens rea is assessed objectively: we do not try to make windows into men’s and women’s souls. Rather, we try to draw inferences about what they must have known, based on their patterns of behaviour.

It might also be worth stressing that “recklessness” is used in a range of criminal offences and is not a new term in the law. It means something more than negligence; it is often described as complete disregard for the circumstances and implications of what was done. Perhaps that suggests a higher threshold than the word “recklessly” might imply in common language. I do not see a particular problem with making the crime one of both intention and potential recklessness.

Good morning, panel. I have a question for Mr Tickell about his concerns about the term “reasonable person”. I know that that has been touched on previously. If two officers are sent to a dwelling house and make a judgment, is that the judgment of reasonable people, which will be followed by the reasonable judgment of the officer at the place of custody? Is not that, in any case, an intrinsic part of the existing arrangements?

That is true. My particular complaint or concern is to do with the use of “reasonableness” as a defence, in that a person could defend their behaviour if they could argue that it was reasonable. The point that I tried to make was that some behaviour might be unreasonable but not worth criminalising, whereas “reasonableness” is also used in the earlier part of the bill to determine whether a reasonable person would think that the abusive behaviour was likely to cause the complainer harm. I think that you are asking about the second of those two issues, whereas I was principally talking about the first in relation to defence.

This question is particularly for the court practitioners. We understand that, under the existing arrangements, police officers might be called to premises and detain a party, and a decision might be taken at some point in the process that further inquiry is merited, so the person might be released. That has given rise to a number of fairly high-profile historical abuse incidents in which patterns of behaviour—particularly violent behaviour—by offenders over a number of years have resulted in salutary sentences. If the bill progresses amended or unamended, would that approach be taken in relation to coercive behaviour—which we all, I hope, appreciate needs to be addressed?

The domestic abuse taskforce has a joint protocol with the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service. That protocol determines that, when officers attend a domestic abuse incident, the investigative response will be more akin to a murder inquiry than the old response was, which was to walk the man around the block and then put him back in the house.

Now the assumption is made that there might not be anyone who can speak to the evidence, and there is a much more proactive gathering of evidence from neighbours and so on. Moreover, the focus is very much on ensuring safety in the situation instead of allowing it to perpetuate.

The difficulty is that we have always had in Scotland the requirement for corroboration, which can be very difficult in relation to domestic abuse because it is a classic case of an offence that is committed in private. As John Finnie will know—indeed, he alluded to it—the police tactic has been to investigate proactively whether former partners have been subjected to the same types of behaviours. That allows a prosecution to be brought that includes charges in respect of a number of complainers, which in turn brings into play something called the Moorov doctrine, which allows corroboration to be found in the separate individual complainers. That has been very successful as a policing tactic, but it would not be wholly accurate to say that it is popular among individuals doing defence work—if I can say that.

I should make it clear that I was not putting myself forward as a spokesperson in that respect.

In any case, one would expect that style of policing and evidence gathering to be replicated.

Of course, no one is going to phone up the police and say, “I want to report a course of coercive behaviour.” The call would be driven by an individual act.

Clearly, if the level of investigation is to be enhanced to deal with a range of domestic situations, that will have significant implications for the resources that are needed to underpin investigation.

There are already significant implications for resources with the operation of the current system and range of offences. Budgets are being curtailed, and difficult decisions are being taken. I point out that great steps have been made in specialist domestic abuse courts, and domestic abuse cases are given priority in trial fixing to ensure that they come to court more speedily and witnesses are not left hanging around and waiting for ages. However, making them a priority inevitably means that other cases fall down the list; indeed, some totally fall off the edge and are not prosecuted at all, because of the view that some offences need not be brought into the criminal courts and can be dealt with elsewhere.

However, pressure is building in the existing system. That is not say that the bill should not go ahead, but it will inevitably put additional pressure on a system that is already suffering. Of course, that is no reason not to do it, but it is something that everyone should recognise.

Indeed. Also, the pressure to carry out detailed inquiries does not necessarily result in what a complainer would see as a speedy response to their concerns.

You must also remember that the bill envisages cases in which the complainer, as we would call them, or the victim—the person whom we believe is being subjected to the crime—might not give evidence at all, and may not support the charge. The bill gives the opportunity to bring to court cases in which other parties or sources are relied on for the evidence, which becomes difficult.

What are your concerns about that?

