Criminal Justice and Licensing (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
The next item of business is the continuation of this morning's debate on motion S3M-5177, in the name of Kenny MacAskill, on stage 1 of the Criminal Justice and Licensing (Scotland) Bill. We continue with speeches of no more than five minutes.
Here comes the Criminal Justice and Licensing (Scotland) Bill, stage 1, part 2. I shall watch the clock and try to avoid all the areas of contention that were well covered this morning, because I want to cover one or two other areas. However, I cannot help reflecting that we had one or two interesting comments this morning. The most interesting one that I recall from before lunch was the accusation that the Liberals are sitting on the fence. First, to be fair to them, I do not think that that is true. Secondly, my observation on the Liberals' policy is that they are very good at finding the gaps in the fence and have never found any need to sit on it.
Let me look first—
I hope that Nigel Don was not expecting me to intervene there.
No.
Let me look first at the sentencing council. The issue of consistency, or the perception of consistency, has been raised in that regard. The sentencing council is a good idea because it could lead on sentencing policy as things develop. For example, I am conscious, as other members will be, of the internet's effect on our world, and I am not entirely convinced that common law will necessarily be up to the mark on internet offences. The sentencing council may well provide a useful way of sorting out how offences that arise in that environment should reasonably be addressed, rather than waiting for the bench to find its way there. The sentencing council will also have a value in relation to knife crime. I suspect, too, that a sentencing council would have been useful in the discussion on drink driving.
I flag up an issue that Rhoda Grant introduced this morning in relation to non-harassment orders, which are in section 15. I simply note, with pleasure, that the process is being changed so that an order can be granted after what is in effect a single event, rather than a stream of events being required. That is a significant step forward.
I turn now to the issue of disclosure, because there is a major issue that will affect much of what will be put in place on disclosure. Lord Coulsfield, who provided an extensive report on disclosure, expressed concerns to us about how the bill deals with the subject. It seems to me—I think that this was the Justice Committee's general view—that, when we deal with a subject such as disclosure, we should set out the principles. If there are more than a couple of principles, there should clearly be a hierarchy so that we know what the overriding one is and what the subsidiaries are. Below that, there will necessarily be a set of rules, which I suspect will primarily lay out duties and responsibilities; it is clear that those should be in the statute. Below that, there will be a set of procedures and processes, and things that might go into a code of practice. I think that that is the way in which we are encouraging the Government to go. I take it from the cabinet secretary's comments this morning that the Government has already got its mind round that issue, but I think that that is the structure to which it should work.
I note in passing that this is a huge bill, which will require a significant amount of time at stage 2. I hope that it is being timetabled appropriately. Further, who knows how long it might take at stage 3?
I draw members' attention to the large number of areas where the Justice Committee was not sure what the answer was. There is a surprisingly long list: section 62, on witness statements; section 63, on spouse compellability; section 132, on antisocial behaviour reports; section 94, on defence statements; section 82, on compensation for miscarriages of justice; and section 38, on the prosecution of children, which was referred to this morning. I highlight those merely to make the point that, although there is a lot of good stuff in the bill and a lot of good thinking has undoubtedly been done—I do not criticise those who drew up the bill—there is a huge amount of discussion, rationalisation and reconsideration yet to come. I want to ensure that we have time and space to ensure that that happens properly.
Finally, on the bill's proposed modifications to the Custodial Sentences and Weapons (Scotland) Act 2007, I merely repeat the Justice Committee convener's remarks from this morning—
You must close now.
Again, the provisions involve an area of huge confusion, but we think that the Government has got them about right.
In the short time available, I intend to focus on the many concerns that we have in Inverclyde, which is a community whose experience has not always been a happy one. In recent years, the sad deaths of Damian Muir and Darren Pyper, who were killed by knives, shocked a community that had become sick of the endless cycle of violence.
We have worked as a community to try to break that cycle and to bring our experiences and influence to the Parliament. We have welcomed the changes over recent years whereby sentencing powers have been increased, although we have been disappointed that those powers have not been used to the full. Over the years, we have engaged with a wide range of groups and initiatives. We have met the violence reduction unit. We have joined with the medics against violence. We have supported the Inverclyde initiative in its aim of educating young people about the consequences of violence. We have rallied and marched with the friends and fellow pupils of tragic schoolboy Darren Pyper to create awareness of the dangers of knives. We raised a petition with John Muir, Damian's father, and presented it to the Parliament to engage with the democratic process. We held a summit in the Parliament and another in our town hall—organised by the local paper, the Greenock Telegraph—to give voice to the community's concerns. In the time since, John Muir has tirelessly campaigned across Scotland. His campaign has struck a chord everywhere that it has gone.
Having engaged in that parliamentary process, we saw the Criminal Justice and Licensing (Scotland) Bill as an opportunity to introduce the tougher sentences and to fund the interventionist measures that people wanted. Today, they will have heard that their calls for tougher sentences are to be ignored in the bill and that funding for preventive measures are not in place. They will have heard that these violent people will be less likely to go to jail and their communities and neighbourhoods will not be safer as a result. To hear their concerns dismissed will greatly disappoint them. To hear the cabinet secretary describe short-term prison sentences as respite care will give no confidence to my community.
Rhoda Grant and David McLetchie outlined the detrimental impact that could result from the bill's measures on domestic violence. A look at last week's report by the Scottish Children's Reporter Administration shows that nine children under the age of two—they were babies—died in recent years in incidents in which domestic violence and aggression were background factors. That is much more than just a debating point. Such an additional significant risk to the lives of our women and children must be measured against a proposal that the cabinet secretary hopes—only hopes—will reduce reoffending.
I believe that the bill is an opportunity for this Parliament of the Scottish people, which was set up to bring solutions to Scottish problems, to send a clear message to people who carry and use knives. My community does not have to look far for experiences in which knives have caused misery and heartbreak, as has happened across Scotland. Just a fortnight ago, we were told of an appalling murder whereby a young man, who was a visitor to this country, with a pregnant wife at home in India, was randomly murdered in the street. We heard of the sickening racial motive, but it is important to remember that the presence of a knife in that situation escalated that from a nasty confrontation to a vicious murder.
The people of my community—and people all over Scotland who supported John Muir's campaign—have made it clear that they think that people who carry knives should go to jail. They have made it clear that they think that violent criminals should go to jail. The strong argument for mandatory minimum sentences for those who carry and use knives is a democratic one. Instead of dismissing their arguments, ignoring their experiences and writing off their demands as populist rants, it is time that this Parliament and this Government listened to people and acted on their concerns.
Although I will support the principles of the bill at stage 1 today, I will not hesitate to vote against the bill at stage 3 if it does not address the concerns of my community.
I congratulate the Justice Committee and, in particular, the committee clerks on an excellent report.
The Liberal Democrats believe that we need to change the mindset of our criminal justice system so that the goal of reducing reoffending is a key objective in the effort to cut crime in Scotland. It is clear that, wherever and whoever we are, that must be our aim. As well as having one of the highest rates of imprisonment in the European Union, Scotland has a persistently high rate of reoffending. The extent of the revolving-door syndrome in Scotland's prisons shows that, for many people, prison does not work as a deterrent. It is clear that a radical overhaul of Scotland's sentencing system is required.
Prison is, of course, the most appropriate place for serious and violent offenders, and prison sentences must be available not only as a method of punishment for serious crimes but as a way of protecting the public from dangerous individuals. However, Liberal Democrats believe that imprisoning offenders for a very short period of time provides little or no benefit in challenging the underlying causes of offending.
Will the member take an intervention?
No, I do not have time.
We believe that short prison sentences of less than three months should be replaced with tough community sentences that require offenders to work to pay something back to the communities that they have harmed.
