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Abusive Parents (PE997)
Good morning, everyone. Welcome to this morning's meeting of the Public Petitions Committee, which is our 19th meeting in session 2. I have received apologies from Jackie Baillie, Campbell Martin, Charlie Gordon and Rosie Kane. On behalf of the committee, I express our sincere condolences to Rosie, who lost her father at the weekend. She has now lost her mother and father within a few weeks. We all express our sincere sympathy to Rosie during this very difficult period.
I am the assistant editor of The Scottish Sun. This summer, an extraordinary letter was delivered to our women's editor, Yvonne Bolouri. She is an experienced journalist who is sensitive to women's issues and she normally deals with such issues herself. However, on July 26, she saw fit to bring that letter to my attention. It was written by the lady on my right, who, for legal reasons, we have referred to throughout the campaign as Sarah Campbell. That is not her real name. She wrote a harrowing letter about her experiences in front of the family division, involving her four children and her ex-partner.
Thank you very much, Mr Cox. I open it up to committee members to ask questions of Mr Cox and Sarah Campbell, so that we can get to the crux of the matter.
Sorry. I should have mentioned this. Sarah has made the effort to come along today and has left her four children with her mum. She desperately wants to have her say; therefore, I would be grateful if the committee could include her in the discussion.
Absolutely, and when members ask questions I will give her a lot of latitude in answering them.
Good morning and thank you for lodging this important petition. I agree utterly with the sentiments that you express. By way of explanation, might Sarah like to go through some of the details of her circumstances and tell us of the avenues that she explored, how she sought help and why those avenues failed?
I met my ex-partner 12 years ago—I was only 16 at the time. From the minute I met him, I was basically raped, abused and beaten. I had no friends. I was always pregnant. I was sexually exploited. Only in the very latter stages of the relationship did I manage to tell a friend that I had been put in the boot of a car and taken to the woods, where I was raped and assaulted by my ex-partner.
That is very helpful. From which agencies did you seek help? I can see that you feel utterly let down by the courts. That is a matter for the courts and we cannot reasonably discuss it. Did the agencies that you approached help you?
Women's Aid was the main agency that helped me. The social work department cannot help me because I do not have a drug addiction and I am not depressed. Unless I have a psychological problem or some addiction, I cannot have help from the social work department. However, it sends a woman as a befriender so that I can offload.
It is bizarre that social work cannot help you when you and your children are apparently in physical danger. Why cannot social work help you?
I do not know. As I said, social workers told me that because I have no emotional problems or addictions and because the courts are dealing with the situation, they cannot step in.
Thank you—that is helpful. We may ask you more questions in a minute.
I will make a point that Sarah might not make. Before we stepped into this maelstrom, I wanted to be absolutely sure that we were dealing with a person of totally sound mind—a responsible citizen—and that she had the backing of her legal team. We could not say so in the newspaper, but we have spoken to her legal team, which thinks that the court has treated her appallingly. We have done as many checks as the police would on Sarah's personal circumstances. What she says is not only true, but inexplicable.
It is inexplicable and bizarre that the social work department has refused to become involved.
I thank Peter Cox and Sarah Campbell for presenting the petition, which gathered a phenomenal 1,893 responses. Sarah, you told John Scott of your experiences and how let down you felt not only by the court, but by the social work department. You are here by yourself, but do you represent just the tip of the iceberg? You have spoken to Women's Aid and presented the petition. Do such situations unfortunately tend to be swept under the carpet? Do people need to be brave to bring forward such cases?
Lots of women out there are in these circumstances and sex offenders are getting court-sanctioned access to their children. The children are being abused, but charges cannot be brought against the abusers, either because the children are too small or because there is not enough evidence. The cases are dropped, which means that the fathers or mothers can reapply for court-sanctioned access. Access is granted and the kids are put back into the same situations.
How did your ex-partner get access to the kids?
A contact centre took on the access.
How do you feel when the contact is made? Do you feel that there is more pressure on you and more torture?
Yes. If I do not comply with the court and do as I am told, I face being in contempt of court and being put in jail. I am forced to take the children to the contact centre, and even there I am harassed outside by him and his family. I have to go in the back door just so that my kids can get into the place.
I want to follow that up and go back to the social work circumstances. Obviously, something must be happening to the children emotionally, regarding the abuse that you mentioned they go through. What state are the children in when you get them back?
