Chamber and committees

Back in 2015, the Law Society approached the Scottish Government on the need for reform, and that is when Esther Roberton was asked to carry out an inquiry and produce a report. After the report was published, we saw polarised views from the legal sector and the consumer. I do not believe that there is any way that the bill could move forward with both sides on board 100 per cent, because there will always be a conflict between the legal sector and the consumer. It is about trying to find the fine balance between the two, so that we can bring in good legislation to improve things for the legal sector and for consumers.

The bill has a huge, long history that dates back to before I came into my post in April. There has been a lot of work by officials throughout the many years of the bill’s development, and the work is on-going. It has evolved, and we have to continue to listen. We know that opinions are polarised in some areas, which is why I am keen to listen to all stakeholders’ views. My officials and I will work collaboratively with all the stakeholders and the legal profession.

I know that the devil is in the detail and that it is not ideal for the committee not to have the detail of the amendments that we will lodge at stage 2. As Maggie Chapman said, however, the situation is unprecedented in that they will not be drafted by the lawyers until agreement is made with the legal profession, the Lord President’s office and the stakeholders. I am keen to share all the information with the committee as we progress, and to get agreement as soon as we are able to do so.

During the annual 16 days of activism against gender-based violence campaign, individuals and organisations worldwide call for the prevention and elimination of violence against women and girls. I am proud that the Scottish Parliament remains an active part of that worldwide call, but we should all be saddened that it is necessary in 2023. Although I welcome Scotland’s and the Parliament’s recognition of the 16 days campaign and a debate in which the Parliament can unite in calling for continued action to tackle violence against women and girls, it is shocking that we still need to address that devastating issue and its harms to individuals and our society.

No matter how far we have come as a society, abuse and violence against half of our population are still prevalent. Violence against women has a profound impact on women’s and girls’ lives, with detriments to health, wellbeing, financial stability, the fulfilment of potential and, ultimately, gender equality.

Each year, the 16 days campaign focuses on a specific theme. This year, Scottish partners agreed the theme “Imagine a Scotland without violence against women”. That is the vision at the heart of “Equally Safe: Scotland’s strategy for preventing and eradicating violence against women and girls”. The strategy, which is co-owned between the Scottish Government and the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, sets out a vision of a strong and flourishing country in which all individuals are equally safe and respected and in which women and girls live free from all forms of violence and abuse and the attitudes that help to perpetuate them.

I am really pleased to see in the public gallery today Councillor Maureen Chalmers, who is COSLA’s community wellbeing spokesperson and my co-chair on the equally safe joint strategic board—I know that we will all welcome her. Councillor Chalmers’s presence reminds us of the necessity of visible leadership across all spheres of government and our institutions to address violence against women and girls. Leadership and action are absolutely necessary, as we all know.

The equally safe strategy provides a framework for action to prevent and eradicate all forms of violence against women and girls. Over the past year, we have worked with Councillor Chalmers and our joint strategic board to gather views on how that important strategy could be strengthened and reinvigorated as part of a refresh. Engagement with our partners across the sector provided an opportunity for us to reflect on recent societal changes and understand the key issues that we must address to prevent and eradicate violence against women and girls.

I am grateful to everyone who has generously shared their experience to help to create a strategy whose ambition we can look to with pride. I recognise those who work in the specialist support organisations, who have amassed a wealth of experience from supporting victim survivors over many years. Their insight and wisdom are valued by all of us, and we will continue to work with those stakeholders as we develop our policy responses across the entirety of government.

The strategy will be launched next week. It is not an end in itself but a continuation of our focus and practical work. We need to make progress on advancing women’s equality in a range of spaces—economic, civic, social and cultural.

Although there has been significant progress in policy, practices and responses to violence against women, and there are more people who will call out behaviour and action, we all know that women’s lives continue to be constrained by the threat and experience of rape and sexual abuse, domestic abuse, stalking, sexual harassment and other forms of violence.

