Chamber and committees

I take it that you would have expected the Scottish Government sponsorship team to be aware that the chief operating officer of a relatively small organisation was attending a training course abroad. Does the Scottish Government sponsorship team monitor the activities and engagements of key personnel in the organisations that it sponsors?

It is unusual for public funds to be used for gifts. Do you know when that practice first began and whether it was ever highlighted to management as part of the previous audit work?

Was that a result of a lack of skill or training in the organisation? Whoever was giving out the gift vouchers should have known that there would be a tax implication.

Paragraph 13 of the report states that the commission’s 2022-23 annual report and accounts state:

“There have been no governance issues identified ... However, during the year, some weaknesses were identified in relation to WICS’ travel and expenses policy.”

It then mentions

“a revision of the policy in January 2023”.

Was the spending on the course, the gift vouchers, the meals and so on identified as an issue in January 2023? When was that first highlighted?

The chief executive officer did not resign until 31 December 2023. If the commission highlighted the problem in January 2023, why was he allowed to stay in position for a whole year?

Will those who will be working in the sexual offences court get more training than what is set out in part 2 of the bill?

You mentioned the budget earlier. One of my concerns, in relation to the financial memorandum, is how much money the provisions will cost and whether we will allocate enough money. The Lord Advocate also raised doubts about financing. She said that the Crown Office struggles for finances presently and that it possibly will do in the future. How is the Scottish Government considering how it will finance the Crown Office more appropriately?

My concerns over the budget are whether we are providing the right resources to achieve our aim, whether it is a real-terms increase and whether it will cover all the training that will be required under the bill.

We heard from somebody that, if we had better-prepared witnesses, we would probably get the verdicts that we were looking for. However, if we get those verdicts, more guilty people will go to prison, which will increase the prison population. We already have issues with the prison population just now. To get people out of prison and on to community payback orders, we need the budget for criminal justice social workers, who are basically saying that they have had a flat-cash settlement for the past four years. I still have concerns about the financial memorandum and whether we are providing the required funding for all the areas of the service that will require it.

I might already know your answer to my question, given your previous comments. At the moment, juries are being directed by the judge on rape myths. There is also the Lord Advocate’s recent reference to that. We have not yet been able to assess the impact that that has had or the outcomes—we do not have any details on that—and we are now proposing huge changes to the judiciary. Again, it will be a long time before we manage to assess the impact and outcomes of all those changes.

Given that there is a lack of clarity about the pilot process—as we have said, it is not really a pilot, because it involves real lives, real cases and real outcomes—would it not be better to remove section 6 of the bill, wait until we have done a full assessment of the outcomes of all the other things that the bill will implement and then bring the pilot process back through clear legislation, rather than bringing it in through secondary legislation?

I do not see it as kicking anything down the line; I see it as ensuring that we have all the evidence that we need to make the right decision so that we do not have bad legislation. We all want what is best for victims and we do not want miscarriages of justice, but the evidence that we have already heard has been contradictory and dependent on who was giving it. We are hearing both sides of the story.

We do not want to put something in place that will affect someone’s life. There will be real results and a real verdict. Someone could be found guilty or not guilty during the pilot. That is different to the research on juries, which was done with mock trials and not in real life. We have looked for evidence about the use of the not proven, guilty or not guilty decisions in real trials, but we do not have that evidence.

We do not want to make a poor decision now, when we do not seem to have the backing of many of the judiciary and when even victims are saying that they do not support juryless trials. We want to ensure that we make the right decision. Why did the Scottish Government suggest that when it is not in the bill? Why would it be brought in through secondary legislation? It feels to me as though there is a rush to include it in the bill, which is a massive one that could have been broken down into smaller chunks.