Crime and Punishment
The next item of business is another Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party debate, on motion S1M-1008, in the name of Phil Gallie, on crime and punishment, and amendments thereto.
In his closing speech in the previous debate, Ben Wallace said that there are more important issues to debate here today. He was right. There is nothing more important than the security and well-being of our citizens. Justice and the law mean nothing unless they are perceived to satisfy the interests of the wider community.
The law has been designed to protect the interests of the weak and the innocent; but all too often it appears to favour the interests of the criminal rather than the victim. It is accepted that justice is not served when people are convicted of crimes they have not committed, but a balance must be found that ensures that those charged with the most violent and damaging offences cannot use technical judicial points or failures of the system to escape justice.
Justice belongs to all the people, not only to the learned fraternity of solicitors, advocates, Queen's counsels, sheriffs and judges. I agree with Johann Lamont, who on Sunday was quoted as asking:
"How can we have a system so out of kilter with the commonsense view of natural justice? The justice system is too precious to be left in the hands of the legal establishment."
I believe that Johann had a real point there that many people will identify with—albeit not too many in the legal fraternity. We have to be aware of public perceptions; if we do not address them, the system will be in danger of breaking apart. There is no room in a civilised society for people who take the law into their own hands.
With some justification, the public regard the criminal justice system as being under increasing pressure. People feel that far too often the deck is stacked in favour of the criminal and against the victim. We are all aware of the difficulties associated with convictions in rape cases; quite a number of instances come to mind. We must all be concerned about recent events in which dealers found guilty of being in possession of £30 million-worth of cocaine walked free because of a procedural foul-up. I found it incredible that, in a case local to me, a dealer who was hiding heroin in his body was freed because a wrong name had been inserted on a search warrant. That individual was later convicted of supplying a lethal dose of heroin to someone who regarded him as a friend. Some friend. There are many other examples that members will know of.
The perception of the system is more than justified, especially when we see it being bombarded from all sides—by the European convention on human rights, by reduced budgets, by falling police numbers, by reduced prison places, by increasing crime rates and by lighter sentences. The galling point is that all that follows an election campaign during which people who are now members of the Executive promised to be tough on crime. Putting policemen back on our streets and into our housing schemes was promised as a priority. I expected from the Liberals that those promises would not be kept; but, as an eternal optimist, I thought that new Labour might have meant what it said. I should have known better.
Victims' agony is being drawn out with ever lengthening delays in our courts. Those who are prepared to act as witnesses begin to wish that they had stepped aside as delays begin to affect their employment or business involvements.
Mr Gallie suggests that budgets are falling. Will he say which ones he thinks are falling, given that the baseline budget of the justice department and of the Scottish Prison Service is rising year on year?
If we consider the reductions in the Prison Service, we find that budgets are not being kept in line with real-terms increases.
They are rising.
Pension schemes and early retirement have a massive effect on police budgets; that has not been recognised. Overall, there is an underfunding that the Executive is failing to address.
I was referring to the ever lengthening delays in our courts. If a case eventually comes to court, the accused may be convicted of at least one offence and then sentenced. All too frequently, within the space of just a few months, someone who was given what the victim was told was a three-year sentence appears out of the blue, at the bus stop—or beside their victim in the local paper shop. The figures that we have seen demonstrate that.
We are told that the Executive will introduce a freedom of information bill. The priority should be to inform victims of crime what sentences in court really mean and to ensure that they are advised when prisoners are to be released. It should be explained that if a three-year sentence is given, periods of remand must be deducted and that a period of only 18 months in total will be served. That does not need a freedom of information act; all it requires is for the Executive to get its act together, to ensure that people who are directly affected are prepared for what can be a fairly traumatic encounter, particularly for the elderly.
A first step—
Before Phil Gallie moves on to his next point, will he explain what his party did during their 18 years in government to inform victims of exactly the same situation on remand? There has been no change. What did the Conservatives do?
The answer is simple—not enough. We took steps and sought assistance—
Eighteen years.
Yes. We did not exactly do well in that area—and in a moment I will mention another issue that we did not do well on. We are prepared to look back and acknowledge some of our mistakes; we want to look to the future and attempt to rectify them. That is what the debate is about. It is not about hiding behind figures, as happened in the previous debate. It is not about kidding on the public. It is about setting out in straight words the facts as we see them and moving forward.
I said, "A first step"—and I have lost my place.
I believe that the Executive needs to revisit sentencing policy. It is nonsense that someone who is sentenced for four years serves only 50 per cent of that period, irrespective of his or her attitude or behaviour in prison. I take no pride in having been part of a Government that introduced that measure, but I took some consolation from Michael Forsyth's late attempt to recoup the situation. Before other members jump up and down blaming the Tories, I must point out that when that measure was introduced, all the parties represented here today wanted to go further in liberalisation.
The effects of automatic remission and early release are reflected in the rising crime figures—a recycling effect is adding to the pressures on the courts and the Prison Service. Early release before adequate time for reflection leads to reoffending, additional burdens on the courts and similar complications for the Prison Service. Scottish Conservatives seek a system of conditional early release whereby remission will have to be earned and the maximum remission will be one sixth of a sentence's duration. My understanding is that the Crime and Punishment (Scotland) Act 1997 caters for that and that the minister can raise a statutory instrument at any time to bring such a measure into force. We would give him every assistance if he did that.
Phil Gallie seems to imply that early release is the cause of rising crime. He also seems reluctant to acknowledge that during the 18 years of Conservative government the number of crimes rose—from 340,000 in 1979 to 420,000 in 1997; eight more victims every hour under the Conservatives. If Phil is so concerned about victims, I do not think he needs to look at the early release scheme for the reasons; it is a general trend.
Is this an intervention or a speech?
I have one quick quotation.
Very briefly, Mr Rumbles.
It is that
"crime has risen and continues to rise throughout the industrial democracies . . . It would be astonishing if patterns were not repeated.
The challenge is to deal with that situation".—[Official Report, House of Commons, 5 November 1996; Vol 284, c 1092.]
Does Phil Gallie recognise that? It was Bill Walker MP.
If Mr Rumbles looks back at the previous law and order debate he will see that he asked the same question and that I gave him a more than adequate answer. I suggest he does his reading.
Crime did rise under the Tories—at the same time as the drug culture built up here and in the rest of the world. The key issue is that when the Tories left office, the crime figures were going down. Now, they are on the rise again.
It is my charge that in rape cases the judicial system favours the accused against the interests of the victim. Cross-examination of a victim by the person whom she or he believes to be their violator creates a situation in which the victim suffers the humiliation for a second time. How can a 13-year-old cope with that? Henry McLeish pledged to stop it when he was a Scottish Office minister. His pledge has gone the way of so many other promises made by new Labour in government. We are told that the European convention on human rights stands in the way, but it seems to me that the ECHR is breached by the status quo. I consider the ECHR to be a red herring in the matter of cross-examination of rape victims.
Senior civil servants giving evidence to the Justice and Home Affairs Committee on Tuesday stated that ministers had other concerns. In the interests of justice and the freedom of information the Minister for Justice holds so dear, I ask ministers to act now and, if they will not, to state clearly why they will not.
I urge ministers to look at the statistics and not to go soft on juvenile young offenders. Efforts have to be made to find new ways of diverting young people away from anti-social and criminal activity. I saw one of those last week, when I visited Rathbone Community Industry in Kilmarnock. I suggest that the impression that youth is an excuse for escaping responsibility for criminal acts is not one of those new ways. The police are constantly frustrated by the fact that when they catch youngsters under the age of 16 who have committed what many people would consider serious offences, after interview, they are turned back on the streets again to offend.
I have some figures that date back a year or two, to when the Tories were in power. They show that 15 youngsters in the Ayr constituency committed more than 800 offences—obviously repeat offences. As is obvious, they were caught and returned to the community. We must do something about that, but the minister's intentions towards young offenders will make the situation worse rather than better.
Will Phil Gallie give way?
I do not have time. I am sorry.
I welcome this week's report from the minister on drugs and confiscation and the fact that its publication was timed for just before this debate—timely indeed. There are one or two issues, however, that I have to ask the minister about. I would like to know whether he intends to ensure that when drug dealers are charged, steps will be taken to freeze their assets at that point. The minister can answer me later, in his speech. I am short on time.
I would also like to ask the minister whether the special finance unit that he intends to set up will be properly resourced, with new people and new money to get it up and running. It will, perhaps, become self-financing later. I would like to think that money will go back into the law and order budget at that point.
