Chamber and committees

Another point that might be of interest to members is about the process. It is normally the case that, if a misconduct process is to be undertaken, it will commence after the outcome of a court trial.

Thanks. I am sure that we will come back to that.

I open up questions to members.

Can the cabinet secretary provide any update regarding the steps that are being taken to ensure that the increased SPA resource budget specifically supports further police recruitment?

It is very welcome that a number of offshore renewables projects in Scotland are now secured by relevant consents and marine licences, including the Green Volt offshore wind project that the minister mentioned. Will the minister provide further information on what assessment the Scottish Government has made of the environmental and economic impacts that the projects are anticipated to have?

I am very pleased to speak in this afternoon’s debate on behalf of the Criminal Justice Committee. I extend the committee’s sincere thanks to the clerking team, who worked tirelessly to support members in what was a significant piece of work, and to colleagues from the Scottish Parliament information centre and the participation and communities team—PACT—who also supported the committee throughout our consideration of the bill at stage 1.

The committee’s stage 1 report has been a major piece of work. From the outset, we were clear that we needed to take the necessary time to consider the bill in a thorough and balanced way. Beginning in September last year, we took 36 hours of oral evidence over 14 meetings. We received 262 responses to our call for views and heard from 64 witnesses. Our report is 200 pages long.

Not everyone will agree with all our conclusions, but we ensured that we heard all sides of the arguments on the main issues. Throughout our report, we referred to the important evidence that we heard from survivors of sexual crime, and I thank all those survivors who gave evidence. Their evidence was powerful and invaluable in helping us, as members, to shape our thinking about the bill.

The words of one of those survivors remind us all why the bill is so important:

“when we talk about what happened, each one of us mentions the exact date that our case went to trial. We remember the date that we were raped, but we also remember the date that we went to trial, because they are as traumatic as each other.”

I acknowledge the constructive way in which my fellow committee members worked together to scrutinise the bill. As a result, a great majority of our report was agreed unanimously.

I wish to highlight the main conclusions and recommendations that were reached by the committee. I will leave it to others to comment on the Scottish Government’s response to our report, but I thank the Cabinet Secretary for Justice and Home Affairs for her constructive engagement with the committee throughout stage 1 and for her willingness to consider changes to the bill following our recommendations.

Turning, first, to part 1 of the bill, on the proposal for a victims and witnesses commissioner, we heard evidence about the potential benefits of establishing the commissioner post. The commissioner could champion the voices of victims and witnesses, highlight areas of concern to policy makers and promote good practice. However, the committee heard about the wider implications of creating a new commissioner post, including the costs associated with having another commissioner at a time when public finances are under significant pressure. We also heard concerns that the commissioner could be another layer of bureaucracy and could stand in the way of victims and advocacy groups engaging directly with policy makers.

Overall, we remain to be convinced that a strong case has been made for the establishment of a commissioner. Instead, better outcomes may be achieved by focusing spending on areas where there is a more direct benefit for victims and witnesses. We recommend that, if a commissioner post is established, it should be for a time-limited period to allow for an assessment to be made of the value of the role.

Part 2 of the bill proposes embedding trauma-informed practice in the criminal justice system. As a committee, we support that objective. Some of the evidence from survivors about the trauma that they experienced as a result of their treatment in the justice system was truly shocking to hear. We made several recommendations about how that part of the bill could be improved. For example, the definition of trauma-informed practice should be strengthened to bring it in line with the knowledge and skills framework created by NHS Education for Scotland.

We concluded that training in trauma-informed practice should be extended to include defence lawyers and judges participating in all court proceedings. Although we recognise the independence of the judiciary, we recommend that court rules should require that court proceedings must be conducted in line with trauma-informed practice. We noted that legislation is not necessarily required to deliver improvements, and survivors highlighted improvements that could and should be delivered now.

Part 4 of the bill proposes to remove the verdict of not proven in criminal cases and to reduce the size of juries from 15 to 12, with a majority for a guilty verdict set at eight. Those are fundamental reforms of great significance to the criminal justice system. On the basis of the evidence that we heard, we concluded that the not proven verdict has had its day and it should be abolished. We do not think that it is satisfactory to have a verdict that has no accepted legal definition and cannot be explained to a jury. Furthermore, we heard compelling evidence about the devastating impact that the verdict can have on victims and, sometimes, the accused. The proposed changes to jury size and majorities are designed to balance the system as the Scottish Government believes that abolishing the not proven verdict will make convictions more likely.

However, we received contradictory evidence about whether those balancing changes are in fact needed. Notably, the Lord Advocate told us that the proposed changes were “very concerning” and that it was her view that acquittals could increase as a result. That left us in a difficult position when it came to drawing conclusions, given those conflicting views. Ultimately, although we supported the abolition of the not proven verdict, we did not hear compelling and convincing evidence to support the balancing changes to jury size and majorities proposed by the Scottish Government in the bill. Unfortunately, we also did not hear convincing evidence in support of any specific alternatives proposed by others. As such, we agree that the not proven verdict should be abolished and that further thinking needs to be done on what else, if anything, is required.

Part 5 of the bill proposes the establishment of a new sexual offences court, which would have the power to deal with a wide range of serious sexual offences, including rape, and other charges appearing on the indictment, including murder. Its jurisdiction would extend across the whole of Scotland.

Some members support the proposal for a new sexual offences court. For those members, the model of a new sexual offences court has the potential to deliver improvements in the handling of sexual offence cases that cannot be realised using existing mechanisms. Other members do not support a stand-alone sexual offences court. Their view is that it would be possible to achieve the necessary improvements through the creation of a specialist division of the High Court and the sheriff court.

