Chamber and committees

I am trying to make sense of what you said. I cannot conceive of a situation in which there would be any support for the English system of unanimity of 12, given that we have corroboration. Albeit that you are suggesting that the October decision has changed that somewhat, we still have it. If the Government had come up with the scenario of a majority of 10 out of 12, would that fulfil the requirement for balance?

I did not fully understand, Michael, what you meant when you addressed the question of reasonable doubt. The point was made to the committee recently that, if possible, we want a jury to act as a collective in coming to a conclusion. That is what we are aiming for, rather than it being a set of individuals who all vote. I had not considered that point previously, but now I think that it is really important.

Will you explain a bit more what you meant when you talked about what would happen if the jury thought that the accused probably did it, but there was reasonable doubt? I did not fully understand that point.

My primary concern—as you might have read—about the setting up of a specialist court is that I do not believe that the Government can fix the problem of rights of audience, which it accepts is a problem. I put that specific question to the Government at stage 1, with regard to how it would ensure that the representation that currently exists in the High Court and the sheriff court would remain as is. The Government said that it would lodge an amendment to address that, but I do not see how it can be done. I seek your view on that.

When we changed the sentencing powers of the sheriff court from three years to five years, a promise was given that it would still attract counsel for those cases that would previously not have been heard in the sheriff court. Obviously, if cases are heard in the High Court, they automatically attract counsel.

That is where I think the flaw is with regard to rights of audience. If we set up a specialist court as part of the High Court, it is quite clear that the rights of audience remain the same. If we set up a specialist court of the sheriff court, the rights of audience remain the same. I would like you to answer that point.

I will conclude with this. I recently learned of a case that was, I was told, indicted as assault with injury to life, and it went to the sheriff court. As you will know, if it had been indicted to the High Court, the representation would have been different—the practitioner’s view was that it was an attempted murder and not an assault with injury. The Crown is deciding how it is indicting these cases, and where cases do not go to the High Court, they do not get the representation that the system intended.

I have serious concerns. Do you have those concerns, and do you think that the issue can be fixed? That is the fundamental question. Is there a way of ensuring that those cases that would be likely to attract more than a five-year sentence would still attract representation by counsel, or not?

I will do my best, convener.

We will have to vote on this pretty soon. What I am trying to understand from both organisations is what you would like us to argue for in relation to the jury size. Give us some guidance on that. That is what I am trying to get to, because if we do not want to be an outlier, we either go with the English position or we do something that is completely unique to Scotland, which is what we have.

Do I conclude that you would prefer the bill not to go through? I am just surmising. There has obviously been a lot of discussion behind the scenes. That has concluded with the Government changing its position to a jury majority of 10 to five, which is what the senators had asked for; it is not what the committee had concluded. I am just trying to understand where you would like the committee to be at stage 2. If you cannot change the Government’s position, is that fatal enough for us to vote against the bill?

I am not meaning that. It is about the jury numbers. It has been suggested that, if we go for a majority of 10 out of 15, we would be an outlier. However, we were already an outlier under the original proposals in the bill. My question is whether we should accept that we are going to be an outlier or whether we try to bring ourselves into line—I do not like using the term “into line”, but you know what I mean. Should we mimic another jurisdiction, so that we are not an outlier? That is what I am trying to get at. Does that make sense?

But you do not think that it—

The Scottish Government regularly highlights its excellent equally safe at school project, which was developed by Rape Crisis Scotland. That project is one of the key ways of tackling violence against women and girls at its root.

The Scottish Government reported that it expected that the equally safe at school project would have been running in around 48 per cent of secondary schools by 2020, but it seems from an answer to a parliamentary question that I recently submitted that, four years later, only 116 schools have registered with the project, which is less than one third of secondary schools. Will the cabinet secretary outline what action the Government will take to ensure that all secondary schools run the equally safe at school programme, or a similar programme, to tackle violence against women and girls at its root?

The legal aid crisis seems to have been ignored in the budget, with a £14 million real-terms cut compared with 2023-24. What does that signal to those who need a legal aid lawyer in both civil and criminal cases? What allocation is there in the budget to address and sustain the legal aid system to attract new lawyers to the profession? I ask that question not simply in the interests of the legal profession but in that of the system that supports ordinary people who need good-quality representation in their lives, whether it is for a civil or criminal matter.

Will the member take an intervention?