I have two children with special needs. Nineteen months ago, it was thought that they were severely autistic, but after a year of being away from the man, things changed. Liam is my second youngest and all that he did was scream and rock. He could not go out. When he walked down the street, he was petrified by the cars and noises. Jack, my second oldest son, was also thought to be autistic. The psychologists and specialists who have been involved concluded that the children are not autistic but that damage was done to them from being in the circumstances that they were in.
You have been very brave to come to the committee this morning and I applaud you for that. Of all the petitions that we have considered, yours must rank as one of the most concerning.
No.
Convener, it is an indictment of our society that a mother could be in such a state and not have support in the community. [Interruption.] I am sorry, convener.
Okay, Helen.
Yes. I am not saying that you should take away fathers' rights. There are fathers out there who are genuinely good fathers and there are mothers who are just as bad as some fathers can be with regard to abusing children. However, when it comes to convictions, especially of schedule 1 offenders, the case should be investigated and judged on its merits. Assumptions should not be made. There has to be more investigation into the background and the people involved.
Yesterday evening I had a meeting with my local Strathclyde police division, in which I received a briefing on the multi-agency risk assessment committee—or MARAC—which it has set up to ensure that all the agencies that would be involved in a case such as yours are talking to one another and that women are not being left to endure the kind of pressure that you are enduring without the involvement of those agencies. I was told that in that one division, 600 women are being assessed by MARAC and that 100 have been assessed as being at severe risk. You would be in that category.
The police have already alarmed my house and I have lights. The council has put a six-foot fence around the garden, so that he does not abduct my children.
The police told me last night that those are the kind of things that they put in place when they have assessed someone as being at high risk. MARAC involves the health board and social work department and, where necessary, it can involve other agencies of local government. How could you not have been supported by social services, given your circumstances? Was any explanation given as to why social services could not get involved?
The only explanation that I have been given is that I am a good mother and am coping really well with the situation, so social services have no concerns for the children, because they are in safe hands. They would step in to help only if I was not doing my job as a mother.
So you were given an explanation. It was not that the opportunity for social services to become involved was missed; they considered your case but decided that there was no requirement for them to intervene.
Yes.
That is disappointing.
Thank you for lodging the petition. I congratulate The Scottish Sun on taking it up. Having considered the petition thoroughly in consultation with your solicitors, can you tell us which area of law is not working? Where is the really sore bit? Where is the bit that is not serving Sarah Campbell adequately?
I am not sure—I do not think that anyone at The Scottish Sun is sure—whether it is the legislation or its application that needs to be tightened. I have had formal talks with officials from the Justice Department. They said that in their view there is a discrepancy between what they would like the sheriffs to act on and what they are acting on. Sheriffs' training is somewhat lacking when it comes to these specific incidents. Most of our sheriffs are men; perhaps they do not have the experience that would give them access to their softer, female side.
What I am saying is, notwithstanding your inability to come to a conclusion on which part of the law is not working—it is not necessarily for you to do that—would you be prepared to make some of the paperwork available to the clerks? I am sure that you will have consulted the most eminent solicitors for advice and it would be a help if you could let us see some of that, if you have not already done so, because it would give us pointers in the direction of where the law is failing women in Sarah Campbell's situation.
I will certainly do that, but I would like to point out that there seems to be a slight intransigence within Ms Jamieson's department. I had a meeting with some of her aides at which I asked for help. I said that we were dealing with highly specific law and that we would like a digest, in layman's terms, of what the new law covered so that we could pick through it as a newspaper rather than as lawyers to identify whether there were any areas that we felt could be improved for the mothers concerned. That was promised me by Monday, but it has not arrived.
From your inquiries, can you tell us whether there are other agencies to which women in similar situations should be going? Sarah Campbell was unable to detail any such organisations, but perhaps that was because there is none.
There is none that I can think of for women in Sarah's circumstances. I cannot speak for all 1,893 people who got in touch with my newspaper. Undoubtedly, some of those cases fall by the wayside and might not involve people who are as deserving as Sarah, but as she points out, it is extremely hard to bring up four children—two of whom are difficult to bring up—when they rely just on their mum. The agencies do not seem to want to know when someone who behaves as a proper citizen needs help. That may be to do with a failure in communication, rather than the following of a series of logical steps.
Just for clarification, when the court was deciding on access, was any support provided by the social services or other agencies or was any advice given to the court?