Many witnesses were generally supportive of the establishment of sentencing guidelines, but there was a considerable amount of disagreement on whether a Scottish sentencing council, in the form that is laid out in the bill, is needed. We think that the proposed establishment of a sentencing council misses the point. Liberal Democrats do not support a proposal for what we think would, in effect, be no more than an additional quango to have influence over the highly respected and independent judicial system. The cabinet secretary was right when he said that the sentencing council had to provide for broader representation of Scottish society, but we think that if the proposal is to go ahead, the argument by witnesses that there should be a judicial majority on it is correct.
The Liberal Democrats are broadly supportive of the new proposal for community payback orders, but I suggest that the £1.1 million that it is proposed will be spent on setting up the sentencing council would be better spent on CPOs. If CPOs are to work, they will need to be adequately resourced, and the committee was not certain that that would be the case. The cabinet secretary has given some indications in that regard, but I genuinely believe that the amount that is to be provided will not be enough.
I agree with the committee—and will quote from its report, as I could not have put it better myself—when it said that it strongly believed that
"if CPOs are to gain credibility with the public, and with the victims of crime in particular, they must begin (and be seen to begin) very shortly after sentence is declared – either on the day of sentence or (where this is not practicable, as we accept will sometimes be the case) as soon as possible thereafter."
I can only say that I have always been firmly of that view.
Sections 16 and 17, on short periods of detention and imprisonment, are perhaps the most contentious. Many of the witnesses who gave evidence to the committee expressed support for the proposals on the grounds that short-term prison sentences are generally regarded as being expensive and ineffective, both in protecting communities and in rehabilitating offenders and reducing crime.
We must all agree that Scotland's prisons suffer from chronic overcrowding, which makes them hugely expensive and extremely ineffective at preventing reoffending. I am sure that we all agree that the issue must be addressed, but the question is how we do that. All members of the committee recognise that the priority is to imprison offenders who commit offences that are so serious that no other form of punishment will do or who pose a threat of causing serious harm to the public. Most of those offenders will not, I suggest, be sentenced to less than six months' imprisonment.
Will the member take an intervention?
I am sorry—I will not.
The SNP proposes to end sentences of six months or less, whereas we would like to see a three-month threshold instead. However, it must be accepted that short prison sentences do not achieve very much in the way of rehabilitation, so there needs to be a method of striking a proper balance between the imposition of short custodial sentences and the use of effective community disposals. I will leave that subject for the committee to address at stage 2.
I turn to section 24, "Voluntary intoxication by alcohol: effect in sentencing". As I might have said in previous justice debates, I was a justice of the peace in Edinburgh. Early on in my time as a JP, I well remember being faced by a defence agent who said that his client could not remember what he had done because he was drunk. I asked the defence agent who had forced his client to become drunk and suggested that he had got himself drunk without any aid from anyone. The defence agent looked somewhat perplexed at the turn of events but then readily agreed that his client had not required assistance from anyone else to get drunk. Very quickly, lawyers in my court stopped justifying their clients' actions by suggesting that being drunk was a mitigating factor in their behaviour.
You must close please.
I agree with the committee report when it says:
"The evidence suggests the principle is already well understood by sentencers, and there may be a risk that a statutory provision will confuse the legal position".
You must close now, Mr Pringle.
This is a very important bill and I look forward to hearing the Government's response to many of the issues raised by the committee.
I will concentrate my contribution to this important stage 1 debate on the presumption against short periods of imprisonment that is encapsulated in sections 16 and 17. I will base my remarks in part on experience gained by working for many years as a general practitioner in a community, several members of which experienced short prison sentences, and observation of how that affected them, those immediately around them, and fellow members of the wider community.
My first point is about the reason why so many of the people whom I observed ended up in prison. In 2008, the commission on English prisons today, chaired by Cherie Booth QC, produced a report entitled "Do Better Do Less", which stated:
"Prisons have become vast warehouses for the dumping of people with problems society has failed to deal with - those with mental health needs, with histories of neglect and abuse, with drug and alcohol addictions."
I cannot go along totally with the image of a warehouse, because many prisoners who are incarcerated for a short period of time are released, reoffend, and return again. The image is more of a revolving door, as described by the cabinet secretary in his opening speech. However, the report is spot on about the type of people who are sent to prison. Although those who are serving long-term sentences could be helped to overcome their problems, that is not the case for those who are serving sentences of less than six months. Therefore, what is the rationale behind sending people to prison for a few months?
Why are we not making sentences of less than six months in prison work rather than simply trying to get away from such sentences? People need to go to prison to give communities the rest that they need.
We are not using those sentences for any form of rehabilitation because there is not time for it to take place while the person is in prison.
One argument is that society needs protecting from such folk. If they get up to antisocial behaviour when they are out of prison, a sentence inside will protect the law-abiding population for that time at least. That is undoubtedly true, as far as it goes, but the problem with the argument is that, over time, more antisocial behaviour is likely. In the recent Prince's Trust report "Breaking the Cycle of Offending", a youngster is quoted as saying:
"Prison is a place where you learn … I've learnt more in prison about being a criminal. Prison is a university of crime."
That is borne out by the knowledge that those who serve short custodial sentences are more likely to reoffend than those who are dealt with in other ways. Although a prison sentence might protect society in the short term, it is a different story over the piece.
I can bear that out from my own work experience. People who are sent to prison for a short time often come out with a much worse and more chaotic drug habit than they had when they went in. Susceptible individuals are exposed to the influence of more hardened rogues and keep up those acquaintances on the outside. Innocence is probably the wrong word to use, but it is no exaggeration to say that any naivety is dispelled for ever by one prison sentence, no matter how short.
Short sentences have a disproportionate effect on the prison service. A recent House of Commons report about the situation in England, which is not so different from the situation in Scotland, observed that all those who are in prison on short sentences at any one time account for only 11 per cent of the prison population, but they count for a much higher percentage of admissions. The considerable amount of time and resource that is required to process each admission could be put to better use in the rehabilitation of more long-term prisoners.
Women are especially vulnerable in that context, and I share the concerns of my colleague Aileen Campbell. The Fawcett Society tells us that, in 2007, 63 per cent of women who were sent to prison had sentences of six months or less, often for such offences as non-payment of television licences or fines. In its recent report, the Equal Opportunities Committee found that, in Cornton Vale prison, most women
"Had experienced some form of abuse; 75% declared a history of physical or sexual abuse … Had suffered psychological distress; 80% of offenders had some form of mental illness;"
and
"Had serious problems with alcohol and drug misuse: a recent report on Cornton Vale concluded that 98% of inmates had drug addiction problems."
It seems to me, as a former doctor, that those people are crying out for help, not punishment. Putting them in prison, separating them from their children and families, is not the way forward—and I am not talking only about women.
What does that all add up to? Short sentences do not work; in fact, they do harm. Courts must think twice or three times before deciding that prison is the only method of disposal, and we must ensure that effective alternatives are available to courts.
I support the bill.
As ever, we read the reports of the work of other committees and see a great deal of valuable evidence and advice provided by those who know and understand all the technical, professional and legal issues. It is clear to me that crimes of violence against people must be treated severely in sentencing policy in every constituency, whether they are committed by men or women.
My speech today is based on the experiences that I have heard about recently from the people whom I represent in Dunfermline East—the people of Cowdenbeath, Rosyth, Aberdour, Inverkeithing and all the other towns. I have been on the high streets, campaigning with my friends for signatures to a petition that calls for a mandatory jail sentence for anyone who carries a knife. People have queued to sign the petition everywhere I have gone. It is the petition of the Muir family and Duncan McNeil, but my people support it very strongly.
Will the member take an intervention?
No. I am sorry, but I have only just started my speech.
Those people support the petition even before I have told them why I was moved to do so. Like Duncan McNeil, I have heard people's views following the tragic stabbing earlier this year of Sean Stark. Having heard a commotion outside, he left the comfort of his flat to see what he could do to restore peace. He was fatally stabbed. The people of Dunfermline East covered that part of the High Street with floral tributes to the young man, who left behind a partner, Melanie, and two little children. Our signatures from Dunfermline East will add to those that have been gathered by the Muir family from Duncan McNeil's constituency. I hope that the petition will grow and grow until, eventually, Alex Salmond and the cabinet secretary will listen to the views of the victims just for once.