Women and girls continue to feel that it is up to us to modify our behaviour to keep safe. However, as we all know, it is men—it is predominantly and overwhelmingly men—who carry out the violence, harassment and abuse, and, to tackle and end the violence, it is men who need to not just modify but fully change their behaviour and attitudes. They—not the victims or those who are threatened—are responsible for their actions, and they need to change, just as society needs to change the systemic inequalities that can underpin that behaviour.

Women’s inequality is both a cause and a consequence of violence against women. Gender stereotypes and norms continue to limit women’s access to labour market opportunities and economic resources, which affects levels of economic independence.

Eradicating violence against women will require us to tackle entrenched gender inequalities. That is why our refreshed equally safe strategy places even greater emphasis on primary prevention to stop violence against women and girls before it occurs by tackling the root cause of the problem: gender inequality. That means focusing on the structures, systems, policies and assumptions that we all live with. It also means understanding the issue through data, which is why further work on supporting data is being progressed through the domestic abuse justice round-table process. Extensive engagement over the past year with a wide range of stakeholders in the public and third sectors has shown just how important that is.

The equally safe strategy is the anchor of our approach, which emphasises the importance of primary prevention of violence by tackling women’s inequality, building the capability and capacity of mainstream and specialist services, ensuring a robust justice response to supporting survivors, and holding perpetrators to account for their actions and choices.

We recognise how important it is to educate children and young people and to challenge outdated stereotypes, and we continue to take forward a range of actions in schools to address gender-based violence and sexual harassment. Rape Crisis Scotland provides a national sexual violence prevention programme to all local authority secondary schools in Scotland, and our mentors in violence prevention Scotland programme is working to tackle gender stereotypes and attitudes that condone violence against women and girls.

As part of the refresh of the equally safe strategy, we heard concerns relating to online and technology-enabled violence against women. Although everyone recognises the positive benefits of digital communication, I recognise that it offers additional tools and channels for perpetrators of abuse. Our ever-growing reliance on social platforms can exacerbate the dangers with which we are already familiar.

In response to those online dangers, we are progressing the development of evidence briefings on technology-facilitated violence against women and girls to inform our policy development. Furthermore, we are providing funding to organisations such as South West Grid For Learning Trust Ltd to raise awareness and increase understanding of intimate image abuse and to facilitate the delivery of practical support for people who are affected by it.

We have been told of concerns about the negative influence of pornography and of the need to work collaboratively to consider how it drives the societal issues that lead to violence against women and girls. The refresh of the equally safe strategy enables us to adapt to changes in the social and legislative landscape without altering the strategy’s valued aims and objectives.

Public policy can be a powerful tool for creating a context that is hostile to violence against women and girls. That is why the equally safe in practice training modules on gender equality and violence against women are now available to Scottish Government civil servants. The modules, which were developed by Scottish Women’s Aid, offer valuable insights to help officials to create policies and acknowledge the impact of violence against women on the lives of women and girls. In addition, Engender has been funded to explore primary prevention policy approaches and create a toolkit to enable policy makers to embed primary prevention in policy making.

I have met survivors and many people who work with them. They have told me about the harms caused to individuals, their families and their communities. They have told me about the challenges of getting support and of being heard and taken seriously. They have told me about how perpetrators continue to use systems and services to abuse. They have told us about the challenges that they face as a result of the cost of living crisis. Black and minority ethnic women have explained the specific challenges that they face in getting their voice heard and the need to better understand the violence and abuse that they experience.

In that context, the Scottish Government, alongside our partners in COSLA, will consider the funding and procurement recommendations in “The Independent Strategic Review of Funding and Commissioning of Violence Against Women and Girls Services”. We are committed to working with partners to ensure the sustainability of funding, and a project board of key public sector and specialist stakeholders is being formed to oversee that work. I take this opportunity to thank the chair and the advisory group for the breadth of work that was undertaken.

