Chamber and committees

As I said, women and girls in Scotland should feel safe on our streets and in our public places, including in online spaces. That is why we have set up an independent working group on misogyny and criminal justice, which is chaired by Baroness Kennedy, to independently consider how the Scottish criminal justice system currently deals with misogynistic conduct and whether there are gaps in the law that require to be remedied. The group is also looking at whether to add the characteristic of sex to the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021.

The group is currently drawing upon a range of evidential sources, including a survey that was filled out by 930 participants, academic evidence and presentations from third sector and justice agencies, including Police Scotland, which will present at the working group meeting this week. The group is due to report in February 2022.

I do not agree with the Prime Minister that it is possible at this stage to rule out the need for a stand-alone offence of misogyny.

I agree with the member in relation to the fundamental cultural aspect of the issue. That attitude informs a continuum that goes from low-level misogyny through to the horrendous crimes that we are all aware of. I concede that there is a need for the police to act on this particular issue, and they have done that well in Scotland. There is also a need for the Government to take forward a number of strategies, some of which I have already mentioned, and there is a need for men and boys to change the attitudes that they have to women and girls.

I go back to the point that I made before about the equally safe strategy at school and Beatrice Wishart’s point about how ingrained in society the issue is. That is why we are tackling gender inequality and gender-based violence at school—for example, by teaching, even at primary school level, things such as consent and healthy relationships.

Beatrice Wishart is right to mention those ingrained behaviours in women, who have to adapt to the behaviours of men. It comes back to men to change their attitudes, and we are doing that from an early stage at school and through the other strategies that we are taking forward, some of which I have already mentioned.

It is always important, when we bring legislation to the chamber, that we have carried out the correct diligence and consulted experts and others. I know that that was done for the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Bill. However, Parliament agreed that we should consider further a stand-alone offence of misogyny. I and other ministers have spoken to Baroness Kennedy on a number of occasions, and I am satisfied that she is making good progress on that. We are now a short time away from her coming to her conclusions, and it would be wrong to pre-empt those conclusions.

I understand that Baroness Kennedy will consult the Parliament’s Criminal Justice Committee, so Pauline McNeill will have a chance to discuss the issue directly with her. If we are to legislate further, it is right that we do so on the basis of the evidence that Baroness Kennedy has gathered, as well as the consultation process that has been undertaken.

I completely agree with that, and my previous answers reflect that position.

Audrey Nicoll is absolutely right in saying that we should never blame any victim of crime for that crime. For far too long, in such crimes, we have pushed on to women the burden of responsibility for keeping themselves safe. That needs to change. For that reason, I do not agree with the comments that were made. I think that the First Minister has also made it very clear that she does not agree with those comments.

We require to focus our attention on men’s violence against women and the behaviours of men, and I think that that informed the police’s response in Scotland. Instead of talking about waving down a bus, the police in Scotland made sure that the onus in their new procedure was put on the police and not on somebody who may be confronted by a lone police officer. That is the right approach.

I certainly agree with Audrey Nicoll that the last thing we should be doing is blaming victims for the crimes that are perpetrated against them.

Crimes of domestic violence have a devastating impact on the victims. We encourage, not least through a new law that has widely been well received, women or anybody who has experienced domestic abuse to report it and seek support.

There is no doubt that the pandemic has been challenging in this regard and that it has created a greater court backlog. That has been caused by necessary public health restrictions, and it has been responded to in a number of ways, not least through remote jury centres and the allocation of over £50 million to the Scottish Courts and Tribunal Service to ensure that we can get through as many cases as possible.

Although 25 per cent of all summary cases are domestic abuse cases, 40 per cent of evidence-led trials involve domestic abuse. That shows the prioritisation that is given to domestic abuse cases.

As I said, £50 million has already been allocated to our recover, renew and transform justice programme. We will, of course, look to allocate further resources to ensure that the backlog is further reduced. We acknowledge the impact of the delays on domestic abuse victims and all those in the justice system, including the accused, and we want to work down the backlog as quickly as possible.

I have spoken to the chief constable a number of times over the past few days, once when he was at the Met, talking to its commissioner about, among other things, COP26. The chief constable has made it absolutely clear to police forces from other parts of the United Kingdom that, when they come to help out at COP26, they will be under his direction and will follow the procedures that we follow in Scotland. That should provide some reassurance to the member.

For its part, Police Scotland has changed its vetting procedures, and there is almost a double vetting hurdle to be overcome to become a police officer in Scotland. However, as the member suggests, there is more to do, and Dame Elish Angiolini has made a number of recommendations. For example, there is more to do in relation to the list of barred police officers—officers who have been taken out of the service due to misconduct. It is, of course, not possible for such officers to rejoin Police Scotland, but we are very alive to the possibility that someone who has been barred from another force could join Police Scotland.

There is more to be done, but a great deal has been done, not least through the work of Elish Angiolini, some of whose recommendations are being taken forward by the police, as well as in relation to vetting and conduct in the police force itself. I hope that that provides some reassurance to the member.

That may have been a technical answer, but it is also a factually correct one. We have observed the standing orders of the Parliament. There is a role for the committees, if they wish to take earlier consideration. This is the second committee of the Parliament to consider the powers, and that is in the context of a pandemic. In addition, the Scottish Prison Service has undertaken a voluntary consultation exercise, which was not required. The SPS has done the right thing in that regard.

If the committee wanted to annul the instrument, it could do that, or that could be done through the Parliament, and the powers would continue until that process happened. I do not think that there is a material loss of benefit to the scrutiny process in that regard.

On the consultation responses, as I tried to explain in my response to the committee, we did not get permission from the consultees to publicise their responses. Work is being done to do that—although some of them are already known to members of the committee. As soon as those permissions have been granted, the responses will be published. You are right to say that that will be next month, but next month starts on Friday. I am not saying that the responses will be published on Friday, but next month starts on Friday, and they will be published as soon as it is possible to do so.

Given Jamie Greene’s previous question, I wonder whether it would be helpful to look at the information that we can provide. I get an update every week—sometimes more often—on vaccination rates for prisoners and staff, as well as on the presence of the virus. As Fulton MacGregor rightly said, that has implications for visiting. In addition, when people come directly into custody as part of the judicial process, there are processes in place to minimise transmission. As far as I am able to, I will get specific figures to you on that. In general terms, it is the same profile as the general population, so the same process is followed in relation to the age that people are when they get vaccinated. From memory, there is a higher incidence of refusals in the prison population but, again, I will get that detail to you.

It might provide further reassurance to say that governors have to act in consultation with health professionals. If a prison governor, for whatever reason, wanted to have a more stringent regime, they could not have one just because they wanted to. They can use the powers under the regulations only if a health professional says that that is required, and it is not likely that health professionals would insist on such measures.

We are dealing with a closed population. We have had a number of outbreaks and, as I said, the virus is currently in nine different prisons. When it bubbles up in a particular prison, the incident management team goes in and takes relevant measures. It is a very real threat, because the virus is able to spread more quickly than it can among the general population. The powers are being extended for the right reasons—and only those reasons. It would not be in a prison governor’s interest to use the powers for anything other than health reasons. I will get as much information as possible and write to the convener with that information for the benefit of members.

The officials have confirmed that.

I think that Tom Fox wants to come in on that point. The Government’s lawyers and the SPS have looked at that and are very conscious of taking a human rights-based approach. It is not a hollow threat because, if they were to be in breach of human rights legislation, they could be challenged on that by individual prisoners or their representatives.