Given that two thirds of people who are convicted of knife crime receive either a fine or community service, it is hard to believe that the punishment fits the crime. That sends out completely the wrong message. I make no apology for saying again—because I believe it passionately—that Labour's policy sends out the right message: carry a knife and you go to jail. There really is a need for a mandatory sentence.
Gathering signatures on the street in connection with knife crime was a salutary experience. I ask members to listen to the views of my constituents. The people whom I represent referred to an atmosphere of fear when they walk down the street. That fear exists when a brawl happens at a pub or a club on a weekend, which is when stabbings are regularly reported. [Interruption.]
Order.
It is unacceptable that such a feeling exists in any community in Scotland in 2009. We all have a responsibility to change that.
One petitioner came to me and said, "Look here, in my neck. This is where I was stabbed." The knife had just missed his jugular vein. Last Friday in Rosyth, a woman told me of her son who had been stabbed five times in his head. He lived, but operations and other procedures were required, and the distress that was caused to his family was beyond belief. I spoke with a young friend this morning who told me that she was out with her boyfriend when he said in a light-hearted, joking way to someone in a pub, "You're sitting in my seat." The guy pulled a knife on him. Labour cares very much about the victims, which is why our message is straightforward and to the point: people who carry knives will go to jail.
On a separate point, I am pleased to see that the bill addresses the issue of spousal compellability, the importance of which the cabinet secretary will concede. I have campaigned for that, asking parliamentary questions and writing to him and his predecessors over time. I am, therefore, very pleased to see the provisions included in the bill. I note that a variety of witnesses provided the Parliament with their reservations on the provisions on pages 77 to 79 of the bill. I hear, too, the views of Nigel Don with regard to the committee's uncertainty of opinion on the matter. Nevertheless, I hope that the committee, the cabinet secretary and the Parliament will, at the very least, adopt the Law Society of Scotland's proposal, which I believe is a middle way.
I shall support the representations that have been made to us by a range of organisations, but especially the Scottish Churches Parliamentary Office, on the issues for the many groups and churches that run small fairs and coffee mornings. My colleague Cathie Craigie has already highlighted that and I shall support her in her work as she lodges amendments on the issue. Unintended consequences might come about as a result of legislation that the Parliament puts through. I hope that the legislation that we pass will not impact heavily on people who give of their utmost by volunteering—we have done that before. We should not add to the administration burdens on those people by changing the licensing regime in a way that would impact hugely on them.
Like other members, I will support the bill at stage 1, but I have concerns and I will watch with interest to see what happens. I urge members to move on the spousal compellability issue.
Members have the absolute right not to take interventions, but I have a very small amount of time in hand that I am willing to add on for members who wish to take an intervention.
As has become apparent from the wise and learned contributions of my colleagues Bill Aitken, John Lamont and David McLetchie this morning and, to be fair, the speeches of other members, the bill is wide ranging and complex. It seeks to implement more than 80 distinct policy proposals across a raft of criminal justice and licensing issues, but I intend to concentrate solely on the provisions that relate to the appalling incidence of hard drugs in prison and the linked problem of illegal mobile phones, which are often used to fuel prison drug trading.
As members will be well aware, the Scottish Conservatives have a zero-tolerance approach to drugs in prison. We urgently need in every jail a proactive rehabilitation programme through which agencies work with addicts, in and out of prison. Inmates who want to get off drugs should be given every help and encouragement to do so. At the same time, robust measures must be applied to anyone who supplies drugs to prisoners. Visiting privileges should be withdrawn and, in persistent cases, criminal charges should be brought. In short, we need a carrot-and-stick approach, to help those who wish to be helped and to deal responsibly with those who break the rules. Serious consideration should be given to using glass screens in prison visits to ensure that no contact occurs between prisoners and their visitors and thus to deny the opportunity for drugs to be passed over.
One of the most serious aspects of the issue is that not only drugs but mobile phones are passed over, which can allow prisoners to communicate directly with suppliers on the outside and to intimidate witnesses. Phones can allow incarcerated gang lords to continue managing their illegal businesses in communities outwith prisons. Members might have noticed that, earlier this week, David Jamieson, the chairman of Wandsworth prison's independent monitoring board, said that, as well as fuelling prison drug trading, mobile phones contribute to bullying and gang activities. We therefore fully support section 29, which deals with articles that are banned in prison, including phones, and introduces more strenuous sentencing for those who attempt to flout the law in that respect.
I agree with much of what Ted Brocklebank says about mobile phones, but I assume that he is aware that, on 11 December last year, measures were taken to render illegal the use of mobile phones in Scottish prisons. I know, because I announced them at Saughton.
I am grateful to the minister for reminding us of that, but I was coming to that as part of my speech.
It is estimated that, behind bars, phones can cost £400 each. According to the Wandsworth board chairman, the trade in mobile phones was worth about £9 million in 2008, when 7,000 phones were seized. However, that does not take into account the phones that are not detected and which are still in operation, which is estimated at three times the number of those that were detected and confiscated. Figures for prisons in Scotland are estimated to be at least as bad. Ever-smaller handsets are being smuggled in by visitors, and some are even thrown over prison walls. It is right that those who are found guilty of involvement in dealing with phones, whether they are prison visitors or inmates, should face the new jail sentences of up to two years, fines or both.
It is also right that we go further, particularly with so many illegal phones in prisons going undetected. We agree that technical solutions should be explored to ensure that phones do not work from prison. We require effective signal-blocking technology or mobile phone blockers in prison grounds. As Fergus Ewing has mentioned, as early as next month, under an amendment to existing legislation—I gather that it is the Prisons (Scotland) Act 1989—it should be possible specifically to prohibit personal communication devices such as mobile phones. We commend that course of action, but it does not include the mobile phone-blocking technology that I have highlighted. Of course, there are problems. For example, many prisons, including Saughton, Barlinnie, Porterfield and Perth, are situated in built-up urban areas where blocking might also affect local residents. However, we are optimistic that such difficulties can be resolved and we urge the Government to explore all possibilities.
Only when we cut the lines of communication for the so-called Mr Bigs—who, like captains on the bridges of great ocean-going vessels, lord it in their prison cells, issuing orders to underlings and meting out their own crude punishment—will yet another door slam on the drug tsars who inflict so much damage inside and outside our prisons. The benefits to society will be immense if we can match political will with developing the necessary technology to ban completely mobile messaging to and from prisons. There will be lower reoffending, less crime and a much safer prison environment, which will be good for addicts, good for families and, given how much crime in Scotland is fuelled by drugs, good for society as a whole.
I am pleased to take part in this debate. I thank the cabinet secretary for introducing the bill, which I welcome, and the Justice Committee for taking the time to consider it and put together its stage 1 report and recommendations. I fully support the cabinet secretary's intention to take forward this wide range of criminal justice and licensing measures, which will modernise our laws in a positive way and make our communities safer and healthier.
At this point, I should say that I, too, have visited Cornton Vale, where one lady told me that she felt safer in prison, because outside it she had no recourse against violent partners and their families. I thank Ian McKee and Mike Pringle for their comments on that issue.
Other members have talked about crime and sentencing, but I want to focus on specific aspects of part 2 relating to criminal law. That part of the bill includes provisions to widen the scope of sexual offences prevention orders and to revise the statutory definition of "obscene material", measures that I believe will prove beneficial.
The bill will amend section 51 of the Civic Government (Scotland) Act 1982 to include extreme pornography within the definition of obscene material. Unlike "classified work", as defined in the Video Recordings Act 1984, such obscene material is solely for the purpose of sexual gratification, and includes images that explicitly and realistically depict extreme sexual acts that are a threat to life or would be
"likely to result … in a person's severe injury";
are forced as in, for example, rape; or feature other depraved activity. As such images frequently show abusive, disrespectful behaviour towards women, we must adopt the new framework in the bill to deal with such material and avoid the harm that it does to our culture, our society and women in general.
