Coroners and Justice Bill
The next item of business is a debate on legislative consent motion S3M-4124, in the name of Kenny MacAskill, on the Coroners and Justice Bill, which is United Kingdom legislation.
The UK Coroners and Justice Bill includes provisions that extend to devolved matters in three areas, in relation to which I am promoting this legislative consent motion. Those provisions deal with the European Union services directive, criminal memoirs, and inquiries into the deaths on active service abroad of Scottish service personnel. The provisions on information-sharing gateways have now been withdrawn from the bill.
The bill includes provisions that will allow the Scottish Government to implement the EU services directive through secondary legislation made under the European Communities Act 1972. Those provisions will enable the directive to be implemented on time, before 28 December 2009.
The aim of the EU services directive is to open up the internal market for service providers, in the same way that it is already open for people, capital and goods. To implement the directive fully, a new power is required to disapply the penalty limits that can be included in secondary legislation made under the European Communities Act 1972.
The Justice Committee has raised questions about the exercise of the power; so, indeed, has the House of Lords, for the same reasons. The UK Government is now considering how best to provide the necessary safeguards in the bill in relation to the exercise of the power.
The bill's provisions on criminal memoirs will introduce a scheme that enables the recovery of profits made by criminals from publicising the stories of their crimes. Those provisions will apply to convicted criminals who seek to profit from and glorify accounts of their crimes, and will act as a powerful deterrent. UK-wide provisions will avoid the exploitation by profit-seeking criminals of any difference between Scots law and the law in other parts of the UK.
The provisions on deaths abroad of Scottish service personnel represent an agreement that was reached between the Scottish and UK Governments. After consulting the families concerned, UK authorities will be able to notify the Lord Advocate of cases in which an inquiry in Scotland would be preferred to a coroner's inquest. The system requires flexibilities to deal with, for example, single incidents or multiple deaths. Some of the operational protocols are still being worked on by the Ministry of Defence and the Crown Office, which will have to acquire expertise in this area.
However, I am pleased that, under these arrangements, the deaths on active service abroad of Scottish service personnel will be able to be investigated here in Scotland. That has been warmly welcomed, especially by representatives of bereaved service families, and I am pleased to promote them to the Parliament.
I am aware that the matter has been of concern to many members in the Parliament. It is a complex issue that involves both reserved and devolved legislation and has required a great deal of co-operation, not simply from the Crown Office but from the Ministry of Defence and other departments south of the border. As members of all parties here and in legislatures south of the border have said, this is a major issue, which has been a huge concern. It is fundamentally wrong that we have not been able to deal with those who have given their lives on active service and address the plight of those who have been bereaved. Therefore, it is a pleasure to be able to deal with the matter now. As I said, there are still protocols to be discussed, given the complexity of the issue. Good discussion and co-operation between the Crown Office north of the border and the Ministry of Defence on a UK-wide basis will be required. Given the common cause that has been shown, I am sure that we can do our best to alleviate the suffering of those whose relatives have given their lives on active service.
In all three cases—implementing the EU services directive, introducing a scheme for criminal memoirs and investigating the deaths abroad of Scottish service personnel—I am convinced that the bill will serve Scotland's needs. I am happy to move the motion, which I urge the Parliament to support.
I move,
That the Parliament agrees that the relevant provisions of the Coroners and Justice Bill, introduced in the House of Commons on 14 January 2009, relating to the EU Services Directive, criminal memoirs and the Scottish system of investigation of deaths and fatal accident inquiries into deaths abroad of members of the armed forces and others, so far as these provisions relate to matters within the legislative competence of the Scottish Parliament, should be considered by the UK Parliament.
I welcome the legislative consent motion, and I am pleased that the Scottish Government has brought it before Parliament today. The Coroners and Justice Bill was introduced in Westminster to deliver more effective, transparent and responsive justice and coroner services for victims, witnesses, bereaved families and the wider public. It will make several important changes to the law to achieve those goals.