I cannot accept either of the amendments to the motion. I cannot accept the SNP amendment because of its reliance on the ECHR which, through incorporation, has brought problems to our judicial process. We have agreed that we observe the ECHR all the way along the line, but its incorporation is the wrong aspect to consider.
Will Phil Gallie give way?
Yes.
Please wind up after the intervention, Mr Gallie.
The ECHR is a critically important point to raise in this debate. A number of rights are safeguarded by it. It prohibits torture, slavery and forced labour and safeguards the right to liberty, security, freedom of thought, conscience and religion, all of which I would assume every member, including the Conservatives, would sign up to.
Mr Gallie has made great play of the effect of the ECHR, as have many other Conservative MSPs. Amendments relating to the ECHR that read across to the Human Rights Act 1998 were introduced at quite a late stage during the passage of what became the Scotland Act 1998. The Tories did not vote against the bill on second reading, or third reading, or during the Commons' consideration of the Lords' amendments.
Nor did the Tories raise any objection, as far as it is possible to discern, to the proposition that the Executive and Parliament should be required to act in a way that is compatible with the ECHR. Furthermore, the Conservative party did not vote against the second or third reading of the bill that became the Human Rights Act 1998. In the end, they gave the bill a fair wind and "wished it well".
One of the problems the Conservatives in Westminster have is that they do not benefit from the presence of Scottish Conservative MPs. My understanding was that Conservatives did vote against incorporation in the Scotland Act 1998, but I stand to be corrected if that was not the case.
You have been.
As well as the reference to the ECHR in the SNP amendment, I find Roseanna Cunningham's appeal for a body to look at public opinion on the effects of sentencing rather strange. The public opinion that I gauge is that of my constituents, and their opinions are pretty clear. I would not have thought that my constituents are that different from hers.
We can go along with the comments on witness support in the Executive amendment and on the confiscation aspects, but the suggestion that we are doing well on police numbers stretches the imagination. We cannot support that. Do not pussyfoot around with this motion. Accept it in good faith and do service to the people of Scotland.
I move,
That the Parliament notes that public confidence in the criminal justice system is at an all time low due to the Scottish Executive's failure to take effective steps to curb rising crime; recognises the frustration and anxiety felt by the victims of crime and the wider Scottish public arising from early prisoner release and asks the Scottish Executive to restore honesty in sentencing by ending automatic remission; further notes with concern the proposals to raise the age of criminal responsibility from 8 to 12 and to bring 16 and 17 year old offenders within the Children's Hearings System; calls upon the Executive to reject the proposals and demands that the Executive brings forward its proposals to strengthen the law in relation to the seizure and confiscation of assets suspected of being derived from drug dealing.
There is no doubt that law and order and the principles governing crime and punishment are essential to the well-being of any society. I welcome today's debate as an opportunity to reject the simplistic solutions to complex problems that are being peddled by the Opposition—principally the Conservatives—and to show how the Scottish Executive is tackling in a positive way the issues that affect the people of Scotland.
First, however, I invite Mr Gallie to accept that his motion is inaccurate. It states that
"public confidence in the criminal justice system is at an all time low."
From recent events in Opposition parties, it appears that extreme confidence in the Scottish criminal justice system is being expressed. The SNP seems intent on using the system as an internal management tool for its party problems. Mr Gallie may wish to comment.
Perhaps the SNP is satisfied, but I draw the minister's attention to the comments made by Johann Lamont, from which I quoted and which she fully accepts.
I have no idea to which comments Mr Gallie refers. I will move on to the substance of my speech, but I pause at this point to invite any further Conservative members who wish to cross the floor to do so.
Does the Presiding Officer not think it a bit worrying that a minister is sitting here who does not seem to understand the difference between civil and criminal law?
I welcome Tricia Marwick's pettiness. I will continue my speech.
I am very happy to engage in political hooliganism with Mr Gallie, but I think that law and order is far too important for that and if we cannot raise the level of debate, we genuinely do a disservice to the country. I want to explain our policy on law and order and then help the Opposition to understand the Scottish Executive's justice programme.
First, we are going to be tough on crime and on the criminals who blight our communities. Secondly, we are taking—and will take—action to prevent the causes of crime. Thirdly, we are going to prevent recidivism through alternatives to custody and the rehabilitation of offenders. Fourthly, and most important, we are pledged to support the victims of crime. How we treat victims and witnesses and how we deal with offenders is a measure of our progress and our civilisation.
We do not share the Opposition's belief that it is enough simply to react to crime, nor do we believe that locking people up will provide the answer. That has been tried and it has failed. Recorded crime in Scotland reached its highest level in 1991, after 12 years of the Conservative Administration. I intend to set out how our policy and programme for action are making an impact, even after only 12 short months.
Members of Opposition parties are the last people who can complain about high crime rates. None the less, we appreciate the anxiety that people may feel about crime, which is why we announced recently an additional £8.9 million for the police to help put more officers on the streets.
Although the level of additional money has been criticised in some quarters, the president of the Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland, Bill Robertson, who is the chief constable of Northern constabulary, said:
"I hear that some people have been quite grudging about it and started to question it, but I think today should be about celebration. Today, we should say thank you very much".
Bill Robertson was speaking as a chief constable when he made those comments. The eight chief constables in ACPOS have more than 30 years' service as chief constables and more than 200 years' service as police officers. They are more than qualified to decide what represents a step change in the quality of funding for the Scottish police service. Other chief constables, such as Sir Roy Cameron and John Orr, have also been enthusiastic about and appreciative of the extra resources and are committed to putting extra officers on the streets.
As well as the £8.9 million for recruitment, which is sufficient for more than 300 extra officers, we gave the police an additional £1.7 million for DNA testing. We are pledged to take tough action against drug dealers, about which I will say more shortly.
At present, Strathclyde police alone has a shortfall of 350 officers. Both the Scottish Police Federation and ACPOS estimate that by the end of the year there will be a shortfall of 1,000 officers. The minister's measures for recruiting 300 officers hardly measure up to that shortfall.
The previous highest level of police officers in Scotland was in 1997, under the Labour Government. We expect our announcements about the extra £8.9 million, with the funding of the Scottish Drug Enforcement Agency and the additional officers that that funding will bring, to create record, or near record, levels of police officers on the streets of Scotland. Everyone in the chamber should applaud that.
We are taking tough action on dealers, which we have backed up with £10 million for the Scottish DEA to allow it to place an extra 100 officers in local police forces to tackle drug misuse. Taken with a 3.8 per cent increase in grant-aided expenditure, the police are receiving an increase of 6.6 per cent over last year. We believe that those resources will boost police numbers to record levels. However, just as we recognise that tackling crime is not a simple matter, neither is policing; given chief constables' knowledge and professionalism, they are best placed to deploy those resources.
Drug-related crime is one of the most serious issues facing society. The Scottish Executive is determined to deal firmly with the drugs issue, which is why we moved quickly to establish the Scottish DEA. The first ever director of the new agency was appointed on 25 February. His management team is in place and I formally launched the agency on 1 June. All that was achieved within six months of our announcement of our detailed plans. The creation of the Scottish DEA means that, for the first time, Scotland will have an organisation dedicated to tackling drug crime. It will build on the excellent work done by the enforcement agencies in trying to tackle those who profit from human misery.
The public have started to play a part in identifying the drug dealers. Nearly 200 calls have been received from the public, which the Scottish DEA is actively pursuing. The Executive calls on all Scotland—politicians, the police and the public—to join forces to deal with those people once and for all.
Prevention is clearly better than cure. We must get to the roots of crime if we are to prevent it occurring. It is a sad fact of life that children are sometimes involved in crime. We need to decide how best to deal with those cases. I am disappointed that the Opposition attempted to make political capital out of a serious and sensitive issue.
The Executive is not rushing into anything. In the context of the review of youth crime, we will ask the Scottish Law Commission to consider the age of criminal responsibility, which is currently set at eight years of age. Although there is no reason to think that that would put Scots law in breach of the ECHR, it remains an important issue for consideration. Eight is not the lowest age of criminal responsibility in Europe, but the Thompson and Venables case was a sharp reminder of how vital it is that the justice system deals effectively and sensitively with children who commit crime.
I therefore look forward to the Scottish Law Commission's response, which will inform the debate on this important issue. I make it absolutely clear that until the Scottish Law Commission has reported, in March 2001, no decision will be taken for or against a move to a higher age. Any decision will take into account the need to ensure that young children are treated fairly and that those who do wrong can be, and are, dealt with appropriately. Whatever we do, there will be no statistical fiddles: crimes will be recorded as crimes, whatever the culprit's age.
