Meeting of the Parliament 23 June 2015
I cannot find any fault in the idea that we should end automatic early release. Victims, and indeed the general public, deserve some clarity from our legal system. When they hear a sentence of a specific length of time handed down, they expect that the offender will actually serve that length of imprisonment. It causes real trauma, anxiety and anguish when victims find that those who were responsible for the crime are out wandering the streets, back in their community, after a relatively short period. The idea of stopping automatic early release is right. The problem is how we go about it.
In a sense, the cabinet secretary deserves our praise. As Margaret Mitchell suggested, he has tackled a number of things since taking office by changing direction completely from that set out by his predecessor. Frankly, this is another mess that the cabinet secretary inherited from his predecessor, and he has worked hard to try and make improvements, but I do not think that he has sorted out the inconsistencies and inadequacies in the bill.
We have got things back to front. If we were going to consider such a fundamental change to the way in which our legal system operates, we should not have taken this particular manifesto commitment from the SNP and put it into effect; we should have taken the commitment to establish a sentencing council, which was also in its manifesto, and allowed that sentencing council to take an informed view and analysis and to come up with some recommendations that the Parliament could debate and consider. We have got this back to front—we have done it the wrong way about. That is a shame.