Chamber and committees

Would it not make sense for another service to pick that up?

Good morning. I want to explore any gaps that there might be in the law and what lies at the root of all this. I have to say that I found your submission quite shocking; the issue is shocking anyway, although it is perhaps not surprising or shocking to see the extent to which girls and females are the victims and men tend to be the perpetrators. That said, I was surprised to learn in your submission that the amount of

“self-generated Child Sexual Abuse Material”

has gone

“up 374% in the last two years, ... disproportionately affecting ... girls.”

We are talking about imagery that is produced on webcams by children themselves, but adults are taking advantage of it, and the child is still the victim. Can you attempt to give us any insight into why such a rise has happened over the past two years? What do you think is driving children to do this?

I do not know whether this is for you to answer, Professor Heyman, but you say in your submission:

“If no offence has been committed and there is not at immediate risk of life, police may not legally remove them from their home for assessment or safeguarding—from a Place of Safety”.

Can you tell me why the police are involved in cases like that?

That is the obvious thing to have, is it not?

I want to ask about resource implications, and I will put the question to David Hamilton. Rona Mackay asked about the distress to officers, and I will quote one of the statements that is made in the SPF’s submission:

“I have seen my hands shaking on my way into some nightshifts knowing I may only have 1 or 2 cars available, just that added stress of increased call volume and low staffing levels is shocking.”

Further on, there are comments from other officers about not being able to get leave, which impacts on the service. As we know, if we lose a lot of police officers under the McCloud judgment, we will be left with a lot of less experienced officers. That would have a huge impact on the mental health of officers, who are having to deal with other individuals who are experiencing mental health issues. Is resourcing for mental health a big issue in the police service?

I want to say in public what I have said in private: the work that you have done is tremendous and I thank you for it.

I am on record as voting for sex to be an aggravator in the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Bill. I felt strongly that that was missing from the legislation. However, I think that the rationale for not doing that seems to make sense. What problems do you think that we, as legislators, might come up against when we have to define something that is not already defined? The simple part of it is that sex is defined in the Equality Act 2010, whereas we will have to look at the idea of misogyny in some detail.

The working group’s definition of misogyny includes

“male entitlement, while subordinating women”,

and it is important that you talk about male power. To me, that is central to everything that the committee is doing, not only on this legislation but as it looks at the range of things that the Parliament should do. I know that you agree.

Do you have any concerns about how we go about defining? We obviously have to define misogyny and I presume that we also have to define ideas such as the subordination of women. We have an ordinary understanding of what that means, but we know that, when it comes to legislation, things may not be as simple as they first appear to be. Do you want to say anything about that to the committee? We will be dealing with it further down the line.

I was going to ask you about international examples, but you said that Scotland would be groundbreaking if we introduced such legislation.

To illustrate what you have told the committee, I note that there was another example of male power yesterday—the case of Tim Westwood, who has been a well-known DJ for 30 years. There are such examples every day. It is a global issue.

Can you point to any countries that are doing something similar? You mentioned Mona Rishmawi from the United Nations. If the committee wanted, could we get access to her through you? If Scotland is going to be groundbreaking, it would be helpful to get an international perspective, because it is a global issue.

I thank Jamie Greene for raising the issue. The policy note could have been clearer. It refers to

“two further ways in which a person on bail can have conditions varied.”

I am struggling to determine what those two variations are. If that is the substance of the SSI, I do not understand why that has not been set out to the committee.

It looks as though the Government is saying that the instrument will just make a technical change, that we do not need to worry about it and that, as Jamie Greene has suggested, we just need to rubber stamp it. I suggest that the Government should note for future reference that, when we get an SSI policy note, there needs to be a bit more information in it. We need to know what we are being asked to sign off.

I am content with that—and I am not intending to take such action, by the way. However, given what we already know, we need to know what the legal position is. What is the point of lodging a motion to annul if we have a legal obligation? The measures arose from a court case.

Russell Findlay is quite correct: press reports suggest that 80 per cent of the police officers concerned have already applied, with 1,700 people being eligible. Can you imagine that? I feel that the note before us does not reflect the enormity of what the Parliament is being asked to sign off. I kind of feel that we have no choice, but it is important to say how we feel. What choice do we have?

I have two points. I want to highlight one of the actions in relation to Lady Dorrian’s report. We recommended:

“Improved communication with complainers, including the provision of a single trauma-informed source of contact”.

That makes total sense, given the evidence that we have heard, but I do not know whether, at this point, we might want to register that we would like to know more about that. I am never clear about the relationship between the police and Victim Support Scotland and the work that it does. I would just like to mark that for future reference. Also, given the evidence that we had from complainers, we may also want to hear more about

“The expansion of advocacy support services”.

On specialist courts, I understood that the specialist court proposal would allow for 10-year sentences, but the key issue column in the table says that, if a specialist court were to be established, it

“could have unlimited sentencing powers”.

I do not recall the Government suggesting that the sentencing powers would be unlimited. I remember the committee questioning whether a specialist court should be able to give a maximum sentence of 10 years. I have no problem with the principle but that was not what was said to the committee. That was my understanding, anyway.