Meeting of the Parliament 03 December 2015
I thank Paul Martin for bringing this important debate to the chamber. It is a motion that I was more than happy to sign, not least because it gives deserved recognition to the courage and tenacity of Margaret Ann Cummings in campaigning to ensure that sex offenders are managed in a way that poses the least possible risk to our communities. There is little doubt that the tragic murder of Mark Cummings served as a wake-up call to the Scottish Parliament that more can and must be done to keep our communities safe from serious sex offenders.
It was with that in mind that the Justice 2 Sub-Committee was established in 2006 to review those dangerous and devious individuals. Following on from the review, 33 recommendations were made, intended to protect children. Nearly all of those have been implemented.
However, I consider it totally unacceptable that, almost 10 years later, the vitally important recommendation calling for sex offenders to disclose information about previous convictions on housing applications has still not been implemented. That is a situation that must be addressed now.
The motion also refers to the need for the risks posed by serious sex offenders in communities across Scotland to be examined. A good starting point would be the Scottish Government’s annual report, published in October this year, on MAPPA in Scotland. The MAPPA guidance states that the primary purpose of sex offender notification requirements is to enable the police to know the location of sex offenders and to manage those sex offenders and minimise the risk of further offending against the public. Yet the report reveals that, in the past year, a staggering 331 registered sex offenders failed to comply with the notification requirements to let the police know of their whereabouts or their current situation. That represents an increase of a third on the number the year before. Clearly, the situation requires urgent analysis.