Some of the policy areas that this Westminster bill covers will be debated here as we consider the Criminal Justice and Licensing (Scotland) Bill, which is before the Justice Committee, but some important legislative changes are best expedited through our agreeing to the motion, which I hope the Parliament will do.
Having observed the progress of the proposals, I believe that an example has been provided of welcome collaboration between the Scottish ministers and their UK counterparts in the Scotland Office and the Ministry of Defence. That is particularly evident in relation to the provisions on fatal accident inquiries. It is very welcome that in future we will be able to investigate in Scotland the deaths while abroad on active service of Scottish service personnel. Given the recent and current conflicts in which Scottish troops have been actively engaged and the fatalities that have occurred as they have played their part in the engagement of our forces abroad, the issue has been a great concern to bereaved families at the most difficult and traumatic of times and to representatives from all political parties here and at Westminster.
We all agree that, whenever possible, we should enable relatives to avoid the added stress of travelling considerable distances down south for inquiries into the deaths of their loved ones. Avoiding that stress will now be possible, although that might not happen in every instance—for example, in some instances of multiple deaths. Ministers are taking the right approach through flexibility and continuing work to ensure that the two Administrations can work together so that inquiries can be conducted here whenever possible.
We support the necessary provisions on the European Union services directive and the provisions to ensure that people who are convicted of crime cannot profit from memoirs—that measure is widely supported. The provisions on information sharing are not referred to in the motion, which reflects the decision in Westminster to put such measures in a new bill. I was minded to agree that when information-sharing measures can assist in addressing poverty and deprivation, they should be welcomed, but that debate is for another day.
I am sure that the motion will attract the support of all parties. Labour will certainly support it.
It is somewhat unusual to find an air of consensus about justice matters these days, but it is certainly present now. The bill will be useful under several headings. First, as the cabinet secretary properly said, the bill will remove the obscene situation whereby thugs, gangsters and criminals can legally make money from their activities. The bill will close that loophole, which all right-thinking people found totally offensive.
The most important provision is that which will have an impact on the bereaved relatives of servicemen who have lost their lives abroad. All of us hope that such legislation will not be used frequently, but we must face the facts. Such deaths have occurred even in the past few days. Given the conflicts that are taking place throughout the world, which British forces and Scottish personnel in them must confront, deaths are to an extent inevitable.
The bill will enable relatives to attend fatal accident inquiries in the sheriff court that is relevant to them. For example, the case of those who lost their lives in the Nimrod disaster not all that long ago could have been dealt with at Elgin sheriff court, and the case of the marines who lost their lives in Afghanistan could have been called at Arbroath sheriff court. Those cases could have been dealt with much more expeditiously, causing much less grief and angst for the relatives, than they were dealt with.
As Richard Baker said, this legislative consent motion is a classic illustration of what can happen when all the agencies get together in a co-operative and collaborative manner. The effectiveness of the legislation and the way in which it has been dealt with does credit to not only the Scottish Government and its Westminster counterpart but the Ministry of Defence and the Scottish Parliament.
The Justice Committee had certain reservations about the bill. Recognising those concerns, Mr MacAskill withdrew that aspect of the original draft motion.
The motion will be agreed to by the Parliament with, I am certain, unanimous support. It is a good job, well done. It will result in a great deal of comfort to—I hope—few people, very much in their hour of need.
I am glad to speak on behalf of the Liberal Democrats in support of the legislative consent motion on the Coroners and Justice Bill.
I welcome in particular the arrangements for the hearing of fatal accident inquiries in Scotland in cases that involve servicemen and servicewomen who have a connection to Scotland. The matter was first raised by my colleague Margaret Smith—I think that she is in the chamber—and then taken forward by the Scottish Government.