However, although the bill seeks to strengthen significantly laws that criminalise the pornographic exploitation of women, section 126 in part 8, which amends provisions in the 1982 act relating to public entertainment licences, falls short of recategorising the licensing of lap dancing clubs by taking them out of the alcohol licensing system. At the moment, such clubs, which represent another form of commercial exploitation that perpetuates the objectification of women as sexual objects for sexual gratification, are regulated and licensed by our local authorities under an alcohol and entertainment scheme similar to that for recorded music or live entertainment venues. That is not only misleading but leaves authorities without the necessary power to decide where—and indeed whether—lap dancing clubs belong in their community or to refuse a licence.
As adult entertainment venues, lap dancing clubs that are seeking a licence should be subject to more scrutiny than other venues. I know that many councils and communities agree, and I hope that, at stage 2, the necessary amendments are lodged to ensure that local authorities have the power to regulate and recategorise such clubs not as public entertainment venues but under some new licensing category. We need to allow each local authority to regulate lap dancing clubs effectively.
In England and Wales, the Policing and Crime Act 2009 has reclassified lap dancing clubs as sexual entertainment venues, made licences more expensive, required more frequent renewals and taken into account the views of local communities. I welcome the provisions in that act, which demonstrate the need for a progressive stance on the issue in Scotland. It is important that we in Scotland look at the issues of lap dancing clubs and the effect that they have on their local communities. In particular, I have been forceful in trying to ensure that we have better regulation of lap dancing clubs in Glasgow. I hope that, if amendments on the licensing of such venues are forthcoming from wherever at stage 2, the committee and ministers will look on them favourably.
I conclude by expressing again my support for the bill and specifically the strengthening of the law on sexual offences.
My comments reflect the concerns of many of my constituents about some aspects of the bill. I regret that, this morning, the cabinet secretary seemed simply to dismiss those concerns rather than take them seriously.
Before I get to the substance of my speech, I will flag up a few issues that I trust will be revisited at stage 2. They include the issues that Sandra White flagged up in relation to trafficked women; prostitution and men who abuse women and prostitute them; and lap dancing. A further question that I hope we will revisit is how we make a connection between communities that suffer under the cosh of serious organised crime and the money that is secured as a consequence of that under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002. There should be a direct link, with funding going back to the communities that have suffered the most.
On the broader debate, it seems that nothing is easy. It is unhelpful to try, as I think Dr McKee rather complacently did, to create the impression that somehow only those who are wilfully stupid wish to ignore the policy that the Scottish Government is taking forward. It is most unfortunate to demonise those in our communities who are demanding action and those of us who wish to highlight how victims often feel let down by the system. To do that is to deny a voice to those who, because of their day-to-day experience, feel that the justice system is unfair, irrational and out of touch with the way in which they have to live their lives.
Yes, we have to try to understand what causes people to commit offences, but we also have to stop infantilising people who choose to terrorise their partners, their families and their neighbours. We owe it to the young men who carry a knife, as much as to their potential victims, to do everything in our power to stop them doing that. I have worked with young men who, in later life, ended up either in prison on a murder charge or dead. If we take steps to address the needs of such young men as well as those of their victims, we will be doing something important.
I do not think that anyone would disagree with that. The issue is what makes the difference. What is the tough sentence that turns such people around? That is the nub of the debate, which some people on my side of the chamber would say the Labour Party has not engaged with as it might.
I recognise that, but I do not think that there is recognition on the other side of the importance of deterring young people who are outside the core group that carry knives, who see that nothing happens to those people and who then carry knives themselves. We owe it to those young people to say, "This is serious," in the same way that we punish people who drink drive to prevent others from doing that.
I am always struck by the degree to which people who come to me to ask for help because of disorder, crime and violence in their communities do so not simply because they want us to put people in jail and throw away the key but out of desperation about their circumstances. It is unjust and contemptuous to sneer at those who want tougher action on knife crime because of their direct experience of those who use violence to silence people, harm them and intimidate them to the point where they phone the police in a whisper. We owe it to those people to empower rather than disempower them and to listen to them. In that context, I urge the minister to reflect further on the action that he is taking and to test it against people's need to have certainty that their communities will not be more dangerous and that the measures will not put them at further risk.
The scrapping of six-month sentences raises a number of issues. At First Minister's question time, I highlighted the implication of the policy for the victims of domestic abuse and the fears of many people that it might increase risk. Following the First Minister's response, I seek clarification on what the Scottish Government's policy actually is. The First Minister said that serious offences should attract longer sentences. Is it the Government's view that all domestic abuse cases that currently attract sentences of less than six months should attract longer sentences? If that is the case, how would that be enforced?
Will the member give way?
I am sorry, but I have only a minute left—the minister can answer the point when he sums up.
Would that policy apply to other serious offences?
There is an issue around resources. It is not enough simply to say that the resources are available. We could end up with an experiment with no safety net, the costs of which will be borne by individuals and communities. The obvious fear is not just that there could be an increase in offending behaviour, but that there could be an increased lack of confidence in the justice system's ability to serve people's needs.
At the heart of the matter there is a puzzle. It is illogical to say that the only way to encourage community sentences is to end short sentences now—it could be done the other way round. It is also illogical to say that people can be rehabilitated in their communities working with them only five or 10 hours a week, yet absolutely nothing can be done with them over six months when they are in prison. I have never understood the logic in assuming that the Scottish Prison Service has no responsibility towards those who are in prison serving shorter sentences. I would have more confidence in the minister if we were not hearing that Sacro, Apex Scotland and other organisations that work with prisoners who come out of prison are being told that their funding is being cut.
In those circumstances, the lack of confidence in our communities must be addressed, not dismissed.
As one of its former members, I thank the Justice Committee for its report, and I welcome this opportunity to speak in the debate. There are a number of welcome provisions in the bill, such as the new offences to tackle serious organised crime and the clarification of Scots law on trafficking.
I believe that two aspects of the bill are capable of effecting positive change: the abolition of short prison sentences and the measures on community penalties. Wide-reaching reform in those areas, backed—crucially—by the proper levels of resources, can help to address reoffending and to provide what we all want: a cut in the levels of crime on our streets and in our communities.
Prison is appropriate for some people. Serious and violent offenders cannot and should not be allowed to remain a danger to our communities. However, Scotland's prisons are chronically overcrowded. They are hugely expensive and massively inefficient at dealing with people who receive short-term sentences. Two of the purposes of sentencing are the punishment of offenders and the protection of the public, but they also include the reform and rehabilitation of offenders.
One paragraph of the committee's stage 1 report jumped off the page. Professor McNeill of the Scottish Consortium on Crime and Criminal Justice remarked:
"three things help people to stop offending: getting older and becoming more mature; developing social ties that mean something to them; and changing their view of what they are about as a person. Short periods in prison do not help with any of those three things."—[Official Report, Justice Committee, 19 May 2009; c 1893.]
I add, from my experience of talking to people in the Scottish Prison Service over many years, that people who are sent to prison for short periods often lose their families, homes and jobs—the very things that might make them not reoffend in future.
We have heard much about the revolving-door system. The cycle of reoffending is a blight on our communities and our criminal justice system. People offend, they are sentenced to a short stay in prison and, on release, they go on to offend again. More than 95 per cent of people who are currently serving sentences of less than three months have already spent time in custody. On release, 74 per cent of them will go on to offend again within two years. I am disappointed that some members are not prepared to recognise that short-term sentences fail completely in helping to reduce the level of crime. For many people, prison is not working as a deterrent.
Without a fundamental change to how we approach sentencing, we risk creating—or, at this point, reinforcing—a class of Norman Stanley Fletchers, a conveyor belt of offenders who, like the "Porridge" antihero, might be happy to be told that they are someone
"who accepts arrest as an occupational hazard and presumably accepts imprisonment in the same casual manner."