One can envisage a situation in which a person might be convicted of a crime in order to protect another individual from that crime, but that individual has not given evidence to support what has been said about the behaviour and does not accept that she is the victim of the crime. She has not come to court and given evidence. The bill says that the case does not have to rely on the evidence of the victim herself or himself. Such cases might well not happen—I cannot think of scenarios in which one could gather that much qualitative evidence without the individual herself giving evidence of what she has experienced. However, the bill envisages a scenario in which it would not be essential to have evidence from that person.

I presume, though, that that sort of provision would be pivotal if the complainer was incapable of giving evidence for whatever reason—mental incapacity, illness or whatever. It would be important for criminal law to intervene in such circumstances, if there was a known problem.

I presume that that is why the provision is in the bill—to deal with situations in which someone is so psychologically damaged that they are not aware of how they are suffering or, indeed, refuses to accept that they are suffering, because they consider the behaviour to be acceptable when, by anyone else’s reckoning, it is not. However, how such an offence might be evidenced becomes even more problematic.

It is probably worth stressing that it is much more likely that far more cases will arise in which there is not much more than the evidence of the complainer, and the case does not proceed, however ghastly and tyrannical the partner has been. In that sense, it is always important to remember that in criminal law interventions we have to take into account corroboration and the wider evidential rules, which impose significant restrictions on the capacity of any criminal law to prosecute crimes that take place in private. We see that with rape conviction rates and are already seeing it with crimes of domestic violence being covered by laws on assault and on threatening or abusive behaviour.

This has already been touched on. Is there an opportunity for the civil law to provide protection if there is insufficient evidence for a criminal prosecution? We have heard that there would be resource implications from that and implications for access to criminal legal aid.

You would have to use a number of the civil orders—with the inherent problems—that have been referenced by a number of members of the panel.

The police are likely to face much more complicated investigative procedures. The defence will then have to respond in kind, which makes defence of such charges difficult and time consuming. The definition of the offence is “a course of” coercive “behaviour” and the bill mentions “relevant effects” of making people “dependent ... or subordinate”. We can envisage a situation in which the accused person would not be readily advised that there will be limits to the admissibility of the evidence that they might wish the defence to lead, because under the definition in the bill, that accused person could rightly want to introduce a lot of evidence about the day-to-day activities in their relationship. There would, therefore, be additional effects for every aspect of the criminal justice system, including the defence.

I appreciate what Andrew Tickell said about corroboration, and I know that it is some people’s bête noire, but remember that one of the main tenets of the criminal justice system is that the accused is convicted only when the court is satisfied beyond all reasonable doubt, which is a high standard. It is an inevitably high standard in any good system of criminal justice whether there is corroboration or a range of other safeguards or protections. A higher level of proof has to be surmounted—although it is different in a civil case.

Thank you.

The COPFS submission goes to the heart of the sufficiency of evidence and the corroboration aspect. It says:

“Potential evidence may be available from a range of sources including friends and family who may not have directly witnessed the behaviour of the accused but may be well placed to give evidence on the ‘relevant effects’ this has had on the victim.”

When we were trying to get our heads around the bill we heard good evidence from victims about isolation and being cut off from family. Will you comment on how that would play out? Would such evidence alleviate some of your concerns?

I imagine that that could alleviate some of the concerns about evidence from third parties, but it could also open the door for third parties to bring their own prejudices, complaints and perceptions about the relationship that might not be accurate. That is why it would have to be put to the test in a criminal court setting. There could be problems and benefits in relying on third-party evidence in such cases.

There are also issues around admission of hearsay evidence. Primary hearsay is allowed in courts as evidence of something being said by A to B, but that, in itself, does not speak to the truth of what is being said. We allow hearsay evidence to a certain extent, but not to speak to the truth of the matter.

If we are going to ask family members, for example, to give evidence about a family member becoming more and more isolated, rather than about what they saw as direct eyewitnesses, we are in danger of asking non-expert witnesses to express opinion in court, by asking them to describe their perception and then to express an opinion of what that amounts to. We have very strict rules and we do not let witnesses do that: only expert witnesses are allowed to express opinions. It would be very difficult.

11:30  

I suppose that I was thinking that if someone said explicitly that so and so did not welcome them and did not want them to visit, that would not be an opinion—it would be a statement of fact that the person was isolated. Would that count as evidence or is it still hearsay?