Members across the chamber will echo Bill Aitken's hope that the provisions will require to be exercised as seldom as possible. On those occasions when it might be necessary to do so, we hope that they will relieve, albeit in small measure, the pressures on the family and friends of service people who are killed in the service of their country. Like others, I am happy to pay tribute to the happy effects of the co-operation on the matter between the different levels of government in the United Kingdom.
We should not forget that the bill also includes measures on the EU services directive and to prevent criminals from profiting from publications on their crimes—that measure has the unanimous support of the chamber.
On a slightly more hostile note—if I may put it that way—the motion is, unusually, the second on the bill to be presented to the Parliament. After I raised at the Justice Committee the draconian powers on data sharing, which were referred to in the original draft motion, and after the committee also expressed its concern about those powers, the cabinet secretary was forced to revise the original draft motion. That was subsequent to the UK Government dropping the data-sharing provisions, although I am not sure whether that was due to our activities.
I hope that the SNP Government has learned to look rather more closely at legislative consent motions. We have the ludicrous situation in which the SNP, having opposed most LCMs when in opposition on an in-principle basis, now rubber-stamp them when in government, apparently without realising their implications. In this case, the oversight was a pretty big one. It took a little while for ministers to dig themselves out of the hole that they had created. That said, the exercise was a tribute to the importance of Opposition scrutiny of legislation and to the importance of the Scottish Parliament committee system. As other members said, at the end of the day, the right result has been achieved.
The substantive measures that are now going forward are extremely welcome. Again, I welcome the co-operative attitude that has surrounded them. On behalf of the Liberal Democrats, I am glad to say that we will support the LCM, now that the rather offensive provisions have been omitted.
I thank the members who have spoken in the debate and those in the chamber who have listened to it. I also thank the members of the Justice Committee, who supported the general tenor of the bill or sought the amendment of certain provisions. I accept the legitimate point that Mr Brown raised.
Obviously, some aspects of the bill are not the most dynamic. The EU services directive, for example, may not generate a great deal of interest, but we are obliged to implement it, and it is important that we do so within the appropriate timescale. The directive will benefit services north and south of the border and the Scottish and UK economies as a whole. It is therefore important that we proceed with its implementation.
As Richard Baker, Bill Aitken and Robert Brown said, a common approach needs to be taken to criminals who seek to profit by publishing accounts of their crimes. Real-crime or true-crime genre paperbacks can be found at airport and railway station bookstores in Scotland, England and Wales. It is important that we have uniform measures to deal with that genre, albeit that some accounts are perfectly legitimate. The genre may not be to my taste, but I do not seek to demean that style of writing.
Will the bill stop people ghosting criminal memoirs?
It is about exploitation. We must ensure that we can prove that exploitation is taking place. The Justice Committee discussed the ghosting of criminal memoirs. The bill is meant to stop exploitation, but there are limitations as regards proof and evidence.
We are keen to do what Mr McGrigor's colleague suggested we should do. It is one thing for a journalist to write a legitimate book about a heinous crime, but it is quite another for someone who has perpetrated a heinous crime to seek to glorify their exploits or to gain from what they did—that is fundamentally unacceptable and we must ensure that it does not happen. Thankfully, such circumstances have been few and far between, but they have arisen and we need to ensure that there is uniformity north and south of the border.
The most important issue is the one that relates to service personnel who have given their lives on active service. I am grateful for the comments of members of other political parties. As a Government, we recognise that whatever differences we might have on the constitution, we need to bury them when it comes to dealing with people who have sacrificed their lives for their country. [Interruption.]
Order. There is too much noise.
Whether they were based at RM Condor in Arbroath or up in the north-east of Scotland, we have a fundamental obligation to try to limit the trauma and agony that their families suffer. Members such as Margaret Smith have highlighted that issue. It is a question of doing what is right. That is why I welcome members' support for the motion. It is appropriate that it should receive unanimous support. The new arrangements will not ease families' grief at the loss that they have suffered, but we must do everything that we can to minimise their suffering thereafter. That is why I commend the motion to Parliament.