Seòmar agus comataidhean

The Scottish Government’s response to the report said:

“the majority of the recommendations are already being undertaken within our ... National Mission and cross-government programmes of work.”

It says that those recommendations that are not already being progressed will be incorporated into considerations for the Scottish Government’s post-national mission planning.

I wonder what those latter recommendations are and whether there is a list of the action points that are being taken for every recommendation. Some of them are part of the national mission, some are part of cross-Government programmes of work and some are still to be considered. It would be easier for us to see what actions have been taken if we had a list of all actions by recommendation.

Can I just ask for timelines to be included in that, so that we can see progress?

I would say that, at the moment, none of us can put forward a proposal that is completely based on concrete evidence, because of the lack of evidence that we had at committee. Pauline McNeill said as much in her contribution—we needed a lot more evidence on this. We could have done with seeing the research before we lodged our amendments, but we do not have it. I will come on to this, but I do not think that the mock juries gave us the research that we needed either.

Actually, I am going to come on to it now. I am deeply concerned that no real research is available to us on jury deliberations in Scotland. We have no idea how juries reach their decisions or what the split is between those who believe the accused is guilty or not guilty. Alisdair Macleod, from the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service, made the point that

“It might well be that every jury in the land comes back with a unanimous 15 to nil verdict or a 14 to one majority verdict. There is no way of knowing how many cases are decided on an eight to seven verdict”.—[Official Report, Criminal Justice Committee, 13 December 2023; c 46.]

Moreover, Lord Renucci made the point, which I agree with, that

“we should not change our whole legal system based on research with mock juries, which, in no way, mirrored what happens in courts.”—[Official Report, Criminal Justice Committee, 13 December 2023; c 9.]

He said that the mock trial in the Scottish jury research lasted one hour, but he had never in his career experienced a rape trial that had lasted less than a day. That is not the way to build an evidence base for reform of the system.

My amendment 63A would have been supplementary to Katy Clark’s amendment 63, which would have allowed for research into jury deliberations. My amendment would have prevented jury deliberations from being compromised by ensuring that that research could be conducted only after the jury had delivered its verdict. However, given that, as Katy Clark said, those amendments were lodged in advance and the Government has now lodged different amendments, I will not move my amendment, either.

Good morning. My amendment 92 would require a jury to deliver a unanimous guilty conviction or, where that threshold was not met, allow a supermajority of 10 out of 12 jurors. That is the approach that is taken in England and Wales, and it has been tried and tested in jurisdictions around the world. In comparison, the Scottish Government proposes that we require a two-thirds majority with a jury of 15, which would make Scotland an outlier as the only jurisdiction in the world to follow that approach.

Lord Renucci, a former vice-dean of the Faculty of Advocates and a senator of the College of Justice, said:

“If we are going to change the numbers, we should be striving for unanimity. In all jurisdictions that operate a jury system of 12, either unanimity or a majority of 10 to two is required. No system falls below 10 to two.”—[Official Report, Criminal Justice Committee, 13 December 2023; c 7-8.]

My amendment is in line with that and is modelled on the amendment on jury verdicts that the Law Society of Scotland published in December. Time and time again, the committee has heard legal professionals express support for unanimity and a 10 out of 12 supermajority verdict. That proposal has been endorsed by the Faculty of Advocates, the Law Society, the Scottish Solicitors Bar Association and the Edinburgh Bar Association. The Law Society wrote to the committee to support the amendment and reminded us that, although the Government’s proposal follows the position of the senators of the College of Justice, who have indicated support for a 15-person jury with a two-thirds majority, that was with the safeguard of a two-verdict system in which the rules on corroboration remained in place.

The Lord Advocate’s letter last week denied that this is the case, but the Law Society has said that the corroboration requirement was radically changed by the Lord Advocate’s reference decision in November. That is concerning and should lead us to question whether the Government’s proposal now comes with the safeguards that are required to meet the needs of our criminal justice system.

As we all know, there are four cornerstones of Scotland’s criminal justice system: the not proven verdict, the jury size of 15, the eight out of 15 majority and the corroboration rule. Three of those four cornerstones are impacted by the bill and the other has been significantly changed. I have deep concerns about whether those changes are based on hard evidence. We must ensure that any changes are made with the care and due diligence that we owe to everyone who is involved with and affected by the criminal justice system.

The Scottish Government has gone back and forth on its position on jury size and majority. First, it wanted a simple majority with 12 jurors. Then it changed that to a two-thirds majority with 12 jurors. It has now changed its mind again and wants a two-thirds majority with 15 jurors.

It was still not a live setting.

Amendment 26 was not agreed to. The cabinet secretary said that complainers want a better experience of the court system. I still think that small practical changes would make a huge difference. I also still have concerns about the practicalities for the legal profession of using up to 38 courts and about the costs, the implementation and whether this will make a difference. However, I will not move the other amendments.

