Meeting of the Parliament 28 September 2017
I am pleased to be speaking in the debate and am immensely proud that the Justice Committee unanimously agreed to the principles of the bill. How often do we see five parties all agreeing about a bill? That says something about Scotland and the Parliament, and we should all be very proud.
During committee consideration, we heard evidence upon evidence that the bill is needed and that there is a gap in the law that means that victims are not protected from psychological abuse. That evidence came from Scottish Women’s Aid, Abused Men in Scotland, all the children’s charities, social work, the police, the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service and victims themselves, to name but a few.
My experience as a social worker told me the same. In 12 years in a local office setting, I lost count of how many times I sat at a child protection conference, a children’s hearing, a multi-agency public protection arrangements meeting or some other forum and heard evidence of what was often a pervasive pattern of psychological and emotional abuse over long periods of time. The police, social and health services often had nowhere concrete to go.
The bill will be groundbreaking and will make a real difference to service intervention and, most importantly, to the lives of those suffering at the hands of abusive—mostly, but not exclusively—men.
I do not want to sound too sucky-uppy to the cabinet secretary but, because this issue was part of my work life for a long time and it means a lot to me, I will say that if the bill is passed, he can be very proud. In years to come, he will be able to think back to this as an absolutely outstanding achievement that will have positively impacted the lives of many and helped to change the culture in this country.
I will address some of the issues in the committee report. Much has already been said, so there is a risk of repeating things, but it is worth doing. A very small—and I stress that it is small—number of stakeholders expressed concerns that the bar of criminality is being set too low. I do not agree with that. The committee heard evidence from Anne Marie Hicks from the COPFS who did not think that that was the case. I welcome that, in its response to the committee’s report, the Government outlined the three thresholds that require to be met; I am sure that the cabinet secretary will highlight those.
During evidence gathering, the subject of children who are exposed to such behaviour generated a lot of discussion. I welcome the Government’s response in relation to the review of the Children (Scotland) Act 1995, including a review of child contact cases as they relate to domestic violence.
I also welcome that there will be consideration of amendments at stage 2 to allow non-harassment orders to protect children specifically. The Government is taking a positive step in meeting Scottish Women’s Aid to talk about emergency barring orders, and I encourage dialogue on that front with the children’s charities such as Children 1st. I met Chloe Riddell earlier today and we discussed that very issue.
I will follow up on a question that I asked the cabinet secretary when he made his recent statement. I believe that the introduction of such an offence and the subsequent publicity will lead to more convictions. From working in the field, I know that the Scottish Government has recently invested strongly in criminal justice, especially in addressing female offending. However, we need to ensure that funding is increased for programmes for male perpetrators—because it is particularly male perpetrators—of domestic violence. Programmes can work, but they need people who can specialise and do the intense work. It takes a lot of work to change people’s belief systems. The change programme and the Caledonian system are examples of such work.
I take the opportunity to encourage local authorities to use Government investment to create specific posts for people who work in the area and allow them to effect change. Some local authorities do this already, but I would like to see local authorities have specific teams to work on domestic abuse, as they do in other areas of criminal justice. That would be a step in the right direction.
I see that I have been speaking for just over four minutes, Presiding Officer, so you will be glad to know that I am finishing. I welcome the bill and commend it to the chamber.
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