No. According to social services, they could not get involved because it was court-sanctioned access.
Were the social services aware of the circumstances of your partner?
Yes. Since my former partner was 15 years old, he has been known to Billy Armstrong, the top man in social services. Billy Armstrong knows about my former partner's circumstances, his convictions and any investigations that were done on him when he was a young man. The social services would not get involved.
I find myself in a dilemma because I would have imagined that the court or the sheriff at the hearing would have taken all the advice that was available and would have come to a decision that was contrary to the one that was made. It seems strange that the decision that was taken was contrary to the need to protect the children and you. Where do we go from here? We would expect the court to dispense justice in favour of the abused, but that did not happen.
Surely that assumption is precisely why we are here.
What happened seems very strange.
I want to go down the same track as John Farquhar Munro. What you have said in the petition is eminently sensible but, like John Farquhar Munro, I am quite confused. If the children are suffering—as was obviously the case—the court has a duty to protect them from the abusive parent, whether that parent is male or female. You are saying that although two of the children are difficult, no record was kept of the circumstances relating to the case and nothing was presented to the court before access was granted.
Social work reports and psychologists' reports that explained the man's nature, his deviances, his convictions and the way that he thinks were handed over to the court, but in spite of the recommendations at the back of those reports, the sheriff was adamant that he would grant court-sanctioned access.
So even though the evidence—to which John Farquhar Munro alluded—on the effects that access rights would have on the children was before the sheriff, he still deemed that it was okay to give access.
Yes. Family members failed to tell me away at the start what kind of person I was dealing with, or who he was.
The four requests that you make in your petition are eminently sensible for the protection of children. However, if we made the changes to family law that you suggest, but a sheriff decided that somebody should get access to their kids, the legislation would not matter. I imagine that we would need further legislation to deal with cases in which the sheriff said that access was okay. Perhaps that is where the training part of the petition comes in—that might deal with that issue.
My personal theory, which is nothing to do with The Scottish Sun and has never been expressed by it, is that the high-profile campaign by Fathers 4 Justice has, I suspect, led to a teensy-weensy politically correct knee-jerk reaction by some sheriffs to bend toward fathers when such situations arise in court. That may be a worry that could be ironed out fairly quickly. That may be one factor.
I am always worried about legislating to force sheriffs or judges to make decisions. The independence of the judiciary in Scotland is held in high regard and politicians would be frowned on if we legislated to tell sheriffs how they will or will not find in a court of law. Occasionally, we should take the sheriffs out to get a cup of coffee so that they can wake up and smell it, but the reality is that although we can legislate on some matters, we cannot legislate to tell sheriffs how they will find once the evidence has been presented to them.
That point was made, but the breadth of the response to the petition shows that something is wrong. We could not go through every response and ensure that the process was date sensitive, but many of the cases were current. I believe that something is wrong. We put it no higher than that, but something did not happen to protect nearly 2,000 mothers and their children. It is difficult to put one's finger on where the issue lies. Scottish Executive officials explained the situation that the convener set out. They feel that their new legislation is probably adequate, but that somehow its nature is not being carried through in the administration at sheriff court level. That was the Executive's position, although it was off the record.
I suspect that that might well be the case. It is down to the judgment of the court to apply the law. That is the difficulty that politicians have when we read your newspaper when, on occasion, it highlights decisions that are made in the courts. Public outrage is understandable, as is the request that we do something about such matters, but the issue is out of our hands, because of the independence of the judiciary.
That is true. However, sheriffs have a lot of leeway. It is common sense to introduce something into the legislation to specify that, should an accusation of abuse that involves children be made, the process should stop at that point so that the matter can be investigated outwith the court, after which the case can go back to court for the sheriff to make a decision.
You are saying that, while that process is taking place, we should err on the side of caution and deny access.
Yes.
I take the point that you make about the abuse of children but, given the horrific and, I presume, verifiable details of the sexual abuse to which Sarah Campbell was subject, I should have thought that it was reasonable to extend the same approach to the abuse of women in circumstances as horrific as those that have been outlined here today.
Not totally, although that point was made. I will explain what I meant by intransigent. The Justice Department is pleased with the new legislation. I was not pushing at an open door, but it took on board the point that something is going wrong. I am sorry to use that vague term, but I am not a lawyer and have not been through all the sections of the Family Law (Scotland) Act 2006. The department took on board the point that we are letting people down somewhere.
