Seòmar agus comataidhean

It is coming up.

Oh, right—that is the next group of amendments.

Thank you, cabinet secretary—that is probably the best birthday present that I have ever had. You have just provided an acknowledgement of a process and a practice that is not delivering for everyone in the justice system, an understanding of the issues and the implications of the changes and a promise to seek to do something about that. I could not have asked for more.

On that note, I am happy to work with the Government ahead of stage 3 on a suitable amendment that expands the franchise for solemn cases, perhaps with a view at some point to looking at the knock-on effects of expanding that to summary cases. I understand the implications for resources and the volume of cases. Nobody wants trials to be delayed and no one wants to unnecessarily re-traumatise victims, but that step change is the right direction of travel.

I believe that there is a constructive consensus around the table and among political parties in the Parliament to make that work. I look forward to working with the cabinet secretary and her officials to lodge such an amendment at stage 3. For that reason, I seek to withdraw amendment 240.

Amendment 240, by agreement, withdrawn.

Amendments 241 to 245 not moved.

Bear with me; it has been a long week. I will not move it.

Amendments 237 and 238 not moved.

Amendment 239 moved—[Jamie Greene].

Yes.

Thank you very much. That was exactly the summary that I was hoping for, and it all makes complete sense. I am very grateful for the opportunity to revisit some of those amendments ahead of stage 3—I will, of course, do so—and I hope that we can make some of those changes to the bill.

On the point that the Labour members have made, there should be an opportunity to scrutinise any amendments that are lodged either by me or by the Government ahead of stage 3, so that everyone has a chance to feed in to them and consider the effect that they might have. When they come back to the Parliament as a whole, that information will be available to all MSPs.

I am sure that the Government and I can work on those amendments together, to ensure that members are informed and that due consultation, if needed, takes place ahead of stage 3. I appreciate that it is a tight window of opportunity, but we need to know what effect those changes would have on justice partners. That willingness to work with me will be warmly received by many of the people who, I know, are watching the session this morning, and I am very grateful for it.

Amendment 246, by agreement, withdrawn.

Amendments 247 and 248 not moved.

I have not.

That is all the amendments that I have in this group. I move amendment 249.

I do not disagree with that. The minister will perhaps share her feelings on the matter, but my personal view is that the victim should be informed of any sort of release, including when someone will be released on licence when they have come to the end of their sentence or when someone will be released for other purposes. For example, as part of the reintegration process, some people go back into the community to work and to participate meaningfully in their community.

I do not have a problem with that, but we do not want a victim to bump into that person on the platform of a train station or in a supermarket, which happens too often. There have been high-profile cases in which family members of someone who has been murdered have bumped into the offender because they have not been told in advance. At one end of the spectrum, no one is told, and, at the other end, everyone is told. I understand that, in the real world, it is not always possible for everyone to be told.

If my amendment 244 in its current form does not work, I would like to sit down with the Government and come up with wording that will make the system better, so that as many people as possible are informed, with as much time as is practically reasonable, in advance of release. I will not reiterate that point too much, because I think that I have made it.

First, I apologise, as I have five amendments in this group, and they are fairly substantive. They are not technical or consequential—each has a specific purpose—so I will talk my way through them. Given that the minister has already spoken, I want to reflect on what has been said, and we might hear more of that if she responds to my arguments when summing up.

My amendments principally relate to the information that is given to victims and the methods by which they can be notified. As I outlined in my opening comments, amendment 237 seeks to obligate Police Scotland to proactively refer all victims for support unless the victim requests otherwise. I am not using the language of “opt in” and “opt out”, because the minister is absolutely right—we want a system that provides enough flexibility so that people understand what they are signing up and agreeing to. Equally, as my amendments will show, the system should be flexible enough for victims to be able to change their mind at any point during the process, which is not the case at the moment. We agree that, whatever system we end up with, that aspect needs to improve.

