Chamber and committees

The consultation highlighted that we need to do more to ensure that women are able to access appropriate support services that can meet their needs. We know that services, including those that help people exit prostitution, are inconsistent across Scotland, and our aim is to address that. As part of that work, I am clear that we need to involve the voices of those involved in prostitution in the design of the services that affect them.

Thank you, convener, and thank you to committee members for inviting us both to speak about our priorities for Scotland’s civil justice system.

Many of our daily interactions and important milestones in life are governed by civil law, whether that is getting married and having children, buying a house, entering into a contract when ordering goods or services, taking out a loan or using social media, to name only a few examples. When things go wrong, we are likely to come into some degree of contact with the civil justice system.

I will give some figures to set out the context. In 2019-20, the proportion of adults who were victims of crime was 11.9 per cent, which is down from 20 per cent 10 years before. However, the Scottish crime and justice survey shows that nearly three in 10 adults—that is 28 per cent—were estimated to have experienced at least one civil law problem during the previous three years. Evidence tells us that people with certain characteristics, such as those who are economically disadvantaged, are more likely to experience civil justice issues and to have to rely on the civil justice system.

Over the past 18 months, our civil courts and tribunals have had to adapt to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. With the help of amended court rules and the extensive use of technology, they have ensured that the vast majority of activity has been able to proceed effectively and efficiently. I take this opportunity to thank the legal profession, court staff and our judiciary, social workers and the police who provide order in our court buildings for all their efforts. We can all agree that it is because of their dedication and hard work that civil justice has managed to continue as well as it has during the public health pandemic.

All that does not mean that we want civil justice to remain as it is. We want to drive forward changes and improvements so that we have a modern civil justice system that works for the people of Scotland. Our manifesto sets out our ambition to increase the choice that people have in deciding how to resolve disputes. There is widespread evidence from across the world that disputes arising from a range of issues including debt, housing, consumer purchases, contractual matters and family problems can be resolved quickly, cheaply and more effectively for all parties by using alternative dispute resolution—ADR—methods, rather than going to court. The Scottish Government will work with stakeholders to expand the availability of mediation and arbitration services within the civil justice system and consult as appropriate to give our citizens, businesses and organisations access to flexible, affordable and less stressful means of settling those disputes, benefiting them and saving time in courts.

In line with the disclosure requirements on other senior participants in public life, including all of us, we will begin work to establish a judicial register of interests that will improve transparency and trust in our justice system as a whole.

Last session, the Scottish Government engaged with the Parliament, in particular the Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee, to reconsider the criteria for Scottish Law Commission bills. Given that effort, we will over the coming session try to accelerate our implementation of SLC recommendations as set out in various reports. Reform of those areas will bring Scots law up to date so that it serves the people of Scotland.

Finally, on access to justice, we will reform the legal aid system to ensure that Scotland has a modern, flexible and user-focused service. The legal profession contributes to the social value of Scotland and helps to protect our human rights and freedoms. It plays a vital role in upholding the rule of law and providing access to justice. We will therefore continue to engage with the legal profession to consider how best to reform the regulation of legal services. Our manifesto sets out our priorities for reforming Scotland’s civil justice system over this parliamentary session. I look forward to working collaboratively with the members of the committee to ensure that we have a modern system that works for everyone.

The cabinet secretary would like to say a few words as well.

That issue has been in the news, particularly on the criminal side, because there is quite a backlog that needs to be cleared on the criminal side.

Things have not quite been the same on the civil side. Proceedings have continued throughout. Many of the adjustments that have been made have been enabled by court rules, although some have been made by legislation—including, obviously, Covid legislation. Sheriff courts reinstated business very quickly after the first lockdown and business continued through the pandemic. Often, that was conducted by telephone conferencing, but there is also a civil online service—I do not know whether the committee is familiar with that. The courts were able to use that to carry on. By the end of last year, all sheriff and civil courts were able to conduct proofs, debates and evidential and fatal accident inquiry hearings virtually, using their WebEx video platform.

There has been an impact. We think that business is down in general. There is no backlog, as such, in civil justice, but we think that there has been an impact and that it has reduced the amount of business that has gone through. I ask Neil Rennick to give a little more information.

I agree with Karen Adam’s points. One of the aims of the Children (Scotland) Act 2020 that we took through Parliament in the last session was recognition that we need to do more to protect victims of domestic violence on the civil side. A number of representations were made to me by groups of people who were going through criminal proceedings for domestic abuse, sometimes very serious, and when they went into the civil court that would not be taken account of in the way that we might expect. One of the aims of the act and of changing the law was to try to protect victims of domestic abuse more.

We have not commenced all the sections of the 2020 act—that is why we are having this conversation—so not all of its provisions are in force. I am very hopeful that, once all sections of the act come into force, both the perception of what happens and what actually happens to victims of domestic abuse and children when they go through the family courts system are much better. That is what we set out to do.

