Chamber and committees

Can councils access the affordable homes budget quickly, and at any point? Given that the budget was cut and then reinstated, there is a bit of worry and concern about whether the full budget can be used. Again, my point is, more than anything, about reassuring councils that they absolutely can access that money.

South Lanarkshire Council is one of the councils that has raised concerns about timescales, even though it might be quite proactive.

Going back to the commencement times, there is an election cycle and a budget cycle in 2027, and councils will have other priorities alongside the policy area that you want to legislate in. Would commencement at that time be bad timing? Will all councils be able to achieve it? If they do not achieve it, what will be the consequences?

I thank the witnesses for their contributions so far. The issue of best-value audits comes up time and again in relation to transformation, reform and assessing the progress that councils have made. When I was the chair of the audit and scrutiny panel at the council that I was elected to, I was always informed that comparing the audits of different local authorities was like comparing apples and pears. How can the reports be best used by local authorities? Is it time for the Accounts Commission to try something new to assess transformation and change in local authority areas? Sorry, Malcolm Burr, but I am picking you to go first again.

Good morning, cabinet secretary. My question is on the same issue. Local authorities will need to be given the right amount of time to implement this plan. When local development plans were put in place, local authorities had up to 5 years to produce them. However, I am very concerned that they will be given substantially less time to produce these plans.

At the start of this meeting, you said that local authorities seemed to be at different stages. Will you advise the committee on where local authorities are—for example, what percentage of them have reached an advanced stage and what percentage have not done so? In effect, you are going to have 32 local authorities that are at 32 different stages. That is not very good when you are trying to bring forward legislation in the field; you would probably want local authorities to be at similar stages so that, when the act comes in and section 10 commences, they will all be at the same starting point.

The committee has heard evidence from some stakeholders that a reallocation of the agriculture budget to local authorities would help them to implement the good food nation plan. Is it the Scottish Government’s intention to go down that route? I am seeking reassurance from the cabinet secretary today that she will not take that approach.

Thank you.

That is helpful—thank you.

Thank you very much, convener. Good morning, everyone.

A war memorial is a centre point of many a community’s life. People gather round it on remembrance Sunday to pay their respects to and remember those who gave their lives in conflict so that our communities may enjoy peace and freedom, and to pay tribute to those who have served in wars. To many individuals and groups, particularly serving armed forces personnel, veterans and bereaved families, war memorials carry special meaning and significance. To some bereaved relatives and friends of people who have lost their lives in war but whose bodies were never recovered or repatriated, a war memorial is symbolic of a grave site.

Many veterans and armed forces groups have taken on the role of custodians of war memorials. They clean the stone, place flower beds and ensure that the surrounding area is kept tidy. I pay tribute to all groups that are involved in maintaining the upkeep of our war memorials.

Any attack on a war memorial, however large or small, is egregious, cruel, offensive and retraumatising for those who have lost loved ones in conflict or who have served or are serving themselves. In some cases, the vandalism or desecration of a war memorial would be categorised as a heritage crime. In practice, the offence is most likely to be charged and prosecuted under the statutory offence of vandalism or the common-law crime of malicious mischief.

Those matters are generally prosecuted in the justice of the peace and sheriff courts, and there are limits to the sentences that can be handed down and the levels of the fines that can be issued. Although those sentencing options are appropriate for most instances of vandalism, they do not allow courts to consider higher penalties, which would deter acts of desecration of war memorials and provide adequate redress for the distress caused to individuals and communities as a result of such acts.

The costs to local authorities of repairing and cleaning a defaced or damaged war memorial amount to thousands of pounds. That is due to the specialised stonemasonry involved in treating the stone and the skills that are required to restore them.

The question that I have for all committee members is this: do they believe that vandalism of a war memorial should be treated in exactly the same way as vandalism of a lamppost or a telephone box? In short, I do not believe that the current criminal law adequately takes account of the impact of the desecration of a war memorial on the people and communities for whom the memorial has significant and symbolic meaning.

That is why I consider that there should be a specific statutory offence of desecration of a war memorial, with options for courts to hand down higher penalties than those that are available at present, thereby creating a stronger deterrent. Ultimately, the sanctions would be for the courts to decide. However, I want to give them a range of options and the law to more appropriately reflect the seriousness of this particular crime.

As committee members might be aware, the United Kingdom Parliament has already legislated in this area through the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022. That followed a private member’s bill from the then MP Jonathan Gullis that would have created an offence of desecrating a war memorial.

I will turn to the provisions of my bill. It is a short, three-section bill with one substantive section. Section 1 would insert a new section 52A into the Criminal Law (Consolidation) (Scotland) Act 1995. Proposed new section 52A(1) would establish an offence of desecration of a war memorial. That would mean that any person who

“wilfully or recklessly destroys, damages or desecrates a war memorial”

is committing an offence unless they have a reasonable excuse. What constitutes a reasonable excuse will be determined by the courts on a case-by-case basis. However, an example might be someone who is working on a war memorial to clean or maintain it accidentally causing damage to it in the course of their work.