It is surely right to emphasise that prison, for many people, should be viewed as a last resort, and that, for less serious offences, a genuine alternative should be sought. We must have a better option than sending people to prison for a few weeks, during which time there is no opportunity to work with them to address the issues that sent them there in the first place. That matter has been well covered in recent years by Andrew McLellan during his time as Her Majesty's chief inspector of prisons for Scotland and by Henry McLeish and his Scottish Prisons Commission.
I welcome the focus on community sentences and the sensible move to a single community sentence, which will help to improve public understanding. However, it is fundamental that the Government ensures that the proper resources are in place to make that happen and to make it work.
The Justice Committee's point about the timing of community sentences is important. Our communities want to know that action is being taken. There is still a perception that community sentencing is a soft option, but for many people it is not as soft an option as lying on their backside in a prison bed for two or three weeks. We have to ensure that people in our communities see that community sentences mean that rapid action is taken.
Although we agree with the Government's direction of travel on short sentences, we would rather see an end to custodial sentences of three months or less, rather than six months or less. That would remove from the prison estate those whose crimes are least likely to have involved serious or violent offences. It would allow the available resources to be focused on those cases where there is the least chance of rehabilitation in the prison system and on cases where tough community sentences are more likely to bear fruit.
Those who are currently sentenced to short spells in prison are not in the system long enough for staff to obtain the relevant information about them or their needs. As a result, they do not receive the appropriate interventions, whether help for drug or alcohol issues, or further training or education, and they are not helped to tackle the issues that got them there in the first place.
Many of the very short sentences are being served for the same reasons and by the same social groups as they were a century ago—those who are blighted by poverty, those who suffer mental health problems and those with alcohol and drug misuse problems. That is not to take away from their offences; it is simply to say that we should get smarter and better at dealing with them when they are in any way brought into an interface with the criminal justice system. Those are not small problems—they are some of the biggest in Scotland—but they need to be tackled from the root. In many cases, they cannot be best tackled in our prisons.
I was shocked by some of the statistics. Compared with the general population, people in Scotland's prisons are 13 times more likely to have been unemployed and 13 times more likely to have been in care as children. Seven out of 10 have suffered from at least two mental disorders and two out of 10 males have previously attempted suicide—a figure that increases to more than 37 per cent for women. Some 65 per cent have the numeracy skills of an 11-year-old and eight out of 10 have writing skills at the same level. Those are serious issues, which have to be dealt with seriously.
Getting rid of short-term sentences needs imagination, commitment and resources. I look forward to the challenges being further addressed and debated during the passage of the bill.
The bill is excellent, but I should like to take this opportunity to suggest an addition to it, which I hope will receive the cabinet secretary's support.
The inadequacy of the present criminal justice legislation was recently highlighted by Louise Adamson of families against corporate killers, who said:
"An annual work-related death toll in excess of 1600 is tragic testimony to the fact that the current system of fining companies for health and safety offences has not served as strict enough punishment or strong enough deterrent."
Last August, I consulted on a proposal for a member's bill to improve the situation, which, if adopted, would introduce the principle of equity fines into Scots law and allow judges to order independent financial reports on convicted companies. The latter, as an amendment, would enhance the bill.
With the creation of new procurators fiscal who specialise in health and safety offences, the cabinet secretary has shown the Government's commitment to tackling the horrific death toll that I have mentioned. The addition of independent inquiries would further strengthen the law. I hope that that would find support throughout the chamber.
The present low, and therefore non-deterrent, level of fines imposed on most convicted corporations is illustrated by the Health and Safety Executive figures for fines imposed by Scottish courts between 2001 and 2005. The median fine is the value of fine that half of all fines lie below. The other half lie above—I am sure that members worked that out. The great advantage of the median is that the results are not skewed by a limited number of very high or very low results. For cases resulting in death or injury, the median fine was only £4,000. When there was a fatality, the median fine was £12,500. In half of all cases resulting in a conviction in which a fatality occurred and for which a fine was imposed on the company, the value of the fine was £12,500 or less. That is £12,500 for being convicted of killing a human in the name of profit—and make no mistake, that is precisely what that represents.
Although hard to interpret, as the offences are not detailed, more recent figures on the HSE's website give little cause for comfort. Average penalties per conviction for cases in which the HSE or local authorities took action have declined in the past three years.
The information under the title "Fixing the sentence" on the HSE's website makes interesting reading. It says:
"Sentencing is entirely a matter for the sheriff or judge. The prosecutor is not entitled to make representations on this matter or to remind the court of their sentencing powers. The sheriff or judge should fix a fine which, in his opinion, reflects the circumstances of the offence. In so doing he must take into account all the circumstances of the case, including the financial circumstances of the accused, whether an individual, a partnership, or a company, and whether or not this has the effect of increasing or diminishing the amount of the fine."
That is the crux of the matter.
One reason for the present low fine levels is that judges might underestimate the size of fine that a company can reasonably pay. A significant failing of the present system is the lack of a mechanism for ordering an independent report into a company's financial situation. In a paper that was prepared for the previous Scottish Executive's expert group on corporate homicide, Professor Hazel Croall recognised that situation and suggested
"that courts should routinely receive a form of Corporate Inquiry Report and should, where necessary, have powers to appoint a relevant expert to provide a professional assessment, paid for where appropriate by the company itself."
It is instructive to compare the present law and procedures for companies with those for individuals. When an individual is brought to court for sentencing, social and other background reports are provided as a matter of course. In the case of companies, judges rely on the convicted party's honesty. That is roughly the equivalent of the judge looking the prisoner in the eye, sternly wagging his finger at the convicted felon and saying in a severe—if not downright angry—tone, "You are a very naughty fellow. Now, before I impose a sentence, could you just tell me what level of fine you can afford to pay?"
I hope that the cabinet secretary agrees that the present situation is unacceptable and that independent inquiries into a convicted company's finances would be a significant and useful addition to Scots law. I hope that the cabinet secretary will lend his support to such an amendment to the bill.
I am pleased to participate in this important debate. I support the amendment that Bill Wilson describes. In the previous parliamentary session, I proposed a member's bill with a similar purpose. I would jail individual directors of companies, because that is the only way to focus their minds on the acts of violence that they perpetrate on constituents such as mine.
I will deal with the provision in the bill to remove the exemption for charitable, religious, youth, recreational, community, political or similar organisations from holding a market operator's licence. In the past couple of weeks in my local paper, the Carluke Gazette, I have read about events that the Girls Brigade, the Kirkton players, the New Lanark Football Club, Biggar and district Oxfam and Castlehill Bowling Club were to hold and about the St Athanasius Christmas fayre. All those events are currently exempt from the licensing requirements. I will support Cathie Craigie's amendments to keep the exemption, because such events should remain exempted. If something is not broken, why bother fixing it? Requiring a licence would be a tax on the groups in our communities that try to raise money and support their communities. I hope that the cabinet secretary will take out this silly measure at stage 2 and that common sense will prevail.
The second issue that I want to raise is knife crime. They say that people's life experiences often determine how they react to issues. That is certainly true for me in relation to knife crime. In the early hours of 26 December 1994, there was a knock at my front door in Jedburgh. We had had an enjoyable Christmas day, and I thought that friends might want to continue the festivities. Unfortunately, the knock changed my life and the lives of my close family friends for ever.
John Frater was in the prime of his young life. He had not been in trouble; he was into rugby and was the vice-captain of Jed Thistle. He had spent Christmas day with his family and was walking his girlfriend home when he was murdered—as the result of a single stab wound—by a man who was intent on causing bother. John was simply a young man who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. He was not carrying a knife or looking for a fight, but he is now dead. His parents have lost their son and will not see him married or be able to look after his children. His death devastated them and affected me greatly. I cannot say without a doubt that tougher action on knife crime would have saved John Frater's life, but it might have given him a better chance. Our attitude to blades needs to change.