Young people are responsible for a disproportionate amount of crime. There are some very stark statistics. Sixteen to 24-year-olds account for 41 per cent of all persons convicted for crimes and offences and 4 per cent of all persons proceeded against in court. Most are young men. However, males aged 16 to 24 make up only 12 per cent of the total population. In the eight to 15 age range, around four times as many boys as girls are referred to children's panels on offence grounds.
We need to tackle this issue quickly, but in an effective and sustained way that makes young people face up to offending behaviour, promotes reparation to or mediation with victims—where that is desired or appropriate—and generally helps young people move into more responsible styles or patterns of living. Those are the right options for young offenders. There is no point in throwing young people into prison, where they learn the tricks of the criminal trade at an early age and, perhaps, turn into habitual criminals, if—and I stress the word if—there is a solution that better suits individual circumstances. That is why the Executive has responded so positively to the advisory group's report "It's a Criminal Waste: Stop Youth Crime Now".
Our response sets out how we intend to tackle this vital issue. We are not about offering soft options. We want challenging programmes and interventions that will give the public confidence that we are making communities safer and will address the needs and deeds of the young people concerned, to help them develop. That means effective measures for young people, whether they come through the court system or through the children's hearings system. It is best to follow programmes that work and are successful in changing the behaviour of young people. We want them to stop offending while they are on the programme and after they have finished it. That is the way to benefit those who are hit by crime.
Some have said that the children's hearings system does not work. We believe that it works well and has an excellent track record over the 30 years of its existence. Its philosophy of examining what causes the child to behave in a particular way, or to be at risk, and of taking steps to deal with those causes is a better and more effective approach than prison. We accept, of course, that it could be improved on.
One of the concerns identified by the youth crime review advisory group was the lack of an effective range of programmes to support the hearings system. We are addressing that by injecting £3 million of new money this year, rising to £4 million next year. That will pay for effective programmes to make young people confront their offending behaviour and to provide them with the education and preparation for employment that they need to stay out of trouble. We want such programmes to be part of the mainstreamed activity in each local authority and to be tailored to what is required there.
The Presiding Officer is indicating that I do not have a tremendous amount of time left, so I will finish by saying this. In the programme for government, we made the pledge that we would be tough on crime and on criminals. Today I have tried to set out the principles that we are following and the steps that we are taking to tackle crime now and to prevent it occurring in the future. We want to protect our communities from criminals. To do that, we must tackle criminal behaviour before it escalates, and break the cycles of reoffending.
That does not need to mean being soft on crime. It means being imaginative and ensuring that courts have effective disposals to hand. That is why we are determined to rehabilitate offenders, through training, education and work, and why we continue to put emphasis on alternatives to custody. It also means ensuring that the police have the necessary resources to tackle crime now and to reassure our communities that the Scottish Executive is taking crime seriously. That is why the justice department's budget is rising in real terms, why police expenditure is rising in real terms and why the prison budget is safe in our hands.
I move amendment S1M-1008.1, to leave out from first "notes" to end and insert,
"continues to support the Executive's policies on law and order and commends the priorities identified in the Programme for Government being taken forward by the Executive, including combating drug misuse as set out in the Drugs Action Plan Protecting our Future and through the creation of the Scottish Drugs Enforcement Agency which will fund an additional 100 officers in local forces, tackling youth crime, particularly persistent offenders, as set out in the Report It's a Criminal Waste: Stop Youth Crime Now and the Executive's response, helping witnesses by extending a volunteer Witness Service to all Sheriff Courts, and the injection of an additional £8.9 million for the police which is sufficient for forces to recruit a further 300 extra officers".
In my view, issues of crime and punishment cannot be reduced to simplistic slogans. Today we have had a typical Tory response on any law and order issue—totally unfocused, ill thought out and produced without any sense of responsibility for the effectiveness of what little was suggested. Listening to the Tories, people would be forgiven for assuming that crime rates went down between 1979 and 1997. Instead, they went up by about 40 per cent, if not more.
Mr Gallie might at least have the humility to admit that if there were an easy solution, 18 years would have been sufficient time to find it, but the Conservatives did not. Therefore, there can be only two conclusions: either he has to admit that there is no easy solution, or he has to admit that the 18 years of Tory rule were 18 years of incompetence in the area of law and order, because those are the only conclusions that the crime rate increase justifies on the basis of his own logic.
I thought that Roseanna Cunningham had been present all the way through the debate; I acknowledged that crime rates went up under the Tories. I gave reasons for that. I said that I did not feel that everything that we did was perfect and correct, and that I wanted to look forward and do something about it. I pointed to the fact that crime levels had been coming down for the past—
Mr Gallie has already had a chance to make a speech. He should restrict his interventions to questions. I listened carefully to what he said, and what I heard is what I would describe as a farrago of simplistic nonsense, which did not deal with some of the complexities involved in the issue.
I want to focus on one or two issues that relate to the adequacy of resourcing of the system at all levels. I do not have a great deal of time, so I will cover only a few of the issues. My colleague Tricia Marwick will address the issue of victim services in more detail, but suffice it to say that right now the role of the victim in the process—we have seen plenty of headlines on that recently—and the role of victim services are hardly likely to inspire confidence. The Executive has to address that matter more urgently that it is currently doing. I am aware that some initiatives are on-going, but they are not anywhere near enough and they are not moving fast enough. I hope that the minister will address that directly.
The fiscal service is another area that is all too frequently overlooked, but it is equally vital. The suspicion continues that under-resourcing of the service leads to cases being marked for no proceedings, which has a direct impact on public confidence. We know from recent months that the courts have had problems that are of a particular origin, but I also know from conversations with sheriffs of my acquaintance—
Name names.
I have heard from more than one sheriff that problems arise as a direct result of the lack of enough fiscals to cope with the work load in the criminal courts. That goes back to the comments that I made about the fiscal service.
That example shows a fundamental problem with the criminal justice system, which I admit is not easy to deal with. I do not look for a simple one-line answer. One cannot address one area in isolation without there being an immediate impact elsewhere. More police and more efficient policing inevitably lead to a greater clear-up rate and more cases referred to the fiscal, which means more stress on the fiscal service and more court time taken up. It is a circular system, which means that if one part of it is plucked, all of it will be affected. My concern is that that knock-on effect is too frequently overlooked, with troubling consequences.
Phil Gallie talked about public perceptions of sentencing and detention. I am always amazed at the ease with which Phil can refer to the numerous conversations that he has with his constituents, as if somehow we are to believe that it is not a self-selecting group. As politicians, we cannot ignore the issue of public confidence, but we need to test more carefully the true attitudes of the public, and not assume that the more lurid tabloid headlines necessarily reflect reality, which I fear is what Mr Gallie does.
In the past, I have seen research—I am sorry that I cannot give proper references, but this occurred to me only when I was listening to Mr Gallie—which suggests that when people are confronted by the realities of cases and potential disposals, their views about appropriate sentencing might not be as clear-cut as Mr Gallie seems to think. It would be useful if the Executive considered looking at attitudes to sentencing and detention, whether of youths or of adults, because there are some confused messages about.
Some of those confused messages relate to young people and to the apparent incidence of crime being committed by young people. The issue of the age of criminal responsibility has been raised before in the chamber. The truth is that Scotland has one of the lowest ages of criminal responsibility in Europe. Whether the Tories like it or not, it is almost certainly challengeable under the European convention on human rights. In my view—and in the view of a great many other professionals—that challenge will be successful. To refuse to consider it now would be utterly irresponsible. I accept the—
Will the member give way?
I will run out of time, otherwise I would let the member in.
I welcome the review of the age, but the truth is that most young offenders go before the panel anyway. They go there for other reasons, allied with any crimes that they might have committed: truancy, substance misuse, being beyond control or whatever. Changing the age of responsibility will not change that, so I must challenge the Tories' approach to 16 to 18-year-olds. Do they really think that sending youngsters in their mid-teens to court for relatively minor offences will be helpful to anyone? It is not cost-effective and there is no evidence that it will deter repeat offending, which should be the fundamental aim of what we are trying to do with young people.
Although I know that this aspect is not entirely within his remit, I say to the minister that if the hearing system is to deal with the age groups that we are discussing, the issue of resourcing the appropriate disposals must be taken on board. I listened carefully to what he said about money. There is concern that that issue is not being taken on board. I know of one case in Glasgow: a 10-year-old boy who has not been to school in 18 months, has been on home supervision requirement for the whole period and has still not been allocated to a social worker. He is not offending now, but there is no guarantee that he will not do so.
