Chamber and committees

If it is the former and not the latter, we have heard from the police that physical court appearances take them out for a whole day and cause them, and remand officers, concern. Is it not much more efficient to deal with proceedings virtually?

This is all about my amendment, convener. I am highlighting the reason for the concern in this respect.

Because of that concern, which was best illustrated by Brian Whittle when he talked about the human interest, or the victims, and the types of cases involved, and, indeed, the points that Pauline McNeill and Katy Clark raised about the human rights elements such as the numbers on remand and in prison and the associated problems, I think it is important that the Government considers whether all those provisions on time limits remain necessary.

I understand that the cabinet secretary said that he would work with me to bring the issue back at stage 3. [Interruption.] He is nodding at me. In that case, I will not move the amendment.

Amendment 1023 not moved.

Amendment 1050 moved—[Russell Findlay].

With regard to amendment 1038, on raising the bar for fiscal fines to £500, the cabinet secretary needs to answer a fundamental question. Are we talking about increasing the amount from £300 to £500 from a purely financial point of view—in which case I would have absolutely no problem with it—or does it in any way encompass offences that previously would not have been included?

That question brings us to the point of the issue with amendment 1038: at the moment, we do not know. If we knew, that would be helpful. If the argument is being made that raising the bar would allow us to dispose of more offences more efficiently and quickly in order to get through the backlog, and for all the other reasons that I suspect that we will hear, we need to know what types of offences will be included if the fine is raised to £500.

It is not as simple as saying that the amount is being increased from £100 to £300 and now to £500. If there is a knock-on effect on the types of offences that are encapsulated by the new bar, that is an entirely different matter. It should, therefore, absolutely be subject to proper scrutiny and debate, which we have not had and are yet to have.

What my colleague is trying to do is probe whether it is the case that fiscal fines may be used only where they were already an option, in the sense that we would not be changing the scope of where and when fiscal fines can be used.

On the point about people who refuse a fiscal fine option, they really are taking a gamble, but it is quite a statistically well-informed gamble. If there is a chance that four in 10 people would not be prosecuted after refusing a fine, that should be a matter of concern to us.

Is it the case that procurators fiscal are not proceeding with those cases through any other means of disposal simply because of their workload resulting from the backlogs that we spoke about earlier? Again, we have not taken any evidence as to why so many of those cases are not followed through when a fine has been rejected. Is it simply that the case is not strong enough? If so, why has the case even got to the stage at which the person is being offered a fine? If there is a case, is the issue that the procurator fiscal simply does not have the capacity or the resource to take it forward? I suspect, from those to whom I have spoken, that the latter is more true.

Amendment 1040, on victim notification, is entirely appropriate. It remains unacceptable that a complainer is not told about the outcome of such offers. They should not necessarily be told about the nature of the offer, as there may be reasons why that should not be made public to complainers or victims, but the fact that they are not told at all is itself a sorry matter, and more so when such an offer has been rejected, with regard to what happens thereafter. In my view, they are completely entitled to that information, and trying to assert that that is on the statute books is—

Yes, I will.

It is not for me to speak to other members’ amendments, but even if there were unintended consequences as a result of the wording that Mr Whittle has proposed, I am still sure that that would not be the intention. I am sure that the intention is to raise awareness of the fact that the victims of those types of crimes are suffering.

As I have said, such extensions affect both parties. They affect the accused, who are often being held on remand, and the victims, who are having to wait a year or so. I actually find it quite shocking that victims are pulling out of continuing with cases because of the timescales. They should never have been put in that position, and we should all work together to stop that happening.

In essence, what I am saying is that, whether we feel that the extensions are unnecessary, illegal or morally justified—depending on what side of the argument we are on—the Government has a duty to consider where the extensions remain necessary on a three-monthly basis, for as long as they remain in place, with a view, I hope, to getting back to the statutory norms that we were used to before the pandemic.

Amendment 1036 refers to “an appearance from custody”. Can the member confirm that her intention is for it to apply to those who have been arrested and are held in a police station and not to those who are in a custodial sentence environment?

I thank members for their contributions thus far. I have a couple of short comments to make. There are probably things that we can agree on. All the amendments in the group, including mine, are very well intended.

Nobody wants cases to time out. That is not a scenario that any Government wishes, and that has necessitated extensions, unwelcome as they are to everyone in the system. It remains the fact that there was a considerable backlog of cases before the pandemic and it is entirely true that the pandemic has added to the pressures on the courts and all partners in that process.

Equally, however, I hope that we all agree that nobody wants temporary extensions to become the new norm. We have heard concerns about there being a bit of mission creep, with statutory maximum time limits continuing to be extended for substantial periods of a couple of years for the wrong reason. For me, the right reason would be to ensure that cases did not time out due to circumstances, while the wrong reason for extending for long periods of time would be to deal with backlogs, given that they would be matters of resource, capacity and capability in the court system. As for whether it is right to extend criminal procedure time limits in that way, I have to say that I believe that the extensions are lengthy—320 days is a substantial period of time—and I hope that we will agree that the measures must be temporary and that the limits must drop back.

We are arguing that this proposal is the best way of doing this, because if we do it the other way and make the case-by-case approach the default, as Pauline McNeill has alluded to, it would undoubtedly lead to a huge volume of traffic in the system, with the courts and those involved in the process seeking to extend thousands and or even tens of thousands of cases.

I will, in a second, but it is important that I address my amendment first.

The way in which we can address this issue is via amendment 1022, which seeks to insert a duty to carry out a

“Review on extension of this chapter”.

In other words,

“Scottish Ministers must undertake a review at the end of each reporting period on the operation of the provisions in this chapter”,

which covers criminal procedure time limits and their extension. The amendment goes on to say:

“A review ... must consider whether the provisions in this chapter remain necessary.”

That is the important line.

I have specifically asked for the review to be carried out every three months. It could be argued that that would be onerous, but I point out that the original coronavirus legislation that we passed put a statutory duty on the Government to carry out a review every two months, and it became quite normal practice for the Government. I therefore do not think that three months is an unreasonable period of time.

I will take the intervention, if there is time.

This will be a record-breaking short speech. My amendment would ensure that a prisoner could not be released more than six months before their scheduled release date. It is a one-line amendment and is fairly self-explanatory. The rationale for it will become obvious to committee members. A prisoner being released any more than six months before the scheduled release date runs the real risk of rendering the sentence meaningless, and for all the reasons that have been eloquently expressed by my colleague on his amendments, it feels intrinsically unfair and unjustifiable in that context. For that reason, I will move my amendment.