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Meeting of the Parliament 16 March 2011

16 Mar 2011 · S3 · Meeting of the Parliament

Item of business

Domestic Abuse (Scotland) Bill: Stage 3

Brown, Robert LD Glasgow Watch on SPTV

I agree with much of what Bill Aitken said. It seems to me that proposed new subsection (2)(d) in particular has distinct difficulties. First, despite Rhoda Grant’s explanation, the phrase “intimate personal relationship” is not in fact defined in the bill and therefore it is difficult to know what a court might make of it. The situations that it covers could range, if I may put it this way, from a one-night stand to a relationship that, despite Rhoda Grant’s explanation, is not necessarily a full sexual relationship, because the phrase “intimate personal relationship” does not necessarily seem to imply that. There are all sorts of definitional issues about what the phrase covers.

The framework is right. I think that we all agreed at an early stage in the process that it is absolutely right that there should be a determination of what a domestic abuse interdict is.

15:15 There is another slight difficulty with amendment 4. Subsection (2) states that the court “may make the determination” that the interdict is a domestic abuse interdict and gives the defender the right to make representations. However, the fact that the court “may” make the determination suggests that there is discretion in the matter, and it is not clear to me on what grounds that discretion would be exercised. One imagines that the interdict is either a domestic abuse interdict or it is not; it does not seem to be the sort of thing that implies discretion. I wonder why the amendment does not either say “must” or explain the circumstances under which that determination may not be appropriate.

Therefore, I have some qualms about amendment 4. I accept the problem that it seeks to address. I accept that there are issues regarding people who stay together for part of the week or whatever, and I accept that the principle that Rhoda Grant is trying to establish goes a little further than that of people who cohabit in the traditional sense. However, I question whether we have a workable definition that the courts can make sense of, that works in practice and that can deliver the goods in relation to the objective that Rhoda Grant has set.

I will not vote against the amendment. I have the same difficulty as Bill Aitken in that I do not have any alternative suggestions to make. Nevertheless, I have some difficulties with the formulation that has been put forward and I am interested in hearing Rhoda Grant’s or the minister’s responses to the points that I have made, which I think are important.