That case is one of many. Sources in Glasgow City Council will privately admit that more than 600 child care cases are waiting to be allocated to a social worker. That is a big stumbling block when it comes to dealing with youth crime, and in regard to the initiatives that are being put in place. That is the point at which we can try to turn young people away from crime. I listened to the minister talking about money. What I really want to hear from him is whether he can guarantee that the money which he is talking about today will plug that gap right across Scotland. Otherwise, any youth crime initiatives will be undermined.
In the few minutes available, I could not hope to address all the relevant issues; my colleague Michael Matheson will deal with issues related to drug crime. However, I would appreciate it if, in his reply, the minister would spend a little more time talking about the resourcing of the system overall and the reality of the knock-on effect that one aspect of the system has on the other.
I move amendment S1M-1008.2, to leave out from first "notes" to end and insert:
"recognises that issues of crime and punishment are complex; contends that to ensure public confidence a criminal justice system requires to be effective, which in turn depends on adequate resourcing at every level; further recognises that there is some identifiable concern amongst the public about both current sentencing patterns and the effectiveness of detention; welcomes the fact that Scotland has human rights responsibilities as a result of the incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights; and calls upon the Scottish Executive to consider the establishment of an accurate review of public attitudes to sentencing and detention which would inform both the judiciary and the Scottish Prison Service and further to address urgently the current under-resourcing of all parts of the criminal justice system in Scotland."
In contrast to the text of the motion, Phil Gallie's speech was more thoughtful than the usual Tory parcel of predictable prejudices. Clearly, we in the Justice and Home Affairs Committee are having a benign influence on him.
Essentially, ours is a law-abiding community: people respect and uphold the law. However, we must never be complacent about crime. As many members said in yesterday's debate, we must equip the police to deal with the ever more mobile, technologically sophisticated and well-resourced criminal. That is why the announcement of the Drug Enforcement Agency was right and proper. I welcome the extra 100 police posts created and look forward to the results of the officers' work.
The recent investment of just under £9 million in police forces across Scotland was also right and proper. The money will recruit more officers, especially if the level of efficiency savings for the next financial year is tempered. If more than 90 per cent of the bill for the police is the cost of manpower, efficiency savings must affect the number of staff. We therefore have to be careful not to give this year that which is taken away next.
Without question, however, there will be more officers on the beat and a more visible police presence in many areas—partly because civilians are increasingly replacing police in administrative tasks.
We have heard much about crime statistics in the debate—I do not wish to repeat them, other than to say that the highest level of recorded crime in Scotland was in 1991, at just under 600,000 offences. As Phil Gallie was good enough to acknowledge, the golden legacy—sometimes appearing in Tory press releases—is perhaps a little tarnished.
On funding, an answer to Sir Robert Smith MP in March 1999, on the year-on-year change in central Government funding for police in Scotland between 1979-80 and 1997-98, showed that in four years, there had been a real-terms cut. Those cuts took place in 1985-86, 1990-91, 1994-95 and 1996-97. The largest real-terms increase of 8.4 per cent occurred in 1997-98.
However, the public are more interested in plans to tackle crime than in trading figures from the past. Mike Rumbles referred to Bill Walker, who quite rightly said that
"crime has risen and continues to rise throughout industrialised democracies . . . It would be astonishing if patterns were not repeated.
The challenge is to deal with that situation".—[Official Report, House of Commons, 5 November 1996; Vol 284, c 1092.]
Keith Raffan will talk about tackling drugs misuse if he catches your eye, Presiding Officer—or rather, if he presses his request-to-speak button. We need to invest in education about the dangers of drugs; we must also invest in rehabilitation. Reducing demand and thus the illicit gain from drug dealing, together with enforcement, is the way forward. We can double, treble or quadruple enforcement but, without the other approach, as senior police officers of my acquaintance regularly tell me, the drug dealers who are removed are swiftly replaced and the vacuum is easily filled. We must prevent young people from experimenting with and using drugs, and rehabilitate those who are already users.
There is a real need to improve crime prevention measures by educating our citizens to protect themselves and by improving home security, perhaps in conjunction with home energy efficiency measures—such schemes are being piloted in some parts of Scotland. We must improve the design of buildings and of housing estates, and such seemingly mundane matters as upgrading street lighting could help. Perhaps we need to consider the grant-aided expenditure settlement for local government roads departments.
I now refer to offending by young people. At eight, Scotland has, as Roseanna Cunningham said, the second lowest age of criminal responsibility in Europe. In England and Wales, the age of criminal responsibility is 10. Even at 12, it would be lower than in the majority of European countries. In France, the age of criminal responsibility is 13 and in Italy and Germany it is 14. As Roseanna said, there will be a challenge under the European convention on human rights, and the Executive is right to review the matter now. If the Executive had just waited for a challenge, it would have been accused of failure to foresee the problem.
I am not aware of the proposal to bring 16 and 17-year-olds within the children's hearings system, as is suggested in the motion. The report of the independent think tank, facilitated by the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, on ways forward in working with young people who have offended, got many of the issues right. The transition from the children's hearings system and adult courts is too abrupt and fails to acknowledge the gradual nature of undertaking adult responsibilities. The report proposes a number of important measures for young offenders. It commends
"greater incorporation of restorative justice approaches commensurate with age and maturity. Certainly for 16+, but for many younger people this would make sense to them as well".
The report also refers to the comprehensive use of arrest referral schemes, which would
"ensure that appropriate services such as drug and alcohol treatment, supported accommodation for those who are homeless and mental health services"
are made available at the point of arrest. The report stresses disposals such as probation with conditions, community service orders, drug treatment and testing orders and supervised attendance orders.
For younger children, we need to develop comprehensive cross-agency early intervention. There is a range of measures that we can build on to tackle truancy in schools, which is often the first step on a criminal path. Instead of exclusion from school, supported inclusion within mainstream education should help children to avoid the slippery slope into crime. We must enhance home visiting for children who are most in need and retain our focus on the prevention of child abuse. Early intervention should be seen as part of a child protection and welfare strategy, rather than a narrow crime prevention strategy, but it will help to prevent crime.
We must recognise the impact of domestic violence and abuse on the development of children, and how that can contribute to childhood behavioural problems and adult difficulties. There must be support to help compensate for the lack of significant adult role models in children's lives. Children whose main carers lead chaotic lives clearly run a severe risk of being offenders later in life.
I make a final plea to the minister. As Justice and Home Affairs Committee members saw when we went to Longriggend prison, there is a problem with remand prisoners. All remand prisoners are categorised as being in one category. They are all lumped together; the drug dealer and the drug user are in remand in the same place. We are in danger of ensuring that education in crime takes place. We ought to separate out types of offenders within remand, so that minor offenders can be rehabilitated and serious offenders kept separate.
We must take the law and order debate seriously. We must get away from what raises a cheer at Tory conferences and go on to the real issues that will make a meaningful difference to levels of crime. Selective amnesia is probably a necessary therapy for a party that leaves government for opposition, but today we have heard concessions from Phil Gallie about the record in the past. Let us build on the progress that we can make. I support the Executive amendment and its more constructive approach to tackling crime.
Euan Robson talked about Longriggend. I would like to comment on prisons in the context of the call in the motion for
"effective steps to curb rising crime".
The Scottish Prison Service is going through massive upheaval. Last November, it was announced that there are plans to reduce staffing levels among the officers by some 400. What makes that more astonishing is that over the past 10 years, the prison population has increased by 1,300. While the prison population has been on an upward trend, the number of prison officers will be substantially decreased. There will be closures, mothballings and mergers. Penninghame, Dungavel and Longriggend are all to close, as well as Peterhead special unit.
That has caused dismay in the Scottish Prison Officers Association to such an extent that its general secretary, Derek Turner, said:
"We can only say that our savings have been stolen by the Scottish Executive".
He went on to say that there were no words to describe the betrayal and that the association was extremely worried about overcrowding and violence. The £13 million stolen from the service was going to fund the new Drug Enforcement Agency. He described it as an affront and betrayal to the Scottish people and their public service.
It appears that the Executive has, at the same time, released a considerable number of violent offenders. In 1999, the figure was 185, through early release—those released had committed crimes including culpable homicide, assault with deadly weapons and attempted murder. Early release on that scale is considered to be inappropriate by a substantial proportion of the public, who would like stronger protections to be put in place.