I would like to make some recommendations. We have heard a harrowing tale, and I agree with John Scott that we need as much information on the issue as we can get. The fact that the petitioners are willing to share with us the 1,893 letters that they have received is welcome, because that will enable us to get to the heart of the matter. I agree that we must place equal emphasis on women and children, because really caring about what happens to people is a measure of our society.
I agree with the recommendations that Helen Eadie has made. Given my concerns about what you have said this morning about social services' lack of willingness to become involved, I would like to hear the views of the Association of Directors of Social Work in Scotland on the issue. I would like to know what role it sees social workers playing in relation to such cases. If they are partly responsible for producing the information that forms the basis for decisions, I would like to know why they feel that it is appropriate for them to step away from circumstances such as those about which we have heard this morning. Social workers have a vital role to play in ensuring that courts are aware of the potential harm that can be done to people such as Sarah Campbell and her children.
I endorse what you say utterly. Is there an organisation of social work directors?
Yes; the Association of Directors of Social Work.
That is perfect. I also suggest contacting Victim Support Scotland. The petitioner is obviously a victim of a variety of crimes and it might be interesting to know how many people are in similar circumstances. Victim Support Scotland is a national organisation of great value, but I do not know whether its records are held centrally.
We will write to all those organisations and get responses from them. Before we do anything else with that information, we will give it to the petitioners so that you can give us your views on those responses and highlight any concerns that you have about them. We would welcome your comments so that we can then deliberate on the replies that we get from those organisations while bearing in mind the petitioner's position and the very harrowing circumstances that have been outlined here this morning.
Blessing Oneself (PE1005)
Our next petition is from Harry Conroy on behalf of the Scottish Catholic Observer, calling on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Executive to ensure that the act of blessing oneself does not result, in any circumstances, in a police investigation or criminal proceedings. The petitioners have submitted completed coupons representing support for the petition from approximately 1,500 Scottish Catholic Observer readers. Harry Conroy will make a brief statement to the committee in support of his petition. He is supported by Gerard Gough.
Thank you, convener, and I thank the committee for giving us the opportunity to present our case.
Thank you, Harry. You have outlined a clear perspective on the issue. I have witnessed the circumstances that you have outlined and I was greatly concerned by the reports about a football player being questioned because he might have caused offence by blessing himself. I took the matter up with the Crown Office myself and I was reassured by it that the specific circumstances did not relate to the Celtic goalkeeper blessing himself but related to other gestures that he had made. It has to be said, however, that some of the complaints that were made against Artur Boruc were in relation to his blessing himself. They were dismissed, but other complaints were upheld. It was for that reason that the procurator fiscal wrote to him.
Any person would have to be daft to do that. I do not think that they would end up getting charged; they would end up getting killed. If they were to do that, they would be abusing the prayer; they would not be making the sign as a prayer. However, the fact that that was seen to be provocative would say something about the people who were marching. If they were not bigots in the first place, they would just say, "What's that guy doing?" I would point the finger at the people who are the bigots.
I have tried to research the matter myself.
There is a case of a Celtic football player blessing himself at a Partick Thistle game and getting booked for it because it was liable to cause upset.
It was a Partick Thistle player.
That was a Partick Thistle player who blessed himself as he left the park and was criticised for doing so because he did it in front of Rangers supporters.
Yes, but the question is who decides that. If I blessed myself before a meal or, through tradition, as I walked past the front of a chapel and somebody took offence at that and accused me of provoking them, how could I prove that I did it in a reverential manner and not to provoke them? When the police come and somebody is jumping up and down, pointing their finger, the person who made the sign gets lifted.
I am trying to think of scenarios in which I have seen that happen. I have seen people, in certain circumstances, using the sign of the cross in a provocative way. At Celtic park, I have seen people turn towards the Rangers supporters and bless themselves, finishing off the gesture with a gesture that in no way could be associated with the sign of the cross. I have seen it and other people have witnessed that type of irreverent use of the sign of the cross. Are you saying that that should never be criminalised?
As Cardinal O'Brien said earlier this week, every time we talk about sectarianism, we immediately link it to the old firm. However, the stats from the Lord Advocate show that most sectarian abuse takes place away from football. As you will know, a Catholic is five times more likely to be attacked. We must keep sectarianism in context, not treat it in an isolated form.
