Hansard

I assume that decision time will be brought forward. That is pleasing because after two or more years of considering the bill, I think that I might be running out of things to say about it. I will, however, do my best to fill the time.

I closed the stage 1 debate for Labour in February 2014, when my colleagues and I were told that we were selling out our principles and, indeed, that we had sold our souls. I am glad that today’s debate has been much more constructive, even when there has not been agreement.

One issue that has concerned members is the need to improve access to justice for victims of one-on-one crimes—in particular, crimes of sexual and domestic abuse. Much of the consideration of the requirement for corroboration concerned that issue. Today, Margaret Mitchell and Alison McInnes argued passionately in favour of introducing the right to legal representation for victims of sexual abuse when application is made to access their medical records. I know that both Justice Scotland and representatives of women’s organisations were supportive of the proposal, but the amendment was not agreed to. Nevertheless, I have recently become aware that the right is available to rape victims in England and Wales, so I think that we need to address the matter here.

I am pleased that the Government is doing research on sections 274 and 275 of the Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995 but, as I said in the recent debate on violence against women and girls, I hope that Parliament will, in the next session, return to gender-based violence with more comprehensive legislation.

Similarly, I am in favour of increasing the age of criminal responsibility from eight to 12 and hope that, in the next session of Parliament, that measure will be in a bill from its start so that it cannot just be glossed over.

Much as I respect our children’s commissioner, Tam Baillie, I am not able to agree with him on the powers in the bill to introduce stop and search of under 18s for alcohol. Those powers may not be used if the consultation suggests that they should not be. Even if they are used, the people who will be criminalised are the people over 18 who supply alcohol to young people. I hope that the children’s commissioner’s concerns will be discounted. It might be that the consultation will come out against stop and search in those circumstances, so we need to wait to see what will happen on that.

Mary Fee lodged important amendments on children and families who are affected by imprisonment, on which she is to be congratulated. As she said, children are often the forgotten victims of crime. She told us about how the stigma and related problems that young people can have result in it being more likely that they will become involved in the justice system themselves and perpetuate the cycle. I was interested in what she said about Perth prison and the thrive parenting programme for male offenders. It was also interesting to hear about the impact of a parent’s imprisonment on children and how it affects the offender. I can think of little that might be more valuable in the prevention of reoffending than making a parent aware of the effect that their offending has on their child.

Christine Grahame expressed the concerns that many of us had when it came to abolition of the requirement for corroboration and how and whether that issue will come back to us. That issue will not go away and extensive consultation on it will be required in the future.

I congratulate Christine Grahame on noticing the issues with the emergency legislation on the Cadder case. The High Court used to have to accept cases that the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission referred to it, but changes made through emergency legislation meant that the High Court might not accept successful cases. It is important that that situation has now been reversed.

Alison McInnes also referred to the corroboration debate and reminded us that the majority of the committee members had asked for the section on corroboration to be removed. She made an important point that lessons need to be learned from the passage of the bill. The way in which it has been improved through its extended passage perhaps provides us with some lessons that we could learn for future legislation.

Alex Salmond also referred to corroboration, but made an important point about knife crime, John Carnochan and the role of the violence reduction unit. Before any of us become too sanctimonious about it, we need to remember that it was my good friend Cathy Jamieson who implemented some of the measures that have been mentioned. They have resulted in a reduction in knife crime, so it is a question of not throwing the baby out with the bath water when good work has been done. We have been concerned about many of the effects of the increased use of stop and search, but that does not mean to say that stop and search never has a role or has no value.

It is important that John Finnie reminded us that there always were common-law powers of stop and search. Sometimes, there is great value in people who have police experience being members of Parliament, because they can remind us of such factors; I am grateful to him for doing that.

I thank the clerks and the witnesses for all their hard work with the committee at all stages of the bill over the extended period—two and a half years—that it has been going through Parliament.