Does Lord James Douglas-Hamilton accept the comments by Clive Fairweather, HM chief inspector of prisons in Scotland, when the proposals for the closure of the establishments that he mentioned were announced? Clive Fairweather welcomed the proposals because of the nature of the facilities and the structure of the buildings that were to be closed. He indicated that the services were better provided elsewhere.
I have Clive Fairweather's statement in front of me. He said:
"The main job of prisons in Scotland is to protect the public from violent or persistent criminals—and to reduce the future number of victims of crime."
I am especially concerned about whether Peterhead prison will be closed. When Angus MacKay has been asked about that in the past, he would not say whether it will be closed. I am especially concerned about that, because sex offenders in Scotland go there in considerable numbers. As the minister will be well aware, there is a code of honour among criminals. Those who attack or harm children can be extremely badly treated in Scotland's prisons. Therefore, they are taken to Peterhead prison, where special educational and rehabilitation programmes are in operation. At some time, many of those individuals are likely to come back into the community, so it is extremely important that the programmes that are in place ensure that they do not reoffend in the future.
If Peterhead was closed, great instability would be introduced into the Scottish Prison Service and a body of expertise that has been built up steadily over the years would be removed. I hope that the Executive will not go down that path.
In the statement to which the minister referred, Mr Fairweather did not call for Peterhead to be closed. I believe that that would be a retrograde step, which would be very damaging to the Scottish Prison Service, because it would mean that sex offenders would not receive the intensive education and rehabilitation programmes that they need. If those people are distributed throughout the Prison Service in a way that is not thought out, enormous harm will be done.
As Lord James Douglas-Hamilton knows, the Peterhead issue that he raises is part of an on-going Scottish Prison Service estates review. We await the result and recommendations of that review.
On the issue of addressing offending behaviour and providing rehabilitation regimes for sex offenders, such regimes do not solely exist in Peterhead but are delivered in other prisons. Any decision about Peterhead—should it come to that—would not necessarily imply the end of the provision of such rehabilitation regimes in other prisons or elsewhere. In fact, it should be put on record that it certainly would not imply the ending of such regimes.
I remind the minister of what Clive Fairweather said. At the end of his statement, referring to the closure of four prisons, he said:
"I doubt if there has ever been such an announcement made about prisons in Scotland for over 100 years."
The closure of Peterhead prison would be going much further. Of course, I accept that the education and rehabilitation programmes are not restricted to one prison—nor should they be. I am suggesting to the minister that a body of expertise has been built up there. I believe that he has plans to close that prison; otherwise he would be clearing the air this morning. If he closes that prison, his action will be condemned by the entire Prison Service in Scotland. It will be a bad move, because it will mean that sex offenders will not be given the same excellent treatment that they receive at present.
We want to ensure that those people do not reoffend. Communities may not welcome them with open arms when they come out, but every step has to be taken to ensure that the best possible service is maintained. That service is seriously at risk. As long as the minister leaves this question up in the air, there will be dismay in the Prison Service.
I will concentrate on young people in the criminal justice system. First, I want to make it clear that the majority of young people are not criminals or young offenders. There is sometimes a danger that we forget that when we see headlines about "teeny terrors" or whatever. It is true that there are young people who indulge in criminal activity. Our communities want to tackle that, and I certainly want to tackle it, but we should put things in context.
The report of the advisory group on youth crime suggested that perhaps between 1,000 and 1,200 persistent young offenders are dealt with in the children's hearing system annually. We have to think about targeting the resources that are needed to tackle those cases. We should remember that the vast majority of children who come before the hearing system do so because their welfare needs require to be met.
We should also remember that the failure to bridge the gap between the children's hearing system and the adult court system—young people who are aged 16 or 17 suddenly find themselves in the adult court system—leads to a disproportionate number of young men, in particular, ending up in Longriggend and other institutions that have been mentioned this morning.
The Tories have a bit of a cheek to talk about reannouncements from the Executive, given that they reannounce speeches the whole time. I am sure that I heard Phil Gallie's speech in this debate several years ago. There are no new ideas or ways forward, and nothing positive is being suggested.
In contrast to that, the Executive should be congratulated on commissioning the report, "It's a Criminal Waste: Stop Youth Crime Now", and on its response. Roseanna Cunningham raised the issue of time scales, but the report clearly underlines the time scales. The Executive has made it clear that it wants early expansion of the range and availability of effective, community-based intervention programmes for young offenders. There are a number of good schemes around Scotland, which could be used as a model.
Those are not soft options. I challenge anybody who thinks that to spend a week during the summer recess working with one of the projects, talking directly to the young people and staff involved and doing something constructive by finding out about the projects and getting some new ideas.
The report also talks about ensuring access to the range of interventions for persistent offenders up to the age of 18 for procurators fiscal and the courts. The Scottish Executive accepts that recommendation and is looking to put some resources into it in the short term.
We know that the children's hearing system has for many years been a subject of worldwide scrutiny because of its success. Things can change and the Executive has said that it will examine what can be done in future, including the feasibility of bringing 16 and 17-year-olds who require such a service into the system. I know that there are people in the Conservative party who serve on children's hearings, who think that that is not a bad idea.
The Presiding Officer is indicating that I ought to wind up, so I will confine my final remarks to promoting something positive for young people. SACRO—Safeguarding Communities, Reducing Offending in Scotland—operates a scheme that brings together young people who have offended with the victims of their crimes and examines how reparation can be made. We ought to support such a scheme.
In some instances, young people cause problems, but they can also be part of the solution. In my constituency, a group of young people in Bellsbank, which would usually be described as a very deprived community, have come together with the local community policeman to produce information for a peer education project that will address the causes of offending behaviour and try to get the message across. That is how we should progress.
We should look constructively at the solutions. It is not good value for money to lock people up simply because they are too poor to pay their fines. The Executive is committed to addressing that issue. I look forward to that. The report is good. The way forward is good. We should take things forward on a cross-party basis, and so ensure that our communities are the safe places that we want them to be.
We are told that children and young people were responsible for more than 42,000 crimes and offences last year, which is an increase of 6 per cent on a rate that has been rising steadily for years. It therefore follows that we need to rethink current practice. We need to reduce levels of youth crime, restore public confidence and improve community safety. However, the debate is not simplistic; it is not about hard or soft options. The aim must be to find strategies and policies that work, which address offending behaviour and divert young people from prison.
The proposal that the age of criminal responsibility should increase from eight, as it must, is less of an issue than by how much it should be raised and when. The United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child levelled criticism at the UK Government on the matter as long ago as 1995. The Conservatives' argument that raising the age of criminal responsibility will allow young criminals to get off with it is totally spurious.
I remind Phil Gallie and others that the strapline of the Scottish Children's Reporter Administration is care and justice. The Kilbrandon committee gave reasons—which remain valid—why that is appropriate. The principle of dealing with juvenile justice cases and care and protection cases in the same forum, subject to the same procedures, and, crucially, accessing the same resources, remains valid. As we have heard, the strength of the hearing system is that it deals with the whole person and not just the offending behaviour.
Many people working in social work have been concerned for some time about the abrupt transfer from the children's hearing system to the adult criminal justice system, often with supervision orders being discharged just before a person's 16th birthday, which results in very young people with very troubled backgrounds being put in prison to no good effect.
Statistics from one local authority are very revealing. They show that in the year leading up to March 2000, of the total number of 16 to 18-year-olds who received community service, more than one third had previously been in care or involved in the child protection system. Furthermore, of those 16 to 18-year-olds who received probation, more than two thirds had previously been in care or involved in the child protection system; of the group who received custodial sentences, half had previously been in care or involved in the child protection system in some way. I suggest that that is more than enough evidence of the impact of social background factors to merit a very serious reassessment of resource allocation, perhaps towards more robust fostering services.
The Conservative motion implies that it would be totally unacceptable to refer 16 to 18-year-olds to the hearing system. I disagree. However, persistent offenders in that age range require something more than the options and disposals that are currently available. Alternative measures would need to be put in place before greater numbers of youngsters are referred.
A broad range of community-based resources, adequately funded and supported by all agencies, would help to tackle the complexity of problems faced by young people. That would make a saving to the public purse by transferring resources from residential schools, prisons and secure accommodation, although I accept that those facilities will always be needed for some people. However, that is not an easy option and it might just work.
When I heard Phil Gallie commenting favourably on something that I said, I was tempted to throw away my speech, throw up my hands and admit total defeat. I certainly do not know what that will do for my credibility in the Labour party. We shall have to wait and see.