I take on board the points that you make and I totally endorse the position that Cardinal O'Brien took the other day in relation to the statistics that were released. However, we are talking about whether making the sign of the cross should never be an offence. I live in the west of Scotland and have witnessed people using the sign of the cross in a provocative manner, and it has caused me offence to see them doing that. Should that not be considered an offence?
I do not think that it should be considered a criminal offence. Why is it provocative? It is provocative only if the people in front of whom it is done are bigots, although that does not excuse someone using a prayer in that way.
That is a fair point, but it is not what your petition is about.
I guess that I was fortunate: I was brought up in Stenhousemuir in the central belt and did not have to deal with these issues when I was a child. However, I now live on the east coast of Scotland and am very aware of the issues that the convener has mentioned.
Gerard Gough, who is accompanying me this morning, covered this story for the newspaper. What the Crown Office says in that answer is only a repetition of what it said to us.
Ultimately, the procurator fiscal will make a determination on that charge based on the evidence. In any case, surely all this comes back to the fact that we need to teach tolerance in Scotland, which is the message that the First Minister—and indeed everyone I know in the Parliament—has been trying to get across.
I could not agree more, but the fact is that there is no tolerance in Scotland. We have to deal with the facts. I have not always sat under a halo; I used to be a crime reporter for the Daily Record and know how the police act when they arrive at a scene. If someone has disrupted a restaurant by bawling, swearing and shouting, "This guy provoked me," it does not matter if I say to the police, "All I did was bless myself." Because they just want to quiet things down, they will say, "Aye, okay—out you go," and charge me. The fiscal might or might not decide to drop those charges. After all, it is my word against theirs.
But any determination has to be based on evidence.
Yes, but if two people sitting at the same table find the act provocative, they could corroborate each other's story. It will be my word against theirs. That raises the argument of where guilt lies.
That is not what Elish Angiolini—
But we have to deal with everything in context.
I hear what you are saying, but it all comes down to evidence. I take your point about biased witnesses and corroboration, but we have to let the fiscal do their work.
The Scottish Catholic Observer is a small paper. Earlier, we heard about the number of people who had contacted The Scottish Sun. Its circulation far outstrips ours, but we were still contacted by 1,500 people. That shows that there is an awful lot of concern among ordinary Catholics. Why are they concerned? They are not all paranoid. And anyway, just because you are paranoid, it does not mean you are not right.
At the time of the reports of what happened with Artur Boruc, I raised the issue with the First Minister and the Crown Office. I subsequently learned that it was not because he had blessed himself that Artur Boruc was written to by the procurator fiscal. However, what concerned me was that the Catholic community in Scotland believed that a footballer blessing himself on a football pitch could lead to a police investigation. That tells us something about Scottish society. It turned out that blessing himself is not what he was cautioned for, but the fact remained that the Catholic community believed that it was possible for a footballer to cause offence by blessing himself. That, to me, was the cause of greatest concern.
As it was with the papers that carried the story.
Good morning.
Good morning.
You have just mentioned the press; for me, it was in the press that things started to go wrong. You and I will regularly see people coming on to the field and blessing themselves. That has been happening for many years and nobody has objected. I have never heard of anybody being prosecuted. You mentioned the world cup; players in the world cup blessed themselves all the time and there was no problem. It was a regular event when players came on or went off. I have seen the same thing when a player is waiting to take a penalty. However, the way in which the Artur Boruc story was first presented to the public justifiably raised concern. People were led to believe that the prosecution of the goalkeeper was started because he had blessed himself. We later found out that there was more to it than was first thought.
I totally disagree with you. I was brought up a Catholic boy in Scotland and I was told to keep my head down, keep quiet and shut up so that I would not get into trouble. The Catholic community in Scotland still finds such difficulties in every area. Yes, our petition is about blessing oneself, but it has to be seen in the context of the way in which Catholics are viewed in Scotland—with which there is a lot wrong.
I fully endorse a lot of what you said. I have made the arguments myself to the people to whom you refer, but I have to say that my experience teaches me that there are bigots on the Catholic side as well. Some people will try to incite problems and they use the sign of the cross as the method by which they do that. I am sure that you would not consider that to be a reverential blessing of themselves.
No. It is not a prayer when they do that.
But the making of the sign of the cross is the method by which they try to provoke a response. It is not beyond the realms of possibility that that could happen. Do you agree that there is a clear distinction between someone who reverentially blesses themselves in an appropriate manner and someone who uses the sign of the cross to provoke and antagonise other people?
