Meeting of the Parliament 01 May 2018
I add my thanks and congratulations to my friend and colleague Kez Dugdale for bringing this hugely important motion before us this evening.
Until very recently, public discourse around rape and sexual assault was shrouded in false assumptions and stigma. Much of that still exists and endures. I am ashamed to say that I carried some of those assumptions myself, but I am very glad to say that joining the task force on violence against women, as I did some three years before I was elected to the Scottish Parliament, helped me to understand the profound and dehumanising impact that rape and sexual assault can have on not just women but men, although the impact is predominantly on women. It was in that group that I was proud to play some role in shaping the equally safe strategy, which has been referenced a number of times in the debate.
My work in that group was underpinned by my membership of the task force on child sexual exploitation. I make that point because many of the themes that we discussed in that task force were apposite to some of the solution around changing the culture, by which I mean a change to our understanding of safe relationships, consent and respect. We need to germinate that understanding and grow it in our children and young people so that they understand the environment of relationships and what healthy relationships look like.
Our response to rape has to be a whole-system response, but I am glad that Kez Dugdale has focused her motion on our criminal justice system’s response. It is very easy for us to use members’ business debates as a forum in which to bemoan a situation and to wail, gnash teeth and cry “Foul!” about the many things that are wrong. However, Kez Dugdale’s five-point plan represents a very powerful index of positive action that we and our criminal justice colleagues can take forward to make things better. Like others, I welcome the response this morning of the Lord President of the Court of Session, Lord Carloway—I think that it was partly in response to the debate happening—with regard to making it easier for people to come forward and give evidence outside of court. I would certainly lend my support to that proposal.
I will touch on something that Daniel Johnson articulated very well, which is the dichotomy between the utilitarian need to have more rape cases brought to justice and the needs of the individual complainant. That issue came up in our Equalities and Human Rights Committee inquiry into human rights, in that we have competing human rights: we have the metanarrative of human rights in our society with regard to rape not continuing and the rights of the individual to be protected from being retraumatised. That is why I am compelled to say that the advice and policies of the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service in compelling reluctant complainers, which come from the best of intentions, will have profound and unintended human consequences for the individual.
It is not hard to understand how the Crown Office got to that position. It is scandalous that some 1,800 rapes have been reported in the past year, yet only 270 have been brought to prosecution. That is a terrible statistic. However, part of the reason is not people’s reluctance to come forward but their lack of confidence in the system. The fact that those 270 cases resulted in only 125 convictions would undermine anybody’s confidence in the system. In addition—my friend Tavish Scott made this point very well, I think—people have a colossal amount of time to wait before they have their day in court and that moment to tell their story, and at many points along that journey they are being retraumatised.
I thank Kez Dugdale once again for bringing this important debate to the Parliament tonight, and I assure her of our continuing support on the matter. Her five-point plan represents a really positive and progressive step in taking the debate forward.
17:55