Chamber and committees

If there are no other suggestions for action, are we content to keep the petition open?

Members indicated agreement.

PE2107 is about using more money that is recovered from the proceeds of crime to support community-based charities that train animals to assist in the detection of drugs. The petition, which was lodged by Kevin Craigens on behalf of the Shetland Times Ltd, calls on the Scottish Government to direct more public funding that is recovered through the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 to support charities such as Dogs Against Drugs, which are vital to their communities and play an integral part in the seizure of drugs and criminal assets.

The background to the petition tells us that the charity Dogs Against Drugs was directly involved in the seizure of more than £360,000-worth of drugs and more than £14,000 of cash last year. However, due to financial pressures, the charity has had to let go one of its dog handlers, and the petitioner has suggested that changes to the way in which the proceeds of crime are distributed could reduce such pressures.

The SPICe briefing notes that, although Police Scotland does not publish the number of dogs in its dog unit, a freedom of information response from April 2023 stated that the police had 144 dogs across Scotland, with that figure having been relatively stable for a number of years. In Orkney, Shetland and the Western Isles, local policing teams work with charities, such as those highlighted in the petition, to carry out detection activities, though they do not fund them.

Responding to the petition, the Scottish Government notes that money that is recovered through the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 is paid into the Scottish consolidated fund and is currently used to fund the cashback for communities programme. The current phase of the programme

“focuses on delivering a range of trauma-informed and person-centred services and activities for young people ... who are at risk of entering the criminal justice system.”

The Government’s response highlights that a grant of £10,000 was awarded to Dogs Against Drugs through the serious organised crime community grant scheme and that, more recently, it received a one-off grant of £30,000 from money that is ring fenced for projects relating to serious organised crime. That is expected to relieve the current financial pressures while officials consider longer-term funding options.

Do members have any suggestions for action?

I thank colleagues who chose to support my motion. There are some events that people are party to that they never forget. As somebody who was in Brighton the night that the bomb exploded, I can say that that is one for me. It is not something that I have talked about very much publicly, but, as I get older, I felt that now was perhaps the time to put on record my experience of that night and my reflections on what it meant for politics in this country, all the way through to Jo Cox, David Amess and colleagues in the chamber who, I know, have been subject to—not always publicly but privately—real harassment and concern.

I will start 10 years before the events of 1984, as it is important to put into context the troubles in Northern Ireland, which underpinned all the difficulties in the United Kingdom at that time. In 1974, a bomb blew up in the Horse and Groom pub in Guildford. The 50th anniversary of that event took place last weekend. Among the victims that night were two Scots Guards—two young boys aged 17 and 18 who lived in Barrhead in East Renfrewshire. They lived in the same street, at number 18 and number 11. They had been in the Boys Brigade together. They had been in the same school football team. They had worked in Armitage Shanks together. They had a joint funeral, and they lie together in the cemetery adjacent to each other to this day.

With people serving in the armed forces, the troubles of that era came very close to home in many communities in Scotland. However, for two young boys, hardly out of school, who had joined the army, to be cut down in that way had a great effect on my local community.

Ten years later, I was at my sixth party conference. All of us here will have been at our respective party conferences. They were very open affairs at that time. Yes, there was a certain amount of policing, but that was more to marshal demonstrators. The policing was not in any sense concerned that there was a genuine threat to life.

On that day—12 October 1984, which will be commemorated this Saturday—I was in the bar of the Grand hotel until about 1 o’clock. I then went back to my digs with other people. In a way that I have never been properly able to explain, I woke up suddenly with a deep-seated sense of unease that something was not right. I could not put my finger on what that was; I just felt it. I said to the people with whom we were sharing accommodation, “Look, something’s not right. Let’s get up and go and see.” We did that.

We were 100 yards away from the Grand hotel. We walked round and there was an extraordinary sight before us. The only parallel that I could think of at the time was the disaster at Clarkston that had taken place in the early 1970s, when a landmark that we were familiar with was suddenly ripped apart in front of us. There it was: the Grand hotel, with a gaping slash down it.

We did what we could. We brought deck chairs up from the beach to let people who were staggering out, covered in soot and dust, sit down. However, in due course, we realised that that was really as much as we could do, and the emergency services had to be left to get on with things.