As the minister said, amendment 237 would shift the responsibility on to Police Scotland, which would require a discussion to be had with it. I have not had time to have such a discussion, but I appreciate that the minister will do so. I hope that there will not be any reluctance on Police Scotland’s part to move to a new world in which it plays a much more proactive role in communicating with victims.

Amendment 237 would amend section 3 of the Victims and Witnesses (Scotland) Act 2014, which is the only way that I thought that I could go about making such a change. The amendment states that a victim, or someone who a constable believes to be a victim, must be referred to a victim support service

“unless that person intimates that they do not wish to be referred”,

which would mean that the decision would always rest with the victim.

In practice, that would mean that Police Scotland would not have to wait for a victim to ask for a referral, and it would give the victim more choice. A few years ago, Victim Support Scotland and Police Scotland did a joint survey on the information that is given to victims when a crime has occurred, and found that, in 2021, only 14 per cent of victims received a care card, for example. I would like to think that the situation has improved a lot since then—I could not find more up-to-date statistics, but it would be helpful to know whether it has.

Essentially, we are saying that, at the point of reporting a crime, someone is at the most traumatic point of their experience, having only recently been subject to a crime. It should not be up to the victim to be proactive to get support; rather, the system should be proactive. I am glad that the minister is willing to work with me, and I will take her up on her offer to sit down and look at any consultation that needs to happen. I am even happy to be part of that conversation if required, given my historical relationship with some of those stakeholders.

Amendment 238 provides for a different scenario, which is after someone has been convicted and sentenced. When that person is serving their sentence, they will at some point come up for parole. At the moment, according to my conversations with Victim Support Scotland, the victim will receive little more than a letter in the post informing them of the forthcoming potential for a parole situation. Again, it is up to the victim to contact a support organisation.

Amendment 238 would change section 20 of the Prisoners and Criminal Proceedings (Scotland) Act 1993 to require the board

“to ask whether the victim wishes their details to be disclosed”

to a victim support service. Again, it is not an automatic transfer of data, but one that would happen at that point of contact, which often, interestingly, will be the first such contact that a victim might have had for many years. For example, if someone has been sentenced to 10 years, not all victims are aware of the early release mechanisms or any changes to it that have happened—it applies at either 50 per cent or 40 per cent of the sentence, depending on the nature of the crime—so that can come out of the blue, and it can be traumatic for the victim when the letter pops through the letterbox.

In fact, the chair of the Parole Board, in a recent interview with The Courier newspaper, agreed with that point, saying:

“It comes as a real surprise to them and can have a significant impact on them”.

He went on:

“There should be a system where there is no surprises.”

That is the view of the Parole Board and of victims organisations, and it is certainly my view as well.

Again, amendment 238 would place the onus on an organisation that is part of the justice system to contact victims and make a proactive offer to pass on their information, subject to the protocols that I think the minister is seeking to investigate. I understand that there will be implications around the sharing of data but, ultimately, if someone wants more information, they should be entitled to it and the system should take more ownership of doing so.

Amendment 243 is one of the amendments that the minister indicated that she does not support. It would amend section 16 of the Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act 2003, which governs the

“victim’s right to receive information concerning release etc of offender”,

which currently happens via the VNS scheme. My amendment would insert a new subsection stating that any victim who had previously stated that they did not wish to join the VNS must be given “a second opportunity” to do so prior to the offender’s release.

I made the same point in relation to the previous two amendments: victims are often asked whether they want to join the VNS at a highly distressing time and they might or might not make the decision that is good for them in the long term—indeed, they might make an immediate decision based on the situation and the circumstances in which they find themselves. It is important that they be granted a second opportunity to be involved in any notification scheme.

If, as Ms Brown’s amendment 172 proposes, we are moving to a merged scheme that enhances the rights of victims to receive information, irrespective of the length of sentence, that is a good thing. However—this is the point that Katy Clark made with regard to the devil being in the detail—the amendment does not state at which point, and how, victims will participate in the new scheme; whether it is a one-off opportunity; or whether victims can change their minds and, if so, at which point in the justice process. If someone says, “No, I do not want to participate in the current scheme or any new scheme,” they should be given secondary or even tertiary opportunities to do so, and it should be made clear to them how they would go about doing that.