Proposed new section 52A(2) sets out what desecrating a war memorial means. It includes, but is not limited to,

“spitting, urinating or defecating upon, or otherwise defacing ... a war memorial”,

and it includes both temporary and permanent damage.

Proposed new section 52A(3) sets out the penalties for the new offence. A person, on summary conviction, could face up to 12 months in prison and/or a fine up to the statutory maximum—the maximum fine is £2,500 in a justice of the peace court and £10,000 in a sheriff court. On conviction on indictment, someone could face up to 10 years in prison and/or an unlimited fine.

Proposed new section 52A(4) provides definitions for the terms that are used in the bill. The definition of “war memorial” draws heavily on the definition of “memorial” in section 50 of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022. Subsection (4) also makes it clear that

“‘land’ does not include land over which access rights are not exercisable under section 6 of the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003”.

My intention is to exclude war memorials in private homes and gardens from the scope of the new offence.

Committee members will be aware that I have written to the committee about that matter. After the bill’s introduction, I became aware of a potential unintended consequence of that provision—namely, that it might exclude war memorials in the grounds of places of worship, which would be private land. As I indicated in my letter, should the bill proceed to stage 2, I plan to lodge an amendment to ensure that war memorials in places of worship or their grounds would be protected by the bill’s provisions, as well as those in any other places that would appropriately fall within the bill’s provisions.

As the bill relates to war memorials rather than memorials more generally, proposed new section 52A(4) makes it clear that

“something has a commemorative purpose in respect of armed conflict if at least one of”

the memorial’s

“purposes is to commemorate one or more individuals or animals, or a particular description or category of individuals or animals, who died in armed conflict”.

Sections 2 and 3 of the bill set out provisions on the bill’s commencement and short title.

I hope that that gives a clear overview of the bill and its underpinning policy development, and that it has been helpful to committee members. I look forward to taking questions and to the committee’s stage 1 scrutiny of the bill more generally.

As I said in my opening statement, destroying, damaging or desecrating war memorials has an impact not only financially on local authorities, which have to look after, maintain and restore war memorials, but on armed forces communities, veterans and the wider communities, who know of and are very fond of war memorials in their areas for obvious reasons, given that we are talking about people who have served and died for the freedoms that we enjoy today.

When I embarked on the bill process, back in 2021, there were six attacks in that year alone. In April 2021, the Carronshore war memorial and the Boer war memorial in Glasgow were attacked; in June 2021, the Spanish civil war memorial in Motherwell was attacked; in September 2021, the Kirkcaldy war memorial was attacked; and, in October 2021, the Cowdenbeath and Prestonpans war memorials were attacked. That shows that, even when I was embarking on this piece of legislation, a pattern of events was happening. I am not saying that it happens every year—it seems to be when there are particular acts of civil unrest or when something else is happening in Scotland—but it shows how many attacks can happen on war memorials in the one place in a short space of time.

I fully believe that, when the friends of Dennistoun war memorial brought their petition to the Scottish Parliament, they had identified a gap in the legislation. With this legislation, I aim to escalate and raise the status of war memorials so that vandalism of them is not akin to vandalism of a lamp post or a telephone box and so that they are of a higher status, given not only their cultural importance but their importance to communities and the emotional impact that people feel whenever a war memorial is desecrated.

I believe that the law should recognise that damaging a war memorial has consequences beyond the littering and vandalism aspects—I hope that we will be able to get into that subject later—and that it causes significant trauma to communities that are impacted when they see a war memorial being desecrated. Going back to the statutory offence that is now in force in England and Wales, in many respects, with this bill I am trying to bring the situation into line with what is happening in other areas of the UK.

I think that because of the work that I have undertaken alongside the friends of Dennistoun war memorial group. We should all applaud the work that it has undertaken and the efforts that it has made to make this a stand-alone offence. It has taken a long time to get to this point. It is only through working with the group that I have truly understood the impact that the issue has on people in our communities, our veterans and our armed forces.

We should look at the issue in the round. Jonathan Gullis’s private member’s bill was absorbed into the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022. I was hoping to do the same here with a piece of legislation in this parliamentary session, but, unfortunately, I have not found any vehicles or mechanisms to enable me to do that, given the bills that have been introduced. If there had been an opportunity, I absolutely would have done that by lodging amendments, but such an opportunity has not been afforded to me, given the bills that have been introduced this session.

I will reflect more broadly on section 50 of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022. It is important that I use the definitions in that act in my bill. Again, had there been an opportunity for me to lodge amendments to other legislation, I absolutely would have done that, but I have had to embark on the member’s bill process to create a stand-alone offence.

I believe that war memorials deserve this level of protection. The research that I have undertaken and presented shows that there has been a pattern of desecration—of varying severity—of war memorials.

The bill could also provide an opportunity to highlight the significance of our war memorials, particularly as we head towards remembrance Sunday, although there are, of course, all the other important memorial events relating to our armed forces and veterans community that take place throughout the year. Most important, we should remember what the people whose names are on those war memorials fought and died for.