Hansard

A few short months ago, I had the privilege of meeting Peter Morris, a Scottish champion for victims and a man who is dedicated to the cause of victims’ rights. He was mentioned very vividly by Lewis Macdonald and Mark McDonald. He marched from Aberdeenshire to present his petition to Parliament, ignoring his own health and wellbeing for the needs of others. His march led to a hospital bed and the loss of his leg, and was born of family trauma—the murder of his sister Claire by Malcolm Webster.

At the conclusion of his four-month trial, which was the longest ever trial for a single accused in Scotland, Webster was jailed for 30 years. The jury heard how he had drugged Claire before staging a fatal crash just eight months after they wed. She burned to death on a lonely country road in rural Aberdeenshire, as her husband callously told the emergency services that there was no one in the car with him. The death was originally ruled to be an accident, and Webster netted more than £200,000 in life insurance. Webster was also found guilty of staging an almost identical attempt on a second bride in New Zealand.

After the verdict was announced, Peter Morris said:

“There is now justice for Claire. The guilty verdict of murder has proven that Malcolm Webster is a wicked murderer ... I feel today is a good day as the psychological sadism over me and my family and many other people is now broken. As the truth came out, it broke the web of deception Malcolm Webster had created around him.”

For the evangelistic campaigning work of Peter Morris and the memory of Claire, I certainly welcome today’s debate.

The consultation paper is sensible, coherent and makes a good contribution to developing services for victims and witnesses. As we have also heard, it builds on Labour’s work in the area: in setting up Scotland’s first dedicated domestic abuse court, in Glasgow in 2004; and in respect of the victims fund in our election manifesto last year.

I will focus on a gap, which has been mentioned several times: the lack of a Scottish victims commissioner. Many members will be aware that my Commissioner for Victims and Witnesses (Scotland) Bill was introduced just over two years ago and had a legacy hearing at the Justice Committee shortly before the end of the previous parliamentary session. The bill’s main objective was to promote, protect and safeguard the interests of victims and witnesses and to ensure that they were projected to the heart of the justice system in Scotland. The objective is to have a champion who ensures that the needs of victims and witnesses are met. I believe strongly that the champion must have a high profile, be difficult to ignore and ensure that the needs of victims and witnesses are centre stage.

In a sense, I believe that I have seen the future, in that I have met the previous victims champion for England and Wales, Sara Payne, and Louise Casey, who was the Commissioner for Victims and Witnesses for England and Wales. l have also taken part in a videoconference with one of the four victims commissioners for Northern Ireland.

My motivation has two elements. First, I have been inspired by the work that Victim Support Scotland and other voluntary organisations, such as Barnardo’s and Scottish Women’s Aid, have done to deliver support to victims and witnesses throughout Scotland. Victim Support Scotland’s 2007 manifesto call for a victims commissioner inspired me to introduce the bill, and I have a couple of years’ personal experience of working at senior level in a national charity. Secondly, I have been greatly affected by the experiences of constituents. We have heard from many members about constituents who have been forced into the criminal justice system through no fault of their own and who have been left hurt, confused and angry.

I will give one more example. I recently saw a young woman constituent who, with her daughter, was awakened in the middle of the night by the noise of petrol being poured through the letterbox. They escaped the inferno that the house became purely because neighbours found a ladder outside, which allowed them to escape, literally as the house went up in flames around them. When I talked to that constituent, the worrying thing for me was that she thought that the court was another ordeal in her cycle of humiliation and that she was a bit player in a drama in which she had no script.

I concede that the situation for victims and witnesses in Scotland has greatly improved as a result of a range of initiatives, such as the victims strategy, the use of victim statements and the victim notification scheme. However, although improvements have been made, a great deal more needs to be done. A number of important and effective voluntary organisations work in the interests of victims and witnesses, but there is not one co-ordinating voice and no one has the statutory power to examine failures. I believe that there is a gap between victims and victims organisations, and the Government.

Can we say that every relevant authority is meeting the requirement to protect victims under existing legislation and that there is a good balance of power between those who work in the interests of victims and witnesses and others in the criminal justice system? I believe that a commissioner would enhance the work of existing organisations and take it to the next step. A commissioner would be central to the justice system.

I mentioned the Commissioner for Victims and Witnesses for England and Wales, Louise Casey. In evidence to the House of Commons Justice Committee in November 2010, she said that her role as victims commissioner was

“to challenge the whole of the Criminal Justice System to do right by victims and witnesses.”

That was the intention of my bill. The commissioner would be responsible for championing the rights of victims and raising awareness of their situation. The commissioner would work with voluntary organisations, politicians, the police and others throughout the sector.

It is important that victims are protected from an uncaring bureaucracy that is often unintentionally hurtful and damaging at a time of great suffering. Witnesses suffer trauma, too. About 40 per cent of witnesses are victims and many offenders are victims, too. The proposed role is that of an independent champion, operating with victims, service providers and the Government, working outside, but looking in. The role would provide a new route map for victims, reflecting the new European rights, as covered by the Stockholm programme. It would be a move towards a system change, so that, in Louise Casey’s words, victims would no longer be “the poor relation” of the criminal justice system.

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