Official Report search · Parliament Workbench

Committee

Justice 2 Committee, 28 Mar 2006

28 Mar 2006 · S2 · Justice 2 Committee

Item of business

Police, Public Order and Criminal Justice (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2

Henry, Hugh Lab Paisley South Watch on SPTV

Clearly, committee members have raised a number of issues and I sympathise with most of what has been said. I think that we all agree that we should strengthen the law on knife crime where possible. However, to echo a comment that the convener made about unintended consequences, we also want the law to be effective in practice. Stewart Maxwell asked why we are acting on indictment cases but not on summary cases. The answer is, of course, that we are also acting on summary cases. We are doing so in our summary justice bill—the Criminal Proceedings etc (Reform) (Scotland) Bill—which is intended to come into force only a few months after this bill.Our logic is that the best way to address the issues is by looking at them not just neatly but coherently. We might have been tempted to jump in for the sake of getting a couple of months ahead of our summary justice bill, but I think that we might have been accused of opportunism had we chosen to do that. We are not opposed at all to what Stewart Maxwell proposes; it is a matter of how best to deal with the issue. If Parliament decides to accept what Stewart Maxwell proposes, we might need to do some tidying up of language and coherence in our next bill, but that would not be an insurmountable problem.I will be guided on this by the committee's thoughts. Does it prefer to take the coherent and logical approach and deal with the sentencing issue in our summary justice bill? Alternatively, would the committee rather deal with the issue now and have sentencing changes implemented in this bill some months ahead of the summary justice bill? If the choice is the latter, we will make whatever adjustments are necessary.I move on to Jeremy Purvis's amendments. I understand his position and, indeed, I would agree with him on most of the issues that he raises. However, I am not sure that I agree with him on how we should address the inconsistencies to which other members have referred. That is not to trivialise or minimise the implications of knife crime or, indeed, the extent of it, but I worry that we might send out a message that those carrying a gun will be dealt with in the same way as those carrying a knife. I would not want Scotland to develop the same culture, bad habits or outrageous activities that we see in other parts of the United Kingdom.I spoke yesterday to police officers in Greenock whose view is that if the proposed sentencing changes were made, there would be the potential at least for people to start looking at the carrying of guns and knives in the same way. That is not something that we can be definitive about—we would find out only after the event—but I am not sure that it is worth the risk. It is right that we give out a serious message that carrying guns, whether pistols or semi-automatics, is not acceptable. Serious sentences are already available for gun use.I think that Bill Butler is right about trying people on indictment. If the Crown Office thought that an offence was sufficiently serious to merit a sentence that went beyond the 12 months that is available to a summary court, I would have thought that the logic would be to try the person on indictment and, indeed, in a court where the penalty might be more than 18 months. I worry that if the amendments were agreed to, potentially serious offences might go to the wrong court and thereby attract sentences that might not be justified in the circumstances. Bill Butler is correct to suggest that our summary proceedings would contain a stark anomaly, because the only offence that would attract a sentence of 18 months would be that of possessing a knife. That would significantly change the nature of our summary courts.We are not being complacent or disagreeing on the extent of sentences. Most people agree that tougher sentences are needed but, if we agreed to the amendments in the name of Jeremy Purvis, some issues would need to be teased out carefully. The matter that Maureen Macmillan raised would also have to be reflected on. We are not disposed to accept what Jeremy Purvis proposes, although we share his view on the signals that the Parliament needs to send and on how we deal with serious crime, which knife crime is. However, we have a duty to deal with it coherently.Further work needs to be done on probation and custody orders. Who has responsibility might have been misunderstood. Once an individual is in prison, it is not the court but the Scottish Prison Service that is responsible. If we agreed to the relevant amendments, we would create confusion about who should be responsible for varying something. I am also not persuaded that varying a sentence after it has been imposed is necessarily the right thing to do.Convener, I do not know whether to deal with Colin Fox's amendments.

Search Hansard contributions

Justice 2 Committee, 28 Mar 2006

In the same item of business