Meeting of the Parliament 22 March 2016
That is precisely the point that I am making and that is the danger with the amendments in the group and how they could be interpreted. That is why we do not believe that Margaret McDougall’s amendments are appropriate, because they would criminalise such behaviour.
More generally, although it is hard to envisage circumstances in which someone would have a legitimate reason to share intimate photographs or films of their partner or ex-partner with a third party without their partner’s or ex-partner’s consent, it is easier to imagine circumstances in which they might wish to share a written message or voice message with a friend. A person may, for example, be confused or even fearful as a result of what they might consider to be the disturbing sexual content of a message that has been sent to them by a friend and wish to seek advice about what to do about it. They could be criminally liable if Margaret McDougall’s amendments were agreed to.
As I said to the Justice Committee at stage 2, we are happy to monitor the issue as the provision is implemented to assess whether there is a need to reconsider the scope of the offence in the future. However, we consider that the focus of the offence contained in the bill should be on images and photographs only and therefore we oppose amendments 3 to 14 in the name of Margaret McDougall.