We knew that the Prime Minister had survived but, in an age before digital communications, it was difficult to know anything else whatsoever. However, what we understood was that there had been an attempt to wipe out the democratically elected Government of the United Kingdom. It did not matter which political party people were in or whether they were fans of Margaret Thatcher—let us face it: not many political parties were fans of hers—they all stood together and understood at that moment that this was an act of terror the like of which we had not seen in the country before and that, had it been successful, it would have had profound implications. Indeed, even though it was unsuccessful, it had profound implications.

The bomb was behind the bath panel in room 629, which was occupied by my friend Donald Maclean—the president of the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Association—and his wife, Muriel. I had seen Muriel just two nights before, when she hosted the Scottish reception—I remember her still, with the Maclean sash. She was a lovely woman.

They were catapulted six floors down. Muriel died a few weeks later from the injuries that she sustained, along with four other people. Donald was horribly scarred. For the rest of his life, he carried the injuries that he suffered that night with tremendous fortitude and courage.

I remember the sense of leadership, irrespective of politics, that the Prime Minister showed the following day. I remember journalists saying to me, “She put the spine back into us, as well.” Everybody was shaken by the enormity of that event.

The bombing led to a change in our politics. Before then, we could go to party conferences and mix and mingle with politicians without there being any real security. However, from that moment onwards—as I saw in the conferences that I attended afterwards—a curtain came down on the way that politicians at the most senior level could engage with people. Over the years since, that has come to affect all of us, too.

Jo Cox was cut down in 2016 and David Amess was cut down a few years later, and I know that there are colleagues in this chamber whose constituency offices have been attacked as they have gone about their daily business. Last week, a woman attacked my office—she attacked the staff in the shared services area of the building. She was arrested by the police, was on remand for three nights and has been charged. These things visit all of us and have changed the colour and character of politics. They have made us all aware of something that we never thought that we would ever have to be aware of. That is the long shadow that has carried forward from that night in Brighton all those years ago.

There is one positive thing that I remember. On the 25th anniversary of the bomb, the fireman who had dug Donald Maclean out of the rubble contacted me and asked whether I could put him in touch with Donald, whom he had not met since that night. They were able to meet, and I think that it meant a great deal to Donald, who passed away the following year. Humanity finds its way through, even in the most awful of circumstances and tragedies. That is what I choose to think and celebrate.

That night gave me a determination that terrorism must never be allowed to succeed. That does not mean that we cannot confront the giant issues that trouble us. However, when it comes down to it, we have to stand together as politicians and recognise that democracy is a fragile thing and that it will succeed only if we stand together, work together and are resolute.

If only the same dedication was shown to filling potholes in our roads.

Agenda item 3 is consideration of new petitions. As I always do before we consider new petitions, I say for the record that, in considering any new petition, we initially invite the Parliament’s independent research body, the Scottish Parliament information centre, and the Scottish Government to give us a preliminary view. That is not in any way to undermine or shortcut our consideration of the petition. It is simply the case that, in considering new petitions in previous sessions of Parliament, that was the first thing that the committee decided that it would do. That allows us to have some informed views before us when we consider a new petition.

The first new petition this week is PE2097, by Giovanni di Stefano, which calls on the Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to immediately repeal the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021. It is the petitioner’s view that that act is in violation of the European convention on human rights and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, while also being, in his words, “impossible for the police to enforce”.

Members will recall that, shortly after the main provisions of the act came into effect in April of this year, Parliament debated a motion to repeal the legislation, which is the objective of the petition, and that that motion was not agreed to. In its response to the petition, the Scottish Government states that the act includes

“rigorous safeguards on free speech and is compatible with the European Convention on Human Rights”.

Notwithstanding the views of individual committee members in relation to the objective of the petition, it is the case that Parliament has recently debated and voted on the very thing that the petition seeks to achieve and, unfortunately for the petitioner and for those who felt similarly, that motion was not agreed to.

In the light of that, I wonder whether the petition is one that we can usefully take forward or whether, in a sense, Parliament has recently spoken on it already. I am inclined to take the latter view and to say from the chair that, on this occasion, because we have recently had a vote on the matter, I think that we should close the petition under rule 15.7 of standing orders, on the basis that Parliament considered the objective that the petition seeks to achieve and, sadly—for those people who agree with the petitioner and others—on 17 April, the majority of members voted not to repeal the legislation.