The 16 days campaign is an opportunity to highlight the blight of violence against women and girls. However, that violence is a concern 365 days a year, each and every year, and sustained action is needed to address it. We must seek opportunities to work collaboratively and constructively wherever possible. We must continue to work together with partners, organisations and society to stamp out violence and misogyny wherever we see it.

It is vital that we keep our eyes on the prize of ending men’s violence against women and girls. We must move forward with a shared understanding of the underlying causes and therefore what needs to change to end violence for good and ensure that the equally safe strategic approach continues to deliver the galvanising focus that it has had to date.

Engender recently noted that women who have experienced abuse found it

“difficult to imagine a world without abuse”

and that they lacked hope that prevention of men’s abuse of women is possible. Is that not a depressing indictment of our society?

However, as difficult as it is, I imagine a world in which women and girls are free from the violence of men. We all have a role to play in challenging everyday sexism and the systems, cultures and norms that perpetuate violence against women and girls. Let us continue to do that today, for the rest of the 16 days, and every day.

I move,

That the Parliament recognises the international 16 Days of Activism against Gender-based Violence campaign; welcomes the 2023 national theme, “Imagine a Scotland without Gender-based Violence”; condemns any violence against women and girls, and acknowledges the significant damage and harm that it causes to individuals and to wider society; recognises that the eradication of such violence can only be achieved through social change and changes in attitudes, actions and behaviour, and acknowledges, therefore, the responsibility of collective leadership across all spheres of government and society to challenge the gender inequalities that fundamentally underpin violence against women and girls.

The Regulation of Legal Services (Scotland) Bill is designed to deliver the objectives of the Roberton review to provide a modern regulatory framework that will promote competition and innovation alongside the public and consumer interest in an efficient independent legal sector. The bill seeks to balance and deliver the key priorities of all stakeholders by improving the transparency and accountability of legal services regulation and the legal complaints system and increasing the transparency and accountability of legal regulation. The bill embeds consumer principles into the regulatory framework and introduces a more flexible and responsive approach to complaints while expanding independent oversight of complaint handling.

As minister, I cannot comment on specific on-going legal situations, but I encourage anybody who has a complaint to go to the Law Society of Scotland to make an official complaint. We are learning lessons. At stage 2 of the Trusts and Succession (Scotland) Bill at the Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee yesterday, I highlighted to the committee an amendment that would help to ensure that a situation like that of McClure does not happen again. In addition, legislation for the regulation of legal services is moving forward to prevent that from happening again.

The Scottish Government continues to develop a framework that effectively tackles and challenges men’s demand for prostitution, and to support those with experience of it. The framework will be published in the new year and our focus will be to implement it with support from a new stakeholder group.

The principles for the framework were published last year, and they will embed equality, human rights and safety at the heart of the new framework. The principles have also been adopted across Scottish Government to inform relevant policy and practice, in turn supporting Scotland’s collective approach to tackling commercial sexual exploitation.

Prostitution cannot be considered in isolation, and there are many factors that must be considered in that work, of which criminal law is only one. It should be remembered that the law already prohibits many activities associated with prostitution, including trading in prostitution of others, the running of a brothel, procuring for the purposes of prostitution, as well as publicly soliciting or loitering for the purpose of purchasing sex. That is why we are focusing on the development and delivery of the framework to enable women to sustainably exit from prostitution, which will inform any future legislative considerations.

The Law Society of Scotland will be required to exercise regulatory functions, including complaint handling, independently of its other functions. It will be required to delegate regulatory functions to an independent regulatory committee comprised of a minimum of 50 per cent lay members and a lay chair.

The Scottish Legal Complaints Commission will retain oversight of complaint handling and continue to have a role in monitoring trends in legal complaints. In addition, the commission will have a role in setting minimum standards as to how legal practitioners and legal regulators handle complaints, thereby providing independent oversight.

I have been watching the evidence sessions of the Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee and the Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee very closely, and I am happy to discuss the matter further with the member.

We are at stage 1 of the Regulation of Legal Services (Scotland) Bill, and I will listen to the committee’s views.