Chamber and committees

I was not sure whether we could speak to the group before the amendment was moved. That is the normal way to do it.

I move amendment 67.

Perhaps I can use the opportunity to speak about the rationale for that.

I will take both interventions in a second. I want to make my point first.

If you want to put that provision in the bill, which is about bail, not sentencing, there are other mechanisms for doing so. Whatever your views are of the Scottish Sentencing Council, it exists. Other directions can be given to judges for when they consider sentencing.

The provisions in section 5 do not lie within the parameters of what the bill is all about. Part 1 is about changes to the bail test—we have had a full conversation about that—and part 2 is about what happens when someone is released. The bill is not about sentencing; it never has been. I do not know where the idea came from, but I think that it is quite bonkers. I am happy to have a proper chat with other members about it.

I am trying to get my head around something. The bill clearly wants to offer the court as much information as possible, and it proposes to do that by allowing criminal justice social work to be given a bigger role in providing information about the offender.

All the amendments in this group are also trying to give the court as much information as possible, but about the complainer or the victim, and yet the Government has rejected every amendment that seeks to find a way to do that.

My question is simple. If there is a mechanism in the bill to allow more information, from whatever source, to be given about the offender’s situation, how on earth do we get more information about the victim or the complainer to the court, given that there is no mechanism for doing so?

Any reduction is, of course, welcome. I am happy to find the provenance of the statistics that I have used for the benefit of the Official Report. Perhaps a link can be provided to that. I suspect that the figures in my briefing are off the back of some published reports. In any case, by the time that I have finished speaking, someone from my office will have texted me about that.

My point is that, clearly, there is a problem, because people on bail are going on to commit further offences. Within that number for 2020-21, there were serious offences, including seven homicides, and a number of serious rapes and domestic abuse incidents. That perhaps underlines why there was nervousness about the proposals: would increasing the cohort of those who are released on bail necessarily lead to an increase in the number of offences that are committed by those people while on bail?

Over the past few months, we have heard from victims organisations about people who are on bail under enhanced conditions but who continue to retraumatise their victims either through direct and overt breaches or through other means, including ways that are technically outside a bail breach. In those latter cases, the police really struggle to charge somebody and bring them back into custody.

That can be as simple as standing at the end of the victim’s street, which means that they are technically not on that street, and being a menace to the victim. We have had a lot of anecdotal evidence about that, so I hope that the Government is looking at that live issue.

There is one other thing that is missing from the reporting requirement, and that the Government might be open to dealing with via an amendment. Reporting is helpful and data is useful, but what happens as a result of that? It would be useful to have an amendment on that at stage 3, which could be as simple as saying that, as a result of the above information, the Government will take any actions that it considers appropriate to achieve a remedy. In other words, if, after the legislation is passed, we see an unfortunate pattern that nobody wants to see, there would be a commitment from or a requirement for the Government to take action to remedy that without necessarily going back to the start of what the bill proposed. That might be helpful and would save the Government from having to repeal major sections of the bill. No one wants to see that, but there is clearly some nervousness that that might happen.

I will, in a second.

The judge will decide on sentencing using the range of factors that are available to them when they are making that decision.

Okay. I am just checking my statistics. Over which period was that?

I, too, thank Katy Clark for lodging amendment 37. My understanding is that she will not be moving it, but I will let her explain that when the time comes. The committee has certainly grappled with the issue of data.

I want to speak to amendment 8, which was a very welcome surprise when it appeared on the daily list of amendments. It is not often that the Government comes forward with comprehensive reporting requirements in that fashion. [Interruption.] Well, you are doing so now, which is a welcome change of tack.

My understanding is that some of the data is already collected, although it is quite hard to get. Indeed, we have been trying to get information for quite some time. It is very tough to tease out the data, which often comes out through various reports or through the publication of statistics in response to a freedom of information request or parliamentary questions.

I could make a controversial comment and say that, if we had done what is set out in amendment 8 before introducing the bill, we might have a better picture of the effect that the legislation might have or whether it is even needed at all. Amendment 8 would give us some of the data that we have been crying out for throughout the stage 1 process. That includes the information provided for in subsection 2(d):

“an analysis of the length of time that individuals spent within the remand population”.

That might explain away some but surely not all the anomalies as to why our remand population is so high. We really would have loved to have had such data. I mean no disrespect to SPICe in saying that, because there are limitations to the data that is collected.

The point of interest to me is on bail orders and the relevant convictions off the back of that. Clearly, there is a cohort of people who go on to do one of two things after they have been given bail: some breach the bail conditions, whether those are simple or enhanced conditions, and others commit entirely unrelated offences. With the limited data that I could unearth, I found that—I think that I have raised this in committee before—in 2020-21, 15,724 crimes were committed by somebody on bail. Those are the Scottish Government’s own statistics. That is one in four crimes that were recorded in that year, which is a fairly substantial number. That might explain some of the uneasiness that some members had about the direction of travel of the proposals. If the effect of the legislation is to—

Is it the plan that, using intelligence, the police will stop and search prior to entry to the stadium? If fireworks, pyrotechnics, flares or other devices are found on persons, will they be denied entry and the items removed, or will the items be removed but the persons still be allowed entry to the football game? I ask in order to be clear.

Would they actually be charged at that time?

I am sure that we will all support that.

In the policy briefings that came with the SSIs, the sections on the financial effects for each instrument state:

“The Minister for Community Safety confirms that ... the instrument has no financial effects on the Scottish Government, local government or on business.”

I have two questions on that. First, multiple ministers have claimed that the financial effects of the legislation were the cause of the delay. That seems to contradict what we are asked to do today. Clearly, there is a financial effect, so I refer to the passing of the act in 2022. What did the financial memorandum claim as the forecasted cost of the legislation? Has it crept up since then? If so, will you provide some numbers? If you do not have that information to hand, I will be happy for you to write to the committee.