Meeting of the Parliament 28 January 2016
On behalf of Scottish Labour, I support the general principles of the bill. I have found the debate to be most edifying and educational. Much has been said about what the bill seeks to achieve. It is fair to say that, in many minds, there is confusion about exactly what we are trying to deal with. The prejudices that are brought to this environment often confuse the notion of love and sexual intent. In fact, the bill seeks to deal with human beings who seek to control others, who exhibit anger in the way that they demonstrate that control and who are happy to use violence and/or threats, either actual or implied, to obtain their own outcomes. In that context, I welcome the bill’s aim of preventing abuse, harassment or sexual harm, using either criminal or civil law.
The domestic abuse aggravator is to be welcomed and is well worthy of further development. I ask the cabinet secretary to bear in mind an issue that was raised with me only this week at the conclusion of a trial that resulted in a conviction. The victim in that case is now left with a duty to return to the civil courts to seek an interdict in connection with future harassment. There might well be a gap in how we deal with long-term domestic abuse and the impacts on victims.
The bill introduces a specific offence of non-consensual sharing of private and intimate images. That issue demands a response in legislation. I believe that further analysis of the impact of sharing texts and sound files is important. We should consider the foreseeable impact on an individual of the sharing of such files with the general public. Sound files and texts can probably do as much damage to a vulnerable individual as images when shared in the public domain.
There is a provision allowing courts to directly protect victims when the court is satisfied that a person has harassed another person but a conviction does not take place. As was alluded to earlier, that is another important aspect. Some victims feel abandoned by the system when the full process of law is unable or unwilling to deliver.
I am persuaded that the requirement for specific directions from the court is necessary. Christine Grahame, I think, commented on the prejudices that ordinary members of the public bring to the process and John Finnie gave a great deal of evidence that that prejudice extends beyond ordinary members of the public. We should be able to rely on a judge setting the context with a comment to the jury about how evidence might be weighed in its decisions.