John was killed 15 years ago. In those 15 years, his family have gone through terrible pain, as have many, many other families. We have tried convincing and cajoling, we have tried campaign after campaign, and we have tried amnesty after amnesty. However, the truth—and John Muir is testament to that truth—is that despite all of that, far too many young people have died in those 15 years. They have been killed by thoughtless, mindless thugs who carried a knife, intent on its use. We have failed to change that culture.
Someone does not go out with a knife tucked down their sock, slipped into their jacket pocket or somewhere else on their person just because they think it is cool; they do it because they think they are hard. They will use the knife if they are challenged. Like Johann Lamont, I believe that it is time to stop messing about on knife crime: it is time to send out a stronger message. We have tried the fines and the community sentences—they have not worked. Far too many innocent individuals such as John Frater are now dead.
I turn to the proposed abolition of sentences of six months or less. Let there be no mistake about it: I absolutely support the use of community sentences. Such sentences work for many offenders in providing an appropriate punishment and deterrent, but for many others they do not. The cabinet secretary talks about a revolving door, but that is as true for community sentences as it is for short-term prison sentences. As a youth worker, I met many young people who got community sentence after community sentence. They saw them as a soft option. The sentences did not change their behaviour. We need more investment in community sentences, not less.
Various excuses have been made in the debate for why we should get rid of short-term prison sentences. We have heard that there is no opportunity to work with prisoners if they are in prison for only six months. Why not? We have also heard that people cannot be rehabilitated in less than six months. Why not? Why do people lie on their backside for a few weeks in a prison cell? Why have we abdicated to the Scottish Prison Service the duty of care to those who are in our prisons? We should be dealing with the issue, head on. If sheriffs believe that someone needs to be sent to prison, they do so for a reason. We should be rehabilitating prisoners while they are in prison, not abdicating responsibility. We should not be returning people to their communities where they cause havoc.
The communities that I represent want this Government to defend people properly. Like Duncan McNeil, I reserve my right to vote against the bill at stage 3. I will do that if the Government does not listen to the people of Scotland; if it does not see sense on this important issue.
The fact that we have held a day's debate on an issue of substance is a good advert for the Parliament.
I listened carefully to members of other parties whom I respect, such as Bill Butler and, in particular, Karen Gillon. That said, in my years in the Parliament, I have heard equally passionate speeches from Labour members in particular in favour of electronic tagging and early release into the community. Members spoke about finding alternatives to custody that are better for individuals, ensure that communities are protected and aim to reduce crime. That is as strong a territory for debate as it was in the days when the Labour Party was in office.
Cathie Craigie made a direct attack on me and my Liberal Democrat colleagues in speaking of our approach to the bill. This morning, Robert Brown made clear his position on sentencing, as he did his position on the proposed sentencing council. In debates such as this, Cathie Craigie and her Labour colleagues can so easily slip into believing that they have a monopoly on representing constituents who are affected by crime. They do not, nor do they have a monopoly on knowing what is effective in tackling the issue.
I represent Penicuik in Midlothian. Year after year, Labour has produced leaflets in which it attacks me for being soft on crime. Labour attacked me even when I was a member of the Justice 2 Sub-Committee for its inquiry into child sex offenders and yet, at the same time that I was being attacked, the Labour council in Midlothian was being castigated in official child protection reports. Indeed, the director of social work and the councillor with responsibility for the issue resigned as a result. Now we are being castigated for being soft on crime, at the same time as I have casework in the town on the Labour council's woeful approach to antisocial behaviour, which is only now being corrected. The police have had to chair the relevant body in the council, to ensure that some order is imposed.
Let us not have rhetoric without the belief that action at council, Government and legislative levels must work. Communities do not want simply more tough talk—they want action on crime. Nor do we want just rhetoric from the Scottish Government on the bill. That is why the Finance Committee unanimously asked serious questions about the assumption that only 20 per cent of sentences will involve a community payback order, rather than custody. The bill team and the Scottish Government provided no convincing reason for including in the financial memorandum options of only 10 and 20 per cent for the likely increase in the number of community sentences. When Robert Brown and the Liberal Democrats raise financial and resource issues, they do so because they want the legislation to work, rather than simply to sit on the statute book, allowing ministers of any Administration to say, "We have legislated, therefore crime is being reduced." That is not sufficient.
If, in the member's view, the bill is not properly resourced at stage 3, will he vote against it?
Absolutely. In an intervention during Richard Baker's speech, Robert Brown asked whether the resource issues were the point of principle for the member. I took careful note of Richard Baker's response. He gave the impression of making a reasonable argument that, because resources may not be in place, the bill should not proceed. However, that is a reasonable argument only if one agrees in principle that very short sentences work. They do not. That is the point that Karen Gillon asked us to address. She asked why we cannot reform short sentences so that they can work, but it is in the nature of a short sentence that it cannot work.
Will the member give way?
I would ordinarily, but I cannot on this occasion.
The Conservatives argued that we have short sentences because they act as a deterrent. It was extremely telling that, when Robert Brown asked how that could be, given that 91 per cent of offenders in Polmont have served sentences there before, they had no answer.
In a reply to a parliamentary question, it was confirmed that 95.6 per cent of those who are currently serving sentences of less than three months have spent previous periods in custody. Short prison sentences are not a deterrent and do not affect reoffending. That is not surprising, given that we know that more than three quarters of young people in custody have a history of regular school truancy and a third have no formal educational qualifications. Parliament has known full well for a number of years that extremely low reading and numeracy levels are the biggest obstacle to successful interventions. Those arguments were rehearsed in a report by the Parliament on youth offending in 2005.
Will the member take an intervention?
I do not have time—I am in the last moments of my speech.
It is not enough to talk tough to communities—the issue is now critical, because offenders are the least employable section of the population. In the current economic situation, their prospects of being employable—the biggest factor in reducing reoffending—are near to zero. It is not acceptable for us to stand aside and to leave them on the scrapheap of unproductive, uneconomic and potentially reoffending individuals when we can do something about that. The bill is one part of that action.
I agree with Jeremy Purvis that we have had a genuinely good debate today with some passionate contributions. Some excellent points were made, not all of which came from the Opposition benches, and there were some astonishing displays of naivety, most of which came from the Government and Liberal benches.
I will go through some of the contributions in which some interesting points were made. In a worthwhile speech, Stewart Maxwell was correct to raise the clear anomaly that relates to DNA retention. The rest of his speech was less worth while. He spoke about the presumption against short-term prison sentences. There is a presumption against short-term prison sentences already and I assure Stewart Maxwell and his ilk that no judge, sheriff or magistrate sends anyone to prison when there is any alternative.
Robert Brown rightly raised the cost of prison sentences. However, if we reduce substantially the prison population there will be no significant saving. I know that Robert Brown acknowledges that fact. The jails still have to pay the staff and the only saving would be on a few flat-screen televisions in Addiewell.
Does the member acknowledge that if we reduce the prison population, that would free up the prison authorities and give them more resource to deal more effectively with the serious prisoners who are in prison justifiably and who are a bigger danger to the public when they come out if they have not been rehabilitated?
That is part of a wider argument that I will address.
Not for the first time, Cathie Craigie spoke common sense in an excellent speech. She raised a valid point about charities. As constituency members in areas that have their problems, she, Karen Gillon and Duncan McNeil underlined the difficulties that arise in many of Scotland's communities. They expressed the fear, which we share, that if the policy to end shorter sentences is imposed on the people of Scotland, things will get very much worse.
In a typically thoughtful speech, Nigel Don dealt with problems that might arise under the Custodial Sentences and Weapons (Scotland) Act 2007. The Government got it just about right in that respect.