Despite that difference of views, we agreed on a series of recommendations to enhance the proposals in the bill. For example, we made recommendations about the level of legal representation that should apply in the new court. It is important that there should be no perception that a sexual offences court lacks seriousness or solemnity. We also recommended that the Scottish Government amend the bill so that any case involving murder can be tried only in the High Court, as happens now.

I turn to the proposal to pilot judge-only trials for rape cases without a jury. That is a very controversial proposal on which there has been considerable debate. In our report, we set out in detail the wide range of views that we received. Ultimately, members of the committee reached different conclusions as to whether the pilot should go ahead and under what conditions. Those positions are set out in detail in the report. However, we made a series of recommendations, which were all agreed to by members.

We recommend that more details about the criteria for assessing the pilot should be included in the bill. Any regulations that are introduced for a pilot should be subject to more detailed consultation and parliamentary scrutiny, with time allowed for detailed consideration of draft regulations. We recommend that the Scottish Government should amend the bill to make it clear that the pilot could be run only once. Finally, we highlight the idea that an alternative to a single-judge trial would be a panel of judges.

I have given a short summary of some of the committee’s main recommendations, and I refer members to our conclusions on other parts of the bill.

Part 3 would expand the availability of special measures in civil cases. Part 6 would provide for independent legal representation for complainers when applications are made under rape shield provisions, and it includes provisions for automatic statutory anonymity for various sexual and related offences. In summary, we supported those provisions in principle, but we made some recommendations for improvement to the details in the bill.

Although the committee is content to agree to the general principles of the bill at stage 1, we note that further improvements can be made. Committee members did not support every proposal in the bill, but we all recognise that it has the potential to improve the justice system for victims and witnesses, and we wholly support that. For some members, the final composition of the bill at stage 3 will determine whether, ultimately, they feel able to support it. In the meantime, we stand ready to give the bill our detailed scrutiny at stage 2.

I, too, am pleased to speak in the debate, and I thank Pauline McNeill for bringing it to the chamber. I commend the 68 is too late campaign, which seeks to address a long-standing anomaly whereby prison officers in the UK are unable to access their pension until they are 68. As a former emergency services worker, I recognise the strength of feeling and support behind the campaign.

I am astounded at the appalling position taken by UK ministers, who view 68 as an appropriate age for prison officers to retire on the ground that a prison is a controlled environment, which completely fails to understand the complexities and challenges of managing a changing 21st-century prison population. The UK Government must bring about pension justice for our front-line prison staff, and I lend my weight to the efforts to secure that change.

I want to continue the theme of wellbeing and acknowledge the commitment of prison officers in Scotland. That was highlighted at a recent event that I sponsored in the Parliament on behalf of Aid & Abet, a charity that works with ex-prisoners. The event celebrated the publication of “The Good Prison Officer”, which is a collection of reflections written by ex-prisoners who are all now practitioners and educators in the criminal justice field. Their personal stories offer an insight into the importance of developing a rehabilitative culture in prison that derives from the empathy, compassion and respect that are shown by prison officers and which were shown towards them, profoundly impacting their lives and, in some cases, probably saving their lives.

Those people described what I would call discretionary effort, the lifeblood of every organisation, whereby staff go above and beyond their role, day in and day out. If workers do not feel that that effort is recognised and acknowledged, they will eventually withdraw it. I will pick up on that point in the context of today’s debate. In a recent lecture titled “We asked for workers and they sent us humans”, the former chief constable of Lancashire constabulary, Andy Rhodes, set out a compelling argument for placing mental health and wellbeing at the forefront of every operational and organisational decision. The context was policing, but the principle applies across other bodies of public-facing workers and particularly, I would argue, to prison staff.

Andy Rhodes spoke of the importance of embedding organisational justice so that a workforce is given the protection and support that it deserves and is better able to respond to the public in a competent and compassionate way. That ties in closely with the survey findings in the report “68 is Too Late: The Case for a Fair Retirement Age for Prison Officers”, which highlights the impact that

“prolonged exposure to this environment has on front-line staff, particularly for those staff who are required to continue working until they are 67 and 68 years of age.”

The report includes some powerful quotations that were shared with the POA, including the one that Maggie Chapman used in her contribution, which I am going to repeat:

“I am aged 59 at the moment and have 30 years of experience in working in various establishments. The job that I am required to do has had a lasting mental and physical impact on me, in particular the latter years. The thought of having to go to 67/68 fills me with dread as I feel that I will be less capable of doing what is demanded of me. It is not an environment for anybody over the age of 60.”

I would have felt exactly the same.

I wish the Prison Officers Association well in its campaign, and I hope that today’s debate shines a light on the injustice that is being faced by prison staff in Scotland and the UK.

That is very interesting. Goodness me.

I am interested in what you think about the intention to allow proceedings against former officers to commence or continue. The timescale for that is up to 12 months after an officer has left the force, unless, according to the bill, specific criteria are met. Do you have a view on that?

A very good morning and welcome to the 14th meeting of the Criminal Justice Committee in 2024. We have apologies from Pauline McNeill. Sharon Dowey joins us online.

Today we begin taking our stage 1 evidence on the Police (Ethics, Conduct and Scrutiny) (Scotland) Bill. Before I begin, I declare that I was a police officer for Grampian Police and Police Scotland. I invite other members to declare any interests that they might have.

From what you say, it seems that those actions contributed to the lengthy timescales that you experienced.

Of course.