Chamber and committees

Yes, I do. That is one of the most important points of the debate: we must make the connection and ensure that we do not discuss issues in isolation. It is fundamental that the strategy identifies that.

Young men and boys are being groomed and radicalised into hating women in misogynistic ways. Katy Clark has spoken about that in the chamber before. We do not like to mention the name of the influencer, but members will know who I am talking about. That is an indication of what needs to be tackled online.

Children cannot be expected to protect themselves and to take responsibility for the abuse and harm that they suffer and encounter online. Sharon Dowey and another member made a point about parents having control and trying to understand how to keep their children safe. It must be very hard to be a parent, to see all this happening and to worry about how to keep your children safe. All the different things have to come together in the strategy.

It is about time that we made tech organisations and companies, whether that be Snapchat, TikTok or other platforms, take more responsibility for preventing abuse. From my basic understanding of the situation, Snapchat and TikTok, in particular, need to take more action to safeguard children and young people.

We must remain constantly vigilant to the threats that are posed by an ever-changing online world—it does not stand still for very long, as we have all experienced. I believe that we still do not have a full understanding in Scotland of the scale and extent of child sexual abuse, and we must ensure that we have the full picture. We seem to lack a national strategy to tackle online child sex abuse in Scotland. There is an action plan for Wales and, separate from that, a Home Office strategy for tackling child sexual abuse in England, but there is nothing in Scotland.

Stop It Now! Scotland, a national child protection charity that is based in Edinburgh, was mentioned by a previous speaker. Stuart Allardyce of Stop It Now! Scotland has said:

“there is no strategic vision ... solutions are often piecemeal, quite disconnected from one another”.—[Official Report, Criminal Justice Committee, 31 May 2023; c 13.]

That is a point that I made earlier.

We must ensure that, in tackling online child abuse, grooming and exploitation, we work across the parties as an absolute priority. On Clare Adamson’s point—I am thankful to her for mentioning this—I have been working with Professor Clare McGlynn, who raised with me the issue of image-based sexual abuse. I am due to have a meeting with the Cabinet Secretary for Justice and Home Affairs on that, because I believe that there is a gap in the law.

Does the minister agree with the statement that I made at the beginning of my speech? The law is one thing, but we are dealing with a huge societal issue, and the extent of the problem might be greater than we think. For that reason, perhaps she will address the question of how we wrap up legislation with how we tackle societal change. I am sure that she agrees with me, as not tackling that means that we will be accepting the widespread harm of our children and wider society.

Child abuse by grooming and exploitation through the use of the internet, which enables that deplorable behaviour, is a matter that I have made a top priority in my work as an MSP. I believe that it is one of the biggest societal issues affecting children and young people.

I was therefore pleased when the Criminal Justice Committee took evidence from the police, charity leaders and experts about tackling online child abuse, grooming and exploitation. In particular, the scale of online sexual abuse material, the harm that children face every day, and the desire of abusers to see more of that content, has not abated. Kate Forbes is quite right to point out that such demand has created further crime in human trafficking—as if there was not enough of it in the first place.

News stories in the past few days alone indicate that the problem is worse than ever. If we do not tackle those harms and take appropriate action, children and young people will be harmed and face lifelong implications for their wellbeing. Although we have to tackle the problem here, in Scotland, there should be a global campaign. We are all grappling with new and changing technologies, as the minister said in her opening speech. Never-ending changes to social media platforms shift the behaviour of online criminals who seek to create and distribute child sexual abuse imagery, usually for monetary gain.

The Internet Watch Foundation has reported that it has

“continued to see a high proportion of ‘self-generated’ imagery”

in this context. Just to be clear, self-generated child abuse material means sexual images or videos that are taken by a child themselves because of peer pressure or coercion by an adult. The IWF has been conducting extensive research into the prevalence of self-generated child abuse images and videos. Shockingly, it found 20,000 web pages that included self-generated content of seven to 10-year-old children in the first half of 2022—what could be more alarming than that? The children have been asked to undress in front of cameras by strangers online. The IWF argues that it is a “digital and social emergency” that requires a sustained national prevention effort.

I thank Clare Adamson for raising that point because I want to address something similar to that. There are gaps in the law around imagery for children, obviously, and also for adults. It indicates that the problem is getting much worse every single day.

We can all agree that child sexual abuse is a heinous crime. Online space gives offenders new opportunities to groom and abuse children, and to exchange child sexual abuse material, and we need a strong response to that. As stated by Christian Action Research and Education Scotland in its briefing:

“Children on both sides of the camera, those able to watch and those forced to participate, need to be protected.”

I whole-heartedly agree with that statement. Those children need to be protected and that protection needs to be provided urgently. Police Scotland is doing an excellent job with better detection and moves towards prosecution, but such vital work depends on the adequate training, funding and staffing of police services.

The technology industry must take responsibility for keeping children safe when they use its platforms. How many times have we said that? I hope that the UK Online Safety Bill will go some way towards doing that but, according to many third sector organisations, it does not go nearly far enough.

A BBC Radio 5 Live and BBC Bitesize survey that was released yesterday found that one fifth of teenage girls who responded had received unwanted nude images and videos from peers. That illustrates the difficult environment that young people, particularly young girls, are growing up in.

I accept that the crime is not gender-specific, but it is important for the Scottish Government to talk about the connection between the issue and the great work that it is doing on violence against women and girls.

Okay.

I will close on this point.

For far too long, images on the internet that no one has consented to have used and exploited by people who do that kind of thing.

Yes.

Good morning. What you said there is very concerning. With 350 deaths and numerous cases that members of the Parliament have taken on—such as the death of Alan Marshall, who was on remand in our care, and Katie Allan, a young woman who took her own life in Polmont—it is shocking to hear that.

All of the recommendations in the “Independent Review of the Response to Deaths in Prison Custody” seemed to be good ones, but what you told us—that very few of them have been pursued—is staggering.

There are two cases that I want to ask you about. I have had some involvement with Katie Allan’s case. I met her family and understand that, through freedom of information requests and meetings, they received a commitment from the then Cabinet Secretary for Justice on the removal of ligatures from the prison estate, but they are led to believe that cost is preventing that from happening. Do you have any comment to make to the committee about that?

That is what I thought. If the top ones in the list have not been implemented, they would require further discussion. The bottom three are:

“applying certain special measures aimed at protecting child witnesses … requiring the court to consider the future protection of the victim when sentencing an offender … and telling the court to always consider making a non-harassment order ... against a person convicted of a domestic abuse offence.”

That last one is really important because, until now, complainers in many cases have had to seek an interdict under one of the civil processes, which is costly for most people. It would be helpful to clarify whether those are just recommendations.

If such a thing could be done—the timescale could be two years following the death, which I do not think is unreasonable—and families felt that they would get answers within 24 months, they might feel less concerned about getting immediate access to information. Do you agree?