Chamber and committees

There is a question of fairness and balance in that. Nobody is demurring from the view that it is necessary at times to have large-scale, independent, judge-led public inquiries. However, my view is that we should learn from other countries, or at least look at what other countries do, because I am conscious that justice delayed is justice denied, and of the point about pace.

It should never be our default position to go straight to a public inquiry. The point that we currently do not have enough information or data about the scale of group-based harms, or indeed other harms, to children, is well made, and I endorse it. I agree that there is much to learn from other countries. The way in which an inquiry’s terms of reference are drafted is important in ensuring that it has a focus, but we should always look at other ways to address the issues and meet the needs of victims, witnesses and survivors.

I have read the correspondence that Mr Briggs refers to. I am not deaf, blind or insensitive to that. As I said earlier, it is for every victim and survivor to speak to their own experience. I do not want to comment too much about what particular victims express, as I would not want anything that I said, in any shape or form, to undermine their right to express their experiences and trauma in the way that they see fit.

I have contact with many victims and survivors. Many will express to me their support for the work that the Government is doing, whether that is work that I have led individually or work done elsewhere in Government. Many victims and survivors make changes because they have the courage to come forward. I am conscious that they do so because they want to prevent the same thing from happening to other people.

Something that I reflect on carefully, and that I am particularly careful with as a minister, is that we should not have to rely on witnesses and victims coming forward to provide their testimony to make changes. It feels to me that a double burden is often put on them: the burden of their trauma and what they have experienced, and the burden of feeling that they must come forward to make changes. That is what I want to work on and address, such that the system and every part of the system is self-improving, and so that we do not have to rely on victims and witnesses being retraumatised and feeling that they have to share their experiences.

Because I had asked to make a private call.

We cannot have any destroying of evidence. If there is any evidence of that occurring now in relation to the matters that we are currently debating and wrestling with, that would be utterly unacceptable. I am quite sure that there would be criminality as well as professional misconduct associated with that.

I will ask officials to respond, too, but I recall from previous work that instructions can be given prior to an inquiry to make it crystal clear that there should be no destruction of any evidence.

I am conscious that, today, it is me who is at committee. We are all entitled to speak to events as we see them.

As you say, I was calling as a result of comments that I had made as cabinet secretary. I wrote up a note, and I have provided that to my office.

I wrote it up that day, and I would have sent it to the office either that day or the next day. I would have to check.

I do not imagine that there is a parliamentarian in this place who does not look back at how they have expressed themselves. Could I have expressed myself differently? I am quite sure that I could have, but the quote was accurate.

In the real world, the protection of our children is multidisciplinary, and there are joint investigations between police and social work. I led on child protection when I was the children’s minister a long time ago, and I had the ultimate responsibility for it when I was Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning, which was also a long time ago.

I will ask Iona Colvin or Andrew Watson to speak to the work that officials do to ensure that we have the right focus, but I will give an example of the work that I am involved in now, as justice secretary. I chair the serious organised crime task force, which has looked at the work of one of Professor Jay’s reviews, which was on the criminal exploitation of children. I led on work with respect to that. Child protection sits with my colleagues in education, but I emphasise that we all have a responsibility towards it.

There are two strands to that work. We have committed resource, and committed to a timeline, with regard to the provision of independent legal advice. That is different from the provision for independent legal representation in the Victims, Witnesses, and Justice Reform (Scotland) Bill that I spoke about earlier, which is specific to the rape shield provisions in the bill. That relates to what happens when lawyers are contesting what evidence should be led about an individual, particularly if it concerns private and personal information belonging to a complainer in a sexual crime. The individual’s voice was absent from that process, and they were not represented—everybody else was there, with their lawyers, but their voice was not represented.

Independent legal advice is a bit different from independent legal representation—