Chamber and committees

You will be aware of a huge amount of concern over many decades about the numbers of women whom we incarcerate in Scotland. The proposals are quite arbitrary, and they will affect a number of women prisoners—the cohort concerned is pretty arbitrary, however.

More broadly, from your experience, what would you say is the proportion of women in custody who you think really have to be there and who should not be dealt with in another way? If you prefer, could you say what proportion of women you feel would be better dealt with in a non-custodial way? I appreciate that, as you have said, you are dealing with some very difficult people, and I am not in any way underestimating the complexity of the issues, but is prison the right place for some of those women?

I do not know whether Wendy Sinclair-Gieben might wish to comment on that. Is that something that you have considered?

Prison is obviously a very expensive option. I fully understand that some people have to be there, and you have outlined some of them, but the committee is concerned about those individuals who could be dealt with in another—and likely cheaper—way. Psychiatric services, for example, might be a cheaper option. Is that something that your organisation is concerned about? Is the way in which we deal with individuals who go through the justice system a false economy?

Does any of the other witnesses want to come in on that?

On a point of order, Presiding Officer. I would have voted yes.

I am looking for advice.

If you were to focus on initiatives that you think are more targeted at poverty, is the Scottish child payment an example of the kind of approach—a direct payment—that is more effective?

The cost of the Scottish child payment is forecast to rise from £457 million to £492 million. Jack Evans has spoken about the need for prioritisation. Do the witnesses think that the Scottish child payment justifies its cost? The witnesses we have heard from in previous evidence sessions have very much been of the view that it does. Do you think that, across the range of policies that are intended to address poverty, money is better put into increasing the Scottish child payment or perhaps into another initiative such as childcare, employability or the raft of anti-poverty initiatives that may be possible?

As you said earlier, it is a question of prioritisation. If the choice were between putting more money into the Scottish child payment and putting it into targeted childcare and other initiatives, where would you tend to fall?

Scottish Labour supports the bill and the blanket exoneration of anyone whose conviction was based on Horizon evidence. Everyone who has been affected should have their convictions quashed and be given access to the compensation fund. We note the cabinet secretary’s assurances as to who will be covered by the bill. We were particularly concerned that family members who were not employees, and others who had pled guilty to protect someone else—perhaps a loved one—should be included. We will support the bill as it has been drafted. We appreciate that its drafting was done on the basis of the UK Government’s legislation that was passed last Friday.

We agree that the use of tainted evidence that was provided by the Post Office in criminal cases across the UK represents one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in recent history. However, we are disappointed that Scotland’s separate and distinct legal system did not provide more protection than was offered in the rest of the UK, and that justice partners failed to recognise miscarriages of justice when so many high-profile concerns had been raised by campaigners, trade unions, the media, representative organisations, politicians across the political spectrum, and so many others.

The bill deals only with convictions, but many who were not prosecuted also faced injustice and repaid false shortfalls, which were often large amounts of money; were suspended from work or dismissed; were made bankrupt; had family breakdowns; were branded as thieves in their communities; or had problems with their health. Lives were destroyed and individuals were imprisoned. All those who suffered deserve justice.

Across the UK, nearly 1,000 people were convicted on the basis of Horizon evidence. Increasing concerns developed about those convictions over many years and there were high-profile campaigns to expose the injustice. By 2013, individuals in the Crown Office were attempting to stop prosecutions in Scotland. Answers need to be given to the serious question why those voices were not listened to at the time and why the Crown Office wished to believe the Post Office when so many believed that it was simply not credible that so many previously law-abiding citizens were acting in an illegal way, with cases being based on evidence from a computer system and a lack of other evidence or corroboration. It raises serious concerns about how cases were marked and the operation of the courts.

In early 2015, the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee, of which I was a member, held a special evidence session on the subject, given the strength of the concerns, and we took evidence from people who had been affected and from the Post Office. By that time, the issues were well within the public domain and there had been a number of parliamentary debates on the subject. Given that, after years of campaigning, the fact that it was a TV drama that led to the introduction of legislation across the UK should be a source of shame for the justice system.

In 2015, a group of 555 people took the Post Office to court, and in 2019 the Post Office settled the cases for more than £57 million. The Court of Appeal in England quashed 39 convictions in 2021. Despite that, however, allowing the normal operation of the courts and the justice system to deal with cases on a case-by-case basis has been unsuccessful. It is necessary for the bill to require the Crown Office to review every case to ensure that every conviction that was based on tainted evidence is quashed.

The Post Office may have lied, and it is clear that the politics of privatisation and the wish to please the then Conservative and Liberal coalition Government by closing down any problems may have been factors, but the justice system across the UK also has serious questions to answer. We support the bill, but there are lessons to be learned on how a publicly owned body behaved and the ethos that should operate in organisations that we own. Those things are not resolved by the bill, and I hope that the Parliament will continue to pursue them to make sure that this does not happen again. Lessons must be learned.