Chamber and committees

Should we have more regulation around whether or not to pay ransoms, given what has been said about where the money might be going?

ACC Stuart Houston, in your submission, you said that there has been a rise in cybercrime and

“physical harm with online groups exploiting vulnerable individuals online to self-harm and share the content.”

Will you say anything more about the profile of those people? Is it mainly children and young adults? Is it mainly girls? Do you have any information on the gender split for sextortion? Any of that information would be useful.

Are you sceptical about that?

I am not trivialising it. I am just saying that there are reports in which people say that that is what they think happened.

I start by saying that the Government’s amendments are the most significant and important changes to the creation of the sexual offences court and I put on the record my thanks to the cabinet secretary and her officials, who I know have worked hard to achieve that.

One of the reasons why I moved my earlier amendments on the structure of the sexual offences court was that rights of audience would remain the same if we went for the formula that I proposed last week. In the event that the Parliament passes the formulation that we are talking about today, I will be pleased that we have resolved the issue.

For clarity, I presume that it is pretty obvious that rape cases would attract a senior prosecutor and rights of audience for either counsel or a solicitor advocate. The position is less clear for non-rape cases. The amendments identify crimes that might attract sentences of more than five years and, as has to happen at the moment, those cases would previously have been indicted to the High Court. That protects the rights of audience, so that accused persons will be represented in the same way as they were previously. That is really good.

I have something for discussion at stage 3. Forgive me if I do not explain this properly, but it is also important to look in the round at what would have happened in the High Court in relation to the prosecution of cases, which would have been either by a procurator fiscal with experience appointed by the Lord Advocate or by an advocate depute with a three-year term. I am not sure, because it has not been discussed at any stage, whether there would be a corresponding expectation in cases that would attract those sentences, and whether anything needs to be said about who prosecutes those cases. For completeness, I thought that it would be worth mentioning that and having a discussion about it before stage 3.

I will not move my amendments. There is no need to do so because they relate to a previous formula. I welcome the cabinet secretary’s amendments.

So there are three categories of people—High Court judges, temporary High Court judges and sheriffs—who can preside over rape or any other sexual offences case.

Thank you very much.

Just for clarification, it would be helpful if I could check that I have understood this correctly. Am I correct in thinking that, in the new sexual offences court, there could be High Court judges, temporary judges and sheriffs, and that either type of High Court judge can sit on any sexual offences case?

I will make a short contribution. As Katy Clark said, we have had the debate and accepted that the Government has had a change of heart. The committee spent a lot of time considering this particular proposal. The huge number of legal concepts and detailed changes to criminal justice in one bill has exercised me from the beginning. I will continue to make that point, and I will certainly make it at stage 3.

We have come to the right conclusion, but it has taken a considerable amount of the committee’s time to examine the proposal, and rightly so. I appeal to future Governments to think twice before they give any future committee such fundamental change all in one bill. I do not need to say for everyone here that it has been a difficult week, what with trying to cope with this big bill and the Criminal Justice Modernisation and Abusive Domestic Behaviour Reviews (Scotland) Bill that we debated in the chamber yesterday.

As I have said before, I do not think that it is ideal in the long run to scrutinise a bill as large as this in one statutory document.

Cabinet secretary, what you have outlined makes sense—not to chop up the act into bits but to review it in one comprehensive report. My only concern is that, if some aspects of the bill are not enacted within the five years following royal assent, or are enacted at the tail-end of the five years, there is only a very short period of that aspect to review—you said that the plan is to draw down in stages. Could you give consideration to that? You might say that it is unlikely that something is not drawn down, but it could happen, so could we take account of that? If that happened, it would be another five years before that aspect was reviewed.