Chamber and committees

I begin by thanking Russell Findlay for bringing forward this important issue for debate during Victim Support Scotland’s victims awareness week. I commend many of Russell Findlay’s contributions in the Parliament and I know that he is dedicated to the issue.

I also commend Victim Support Scotland, representatives of whom I met recently. They showed me around the amazing facilities in Glasgow for complainers who are giving evidence remotely or by commission. It is a significant step in our justice system and one that is already making a difference. I commend the organisation for doing that.

As a member of the Criminal Justice Committee and the Labour spokesperson on justice, I am dedicated to listening to victim survivors highlighting their experiences and championing their rights. The testimony of victims of rape and sexual assault indicates that we have a long way to go with regard to listening to them. Without making a system humane, we will not really have achieved our goals.

As Russell Findlay said, if victims do not speak up and give evidence to court, we cannot hold those who are charged with crimes to account. Today, therefore, I take the time to champion the women and girls who are victims of violent crime in Scotland.

A report published by the Scottish Government this month looked into the experience of families who have fallen victim to domestic abuse. One woman told of her harrowing experience in the run-up to her court case, and it is not unusual. She said:

“the police sergeant phoned me the following afternoon to tell me that he’d been released on bail, and he was released about an hour ago to two hours ago, and, if I’m in the house, make sure I get out, because he’ll be there any minute.”

That is just unacceptable in this day and age. We have to wonder why anyone would report a crime if they thought that that was how the release process would be handled. We need radical changes to that.

We need to listen to the voices of survivors when we make the big decisions about reform of the criminal justice system. Delays to hearings and people being put at physical and mental risk during the court process all impact on young children and have all been highlighted by victims and survivors as major failings in the current system. Before lockdown, we still had significant delays in our court system and they are hugely disruptive to the criminal justice process.

Alongside the delays, sexual offence cases have been cancelled or rescheduled many times. Taken together, those issues represent significant causes for concern as victims and survivors of sexual violence and their advocates as well as parliamentarians and policy makers demand some change.

The past few years have seen significant movement in criminal justice reform policy responses to gendered crimes in Scotland, and I thank Victim Support Scotland for its advocacy work on that issue. Unfortunately, we have a long way to go. The Criminal Justice Committee has listened to the testimony of many survivors of rape and sexual assault. In a single day, an average of four rapes will be reported to Police Scotland, which is utterly shocking.

I and my colleague Katy Clark have spoken many times about the need for victims of sexual assault to have legal representation in our system. I firmly believe that it is time for that, and I await the Scottish Government’s plans for reform. In fact, I would have proposed a member’s bill on that very issue had the Government not proposed to come forward with those reforms itself.

We need to change the system and ensure that it is properly balanced to give victims and survivors of all crime the confidence that they can give evidence in our court system and that they will be supported in doing so. We need to make the changes where we can so that it will make the system better.

On that, I commend the work of Victim Support Scotland, and thank Russell Findlay for bringing the debate this evening.

I have one additional point, which goes back to the issue of the police budget. We need to know how the £80 million additional resource squares with the cabinet secretary’s statement that he has

“no intention of overseeing a budget for the police force that results in 4,000 officers leaving.”—[Official Report, Criminal Justice Committee, 23 November 2022; c 12.]

I do not know what £80 million actually means, but I would be concerned if £80 million did not represent a figure that would prevent 4,000 officers from leaving. Should we pursue that with the Scottish Police Authority or with the cabinet secretary?

That is at the end of page 4. The policy note covers the preparation of prisoners for parole hearings, which seems a good thing. It says:

“This allows information to be obtained from the person concerned in advance to assess whether they are ready to proceed.”

I do not know whether or not this is relevant, but it has occurred to me that some prisoners will have literacy issues. If a new rule is to be introduced about preparation, it might be worth mentioning that it should include support for any literacy issues.

I do not for a minute think that the cabinet secretary intended to mislead the committee. However, I totally agree with what Jamie Greene has said, and I took what the cabinet secretary said to mean the same as what Jamie thought. I was really pleased when the cabinet secretary said that, and what is said in the letter does not make sense to me.

My understanding is that the chief constable said that, if there is a flat cash budget, that will result in about 4,000, or whatever the figure was, people leaving the police force—well, not leaving, but I assumed that that meant people would need to be allowed to leave or that there would be cuts. However, the cabinet secretary rephrased it by writing:

“I said that I had ‘no intention of overseeing a budget for the police force that results in 4,000’”—

that is okay so far—“officers leaving”. Do you see the distinction that I am making? That does not make sense. I thought that the issue was not that 4,000 officers would leave but that we could not fund 4,000 officers.

Yes.

There is quite a lot contained in the Scottish statutory instrument, and in ploughing our way through it we come across a number of fairly significant issues. We have a very short procedure for commenting on something that could be extremely important.

I wish to highlight two issues. The first is covered on page 4 of our note, which refers to risk management plans and says:

“There is also a new addition to the rule on decision summaries (rule 34) which provides that the Board must give reasons for a decision where it differs from the recommendations in a RMP. These provisions ensure that the most recent assessment of risk is available to the Board in their consideration of such a case and that they articulate their reasoning in reaching their decision.”

When I read that, I thought that that was quite an onerous responsibility for the Parole Board. If we have an authority with expert opinion that makes a recommendation, it will be quite onerous for the Parole Board to set out why it has gone against that. That is just an observation.

The point in the policy note about prisoner preparation says:

“A provision has been added to the rules to assist the person concerned to be better prepared for a parole hearing.”

I do not think that there is any mention about literacy issues. I thought that that should perhaps have been mentioned.

I put on record the fact that I welcome that investment. However, the Scottish Government does not seem to recognise that Glasgow has an economy that is underperforming in relation to the European average for growth and productivity, and that it has a smaller voice in the British and Scottish growth debates than a city of its stature—the largest city in Scotland—should have.

Yesterday, I raised the fact that the decision not to accept the Clyde green freeport bid was an extremely significant blow to Glasgow, which I do not think has been recognised by the Scottish Government. Stuart Patrick, chief executive of the Glasgow Chamber of Commerce, said:

“Overlooking Scotland’s entire west coast risks making both the UK Government’s Levelling Up strategy and delivery of the Scottish Government’s commitment to a Clyde Mission extremely challenging.”

What does the minister have to say in response? What plans does the Scottish Government have to ensure that Glasgow, as one of the big four UK cities outside London and the most locked-down city in the whole of the UK during the pandemic, is not left behind?

To ask the Scottish Government what assessment it has made of the impact of investment levels on the status of the greater Glasgow and Clyde area, including how this compares to similar city regions across the United Kingdom. (S6O-01877)

The minister rightly laments the failure of Glasgow to receive funding in this round of awards, despite there being clear economic need. However, how much pleading does the Scottish Government need to hear from Glasgow business leaders, who are being let down by that failure and by rejection of the Clyde freeport bid, despite there being high levels of deprivation across the region? Does the minister agree with me and local business leaders that Glasgow is of strategic importance to the economy and should be compared to cities such as Manchester? Does the Scottish Government recognise the need for a plan to enhance existing funding and to support the failings of levelling up?

To ask the Scottish Government what recent meetings it has had with Universities Scotland to discuss gender-based violence in higher education. (S6O-01859)