You are absolutely correct that someone can say, “She didn’t want us to visit,” but if the witness then goes further and says, “That happened because he told her we weren’t allowed to visit,” the second part is opinion. It might be quite difficult to manage that in a court setting, but it is the role of the judge to manage such things and to ensure that the evidence rules are followed. However, reliance on such evidence—you can understand why it could become very important—might make it difficult for civilian witnesses, who are not trained lawyers, to understand where the limits of their evidence should lie.

Ben Macpherson is next.

Thank you, convener, but I was going to ask about recklessness and that point has already been covered.

I want to come back briefly to the issue of the aggravation in relation to children in section 4. Barnardo’s and Children 1st have both raised concerns around the way that the issue is described, discussed and drafted in the bill. I want to focus specifically not on the issue of a child witnessing or hearing abuse but on cases in which a child is used in the commission of the offence, particularly if a very young child is used by an ex-partner to perpetrate and continue psychological behaviour towards the child’s parent. If a young child does not fully understand why they are being used but they are perpetrating abuse, they are a victim but they are also being used to continue the abuse. Should there be something else in the bill on that? Are you content that there is enough in the bill to reflect the issue, or is it captured somewhere else?

Sorry—maybe you can clarify one point so that I am clear. Do you mean scenarios in which, for example, one partner poisons the outlook of the child in respect of the other partner—where they turn them against the other partner?

No.

Because that is criminal in some jurisdictions, interestingly.

No. I mean where a child is used quite specifically to continue psychological abuse by behaviours and different ways that the child is used.

The bill focuses on the abusive behaviour of the accused person and behaviour can be acts, omissions, things said or things not said. Given that extremely broad definition of behaviour, which includes doing things and not doing things, I suppose that it is hard to see why that would not already be covered under the provisions.

I want to go back to the situation in which the victim is not the complainer and test what that really means. Surely we have lots of examples already in which the victim lacks legal or practical capacity, as a child does in other parts of the legal system. There is nothing novel about the victim not being able to be a complainer that particularly informs this debate, is there?

That is correct. The difficulty here is that depending on the incident, you can have actions or activities that you are seeking to show are criminal that, of themselves, would not necessarily be criminal but that would become criminal in a particular context, and I would have thought that the person’s evidence would be very useful in seeking to prove that. I am not saying that it is impossible to prove it by other means, but it is an inherently difficult charge to prove—the responses from legal contributors have indicated that. Therefore, it will be difficult to get evidence to support the charge. It will not be impossible but it will be difficult and it may be resource intensive and lengthy, with no guarantee of a conviction at the end because the standards that have to be met are high. It will be difficult but not impossible.

There is an added difficulty if the one witness who is vital in cases of breach of the peace or assault in domestic settings is not there. Generally, such cases in a domestic setting are heavily reliant on the evidence of the individual who has been subjected to the crime. Therefore, it is an extra difficulty, as it were. That is not to say that it will be impossible to bring such a charge, but it will be more difficult because the offence is wide-ranging and incorporates both behaviour that is not necessarily criminalised at the moment and behaviour that is already criminalised, such as threatening and intimidating or violent behaviour, and is covered by existing legislation.

There is also a risk that, if the victim is not prepared to be a complainer, they could end up as a witness for the defence. The prosecutor would have to consider that—

It could, inadvertently, make matters worse for the individual.

That is correct.

The low bar issue has been raised in relation to various definitions. The first of those is the definition of

“a course of behaviour which is abusive”.

The Faculty of Advocates says that the definition

“avoids criminalisation of single isolated incidents”

as it talks about such action taking place on at least two occasions. However, the Law Society points out that there is no indication of

“what gap in time might be reasonable”.

Two incidents could conceivably happen on the same day.

Or, conversely, years apart.

Yes. Will you comment on that? Is that insurmountable? How can we address that low bar?

I think that the Law Society raised the issue simply because, when we discussed the matter in committee, we noticed that the policy memorandum talks about a pernicious, sustained, on-going course of conduct that can be as damaging as any violent assault because of its pernicious and continuing nature, perhaps over a long period of time. In trying to express that, however, the bill says that the conduct must take place on a minimum of two occasions.

There seems to be a bit of a contradiction between the bill’s initial aim and the inclusion of the minimum of two occasions, which does not seem to marry up with the idea of conduct that is continually pernicious over a period of time and systematic in wearing down an individual, as it were, which is perhaps what people would normally understand by the terminology “coercive” and “controlling”, because it is on-going—not high level or dramatic on any one occasion, but continuous. I think that the policy memorandum uses the word “pernicious”.

