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:Given that you have adopted biological sex for the purposes of that section in the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021, could you not just have adopted the same definition for the purposes of a stand-alone misogyny crime?

:As I said in my questions, I will support the Government’s SSI because I have always believed that there is a gap that should have been filled in 2021. We would prefer to see a stand-alone crime for reasons that are eloquently set out by Engender about the nature of misogyny.

The wonderful work that has been done must be recognised. I recognise that the Government and Helena Kennedy have done a lot of work on the matter.

If I am honest, the Government should have been presented in the first place with the point that most women probably want a crime that is based on biological sex. That is not to say that there are not people with other characteristics who should have equal protection in law but the nature of misogyny necessitates it. I am sorry to say that that is probably what has held up the misogyny bill. However, that is for a future Parliament to decide and I wanted to acknowledge the work that had been done by everyone on the matter in the hope that the Parliament will take it on in the next session.

:Thank you.

I want to address the issue that Liam Kerr mentioned. You said—and, just for the record, you were not the Cabinet Secretary for Justice and Home Affairs at the time of the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Bill’s passage—that those of us who supported the addition of sex to the bill did so in order to fill a gap. However, that was not the primary argument for doing so. We did so because of the same argument that the Government is putting today, which is that there should be a stand-alone crime.

In your answer to Liam Kerr’s question, you said something about the Supreme Court judgment. Did you mean that it is the Supreme Court judgment that is holding up the work to create a stand-alone offence?

:I am sorry. I am not saying that I understood this. I think that you said to Katy Clark that you have used section 12 to alter the section on characteristics only, as you want to add the characteristic of sex, and that, for that section only, you are defining it as biological sex.

:All I was asking was a simple question, but thank you for the explanation. You have defined sex for the purposes of the characteristic but, for everything else—as far as the act is concerned, and for the reasons that you have outlined—you have not defined it. That is all that I wanted to know.

:You are not defining it elsewhere in the act; it is just left undefined. Is that fair?

:Right. So we cannot conclude anything from that as to what is meant by the rest of the act—it is only that bit. Is that fair?

:That is important, because of the representations that we have had, which Katy Clark referred to, from For Women Scotland and Scottish Trans, who have concerns. On a technicality, the rest of the act does not define sex. I think that Jasmin said that it does not define it.

:There is a great deal of disappointment and Engender did not spare the Government, to be fair. The work that Helena Kennedy did is important and there is agreement across the board that we do not want an asymmetrical crime, because of the whole nature of misogyny. Most groups wanted the stand-alone crime. In its written submission, Engender notes that the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women—CEDAW—and the Istanbul convention talk about the asymmetry

“between men and women’s experience of gender-based violence”

and the fact that the conventions

“require approaches to reflect the deep inequality, structural injustice and power imbalances”.

It is therefore disappointing that we are not going to see a stand-alone offence by the end of this parliamentary session.

Engender also points out that, in the Government’s consultation, more than half of the consultees did not accept that the SSI that we are looking at today is in any way an answer. I agree with Liam Kerr: I do not think the Government should give the impression that, somehow, it has achieved 25 or 30 per cent of what Helena Kennedy recommended. It has filled the gap, and I will support the Government in doing so, as I would have done in 2021. However, it is disappointing that progress has not been made on the stand-alone crime, given that everyone accepts that that approach is the right one, rather than just including misogyny as a characteristic of hate crime legislation.

Good morning. You sat in on the previous evidence session, so you will have heard everything that was said. It was difficult to discern what the NHS thinks is the problem, but I think that we got to it. My reading is that the NHS is saying that there is a gap between services and that some cases are no one’s responsibility, so they fall to the police. What do you think about that?