It is important to recognise that we are debating a complex issue. One of my concerns about the approach of the Tories is the suggestion that there are all these easy solutions that are just sitting there, waiting for the political will to pick them up and run with them. We do a disservice to those who suffer most from crime to suggest that it is as easy as that.
It is important that we take the debate around crime and disorder out of the ownership of the Conservatives. Crime is a concern in all our local communities. In the recent past, I have dealt with very specific and troubling cases where constituents have been concerned about sentencing decisions that they cannot understand or where they have had horrific experiences as the victims, or relatives of the victims, of crimes. People also have great concerns about the way in which bail agreements are reached, because they believe that the result is detrimental to their rights. Even when we discuss more local issues such as housing, they are often linked to questions of youth disorder in the local community. There are anxieties about policing decisions. People feel frustrated that the police do not respond quickly enough to incidents that take place on the doorstep.
I agree with Roseanna Cunningham that at the heart of the debate is the issue of confidence. Those who have been accused of a crime must believe that they will get a fair trial. However, the victims of crime must believe that they, too, will get a fair hearing. Our communities, including elderly people who have been harassed by youngsters or residents who have been harassed by their neighbours, must believe that their concerns are being taken seriously and must have confidence that the police will respond to local priorities. Similarly, our young people must feel that they have the right not to be moved on and harassed simply because they are young; they ought not to be judged by their age or have presumptions made about their behaviour.
I will briefly touch on the question of children's panels. Before I became an MSP, I worked with young people who were saved by that early intervention and by the willingness of the legal system to look beyond a child's behaviour to what had caused that behaviour. It is not an easy process and often calls parents to account in a difficult way. It would be to our detriment to have a system that said that we believe that young people at the ages of 12 and 13 are beyond the pale and cannot be saved. We know that locking up our young people does not work.
Recently, we have seen a good example of the importance of having confidence in the system. We have had a debate on the cross-examination of witnesses in sexual crimes. I believe in the right of people to be considered innocent until proven guilty. However, no one has been able to explain to me why that important principle would be damaged by introducing a general category of crimes where a defence is pursued through a third party.
Unlike the Conservatives, I am committed to the European convention on human rights, but we need to understand that we have to defend the rights of all, including those who are accused of crime and those who have suffered it. In the past few days, there has been a concerted and ferocious attack on those who have been making the argument about protecting victims in such cases. I have been shocked by the ferocity of the attack, for while we may argue about the solutions to the problem, the fact that there is a problem is self-evident.
We have heard accusations that we want to deny people their human rights. It has been suggested that rape cases are pursued inappropriately to court when they are unlikely to lead to a conviction; in fact, the women's organisations are saying that the big concern is that rape cases go unreported because women are frightened of what will happen to them in the system. It has been suggested that this is about the special agendas of women's groups—that the legal profession gives us considered advice while the rest of us are in the business of special pleading. Quite offensively, it has also been suggested that women, and others who are campaigning on this question, are chasing tabloid headlines. The reality, too often, is that women in rape trials have been at the wrong end of tabloid headlines. To suggest that people are in the business of chasing such headlines is offensive.
Women's organisations at the sharp end of supporting women who have been the victims of sexual crimes have sought not publicity, but equal access to justice. If women's organisations, those who support children and those who campaign on behalf of victims had not campaigned long and hard, there would have been no change in the process that is now trumpeted as sufficient safeguard against harassment. There would have been no video links, no special arrangements for children and no discussion around inappropriate questioning. Those were all, at one time, feared and resisted on the basis of the rights of the accused.
At the heart of the serious debate about options, there must be close scrutiny of what the judicial process does and how that works out in our local communities. We need more transparency about what judges are asked to do. We need a police force that is linked more closely with its local communities and their priorities. There must be an acknowledgement that, while we are told that we are all equal under the law, many groups in our society have the strong feeling that there are still some who are more equal than others. For as long as citizens feel that way—even if the feeling is ill founded—and we do nothing at all about it, we will have a problem in sustaining a fair system of justice, because our justice system will be undermined by people's lack of confidence in it.
I will go back, if I may, to the Tory motion. What is it about the Tories when it comes to law and order? We know, and they know, that the causes of crime are complex, yet a glazed look seems to come over their faces when the subject of law and order is raised. Even the most reasonable Tories—and Phil Gallie is not necessarily always the most reasonable of them—seem to be programmed in that way.
We all know from what we see on television that the surest way to popularity at Conservative conferences is to rant and rave about the tide of criminals that are pillaging and robbing their way across the country and how they all ought to be horsewhipped and locked up for ever. When the Tories were in power, as a number of speakers have said, that sort of approach—even when it was moderated by the responsibilities of Government—produced overflowing prisons at huge and ineffective expense to the public. Remember the short, sharp detention centres that provided a short, sharp training course on how to become a more successful criminal? Did that stem the crime surge? No. The result of such policies, under the Conservatives, was eight additional crimes an hour.
I am not one of those people who say that Governments create crimes; that fallacy is sometimes put across in debates such as this. The fact is that crimes have many causes; I will use some figures to illustrate that. A 1997 survey at Polmont young offenders institution revealed that 41 per cent of offenders had been in special education facilities as children; 82 per cent had truanted; 83 per cent had been suspended from school; and 55 per cent had been expelled or excluded from school. Surely those figures tell us something about the basis of crime and the reasons that lie behind it.
Crime has many causes. There is a proven and major link between addictive substances—alcohol and drugs—and crimes of both violence and dishonesty. The problem will not be solved by posses of justice ministers on white horses going around the place curbing crime.
My main point relates to the procedures of the law, so castigated by Phil Gallie in his opening speech. In my time, I have been both a criminal defence lawyer and a procurator fiscal depute, so I have seen something of the legal system from both sides. Nobody should be convicted of a criminal offence except on solid and convincing evidence. That does not stop reforms in the legal procedures, but—and this is a basic fact—arbitrary power, in the hands of the state and its law enforcement officers, would produce the very situation that Phil Gallie goes on about: the collapse of confidence in the legal system and the crucial knock-on damage to confidence in the police and their ability to do their job.
Our traditions have been buttressed by ECHR regulations to which, to its credit, a more sensible Conservative Government of an earlier age signed up. I have a direct question for the Conservatives. Phil Gallie is rightly concerned about the trauma suffered by a 13-year-old in court undergoing cross-examination in a rape case; however, what spasm of neanderthal logic makes the Tories want to haul eight-year-old boys and girls before the criminal courts?
Although there is a serious debate to be had on that issue, this is not it. This kind of motion wastes the Parliament's time when we should be more closely examining the real and basic causes of crime. The Scottish Executive—and Governments of all persuasions—have done much good work on the issue. The dividing line between today's proposition that a swing of the sword can sort out all the problems—
Will the member give way?
No, I am finishing on this point. The dividing line between today's proposition that a swing of the sword—
Will Mr Brown give way? He did ask us a question.
The answer to that question is the nature of the crime, not the individual. Although I am very sympathetic to many of the points that have been raised about looking after children, eight to 12-year-olds must be held responsible for serious offences.
We are now over time.
My concluding comment is a response to Mr Gallie. The Conservatives do not understand the basic philosophy of the children's hearing system. The system is not based on criminal responsibility, but on the need for care and protection of vulnerable children who might have committed crimes.
It is quite facile to pretend that this is not a complex matter, and the Conservatives generally accept that simplistic solutions are not necessarily the answer. However, an injection of realism is sometimes needed in the debate.
The fact is that the children's panel system, which the minister has advanced as an outstanding success, has been a dubious success. The Kilbrandon committee did not get it right. I attended a children's panel hearing on Friday, and accept that the system fulfils an admirable role in the treatment of children at risk. However, the system is frankly impotent in dealing with persistent and determined young offenders and, as a result, is losing credibility. If the system has been so successful and is admired throughout the world, why has no one else copied it? The reason is that it does not work with young offenders.
Like Robert Brown, I have seen both aspects of the juvenile system. As a Glasgow magistrate and justice of the peace, I have sent more than my fair share of people to prison over the years, but I never did so lightly. I can assure the chamber that no judge at any level sends anyone to prison unless there is no alternative. Although sending people to prison is a terrible thing to do—and I was never comfortable doing so—it had to be done in the greater interests of society.
