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Public Petitions Committee 12 January 2016

12 Jan 2016 · S4 · Public Petitions Committee

Item of business

New Petitions

Offensive Behaviour at Football and Threatening Communications (Scotland) Act 2012 (Review) (PE1593)

Paul Quigley (Fans Against Criminalisation) Watch on SPTV

Thank you for the introduction, convener, and thanks to everyone for having us here to discuss the petition and share our concerns about the 2012 act. I will give you a quick overview of who we are and who we represent. We are members of Fans Against Criminalisation, which is a protest group that began in 2011 to oppose the introduction of the legislation. We have since campaigned against it while helping people who have been charged under it and collating our own evidence about those cases. I make the point that our petition does not defend sectarianism. We are not here to defend any hate crime. However, we note that sectarian behaviour, racist behaviour, homophobia and sexism were all covered by previous legislation. Our point of contention with the act concerns its offensive behaviour provisions, which create a new law that criminalises offensiveness. The difficulty with that is the fact that, obviously, offensiveness is subjective. What committee members might find offensive I might not, and vice versa. Therefore, the law becomes practically impossible to police, which creates a blurring of what is legally acceptable. The impact of that is that young men and girls, primarily, are being arrested at football matches. The University of Stirling report showed that the court cases go on for far longer than normal court cases do but that the conviction rate remains shockingly low—and people’s lives are ultimately ruined in the process. We object to the fact that the 2012 act specifically discriminates against football fans. It is a law that applies only to one, demonised, sector of society. We disagree with the law on that basis. The specific reason for the petition is that we feel that the Scottish Government has reneged on its promise to fully review the act, which should have been done in 2015. What was produced as the review was consideration of one piece of evidence—a report by the University of Stirling—which we contend was selectively quoted. For example, it was not mentioned that that piece of research showed that, because so many resources had been diverted to policing offensiveness, there had been a rise in violence at football games. The research also showed that many judges had significant concerns about the human rights implications of the 2012 act because of its curtailment of freedom of speech and of political expression. Those issues have still to be properly reviewed. Another piece of evidence was an opinion poll that YouGov carried out, which we felt was somewhat skewed. In 2011, an attempt was made to rush through the Offensive Behaviour at Football and Threatening Communications (Scotland) Bill as emergency legislation. However, the then First Minister said that he wished to build consensus on the bill. Five years on from that, all that remains is a consensus of opposition to the legislation. Every Opposition party in the Parliament, as well as independent MSPs, voted against the bill. As far as I am aware, none of them have changed their minds on the matter. There are still concerns about the legislation among lawyers, judges, civil rights groups, football fans and football clubs. The problem is that people have not been given ample opportunity to present evidence in a review process to show why they are against the 2012 act. We have heard about just one side of the legislation. The continued controversy surrounding it and the incredibly low conviction rate in cases that are brought under it demonstrate that it is not working. It is now clearly in the public interest to have a full review of the act and give the different stakeholders the opportunity to input into that process. We would want to be part of that, with a view to having the act ultimately repealed.

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Public Petitions Committee 12 January 2016

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