Meeting of the Parliament 04 June 2019
Even after Liam Kerr’s performance this afternoon, I firmly believe that, when it comes to justice, his instincts are broadly liberal. I see him more in the mould of his colleague, Rory Stewart, than a latter-day Michael Howard; far less a ready-made solution to plugging the Anne Widdicombe-shaped hole in the Tory Party.
I say that despite much of the poorly-evidenced nonsense stuck out in his name denouncing “soft-touch justice” and alleging that Scotland’s prisons are being emptied—at a time when, as we heard again this morning, our prison population stands at 8,242 and rising and when the UK has more people under penal measures than any other country in Europe save Russia and Turkey. How Liam Kerr squares all that with what appears to be a genuine concern for restorative justice and demands for ministers to better resource diversionary and rehabilitation programmes is not at all clear.
Like others, the Scottish Liberal Democrats will consider the detail of the member’s bill that Mr Kerr has promised to introduce. However, today’s debate and the rhetoric surrounding it bear all the hallmarks of political posturing, rather than a serious attempt to reform sentencing to better meet the needs of victims and their families, those in our prison system and communities across Scotland. In playing to the gallery, Mr Kerr either chooses to ignore or is unaware of the options already available to judges.