That said, I am perhaps one of the few in this Parliament with a criminal conviction. When I was 13, I was fined the princely sum of 2s 6d for the heinous offence of street football. We fully accept that there is a case for not sending youngsters to a criminal court for very minor matters. However, if we increase the age of criminal responsibility to 12—with which there is an ECHR problem—what do we do with an eight-year-old, nine-year-old or 11-year-old who commits murder? There have been instances of such crimes in the UK. For example, there was a deliberate stabbing in Glasgow not so long ago. How do we cope with such a serious offence?
In his opening remarks, Bill Aitken condemned the children's hearings system by saying that it fails young people who have committed an offence. He then talked about a possible increase in the age of criminal responsibility. Does he accept that one of the great advantages of the children's hearings system, as Johann Lamont said, is that it does not deal only with why someone is there but with their entire background? That is why the system is valuable. Committing a criminal offence is only one of 17 grounds of referral to a hearing. There are 16 other reasons why young people appear before children's hearings. Surely that is the point that we should be addressing.
The input of the children's panel system in relation to children at risk or in homes in which we would prefer them not to be is invaluable. However, the system lacks teeth and does not cope with the criminal aspect, a fact that is demonstrated by the recidivism rate.
The interventions that were referred to earlier are not sufficiently challenging to stop repeat offenders. It is a pity that Cathy Jamieson is not here, as my point is relevant to what she was saying. We have to educate the offenders to give them a better prospect of employment, but I would be uncomfortable if we came to a point when offenders got a better education than non-offenders.
If the age range of the children's panel is increased, we could see the farcical situation in which a 17-year-old will be brought before a children's panel for beating up his wife. I doubt that that we want to arrive at that situation.
I firmly support Phil Gallie's motion.
Three more members wanted to be called to speak but there is no time. I appeal to the winding-up speakers to stick rigidly to time as we have a ministerial statement to follow.
The issue of tackling drug abuse should be central to this debate. The number of injecting heroin addicts in Glasgow is estimated at between 12,500 and 15,500. The figure for Scotland—which I think is an underestimate given by the Executive—is more than 30,000. The addicts in Glasgow steal, burgle and shoplift an estimated £190 million a year to finance their habit. The figure for Scotland is probably more than £400 million. That is the scale of the problem that we are dealing with. In some of our prisons, more than 70 per cent of inmates are in for drug-related offences. Many of them, quite frankly, should not be in prison at all.
The Executive deserves credit for instituting the drug testing and treatment orders. I hope that the minister will tell us how many offenders are undergoing treatment as a result of the orders. I understand that there are worryingly few, but then, of course, the system operates in only two pilot areas: Fife and Glasgow. The orders demonstrate an attempt to establish alternatives to prison and divert problematic drug users away from the prison system into treatment, where they belong.
I would like a pilot scheme on drug courts to be introduced. Such a scheme would relieve pressure on our courts and prisons. It makes no sense to send an addict to prison at an average cost of £27,000. As I saw in Saughton prison, some of the inmates have the courage to get off drugs. However, they are then put into drug-free zones where they get little support, treatment or counselling. When released, they return to the people they knew before and the places where they used to live, relapse into addiction, reoffend and end up back in prison.
Prison for them is not a sensible use of public money. We must break that cycle. If those problematic drug users can get treatment in prison and then get into halfway houses, or through-care as provided by the Simpson House drug project in Edinburgh, we have an excellent chance of preventing them from relapsing and reoffending upon release. That makes sense. I am not calling for public spending that will go down the drain. I want public investment that will bring a return. If we can guarantee treatment for those people so that they can recover and gain employment, they will cease to be a drain on our finances and will become contributors to our economy and taxes.
The Scottish Prison Service has produced a drugs strategy. I have reservations about the Prison Service and its lack of openness. I hope to meet the minister to discuss some of the problems in detail. That service must be made far more accountable, not just to the minister but to this Parliament. When I meet the minister, I shall give him details of my experience when the service has not been open.
Will Keith Raffan give way?
No. I am sorry, but I have very little time left.
I hope that we can have a debate on the Scottish Prison Service's drugs strategy in the near future, which will include consideration of whether mandatory drug testing is a worthwhile investment of public money. I share Dr Richard Simpson's reservations on that issue. In a debate not so long ago, he outlined his reservations far more eloquently than I could have done. We also need to look to the CARATs scheme in England and learn from its experience.
I have to wind up, although I would have liked to go on to talk about the Scottish Drug Enforcement Agency. Let us hope that we can have a debate on that agency in the near future.
In The Herald today, Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh says that she has left the Tories because of their
"appeal to base prejudices which I find wholly unacceptable and highly offensive."
Among that party's members I have respect for Lord James Douglas-Hamilton, but the Tories must stop appealing to base prejudice. It is time that they developed an intelligent and thoughtful approach on these issues, rather than the base prejudice that they continually display. I believe that they will pay a huge price for that, resulting in defeat at the next general election.
In Tory debates on law and order, members are often left wondering what the Tories will do. Their motion for this debate was confusing and unclear, and some of the points that are raised in the motion have not been addressed.
This debate illustrates the fact that there is no simple way of tackling the problem of crime in Scottish society. Unfortunately, the Tories are trying to pander to the prejudice of the headline, and are calling for tougher sentencing while ignoring the root causes of crime.
Phil Gallie's main explanation for the increase in crime in Scottish society centres on the problems in the remand system. Although there are problems in the remand system, the issue of crime in our society is much more complex. He also mentioned that people have been acquitted on procedural grounds and that the justice system is failing people. In 18 years of Tory Government, was no one acquitted? Were no mistakes made? Let us be honest: mistakes will be made in the future as well. We must try to limit them as far as we can, but it is folly to kid on that mistakes have started to occur only in the past couple of years.
I have sat next to Phil Gallie in the Justice and Home Affairs Committee in recent weeks, and I have noticed, as Euan Robson has noticed, that his manner seems to have mellowed somewhat towards crime issues. That may be the commonsense revolution arriving at Phil Gallie's door, although I never saw Phil Gallie as the new face of the Tories' justice policy.
He is said to be in the mainstream.
Maybe.
One of the major causes of crime is the misuse of drugs. It is shameful that, after securing this debate on crime, the only issue that the Tories have raised, in relation to the drugs problem in Scotland, concerns the confiscation of assets. That is only one part of the equation; a multitude of other measures must be deployed—some of which Keith Raffan has touched on—to deal with the drugs problem.
Will Michael Matheson give way?
No. I have very little time.
Although the confiscation of assets is a useful measure, we must try to deal with the root causes of crime.
Let us be quite clear: we have to deal with enforcement; we have to consider getting prisoners with a drug problem off drugs; and we have to improve our rehabilitation services. There are question marks over whether the policies that are being pursued by the Executive sufficiently address getting the balance right. In my view, the balance may be tipped too much towards enforcement and not enough towards rehabilitation and support services, to break the cycle of people continually committing crime. People go to prison because they have committed a crime due to a drug problem, and when they get back out, they do exactly the same thing.
The causes of crime are often linked to people's poverty, to their social circumstances. If we are to be realistic in our efforts to address the problems of crime in our society, we must also be committed to being holistic in our approach. If we are to reduce crime in Scotland, we must do so from a platform that is based on facts and not on headlines.
I ask members to support the amendment in Roseanna Cunningham's name.
Thank you, especially for sticking to the time.
This has been an interesting debate and we have covered an enormous amount of ground in the past hour and a half—culminating, somewhat bizarrely, in Michael Matheson recommending himself as the personal rehabilitation project for Phil Gallie. That is an onerous undertaking and we all wish him well in that enterprise.
I will try to pick up on some of the points that have been directed at the Executive. One of the big issues that has been raised has been the increase in recorded crime. A wide range of factors influence the incidence of crime.
For example, the number of non-sexual crimes of violence increased by 11 per cent in 1999. Within that total, there was a 17 per cent increase in crimes of handling an offensive weapon. However, that is an example, at least in part, of crime rates increasing because of sustained efforts by the police to tackle the culture of violence. It is clearly better to have weapon carrying detected than to have violent crime committed with the weapon. That is an example of positive, proactive policing affecting the crime rate. Similarly, encouraging women to report domestic violence and supporting the victims mean that more crimes are reported.
By contrast, specific campaigns by the police to detect and prevent crime can have the effect of reducing crime rates. For example, the 5 per cent reduction in 1999 in house-breaking is undoubtedly partly due to the kind of special efforts undertaken by forces based on intelligence-led policing. It is important that we look behind some of the figures and avoid knee-jerk reactions.
