Chamber and committees

Okay. Thank you.

It is question 22—I am not sure how it is numbered for you. It is probably question 5. It is about whether you feel that there was openness from the police when you were—

So, in your experience, you did not feel—

It would be really helpful if you could let us have that afterwards.

It is clear that you feel that there was no candour or honesty in your experience.

We heard something similar from a previous witness, so perhaps I can pick that up. If, as you are saying, former police officers are not appropriate people to be employed in those roles, what kind of skill set do you think the organisation should draw from?

Thank you, Stephanie, for being so brave as to come along today. It must be incredibly difficult. From what you said to Rona Mackay, it sounds as though you did not have a single point of contact and had to deal with quite a number of individuals, which is clearly a major issue.

I want to ask you about the duty of candour that the bill would create. Do you feel that there was candour from the police in your situation? Would such a duty have made a difference?

Thank you very much, Maggie, for being willing to speak to the committee.

You are suggesting that we start again with the complaints process. The PIRC, which is what we have at the moment, has been in place for only a relatively short period of time—just a few years—and you have talked about wanting an organisation with a different set of morals. How would you ensure that any new system does not fall into any traps or failings that the PIRC has? Do you not think that the PIRC could be reformed to incorporate some of the changes that you are suggesting?

I am pleased to close the debate on behalf of Scottish Labour. Hate and prejudice have no place in Scotland, and robust laws are needed. We know that the number of recorded hateful incidents has risen over a number of years, and it has been said in this debate numerous times that we already had hate crime legislation in Scotland. However, as Jamie Greene pointed out, the 2021 act is more than a consolidation.

I was interested in Audrey Nicol’s comment about the consultation process leading up to the legislation, which I believe shows again the inadequacy of processes that consult on general principles rather than on specific proposals and a draft bill. As Carol Mochan said, the Scottish Government has failed to recognise the strength of feeling on the issue in communities, and I believe that Murdo Fraser’s experience is one of the reasons why the act has been brought into disrepute. These are sensitive issues, and there has been a failure of leadership by the Scottish Government.

The debate in the previous session of Parliament highlighted the complexities of the provisions, and the first few days of the implementation of the act have been shambolic. As Russell Findlay said, the minister did not seem to understand the definitions of the offences created by the act, and there has been confusion about what is and what is not a hate crime. The police have been overwhelmed with complaints, and the Scottish Police Federation has complained about poor training. Yesterday, the Scottish Government’s response was to announce that it had published a fact sheet.

The chaos of the implementation of the act has led to a loss of public confidence. Siobhian Brown has said again today that there is a high threshold for criminality, but that point has not been part of the communications strategy. She also pointed to a fall in the number of complaints since the first days of the act. Today, however, she has again made ambitious claims about how the act will help marginalised groups. It is therefore hardly surprising that a large number of complaints have been made. The fact that Lord Hope has said that the act is unworkable shows the consequences of failures of communication.

As Pauline McNeill said, there is merit in some of the provisions in the act—for example, the aggravators. As has been said, Scottish Labour argued strongly during the passage of the bill that the characteristic of sex should be included in the legislation. We still believe that that characteristic should be added now, and it should not be necessary to wait for misogyny legislation.

I believe that the failure to include sex as a characteristic has been extremely damaging to the reputation of the act and indeed to the Scottish Government. We need to look at how this act has been implemented before we consider the misogyny legislation. As I said, our view is that sex should be added as a characteristic at this stage and indeed as an aggravator.

As the member knows, the Scottish Police Federation warned that training was just not going to be good enough to handle the inevitable surge in complaints and reported that officers had been allocated only a two-hour training course. We understand that one in five officers had still not completed the course a week after the legislation came into effect. The backlash against the hate monster campaign leads us to conclude that the communication of what the legislation means has been disastrous. Indeed, as has been flagged by the Faculty of Advocates and by many others, although the bar for prosecution remains high, many are concerned about how hate crimes are being recorded.

The Scottish Government has pledged to systematically collect data on hate crimes in line with United Nations recommendations. However, as my colleague Pauline McNeill has said, the Scottish Government must set out in its guidance the extent to which it believes the recording of non-hate incidents is human rights compliant, particularly given that, in England and Wales, vexatious complaints are no longer being recorded. It is for all those reasons that we believe the act needs to be reviewed. As we say, we recognise the need for strong and robust hate crime legislation, but guidance and training in relation to the act need to be urgently reassessed, and sex must be added as a characteristic.