Is there any other way to address that? For the people from whom we took evidence, the behaviour continued over a number of years. Interestingly, in every case, it happened once they were married—they might have been in a relationship before, but it started many years later.

It would be interesting to get Mr Tickell’s thoughts on distress, as you have particular concerns about the low threshold.

If you look at the language that is used in the bill, you will see that “abusive behaviour” has to cause “physical or psychological harm”. Read simply, that sounds like a pretty substantial test. However, if you go into the definition of psychological harm, you find that it includes the traditional criminal definitions of “fear, alarm and distress”. It strikes me that distress is not used in other comparable public order statutes that we have seen. Also, distress is a fairly low bar for criminalisation. It is quite easy to cause somebody distress; causing someone fear and alarm seems to be categorically different.

The word “distress” is included in the English legislation, but it is qualified by the word “serious”—“serious fear or distress”—so we are talking about a threshold of seriousness. If you told me that I look fat, the chances are that I might be moderately distressed about that. I do not mean to trivialise the matter, but that would be a distressing thing. Distress seems a low bar, and if the bill is about the kind of serious cases in which people’s human integrity is undermined by their partnerships, it seems unnecessary to incorporate such a minimal threshold in the bill. If it is about catching cases that are not criminalised at present but deserve to be, the term “distress” merely drags in a whole set of behaviours, given the broad definition of abuse, which may well impact on the credibility of the legislation by casting its net far too broadly. I would argue that that is very problematic in a statute that has a maximum penalty of 14 years in prison.

So, for example, if I were to refer to you as “Mr Tickle”—

That would cause profound distress. [Laughter.]

A final aspect concerns psychological abuse and the “reasonable person” test. There was some concern over whether a reasonable person would be able to identify or recognise what is psychological. Would that need expert witnesses?

We were of the view that there could be situations in which the only way to establish the psychological impact would be to call an expert witness to speak to that, particularly if the complainer was not supportive of the prosecution. It is hard to envisage a situation in which the complainer does not give evidence but the court is able to establish psychological distress.

It might go back to the wider definition. You do not need to be an expert to recognise fear, alarm and distress in that context, which might weigh against the requirement to have expert witnesses. In many breach of the peace cases you do not have expert witnesses explaining to sheriffs or juries what fear and alarm looks like. In a sense, you are using a lay definition of the distress that is likely to be caused to the complainer.

There is a final point on procedure in the bill, which is that the accused should not be allowed to carry out his own cross-examination.

The Faculty of Advocates strongly supported that mirroring of the provisions that we have in sexual offence trials, where the perpetrator is not allowed to conduct their own defence. That is so that there is not an opportunity for further distress to and abuse of the complainer.

Did everyone concur with that point?

Yes.

There was a concern that in a case of a reasonably high worth, in which an individual was unable to carry out their own cross-examination but was unwilling to instruct a solicitor, there might be pressure on legal aid budgets. Is that right?

I think that we made that point. It is something that one would have to be alert to. As criminal lawyers, our initial response was that it is not a situation that we come across very often—people in summary cases saying that they want to represent themselves. If it were to happen, we can see that it would cause distress, but given that the bill will eliminate that option, we felt that it was appropriate to raise the point that if someone was manipulative enough to wish to carry out their own cross-examination in court, in order to make life a misery for the person over whom they wished to exert power, then another way of subverting the system—for people who are quite calculating by nature—would be to refuse to engage a solicitor. Then, a provision would have to be invoked to allow the court to appoint a solicitor for that person. Realistically, there is the possibility that by doing so, the person would have legal representation free of charge.

We just wanted to raise that point as a practical consideration—somebody might subvert the system in a different way, by getting a free lawyer to do their trial for them.

Did you work through that to see whether there is a possible workaround, or would any workaround cause more serious problems in other areas?

It would need to be looked into. I am not sure that there is a real risk of it happening, but it might happen. There is already a provision to allow court-appointed lawyers in sexual offence cases, if someone refuses to engage a solicitor or, more commonly, has sacked their solicitor as a way of creating more mayhem in the system.

I am not sure how often that provision is used and I do not know how successful it is in its current setting. The criminal law committee could not really say what impact it might have in the new setting.

That concludes our line of questioning. I thank all of you for your evidence, which has been immensely helpful to the committee.

I will suspend the meeting briefly to allow for a change of witnesses.

11:45 Meeting suspended.  

11:49 On resuming—