I would like to talk about victims. In my opening remarks, I said that the fourth strand of our strategy concerned victims. In the past, there has sometimes been a view that victims are there solely for the benefit of the criminal justice system. We think that the opposite is true: we think that the system should be there for the victims. Our strategy is to ensure that there is a co-ordinated approach to services for victims across the criminal justice system and across other agencies that have contact with victims. We look to those agencies to develop services within the framework of the strategy and to monitor how well those services meet victims' needs.
Will the member give way?
Not at this point.
We continue to support the victims of crime through funding to Victim Support Scotland—£1.2 million this year, which is up 9 per cent from last year, goes towards meeting the cost of local victim support services. Those local services are at the sharp end. They provide much-needed direct help and support to victims of crime. The grant that VSS receives pays for a network of 29 area services, 68 locally based employees, and the recruitment and training of 750 volunteers. A further £700,000 is being provided this year for VSS to roll out the witness service in sheriff courts. Additional funding is also being provided to support VSS's national headquarters. In total, therefore, VSS will receive more than £2.2 million from the Executive this year.
In December 1999, we announced the roll-out of the volunteer witness service to all sheriff courts in Scotland. We see it as vital for witness—especially those who are also victims—to have access to support, reassurance and information. For many people, appearing in court is stressful and upsetting. The witness service volunteers can help in a range of ways; for example, by arranging court visits, by explaining procedures, or simply by spending time sitting with a witness who is waiting to be called.
I do not want to leave the issue of the support that we give to victims without mentioning a particular and real concern that has been expressed by members and which was discussed on Tuesday by the Justice and Home Affairs Committee—the issue of rape victims being cross-examined by their alleged attackers. I want to make it clear that ministers have instructed officials that proposals be developed to prevent an accused person who has been charged with a sex offence from cross-examining a victim personally, and to strengthen the provisions restricting cross-examination on sexual history. It is not a question of whether we intend to do it, but of how. Scottish ministers are committed to achieving that policy and work has begun on assessing how we can do it. We recognise that we must balance the need to protect witnesses and their rights with the rights of the accused in a way that is consistent with the ECHR.
The debate offers some interesting contrasts. We have an Executive that concentrates on delivering, a partnership between Labour and the Liberal Democrats that was criticised at its outset but that has many concrete achievements. Today we can contrast that with the blood feuds that are breaking out in the Opposition parties.
As if Labour never had any.
The hard right is attacking the mad right in the Conservative group—and it is sometimes difficult to distinguish who is a member of which tendency. In the SNP the fundies and traditionalists are tearing each other apart. Alex Neil must be wondering when the midnight knock is going to come on his door.
Let us look at the record of this Administration. We have given the police resources sufficient to boost policing numbers to record levels. We have set up the Scottish Drug Enforcement Agency, with a £10 million budget, to target the dealers. We are rolling out the witness service to all sheriff courts in Scotland. More than £21.4 million extra is being made available to give courts the full range of options for disposing of offenders. Ministers have instructed officials to develop proposals to prevent those charged with a sexual offence from cross-examining a victim personally. We are supporting the recommendations of the youth crime review and ensuring that offenders face up to the consequences of their crime.
Before he closes, will the minister undertake to give a detailed breakdown of spending to tackle drug misuse on enforcement, treatment and prevention? I am happy to put down a written question to facilitate the answer. We do not have the breakdown of the figures so we cannot make up our minds whether the proportions are right.
The minister is on his last minute.
I will not reply in detail at the moment. That information will be forthcoming when we publish the policy unit's work, which has been done, and further work will be undertaken.
We have spent an additional £1.7 million on DNA testing. We have ensured that justice department baselines will have increased by more than £100 million between 1998-99 and 2001-02. That is a real-terms increase of £40 million. We have ensured that the prison budget will have increased by £32 million in the same period. The finances of the infrastructure, the framework of our criminal justice system in Scotland, are safe.
The Executive has set out its stall in our commitment to creating a safe and fair Scotland. We have introduced practical and effective policies to combat crime and the scourge of drugs in our communities. We are committed to tackling the problem of persistent reoffending and to rehabilitate offenders through training, education and work and through alternatives to custody. We have put in place imaginative and deliverable policies to support the victims of crime and we are working to protect the most vulnerable members of our society. We have done all that in just one year.
I commend the Executive's approach to members and invite members to support the Executive's amendment to the motion.
I am conscious of the time and wish we had more of it. I will judiciously cut out half of my speech.
What a debate—everything that was known to be happening on crime and punishment but which the Executive is too scared to confront. I excuse Mr Wallace and his Liberal-Democrat colleagues from that because they promised to be tough on crime and its causes. To truly deliver on such a pledge you must be proactive, not reactive.
Things, we were assured, could only get better; yet the Scottish people live in greater fear of crime today than they ever have. We can list the reactive measures taken by the Executive more easily than we can list measures taken proactively. I will only mention two: the Ruddle muddle and temporary sheriffs. To cap it all, we are now seeing rising crime rates, prison closures, falling numbers of prosecutions and falling police numbers. That directly contradicts the social justice rhetoric that I and others here had to listen to at recent elections. That rhetoric is based on a policy of legislation for the many, not the few.
What about the rights of the many law-abiding citizens, not of the few in the criminal fraternity? For too long, we have heard about Labour in power, both at Westminster and here at Holyrood, pledging to act for victims and to punish criminals. But talk is cheap. The people of Scotland want actions, not words. Scotland wants a commonsense solution to blindingly obvious problems in sentencing policy. We want commonsense powers to be given to the police to enable them to deliver for the communities that they serve.
Will Mrs McIntosh give way?
I am terribly sorry, I would normally, but I am right up against the time.
Scotland wants a commonsense, coherent drug action plan, not the lengthy consultation exercise that the Executive has conducted. In short, Scotland wants, needs and deserves a commonsense revolution in our criminal justice and sentencing policies.
Will Mrs McIntosh give way?
I really do not have time. I have only three minutes now.
Let me give one example of those who would welcome the day that reform is delivered on their behalf. The home of a couple from East Ayrshire was ransacked, resulting in several hundreds of pounds of damage. The lady of the house was terrorised and was held against her will at knife-point by an inmate of Shotts prison, who escaped his prison escort while in transit from Kilmarnock sheriff court.
The Scottish Prison Service advertises itself as an agency of the Scottish Executive justice department. We might think that those in the Prison Service, of all people, would be sensitive to the victims of the offence, particularly when it was their inability to fit a pair of handcuffs that enabled the crime to take place. But no: in its letter of 16 May to the couple's solicitor, the service repudiates the claim for compensation. It wrote that
"the Scottish Prison Service cannot be held responsible for"
the prisoner's actions.
Will Mrs McIntosh give way?
I am really sorry. I took plenty of interventions in the chamber yesterday, but not today.
To add insult to injury, that was justified because
"He was handcuffed to a prison officer who had no reason to suspect that"
the prisoner "would slip the cuffs".
We must structure our criminal justice system so that it delivers for people. To do so, we have to ensure that a whole load of conditions exist, some of which have been mentioned already. Putting the victim first is essential to re-establish public confidence in our police and criminal justice system, and is a fundamental plank of Conservative policy.
As a mother, I would like to address the recent suggestion that the criminal age of responsibility could be raised from eight to 12 years, which is the age of youths who are throwing stones and bricks at the windows and doors of two constituents in Grangemouth. Mrs Rennie and Mr Elliot are prisoners in their own homes because of the antics of young hooligans.
We have commented on the good that can be done by the children's panel system, and I am happy to concede that I am probably the person to whom Cathy Jamieson alluded in her speech. Hearings can be enormously effective, and can help when considering the whole situation.
The police have been very sympathetic, but cannot be there all the time for constituents such as those I mentioned, and there seems to be little that they can do. Does it not mean anything that those people are trapped? I welcome the assurance of the Deputy Minister for Justice that no decision has been made on the matter so far, and that it will be next year before a decision is made. The ECHR can and will have many effects on legislation, but we eventually have to take a principled stance. We have to say that we can go thus far and no further.
From my experience as a justice of the peace, courts take an extremely sensitive approach to dealing with children between the ages of eight and 12, and it is only right and proper—and demonstrates a commonsense ability on the part of the courts—to assess the current situation. However, youngsters may take away a message that their actions are unacceptable, and that what they did constituted an offence. I have a son and a daughter, and I would like them to learn that lesson.
We ask for cross-party support to require the Executive to strengthen legislation in order to tackle the problems in our society, rather than producing bills which dilute powers and advantage criminals. All our postbags support our position, and I hope that the Parliament will accept it—although, having said that, I doubt that it will today.