Mike Pringle issued the usual mantra about tough community sentences. Whatever community sentences come, we can be assured that they will not be tough, nor will they be carried out. The other evening, I attended a lecture chaired by the cabinet secretary. The new chief inspector of prisons spoke about a conversation that he had had at Polmont, in which he had been told by one of the inmates that he did not like having to get up early to do community service. Nobody asked the prisoner how he had ended up in Polmont, if he did not like doing the community service. He had probably not done that community service, or he had reoffended as a result of it.
Bill Wilson raised a question about health and safety, which is an argument that could take place in another direction. Sandra White spoke about lap-dancing clubs, which is hardly the greatest priority given the amount of violent crime in Scotland.
Ian McKee, a man to whom I always enjoy listening, let me down a bit today. He said that prisons are a university of crime. If that is the case, some of the streets of Glasgow must be where criminals get their doctorates. He pointed out, correctly, the difficulty of drugs in prison. Surely the answer is to try to prevent drugs from getting into prison rather than bemoaning the fact—
Will the member reflect on the state hospital's success in preventing drugs from entering the hospital? Perhaps the mainstream prison estate can learn lessons from there.
That might be of interest. I acknowledge that the Government has taken certain steps in that direction, but we are not yet at the stage where that will happen.
Those who advocate the ending of short prison sentences must acknowledge that the presumption is already against such sentences. They must tell us who should not be sent to prison, because all that the policy would do would be to give the green light to the fourth-time drunk and disqualified driver and to provide a get-out-of-jail-free card for the knife carrier, the wife beater and the small-time drug pusher. It would send the message "Carry on thieving" to the shoplifter who has had 40 or more court appearances. That is the issue that confronts us all. Those are the people who would normally get a sentence of six months or less.
The bill has much to commend it, under many headings. However, part 1 is so fatally flawed that it will be difficult for any right-thinking, sensible person to support it unless it is radically amended.
I welcome the opportunity to make the closing speech on behalf of the Labour Party, and I thank the Justice Committee and its clerking team for their extensive and comprehensive report on the bill.
We have had an interesting, high-quality debate. The debate started in daylight, and as darkness falls there is no doubt that gloom will descend on the SNP benches, because the debate has underlined serious flaws in the bill. Chief among those flaws is the policy of scrapping six-month sentences. It is clear to me that that would send the wrong message to Scotland's communities, as Bill Butler put it articulately. The scrapping of six-month sentences would mean that 75 per cent of people who have been found guilty of any crime, 40 per cent of people who have been found guilty of indecent assault and 71 per cent of housebreakers would be released into the community.
Members have quoted the experts and the academics, but the people in whom I put good store are the ones in my constituency: the pensioner who came to my surgery recently, who had had the door of her flat kicked in and her close vandalised; the man who had been attacked with a hammer and was afraid to return to his job on the rigs in case his family was attacked; and the constituent who was nearly beaten to death by a man who had been released from prison only that day. Those are the voices that speak strongly to me.
Mike Pringle and Ian McKee told us that prison does not work, but I do not see the logic of simply releasing people who are guilty of indecent assault, for example, back into the community. [Interruption.] That is not a matter about which to chuckle away, as the cabinet secretary has done during a number of serious speeches. This is an important debate.
Richard Baker made serious points about the cost of the policy. The Government's bill team has provided no evidence to explain why the financial memorandum costs the policy on the basis of a 10 or 20 per cent increase in the use of community penalties.
Why is the Labour Party in favour of using electronic tagging as an alternative to custody in many of the instances that we have heard about during the debate?
That issue is not in the bill. I am addressing the serious shortfall in resources to implement the SNP's policy of scrapping six-month sentences.
Prison statistics show that 8,200 people are serving sentences of six months or less. The figures in the financial memorandum would account for only 4,000 of those prisoners. In addition, there is nothing in the budget to support the policy. If the vast majority of the 8,200 prisoners were moved on to community sentences, the policy would cost £22 million. In a three-year period, a £66 million black hole would be created. The policy has not been costed properly. It is also important to destroy the myth that releasing prisoners from jail will save money. The Government officials made clear to the Finance Committee that it would save no money at all.
I do not dissent from James Kelly's point but could we have clarity in the debate? The bill does not propose scrapping short-term sentences; it proposes a presumption against them. That is an important difference and we should talk in clear terms about it. At the end of the day, the resource follows from all that.
The important point to bear in mind is that, if the bill is passed, a presumption against six-month sentences would be lodged in statute. As a result, we would see the examples that Bill Butler cited earlier of convicted offenders who would currently go to prison being released into the community.
The policy is not properly costed. It is broad-brush accountancy. I just hope that, when John Swinney finalises his budget, he does not look to the Cabinet Secretary for Justice for any advice because numbers are clearly not Mr MacAskill's strong point.
I point out to Jeremy Purvis that the Labour Party supports the principle of community payback orders. In his opening remarks, Bill Aitken made the valid point that it is important for the public to see that community payback orders are immediate. There is work to be done to make them more effective.
There were important contributions on knife crime from Duncan McNeil, Helen Eadie and Karen Gillon, who spoke from experience in their constituencies about its horrendous human impact. There were 3,418 convictions for knife crime in 2007-08 but only 29 per cent of those offenders went to jail. As many Labour members have said, we need to send a strong message that knife crime is unacceptable and if somebody carries a knife they should go to jail.
Will the member give way?
Not at this point, sorry. I want to make my next point.
Robert Brown criticised Labour's justice policy and said that we were more interested in getting into the pages of The Sun. It therefore came as a surprise to me to discover a newspaper clipping from December last year that quotes him widely—in fact, it has his photograph as well.
It is in The Sun.
Yes, it is. As part of the article, Robert Brown says:
"Carrying knives is always stupid and should normally lead to a prison sentence for those caught with weapons."
Once again, we have a change of Liberal Democrat policy. I only hope that we witness a further change at stage 2.
Is James Kelly saying that there would be no exception to Labour's mandatory sentence for knife crime? If not, will he please define what the exceptions would be?
As the cabinet secretary knows, there are already exceptions in law. The Labour position is to support a mandatory minimum sentence for knife crime. That is the strong message that Scotland's communities look for.
There are serious concerns about the costs of the sentencing council—£1.1 million annual running costs and £0.45 million set-up costs. As Professor Fergus McNeill told the Justice Committee, the £1 million annual cost is equivalent to 1,000 community penalties. The costs of the proposal should be closely examined.
Richard Baker covered DNA. The UK Government has indicated that it intends to extend the policy in England and Wales of holding DNA for six years. There are currently no such proposals in Scotland, but I would certainly support the extension of the use of DNA. It is clear that the policy has been effective in ensuring that more people have been caught and more criminals put behind bars in recent years.
Cathie Craigie made an effective speech that highlighted the problems in the bill with exemptions for charity organisations and community groups. We all have experience of those problems in our constituencies. We do not want charities and community groups to be unable to hold local events because they cannot afford to pay for a licence. Further, the administration of licences would be a burden on councils.
Among other issues that were raised in the debate were antisocial behaviour reports, serious and organised crime and witness statements.
The bill's proposals are flawed. They come from a cabinet secretary who told us that prison was "a skoosh". The bill is a criminals' charter, with a £66 million black hole at the centre of its proposals. Labour will not support the bill at stage 3 unless our concerns about short-term sentences and knife crime are addressed. It is time for the cabinet secretary to venture homeward to think again.
I thank the Justice Committee for the work that it has undertaken on what is a substantial bill with, as we heard during the wide-ranging debate, a large number of measures, many of which, I think it is reasonable to say, have been welcomed by members across the chamber.
The bill's effect on charities was raised by Karen Gillon and, I think, by John Lamont and Mr Kelly. We will consider extremely carefully the arguments that were presented by members across the chamber. The point of having such debates is so that the Government can pay heed to issues, particularly when they are raised in a non-partisan, non-political way. We will reflect carefully on the arguments and report, as is appropriate, to the Justice Committee.
I will comment first on some of the bill's less controversial measures and move into the shark-infested waters towards the end of my speech. I will move towards a crescendo, as it were.
