Chamber and committees

Thank you.

That is very helpful—thank you.

It is not clear whether the effect of the legislation will be to change the number of people who are on bail, and it is not really clear how the public safety test will operate.

Fergus McNeill said that bail is used in Scotland quite differently from the way that it is used in other European countries. Proportionately, Scotland has the highest number of people in jail and, within that, the highest number of people on remand—the figure is now approaching 30 per cent, which is extremely high. I ask all the witnesses to comment, if they wish to do so, on the arguments for and against the approach that we take in Scotland, in which we send quite a lot of people into the prison system on remand. Are there lessons to be learned from other comparable jurisdictions?

On transcripts, I suspect that one of the issues is cost, but we really should be provided with that information. The committee is spending a huge amount of its time talking and asking about the issue, and there does not seem to be a willingness to share information.

As, I think, we will all remember, we discussed virtual trials at length during the bill process. We asked repeatedly for the kind of information that Rona Mackay is talking about, but it was not forthcoming. It took us an awful lot of time to get any information. I think that we concluded that far less was happening than was being presented, and I suspect that that is still the case.

As a committee, we should be concerned about being bounced into making permanent decisions when the evidence base is not there, so we should be robust in our correspondence with the cabinet secretary. We should outline the history and say that it is not that we would object to the proposed change in principle, but that it needs to be evidenced and subject to democratic scrutiny, given the serious and considerable implications for the justice system.

Whether we do that now or at a later stage, I think that we would want to put that in writing and go back to the point about why we are asking for that information.

Emma, have you had the opportunity to consider the concept of public safety? Do you have thoughts on how it might be better defined? Are you concerned that bringing in a new concept, with a lack of certainty about what the law is, might make things more difficult for victims?

We would be grateful for the information that you refer to.

Professor McAra, it would be interesting to hear your thoughts on the issue that has just been raised. However, as a committee, we also have to grapple with the black letter of the law. With regard to the bill, we first have to ensure that we agree with the Scottish Government’s overriding policy objectives, and then we have to decide whether what is in the text that will be put to the Scottish Parliament will deliver those objectives. Do you have thoughts on that, too? Do you think that the words that the legislation will contain are likely to be implemented by the courts in the way that the Scottish Government intends?

The evidence that we got from the pilot was that a very small number of cases had gone ahead, but there was a very high number of acquittals. Far more people were found not guilty than we would normally have expected. That was a very small sample, so we could not take much from it. However, the evidence that we have had on domestic abuse cases in particular suggests that virtual trials are leading to more people being found innocent rather than more people being found guilty. The concern had previously been that the accused would not get a fair trial, but the evidence that we have had has, if anything, been surprising, which means that we need even more information before making any further decisions.

As Jamie Greene said, that reinforces the fact that we need to lay down a marker that we will not agree to permanent changes unless the evidence base is there, and that we want to see the evidence over a period of time, because the proposed changes would be permanent and could have major implications for cases.

Yes, with a greater emphasis on complainers.

When might it be appropriate to remand a person who is accused of a non-violent offence? You spoke about sexual offences and violent offences; are there other situations in which it might be appropriate to remand someone?

The number of sexual and violent crimes has increased again, and we know that the number of victims, particularly of sexual offences, who do not report is far greater than the number of those who do report. Therefore, the real figures will be even higher. How will the real-terms cuts to the budgets of the Crown Office, the judiciary, the police and the courts help to tackle that issue?

The way in which we use land and the type of development that we allow are vital matters for all communities. The questions of whether we have industrial development, whether we build houses and how we construct them, and the issues around the demise of our town centres, the continuing closure of high-street department stores and the expansion of out-of-town shopping centres, are all affected by the decisions that we make here and the detail of NPF4 and local development plans. As has been said, the process transfers power from communities and local councils, so we need to get the detail right.

This is an important debate, not least because the planning system is imbalanced and communities do not have the same rights as developers to appeal planning decisions. As has been said many times in the debate, the resources that developers have create an imbalance also. A number of community campaigns with whom I have been meeting attempt to consider hundreds of pages of documents in order to respond to proposals that affect their communities. Hundreds of community and environmental groups back the campaign for equal rights of appeal, which are still absent from planning law in Scotland. That is an important aspect of the debate. I therefore welcome the repeated comments by the minister, the convener of the committee and many others about the importance of engagement and consultation.

Like many others in the chamber, I have spent literally hours with campaigns, community organisations and individuals in trying to get their voices heard in the planning process. Sometimes, they have been successful with their campaigns. I listened with interest to what Mark Ruskell and Ruth Maguire said in relation to planning applications for renewables, because one of the local community campaigns that was successful focused on the proposal for the Rigghill wind farm near Skelmorlie, which almost every part of the community for many miles around opposed and which took many years to defeat. Most of us would agree that it is only when constituents have something happen near them that they begin to realise the importance of the debate that we are having today, NPF4, the local development plans and all the work that goes into those documents and how they affect people’s lives.

I welcome the fact that the Government has looked again at the initial proposals that came forward. All the representations that have been made say that considerable improvements have taken place in the documents that we are considering today. However, much needs to be done to improve our planning process. Several references have been made to the cuts to staffing levels in planning departments, which is a real issue that affects councils up and down the country. The real-terms cuts to local government core revenue budgets will obviously not help in ensuring that adequate resources are put in place around the issues.

We all know that we are in the midst of a housing crisis. At any time in this country, an estimated 112,000 properties are unoccupied, nearly 30,000 of which have been empty for more than a year, and more than 130,000 people are homeless or on housing waiting lists. Homes for Scotland has pointed out that

“There is still no mechanism for fixing an under-delivering land pipeline if longer-term sites cannot come forward to fill the gap”.

I know that a different approach exists in England, where there are proactive attempts to get building in certain places. Given that we are talking about local development plans that are set to last for another 10 years, the position that we are in is concerning. We need to seriously consider how we can intervene to ensure that land is available for housing development where it is needed. That is the case in areas where we have brownfield sites and on islands such as Arran, where a shortage of land for housing is a major problem.

It is welcome that the Government has made changes to the draft NPF4. I note everything that has been said about the incorporation of climate change and environmental standards, which must, of course, dictate the operation of the planning regime. However, we must also consider how we ensure that the voices of individuals and communities are far stronger in planning processes and that it is not a top-down system that does not reflect what communities say. Communities often know what is best for their locality, and we must ensure that they have a strong voice in the process.

As we move forward with the framework and the local development plans, we must consider how we can ensure that the voices of individuals and communities are heard strongly when individual decisions are made.