I understand what you say, but legislation should err on the side of the innocent. The innocent Catholic who blesses themselves as they pass the front door of a church could be open to prosecution because someone of whom they are not aware is provoked by it. Protection in legislation could mean that the loonies get away with doing what they do, but they do not even know how to bless themselves properly, and I suggest that they are probably doing something else at the same time for which they could be charged, just like Artur Boruc—if that is true; maybe I am paranoid, but it is strange that there is no closed-circuit television footage of the crowd behind the goals and there was no evidence of it.
You raised a lot of important issues this morning. I would like to get on the record the positions of the various organisations that are involved. It would be useful for the committee to contact the Crown Office and the Scottish Executive to find out their positions. We will give you sight of the responses and would welcome your comments on them before we decide what we can do to progress the issue.
Thanks, convener. I should say that I was thinking of blessing myself at the start of the meeting, but I thought that it might bring the meeting to an end.
Shetland Islands Regulated Fishery (Scotland) Order 1999 (Revocation) (PE1003)
Our next new petition is PE1003, by Sydney Johnson. It calls on the Scottish Parliament to revoke the Shetland Islands Regulated Fishery (Scotland) Order 1999.
I am grateful that we received extra evidence, because I was confused about the various organisations and the various people who are represented on them. I agree with your recommendation, convener.
This issue is inordinately complicated. As people used to say about the negotiations around the general agreement on tariffs and trade, if you are not confused, you have not been listening. In this case, it seems that the more information we get, the more confused I become. We need to seek clarification from the Scottish Fishermen's Federation, Scottish Natural Heritage, the SSMO, the North Atlantic Fisheries College and the Scottish Executive in relation to everything that has been placed before us—and, possibly, a great deal more things that we do not yet know about.
Our papers suggest that we contact the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. Does it have a remit in relation to the water?
Not directly, but there is an issue to do with the environmental impact of inshore fishing. The area with which the petition is concerned is covered by an order that regulates inshore fishing.
Thanks for that clarification. I suggest that we contact the RSPB as well.
When we get the responses from those organisations, we will ask the petitioner to give us his perspective on them.
Affordable Housing (Subsidy) (PE1002)
The next petition is PE1002, by Tina Wilson. It calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Executive to prevent private sector developers from receiving public subsidy in relation to the provision of affordable housing.
Shall we seek clarification from Communities Scotland of the extent to which private sector developers receive public subsidy in relation to the provision of affordable housing? I find this quite surprising: it is usually local authorities that are seeking subsidy from developers.
I am a little surprised by this petition and its tone. I think that the system is working pretty well. Regardless of my concerns in that regard, however, I think that we should do as Helen Eadie suggests.
Do we agree so to do?
We will seek the petitioner's views on the response when we receive it.
Council Tax (Appeals) (PE1001)
The next petition is PE1001 by Damian Pavillard. It calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Executive to remove the requirement for appeals to a local valuation appeals committee against decisions made by a local authority in relation to council tax payment to be initiated within a two-month period.
Mr Pavillard raises a serious point. We should ask for the views of the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, Citizens Advice Scotland and the Scottish Executive. Thereafter, we can invite the petitioner's views on those responses. I suggest that we also seek the views of Dumfries and Galloway Council and ask it, out of fairness, to explain its position on the matter. It would be reasonable to hear the council's side of the argument, too.
Okay. We will get back to the petitioner with those responses in due course and give him the opportunity to comment on them.
Criminal Legal Aid (Abolition) (PE1016)
The next petition is PE1016 by Mev Brown, on behalf of the NHSFirst party. It calls on the Scottish Parliament to scrap criminal legal aid and to create a public defender's office that is responsible for undertaking the role of defending those who have been accused of criminal offences but who cannot pay for their own defence. The petition suggests that the public defender's office should be phased in over a period of four years to allow law firms and practitioners to adjust to the new service. Before being formally lodged, the petition was hosted on the e-petition system, where it gathered 19 signatures. Do members have any suggestions on how we should deal with the petition?
The matter is, to an extent, already being addressed through the Executive's on-going pilot project, the public defence solicitor's office, which opened in Edinburgh in October 1998. There is on-going evaluation of that project, and we should note the petition in the context of that work.
We could perhaps point the petitioner in the direction of that and let him follow it through.
Yes.
Are members happy for us to do that and to close the petition?
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