I think that we all believe that extreme pornography is particularly vile and offensive, and that we will all support the measures that Sandra White talked about. She has rightly campaigned on that subject for many years.
Mr McLetchie rightly mentioned the extreme problem of domestic violence and the continuing stain on our nation of men who batter their wives—and the serious, complex and difficult issue of how, as a society, we deal with that. Of the 5,029 convictions with a domestic abuse aggravation in 2007-08, about 80 per cent involved common assault or breach of the peace, with very few resulting in custody. I am sure that Mr McLetchie will know well that the circumstances of those cases are hugely divergent. Plainly, the courts have taken a very stiff view and imposed serious and long sentences in the relatively small number of cases where a charge of serious assault or attempted murder was brought. However, we will reflect seriously on the detailed arguments that Mr McLetchie and others made.
Bill Wilson talked about his proposals for equity fines and how we deal with crimes that are committed from behind the corporate shield. Karen Gillon has long campaigned on an extremely serious incident that led to deaths in her constituency. I recently spoke on the issue, having had the pleasure of being invited to speak to a Scottish Trades Union Congress audience. I pay tribute to the work that Karen Gillon, Bill Wilson and others do in this field. It is, as they know only too well, a reserved issue, which we would prefer not to be the case. That fact has made consideration of the issue difficult. The cabinet secretary has offered to work with Mr Wilson and other members on proposals to ensure that courts have information about a company's financial position to help determine sentencing. Bill Wilson alluded to one positive development that we should recognise and praise, which is the Crown Office's appointment of a dedicated prosecutor who now leads a group of individuals dealing with health and safety offences. That will make a huge difference in practice to how such cases are pursued.
Reference was also made to various of the slightly more technical aspects of the bill concerning disclosure. My understanding—I am by no means an expert—is that the position on disclosure requires to be clearly stated. The issue is complex, so it is not possible to make the provisions as simple as we might like. Nonetheless, on that matter and on all others on which we are trying to achieve a corpus of law that is clear, coherent and effective, the Government is happy to continue to work with the Justice Committee to achieve the best possible result. The same point applies to defence statements, which several members referred to during the debate.
Ted Brocklebank raised, quite rightly, the issue of mobile phones in prisons. It is certainly the case—I know, because I did it—that the prison rules were changed to make introducing a mobile phone into a prison contrary to the rules. As Ted Brocklebank and other members who have visited prisons will know, prison officers do excellent, painstaking and detailed work day and daily to prevent the importation of drugs into our prisons. When I saw the videos showing drugs being passed from one individual to another I did not notice what was happening in any of those instances, but the prison officers, through their professionalism, detected those incidents and prevented the importation of drugs on those occasions. The ban on the use of mobile phones, coupled with the new offences that will be introduced by the bill, will take the tough action that I believe is supported by members of all parties in the Parliament.
The minister has described heavier sentencing under an amendment to the prison rules to deal with the trafficking of phones in and out of prison, but I asked about the blocking of mobile telephone signals. Such technology is available, but the minister has not referred to it.
I had not finished responding to the specific points that Ted Brocklebank raised. I was about to say—in closing the debate, I have a duty to try my best to respond, in so far as is possible, to members who made specific points or recommendations—that work on a signal blocking device is being progressed by the Scottish Government, together with the SPS, the Ministry of Justice national offender management service and the Home Office scientific development branch to try to identify a viable solution to what Ted Brocklebank conceded is a difficult and complex problem. That is so not least because we do not want to block the mobile phone signals of people who live in Saughton outside the prison walls nor of those who live near our other prisons, which happen to be mostly in residential areas. I am sure that people who live on Inverness's Culduthel Road near Porterfield prison would like to continue to enjoy chatting among themselves of an afternoon about activities in the Scottish Parliament—
Steady on.
—however unlikely that may seem.
We take the matter of mobile phones in prison very seriously, in a way that I think Ted Brocklebank would approve of. We must also think about the safety and security of prison officers, who must be able to continue to use effective methods of communication. We will continue to ensure that they can do precisely that.
The more controversial aspects of the bill have certainly enlivened today's proceedings. Our priority must be to keep the public safe. We must reduce the damage that crime does to victims and communities. That requires us to respond decisively and effectively when confronted by serious, violent crime, but it also requires us to use the best available evidence to work harder and to be smarter in challenging and changing offenders and in tackling the underlying social and cultural factors that so often drive offending and reoffending. I believe that our current uses of imprisonment make that extremely difficult.
"Scotland's prisons hold too many prisoners on short sentences where there is no real expectation of being able to punish, rehabilitate or deter."
Those words are, of course, not mine. Members will have recognised from the unusual succinctness and fluency of that passage that they are the words of Henry McLeish—they come from the foreword to the Scottish Prisons Commission report of 1 July 2008. That is the approach that we have pursued.
Will you clarify why you are taking that approach? Why do you presume that nothing can be done with people who are literally a captive audience for six months, but expect it to be possible for those issues to be addressed in the community, even though the organisations that would provide that service are suffering cuts in their funding?
I remind members to speak through the chair and not directly to each other—in other words, do not use the word "you".
I can give Johann Lamont the answer that she seeks and can explain exactly why we are taking that approach. We are doing so because we believe that it is the right approach. Unless we take it, we will not tackle the problem of crime and reoffending in this country.
I spell out that we are taking that approach because we learn not, as Mr Kelly said, from academics, but from people who should know—people such as Chief Constable David Strang—that it is the right approach. In his evidence to the Justice Committee, he said:
"We want a shift in the general approach to one that recognises that putting people in prison for a short time and then allowing them out unsupervised simply does not address the crime problems that Scotland faces. In principle, there should be a presumption against short sentences."—[Official Report, Justice Committee, 26 May 2009; c 1931.]
We learn not from academics, but from people such as Professor Alec Spencer, who has been governor at Peterhead, Glenochil and Saughton prisons, occupations that are probably as unacademic in their daily duties as any that I can conceive. What did that non-academic have to say? He said:
"I think that the use of short-term and very short-term sentences is complete eye-wash. It has no effect at all on reducing crime."
As a man who has governed three prisons, he should know, should he not?
Will the minister give way?
I ask Bill Aitken to let me finish—there is more of that quote, as he will be pleased to hear. Professor Spencer went on to say:
"We know from research from around the world that where prison is used on its own—in general, short-term sentences involve only prison—crime increases by between 1 and 3 per cent."—[Official Report, Justice Committee, 19 May 2009; c 1891.]
Is that the same Professor Spencer who suggested that a queueing system should be adopted at prisons to restrict prisoner numbers, which would mean that there would be a queue of offenders all the way down Smithycroft Road in Riddrie waiting to get into Barlinnie? Is that not eye-wash?
I am reliably informed that that is a Swedish policy, and it is the Conservative party that has championed various aspects of Swedish penal policy.
While we are at it, and while we have a full chamber, I am sure that members would want to be updated on one of the Conservatives' policies that they are unusually coy about expounding in detail. They think that we need more prisons and that we should use disused hospitals throughout Scotland to house our prisoners. Members may think that the walls of hospitals are gey thin and that they were designed not to keep people securely in prison but to divide wards in hospitals and are therefore fundamentally unsuitable for conversion into prison use. How is the great disused hospital hunt going? How many such hospitals have the Conservatives found? Where are they? How much will it cost to convert the disused hospitals that Annabel Goldie says exist all over the country to house the thousands upon thousands of additional prisoners who will end up in jail, who might include me?
You must conclude, please, minister.
I will finish on a consensual note.
Quite quickly, please.
We all deplore organised crime. I do not think that Mario Puzo—the author of the novel "The Godfather" in 1969—has ever been quoted in the Parliament before. He said:
"A lawyer with his briefcase can steal more than a thousand men with guns."
We want to ensure that there are no covert consiglieres in Scotland helping organised criminals. We will stamp that out through our measures on organised crime.
I thank members for their generous support.