Chamber and committees

Apologies—I am not sure that I understand 100 per cent what you are asking for. The bill seeks to create a domestic abuse register, so we are assuming that that would require a new IT system. That would cause—this is where I was talking about the Home Office being involved—a lot of duplication. Are you asking that we try to attach the register to the MAPPA computer IT?

The Scottish Government is committed to ensuring that perpetrators of domestic violence are held to account. That is why we are proud to sponsor the Caledonian system, which works with men who have been convicted of domestic abuse and related offences, to assist in reducing reoffending, and offers integrated services to women and children.

In 2025-26, the total ring-fenced budget allocation for the 23 local authorities that are operating the Caledonian system is close to £4.5 million, and the Scottish Government has provided a further £1.4 million to local authorities this year. The Caledonian system is operated by local authority criminal justice social work departments, and the Scottish Government is committed to rolling it out across Scotland. At the moment, 23 of the 32 local authorities are delivering it, and it will be rolled out in a further two areas by summer 2026. That is an example of how we can roll out more support without having legislation in place.

My understanding—my officials will correct me if I am wrong—is that courts currently have discretion to use community payback orders, and the Caledonian system if that is suggested by the courts.

Graham Robertson may want to come on the protection side.

Absolutely—yes.

From watching all of your evidence sessions, I would say that this is untested ground. There is no jurisdiction that has such data, so it is hard to confirm whether the proposal would be a deterrent. I do not believe that we should be moving forward with legislation that is simply meant to be a deterrent. In principle, legislation should be deliverable and affordable and not just put in place as a deterrent.

I know that the Law Society expressed concerns about the effect on the perpetrator’s decision to plead guilty if they know that they might go on a register. The Law Society also highlighted the possibility that manipulative offenders might change their names. I have not heard any strong evidence, in your evidence sessions or elsewhere, that the proposal would be a deterrent. I hope that that answers your question.

I might go into a bit more detail on what is currently involved and the fact that we are not convinced that the bill could be integrated into the current system. I have quite a bit of detail to go through, if that would be all right, as it might be helpful for the committee.

Although I know that there has been a move away from defining the approach in the bill as one that would involve a register, it would, in effect, deliver the same product. It remains unclear how the proposals would work in practice, including their perceived interaction with existing schemes, such as MAPPA and DSDAS, and the operational and financial challenges that would be presented, especially for Police Scotland. It is not clear to us or to stakeholders such as Police Scotland what benefit people being on such a register would bring. There is no clear case for incurring the significant administrative impact and costs, including opportunity costs, that would be involved in managing a cohort in the way that is proposed.

If the register were to bring people under MAPPA, the proposed approach might be at odds with Scotland’s aspiration for MAPPA to be led less by offence category and more by assessed risk. Policing by offence type rather than by risk would have an adverse impact on police resources. That was a key finding from the Creedon report on the independent review of police-led sex offender management.

Individuals with domestic abuse convictions can already be managed under MAPPA—under “other risk of harm”—on the basis of the level of risk. The bill suggests the creation of a domestic abuse register. It is assumed that that would involve creating a new information technology system from scratch, which would be undesirable for duplication and affordability reasons. Therefore, the most likely way to put the register into effect would be to amend the system that is used for recording details of sexual and violent offending that justice partners can currently access, which is the violent and sex offender register—VISOR—system. The current VISOR dangerous persons database is a Home Office system that operates UK-wide, so it is not solely in the gift of the Scottish Government to amend it to make changes on the scale that is suggested in the bill. Such changes would also incur a cost.

Scottish systems are already in place, such as the central level of service and case management inventory system, which is a comprehensive general offending assessment and management planning method that can produce an overview of the risks and needs of all the cases that are going through court, and work is under way to explore linking that system with court outcomes. The collection of further data on domestic abuse victims can be achieved through non-legislative measures, and the question of whether to provide such information remains for the individual. The bill, as it is drafted, has a lot of detail, but, given the current system that is in place, we are not convinced at this stage that it would add value.

Work has been done on that, which I raised in my answers to earlier questions. Data improvement has been a clear focus of the domestic abuse justice partners group. Work has been done to date to review and map the domestic abuse-related data that is held by justice partners, with particular reference to data on protected characteristics. We will write to the member specifically on her question about which public bodies are currently collecting that data. Work is on-going, and the group is progressing with a working paper, which will come out next year.

You will know where we are in the Parliamentary session—it is not possible for that to be done in time. Our approach gives us some flexibility. As Graham Robertson said, there are issues in island areas with setting up the Caledonian system. The Scottish Government is looking at how we support the system, which we want to roll out across the 32 local authorities. Currently, it has been rolled out across 23; that will be 25 by next summer, and I think that Graham Robertson said that another two would be coming online next year. The Scottish Government is committed to the Caledonian programme and will keep rolling it out to provide support to people who have experienced domestic abuse.

Investment in the Caledonian system is one example of how that could be done without legislation. As I mentioned, we are looking to roll that out across Scotland, and we are making progress on that. We are also watching with interest to see whether, when the sentencing and penal policy commission makes its recommendations next year, they will include any recommendations about parole.

We are doing a range of things at the moment, and we are happy to take on board any further recommendations.

I think that article 8 of the UNCRC is on the right to education. I am not a lawyer, so I cannot answer that question, because it is complex. I do not know whether anyone else has any insight as to whether that would breach the UNCRC.