Do members agree with my proposal?

Members indicated agreement.

I thank the petitioner for lodging the petition, but we had a vote in Parliament on the matter not long before the summer recess, when Parliament once again expressed its view.

PE2101, which has been lodged by Peter Earl on behalf of Troqueer primary school, calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to provide primary and secondary schools with automated external defibrillators—AEDs. The petition explains that Troqueer primary school pupils discovered that their local defibrillator is, in fact, too far away to have a positive impact if someone were to suffer cardiac arrest at the school.

The SPICe briefing notes that, in January of this year, data that was obtained through freedom of information requests submitted by the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party showed that approximately four in 10 Scottish schools do not currently have a defibrillator. It is thought that that figure could be an underestimate, because six of Scotland’s 32 local authorities did not respond to the freedom of information requests.

The UK Government provided AEDs to state schools in England that did not already have one on site to ensure that all state schools had a defibrillator by the end of the 2022-23 academic year.

The committee has received a response to the petition from the Minister for Public Health and Women’s Health, which highlights the existence of “Scotland’s Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest Strategy 2021-2026” and points out that one of the strategy’s aims is to increase the percentage of OHCA cases in which a defibrillator is deployed before the arrival of the Ambulance Service to 20 per cent. The response also points out that decisions on the installation and maintenance of defibrillators in schools are matters for local authorities to consider at local level.

Members will know that our colleague Finlay Carson has expressed an interest in the petition. Although he is unable to join us today, he has submitted a written submission.

The provision of defibrillators is an issue that we have come round to before. It seems something of a no-brainer that defibrillators should be in place in schools. Other parts of the country have already moved to ensure that that is the case. The response that we have received is a bit lacking, I think, in that nobody appears to be taking a lead. It is all just being farmed around. Do colleagues have similar thoughts? Does anyone have any suggestions on how we might proceed?

We come to PE2102, for our consideration of which Fulton MacGregor MSP has expressed an interest in joining us. I understand that he will be with the committee shortly.

The petition, which has been lodged by Anna-Cristina Seaver, calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to abolish the option of an absolute discharge in cases where the accused is found guilty of rape or sexual assault and to introduce a statutory minimum sentence for such offences that includes the convicted person being registered as a sex offender.

The Scottish Sentencing Council’s information on absolute discharge states that

“Reasons for an absolute discharge can include, for example, that the crime is very minor, that the offender has been previously of good character, or that the offender is very young or old.”

The Scottish Government’s statistics show that there were two absolute discharges for rape and attempted rape and nine for sexual assault in 2021-22.

The petitioner feels that, even though the numbers are low, there is no circumstance that is exceptional enough to allow a person who is found guilty of a sexual assault to go unpunished. In its response, the Scottish Government notes that, in assessing a case, the court will consider the appropriate sentence for each offender before them,

“taking account of all the relevant facts and circumstances of the particular case.”

That includes consideration of the fact that absolute discharge will remove the requirement for notification—that is, for the person to be registered as a sex offender.

In her recent submission, the petitioner argues that the current framework has a loophole that excuses those with an absolute discharge from being subject to notification requirements. That is because the length of an individual’s notification requirement is set by the length of their sentence. When no sentence is set when an individual receives an absolute discharge, that equals a period of “no duration” in which they are subject to notification requirements.

I will use my discretion to briefly suspend the meeting, because I understand that Mr MacGregor will be with us shortly, and I know that the committee would want to give him an opportunity to comment on the issues raised by the petition.

Given that we know that the Scottish Sentencing Council is undertaking a consultation—and we respect the fact that it is—it would be helpful to the committee, in trying to understand on behalf of both the petitioner and others who might be looking at the issues that are identified in the petition, if the council was able to give us some understanding as to how an absolute discharge might arise as an appropriate sentence. We are not asking for any breach of confidentiality in a specific circumstance, but we would like to understand in a more general sense how that could happen. On the face of it, it seems unpardonable.

We will keep the petition open. Thank you, Mr MacGregor, for your contribution.

Are colleagues content that, in addition to Mr Torrance’s and Mr Ewing’s suggestions, we proceed on the basis that we have identified?

Members indicated agreement.