I appreciate that amendment 243 as drafted might not quite fit the bill, but I ask the minister, in the spirit of her offer to work with me ahead of stage 3 on other amendments, to sit down with me and work out how we can amend amendment 243 in a way that enhances any new scheme that might be forthcoming. If that new scheme is to come forth in regulations or in other secondary legislation, so be it, but it is important that the committee understands its nature and how victims can opt in or opt out—to use the language that we said that we would not use.

The reason why it is important is indicated on page 9 of the Victim Support Scotland briefing, which sums up the underlying premise of my amendments in this group. If you do not mind, I will quote what it says:

“Victims ... do not take linear journeys when healing from, and processing, their trauma.”

Their

“needs and circumstances ... after a trial, may be very different than their needs or circumstances in the future.”

Our

“justice system and processes must reflect this and must”

help

“people ... make informed choices ... Choice and control, access to information, and removal of barriers are the key aspects of a trauma informed system.”

I agree with that.

On amendment 244, I will double check with the minister whether she said that she was supportive of it in principle—she can nod at me, but I think that the answer is yes—but it relates to victims being notified of a prisoner’s pending release. At the moment, the 2003 act sets out the information that a victim is entitled to in relation to the release of an offender; more important, though, the victim is to be notified of the date of release. My short amendment 244 would not change the type of information given to the victim, but it would make it clear that they should be told of the release of the prisoner prior to release.

That might seem basic, but it is actually quite fundamental. Essentially, it would mean that all victims would be informed of a prisoner’s release before that person walked out the door of the prison. Why? The answer is self-evident. When I sat on this committee, I heard numerous examples of victims not knowing that someone had been released, and I have heard more since then. That happened for two reasons: first, they should have been informed and were not, even though they had signed up to notification schemes; and secondly, they were not signed up to a VNS, because they might have forgotten that they were offered the choice at a very early stage in their trauma.

That is not good enough. When I did the consultation for my member’s bill on victims, we submitted a freedom of information request on instances of people being released and their victims not being notified—or their families, if the person, sadly, was deceased. There were 17 very high-profile cases in which sexual offenders had been released on compassionate grounds, due to, for example, terminal illness, and the victims had not been notified. I can provide copies of that FOI response. Seventeen might not sound like a lot, but it is still 17 individual families and victims.

I should also note that we as a Parliament have been asked on a number of occasions to approve emergency early release, and of course, there have been other changes to the point at which people are eligible for release. We can debate those separately, but the point that was made repeatedly throughout those debates—I made it, too—is that in no circumstances should someone find out that a person has been released after their release. That is just commonsense logic.

I understand that there are exceptional circumstances in which that cannot happen, such as day release. It would be unreasonable and impractical to notify the victim that someone was leaving prison for a day to attend a funeral or for some other compassionate reason—say, to go to hospital. Moreover, the emergency release powers made it very difficult to notify every victim, given the volume of people who were released. In my view, it should have happened, but it did not, and I understand the rationale for why it did not.

Would you mind if I come back on that? I understand and agree with some of those points. However, I am looking at the amendment as it is drafted, and it is not about giving victims—or alleged victims, or whatever language you want to use—the ability to intervene, to influence, to agree or to disagree. It is about a one-way path of communication from the Crown to the individual who has reported a crime and is part of some form of criminal proceeding. The amendment simply says that when

“a prosecutor decides ... not to prosecute”

or “to discontinue” proceedings, they must,

“as soon as reasonably practicable, inform any person who is, or appears to be, a victim in relation to that offence or alleged offence”

of that decision. It is simply about improving communication and information. That is all that it seeks to do. It is not going beyond the reach of this Parliament or straying into the territory that you believe some of the other amendments in the group might be straying into; it is actually quite simple.

We agree in principle that people should be told about decisions. Let us reverse it: why should people not be told when there is a decision not to prosecute? If you can answer that, I would find that most useful.