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I thank the witnesses for those answers.

Professor Heald, you said in your written submission that the equalisation methods that are used to distribute funding mean that Scotland is not realising the full benefit of the funds. Will you expand a wee bit on that, and say what could be done in this year’s budget to address the issue?

Good morning, and apologies that I was late—I was attending the Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee.

I think that you might have already mentioned this because, since I have been in the room, you have referred to a vodka case a couple of times and it might be the one I am thinking of. Can I confirm before I ask my question: is the vodka case that you have described to the committee the one that happened in Coatbridge?

I apologise if you have gone into great detail on that. As well as my role on this committee, I am also the MSP for Coatbridge and Chryston, and I have been very aware of the case. I want to thank you and North Lanarkshire Council for your work on it. It sounds like good work was undertaken, and it helped educate me about the work that you do in partnership with the council.

I would not normally ask a direct constituency question at committee, but it could be helpful for us to understand as a whole, and I do not have the full information. What was the process and how did it come about, from point of contact—whether it was from members of the public or the store itself—to your investigation? Could you go through in some detail—not lots—how that came about? It sounds like it could be a good example for us to understand and learn from.

Yes—up to what you can share.

Thank you for that. It sounds like a good example of you and the local council—in this case, North Lanarkshire Council—working closely together to deliver a fast and effective result. When you identified that there was an issue and spread the message to other local authorities, what was the response from them? Has that been positive as well?

That raises a question. You do not have to mention the individual council—I would not ask for that or expect that—but given the serious nature of your work, should there be some process in which there is a contact for you?

So you have an emergency contact that you should, in theory, be able to contact.

As the committee will be aware, the petition before you calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to abolish the option of an absolute discharge in cases where the accused is found guilty of rape or sexual assault and to introduce a statutory minimum sentence for those offences that includes the convicted person being registered as a sex offender. The petitioner is a constituent of mine and has met me to discuss the issue on several occasions. It is an issue that she is very passionate about.

It should be noted that I have written to the Cabinet Secretary for Justice and Home Affairs on the issue as a result of the discussions that I have had with my constituent. The cabinet secretary has outlined the narrow scope whereby someone who is convicted of a sexual assault can receive an absolute discharge, as well as some of the reasons that a change to legislation might be difficult to implement here. With permission of the cabinet secretary and my constituent, I could share that correspondence with the committee if it is interested in seeing that.

The petitioner acknowledges that an average of three people each year were granted an absolute discharge as a result of receiving a guilty verdict for sexual assault, which underlines the rare circumstances in which that occurs.

However, at its core, the petition seeks to address an apparent loophole. Being convicted of an offence that is listed under schedule 3 to the Sexual Offences Act 2003 makes the offender automatically subject to notification requirements—that is, they become a registered sex offender. The notification requirements are not dependent on an order of the court. An offender who becomes subject to the requirements does so automatically, because they have been convicted, cautioned, reprimanded or warned for a “relevant offence”. There is no discretion exercised by the courts or the police in imposing the notification requirements on relevant offenders.

However—this is the perceived loophole—absolute discharges do not trigger the notification requirements. In solemn proceedings, even when an offender receives an absolute discharge, a conviction is still recorded. Despite the conviction, an absolute discharge means that no duration is assigned for notification requirements, creating the said loophole that means that the offender is not subject to notification requirements. The petitioner feels that that should be an automatic process as part of the conviction.

The petition has perhaps come at an apt time as the Scottish Sentencing Council is currently at stage 2 of its process to develop sentencing guidelines on sexual assault and at stage 4 of its process to develop sentencing guidelines on rape. As the council must consult Scottish ministers and the Lord Advocate before submitting the guidelines to the High Court, there might be some scope for the committee or the Parliament to impress upon the Scottish Government the nature of the petition and what it is trying to achieve.

Ultimately, the petition is based on the notion that my consituent has asserted to me very clearly that they do not believe there is any circumstance that is exceptional enough to allow a person who is convicted of sexual crimes not to be subject to the notification requirements. Part of the assertion comes from how difficult such convictions are to obtain, through every part of the criminal justice process, which is something that the Criminal Justice Committee is very aware of. There are a small number of people who receive guilty verdicts and whose sentence is absolute discharge. However, where victims later learn that they are not subject to sex offender registration, that could and does have a devastating impact on victims.

I conclude by thanking my constituent for submitting the petition, for getting the number of signatures that she did and for bringing the matter to the Parliament. As I said, she is very passionate about the issue and she wants to see change in that area. I will continue to support her in my role as her local MSP.

Back to you, convener.

Thank you, convener. I have no relevant interests to declare. However, for the purposes of the committee, I want to put on the record that I was a local authority councillor in North Lanarkshire Council between 2012 and 2016.

I have one more question. The Government has said that the recommendation on severance payments for councillors who lose their seats needs further consideration. Could you expand on that and say where the Government’s thinking is?