I set out to ensure that the welfare of the child is paramount and to bring the child’s voice into proceedings, so a sheriff will be able speak to the child, ask them what they want and get feedback. Having the child welfare reporters and the register—which we are discussing now—gives us the ability to ensure that the people who do those jobs, which involves going to families to speak to children and other family members, are able to spot domestic abuse. People have to be trained to see things—it is not always obvious—and to act in a trauma-informed way, as you have just described, so that children have a better experience. We hope that that will be the case.

I am sorry—I cannot remember whether there was a second part to your question. Have I covered it?

We value the SLC’s important work in continually trying to update and modernise Scots law and in the reports that it publishes.

I do not know whether the committee is aware of this, but there was a working group involving the commission and parliamentary officials that looked at a more strategic way of progressing SLC bills through the Parliament. Traditionally the Minister for Community Safety would have done that, but there are, I think, some longer-term capacity issues with the committees. That said, we took forward five SLC bills in the previous five-year session, but we are looking at what more can be done in that respect. That work is on-going, but as there might be an announcement on the matter in the programme for government later today, I will not say anything more about it.

The referral of bills is not really a decision for a minister, but I know that the moveable transactions bill is certainly very important to stakeholders, who are keen for Scots law in that area to be modernised. We are very alive to the issue.

Yes. It does not feel like that long ago; I think that it was in September last year.

We are still working on analysis of the consultation responses, so I will have to get back to the committee once that work has been completed, if that is okay.

The responses point to broad issues that one would expect to come up, around how the child welfare reporters would operate and how they would be appointed. There is broad consensus that child contact centres need to be safe and welcoming. Disabled access to centres was one of the themes that came up.

With regard to timings, we hope to introduce secondary legislation in the autumn—probably around October—which will allow us to commence provisions.

We need to work through quite a lot with those issues. The matter of child welfare reporters was clearly a big part of the bill, so we spent quite a bit of time discussing it. We have a real opportunity to set training and standards for child welfare reporters and curators ad litem, and to ensure that the people who do those jobs are sufficiently trained to work with children in a trauma-informed way. Those are things that members of the committee would, I am sure, want the legislation to have. We still have quite a bit of work to do on getting feedback from the consultation into the regulations that we will introduce. Denise might be able to say more about what came through in the consultation.

I think that it is. We are always cognisant of the potential for things to be used in that way. May I give that a bit of thought and come back to you?

You have hit the nail on the head—there is quite a polarity of opinions in that area and that is one of the reasons why, as I said, taking a little bit of time to see whether we can build consensus on the issue might be a good way forward. There is probably consensus in a couple of areas. Almost everybody agrees that we should decriminalise the seller—there is good consensus there, and we should absolutely do that. It is also important that support services are designed to reflect the priorities of women, because it is mainly women and girls who have been exploited in prostitution. We must prioritise that service design and make sure that the services are there and are easy to access—that is another area where there is probably a lot of consensus.

I am very interested in listening to the voices of people who have been involved in prostitution. Some committee members will probably be aware that, yesterday, a survivor-led organisation called on the Government to look at that area and see what more we could do. We should all listen to those voices, but there can sometimes be a problem with that. Sometimes, people who have worked in prostitution do not want to sit in a Scottish Government focus group and talk about all the ways that they were traumatised, or even admit to the fact that they have worked in prostitution, so that can be an issue. There are challenges around doing that work, but I am determined that we will try to get those voices in here somehow. We are developing a programme for lived experience engagement, which we will work on over the next year or so. I am happy to engage further with Maggie Chapman if she wants to contribute to that work.

With regard to harm reduction, we reduce the harm if we reduce the number of people who are being trafficked into the market of prostitution. The data shows that trafficking inflows are much lower in countries that challenge men’s demand to purchase sex, so we have a duty to take note of that. We also have international commitments that we need to make good on in Scotland and move towards. I think that we all want the same things—to reduce harms, protect women and girls from that exploitation and promote equality. That is the starting point that I am working from. I do not know whether our proposals will come to this or another committee but I hope that we can work together to achieve those aims.

You have alluded to a certain issue. The Roberton report was published quite a few years ago—in 2018, I think. It was quite a wide-ranging report, and it suggested some quite revolutionary changes to the legal system. The idea would be that we would move to a different model. It is fair to say that the main recommendation of the report was not well received by many of the stakeholders—I think that that was clear.

We have consulted on the recommendations and have worked very hard to build consensus. We have worked with all the stakeholders to see where there might be a way forward. We will consult on a number of different models in the autumn. That will give everyone an opportunity to see the kind of things that we are laying out and give their views on them.

We are trying to improve things for consumers. We want to give that issue a bit more focus. However, we also accept that members of the legal profession are important to what we are trying to do. We want to ensure that we put forward a system or model that everyone can work with and be happy with.

Denise Swanson can give a bit more information on that.