My fear is that we are trying to put something into legislation that sounds good but that will not do any good for the victims. Many small changes could be made that would have a huge impact on victims, but we are trying to make a huge change that, if not implemented properly, could end up having a detrimental impact on victims and make the court system worse rather than improve it, which is obviously what we intend to do.

Thank you for that clarification. It still does not fill me with confidence that the Scottish Government has a clear vision, supported by concrete evidence, that would justify radical changes to the justice system of the kind that it is now proposing at stage 2. Indeed, the cabinet secretary told the committee on 26 February that

“the research ... led us to support a jury size of 12 in the first place.”—[Official Report, Criminal Justice Committee, 26 February 2025; c 13.]

I share the concerns that Pauline McNeill has just outlined, and I support her amendments.

Russell Findlay’s amendments 26 to 52, 56 and 58 would remove the establishment of the sexual offences court from the bill. Everyone on this committee agrees that victims of sexual offences deserve justice, that offenders must be punished and that the experience of victims needs to be improved. However, having sat on the committee throughout this process and having heard evidence from survivors, lawyers, victims organisations and various experts, I am not convinced that the establishment of the new court, although well intentioned, would deliver meaningful improvements to the experience of victims. The costs and complications are not justified when we can concentrate resources and funding more efficiently, such as on improved trauma-informed practice.

I agree that there is a need for more specialisation in the court system. Since 2020, sexual crimes have increased by 11 per cent, rape and attempted rape have increased by 25 per cent and sexual assault has increased by 15 per cent. We should never forget that behind every one of those statistics are victims and their families who have been through a traumatic experience and deserve justice. We all want to help them, but we disagree on how to do so. I believe that the best way would be the creation of specialist divisions of the High Court and sheriff court.

That proposal is supported by the Faculty of Advocates, which made it clear that

“there is no single feature of the proposed court which could not be delivered rapidly by introducing specialism to the existing High Court and Sheriff Court structures”.

Simon Di Rollo KC put it more concisely when he said that creating an entirely new court

“would be just a bit of window dressing”.—[Official Report, Criminal Justice Committee, 24 January 2025; c 39.]

The Law Society of Scotland also supports the approach and has said that a new court would serve only to overcomplicate the existing criminal justice system. It has argued for specialist divisions in existing courts that follow the example of the domestic abuse courts in Edinburgh and in the Glasgow sheriff court. It is also notable that Lady Dorrian, whose report recommended establishing this new court in the first place, said that the bill does not reflect the model of the court that she had suggested.

One of my key concerns is the unclear and unpredictable costs of creating the new court. The Government has said that it cannot fully anticipate the costs of the new court at this stage. Given the Government’s track record of introducing legislation that then goes unimplemented, namely the Children (Scotland) Act 2020, we cannot be sure that the sexual offences court will avoid a similar fate.

The bill’s financial memorandum estimates that the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service will incur one-off costs of £1,444,000 and annual recurring costs of £492,000 associated with the new court. When those costs are compared with the estimated costs of delivering trauma-informed practice—£350,000 in one-off costs and £62,500 in annual recurring costs—there is a huge difference in the funding required. I know that those figures are not entirely comparable, but, when we look at the figures that we have, it is difficult not to conclude that we could prioritise investment and resourcing in our current courts for the benefit of victims and witnesses.

It is not surprising that some people who support the sexual offences court in principle are sceptical that it will actually deliver in practice if it is created. Emma Bryson of Speak Out Survivors expressed those concerns, and Sandy Brindley from Rape Crisis Scotland said:

“my concern is that we do not want there to be a courtroom in Glasgow High Court that has a label on the door that says, ‘Specialist Sexual Offences Court’, but there is literally no difference other than that the people involved have maybe been on a day’s training.”—[Official Report, Criminal Justice Committee, 17 January 2024; c 56.]

The committee has heard from victims groups and survivors themselves about the different changes that are required for the court estate to deliver better trauma-informed practice. Those changes include informing witnesses about their choices of how they provide evidence, ensuring that victims and witnesses are distanced from the accused in court buildings and setting up screens or allowing remote evidence to be given, while also affording the opportunity to victims who wish to see the accused when testifying against them.

Those are all changes that we could make in the current court estate through an investment in trauma-informed practice to support victims in practical and realistic ways, and we should be making them whether or not the new sexual offences court is introduced. We need to maximise the benefit of trauma-informed practice instead of introducing something that makes big changes in theory but cannot necessarily live up to them in reality.

There is already a substantial backlog in our court system. Tony Lenehan KC told us:

“It is a struggle to resource the courts that are currently sitting.”—[Official Report, Criminal Justice Committee, 24 January 2024; c 48.]

My fear is that we are proposing to create a new court that could worsen that backlog and put further strain on court staff. That would not be a good outcome for victims in the long term.