Did those courts take place in the court buildings where such cases are normally dealt with? I presume that you did not have anywhere else and, therefore, that those cases took place in a very traditional court setting.

I fully understand that your role is to implement the proposal, so I am not asking you to justify anything. We are just trying to understand what you think is happening.

I will ask about domestic abuse, which is different from sexual offences. I understand that it has been possible to pilot certain practices in domestic abuse cases without the need for legislative change and that there have been specialist domestic abuse courts. Will you outline what difference that has made to the way in which cases were dealt with before or, indeed, are dealt with now in many situations?

I am thinking not so much about the virtual trials as about pilot specialist domestic abuse courts. We were told that those were piloted before Covid. Will you share your understanding of that approach, any information that you have about how it worked and any evaluation that you are able to provide?

That would be very helpful.

I think that it would be helpful to ask them. Perhaps I can deal with sexual offences before I move on to the slightly different issue of domestic abuse cases.

Are you suggesting that cases in which a sentence of 10 years or more would be suitable—there are many appalling sexual crimes, such as historic child abuse, rape and so on, for which the sentence would be greater than that—would still be dealt with by the High Court?

I do not particularly expect you to comment on this, but there is a concern that that might create a hierarchy. If there is a limit on sentencing, the message that is sent by conviction in a specialist court is different from that sent by conviction in the High Court.

It is the same at the other end. At the moment, the courts deal with many sexual offences, such as underage sex, that might involve a boy who is over 16 and a girl who is younger than 16. The suggestion is that some of those cases, which are difficult and sensitive for the people involved—often they are very difficult cases that involve very young people—might not go to the specialist court but might continue to be dealt with as they are at the moment. Is that your understanding?

I welcome the statement and in particular the apologies that have been made by the Scottish Government to survivors. Does the Deputy First Minister agree that, for many survivors, the additional practical and emotional support will be even more important that any financial compensation, and could he outline what work is being done to establish the redress support service, how much it is likely to cost and how we can ensure that it is properly resourced?

I will use the short time available to me to outline some concerns about the failure, to date, to take the necessary steps to ensure that we create the green jobs that we need. Despite ambitious targets, jobs have not been created in the numbers and with the terms and conditions required to make a just transition possible. Unless we see seismic change, there will be no just transition.

There is no doubt that we need a jobs and workers-led transition, with the trade unions at the heart of the debate in all sectors. The Scottish Government promised 130,000 green jobs by 2020. However, as has been said previously, the latest figures from the Office for National Statistics show that an estimated 21,400 direct full-time equivalent jobs were created in the low carbon and renewables economy in 2019—the most recent year for which we have figures. That was a fall from 23,100 the previous year and the lowest direct employment since 2014. My concern is that a strategy has not been presented to us today to describe how we will create those new, high-quality jobs.

The Conservative Party amendment welcomes the UK Government’s North Sea transition deal, which includes a commitment to work with employers to secure joint investment of £16 billion to retrain their workforces, but that deal fails to recognise that many of the workforce are contractors, who will therefore not benefit from it.

The recent debate on offshore training passports outlined the transferable skills that many oil and gas workers have. A Robert Gordon University review found that

“over 90% of the UK’s oil and gas workforce have medium to high skills transferability and are well positioned to work in adjacent energy sectors.”

The review projected that 100,000 of the jobs in adjacent energy sectors are likely

“to be filled by people transferring from existing oil and gas jobs to offshore renewable roles”.

However, we are talking about only approximately half of the workforce. The announcement on Cambo makes it clear that change is coming, but well-paid green jobs are not currently being created in the numbers required, and much more needs to be done by both Governments to make them a reality.

Scotland has, of course, huge potential to lead the way in renewable energy. However, our history is one of innovation and invention, but then failure to turn that into mass production. That is, of course, what has happened in the renewables sector in recent decades.

We need an industrial strategy that lays out how domestic industrial capacity will ensure growth in renewable energy production and new jobs in Scotland. As a first step, we need to create a publicly owned energy company, but we also need to look at municipal energy production, such as the solar energy farms that are being created by North Ayrshire Council. The model of public energy provision is mainstream in many other parts of the world, including Germany and the USA.

I welcome the debate on all sides. However, to deliver a just transition, we need to be more radical.

Seafarers returning to Scotland from work overseas are still required to quarantine in hotels at a cost of £2,285, but some employers are refusing to meet those costs. That is not consistent with other sectors such as offshore or the rules in the rest of the UK. Has the First Minister had the opportunity to look at the issue and is she willing to meet the relevant trade unions to discuss how those rules could be made consistent?

The statistics on violence against women and girls make sombre reading. The number of sexual crimes reported to Police Scotland, including rape and attempted rape, has gone up by 114 per cent over the past 10 years. Since 2010-11, the number of other sexual crimes, including internet-based crimes such as communicating indecently and taking, possessing and distributing indecent photographs of children, has increased by 238 per cent.

According to Rape Crisis Scotland, on a typical day in Scotland in 2019, the number of survivors of sexual violence who were waiting for access to what it calls life-saving rape crisis support had almost doubled since the year before. Only 43 per cent of rape and attempted rape cases lead to a conviction compared with 88 per cent for other crimes. Disturbingly, at least 40 per cent of all sexual crimes recorded in 2019-20 related to a victim who was under the age of 18.

Many women will never report their abusers. Those who do report these crimes experience a legal system that fails them, and many speak of the further trauma that is caused to them due to their treatment by the police, the courts, the legal profession and the wider judicial system.

Domestic violence against women and girls is endemic. The figures that were released today show that, for the fifth year in a row, there has been an increase in the number of domestic abuse incidents that are reported to the police.

Specialist domestic violence courts have been trialled, and we ask the Scottish Government to provide an evaluation so that we know how the courts worked. We need to know whether those who had suffered domestic abuse felt that the specialist courts dealt with cases better.