Meeting of the Parliament 28 September 2017
I will seek to do so. As we said in our response to the committee’s report, we believe that we have set the bar at the right level. Our response reinforces the oral evidence that I gave to the committee, in which I said that we believe that the qualifying criteria for engaging the offence have been set at the right level, and that the courts will interpret that bar appropriately.
As well as criminalising specific behaviour such as violent behaviour, the new offence will criminalise other types of behaviour by reference to its effect on the partner, or ex-partner. For example, the offence seeks to cover behaviour including unreasonably restricting access to money, by reference to the fact that that might make the partner feel dependent on, or subordinate to, the perpetrator.
Children, too, are harmed by domestic abuse. When a parent is abused, that always brings harm to the child, either directly, as a result of the child witnessing the abuse, or indirectly, with the child being affected by the effect of the abuse on their parent. In line with the long-established definition of domestic abuse, the bill is about creating a new offence of domestic abuse between partners or ex-partners. The harm that is caused to children will be acknowledged through the new statutory aggravation. When children are involved, that can be reflected by the court when the perpetrator is sentenced.
I welcome the Justice Committee’s stage 1 report, which supports the general principles of the bill. I thank the organisations and, in particular, the individuals who contributed to it—not least, those who shared with the committee their personal experiences of suffering domestic abuse in order to assist the committee with its consideration of the bill. The committee has raised a number of important issues, including how we might expand the scope of the power to impose non-harassment orders in order to protect the children of the victim; the proposal to create emergency banning orders that would ban the perpetrator from the victim’s home; and issues concerning the interaction between criminal domestic abuse cases and the civil child-contact case process.
The Scottish Government has responded to the stage 1 report’s recommendations, and I will listen carefully to the views that are offered on those issues in the debate ahead of stage 2.