Hansard

I welcome Keith Brown to the chamber. I suspect that his ears have been burning for the past two hours.

I want to start my comments by saying two things about the debate, which is about a rise in violent crime—[Interruption.]—if the cabinet secretary will permit me to talk about this important subject. The first is that we, as a Parliament, and right across the political spectrum, owe a huge debt of gratitude to those who are working in the front line in our justice sector. They are the various cogs in the wheel, from front-line police officers to prison wardens and their staff, who unfortunately are far too often at the receiving end of abuse and violence. They are those who work in our courts, including our on-call defence solicitors, and those in the third sector, who try, often in vain, to support victims of crime through the cumbersome and traumatic experiences and interactions with justice that they face in this country.

My second point, and the most important in the debate, is a reminder for each and every one of us that behind every statistic that I use today is a real person—a real victim of crime in each and every one of our communities.

I brought the debate to the chamber today because someone had to. There is no doubt that the Government would not have dreamed of bringing forward these statistics to debate in the chamber. Violent crime is on the rise here in Scotland. There is no getting away from that. Let me remind the chamber what sort of crime I am talking about when I say “violent crime”. The Government’s own statistics include offences such as homicide, attempted murder, serious assault, domestic abuse, domestic violence, violence against children and physical attacks on minority groups.

The numbers speak for themselves. Last year, there were 9,842 violent crimes recorded in Scotland. That figure is higher than any other year during Nicola Sturgeon’s tenure as First Minister. You cannot spin your way out of that fact. Nor can you spin away the 14,500 sexual crimes that took place last year—the highest on record. Nor can you spin your way out of the 65,000 incidents of domestic abuse that took place in Scotland last year, which is also the highest figure on record; or the increase in the number of sexual assaults, to over 4,000 last year; or the increase in other sexual crimes, from 2,500 in 2011 to 6,500 last year—an increase of 4,000. The list goes on and on, and I remind folks that behind every one of those numbers is a victim of a serious crime.

The Government’s response to that will be predictable. It is always predictable when I raise issues from crime statistics. The Cabinet Secretary for Justice will tell us, on the one hand, that reported crime overall is down, while completely failing to acknowledge, on the other hand, that the most serious of crimes—the most horrific types of crimes that affect people in the most horrific ways and have the biggest impact on their lives—are going up. Each and every one of them is, but we never hear an acceptance of those figures from the front bench, and we certainly never hear an apology for it.

Therefore I ask whether, anywhere in today’s debate, we will hear from the Government what it is going to do to address the monstrous rise in violent crime in our country?

Prevention is one area, and we do not hear much about that, but enforcement is the other. Let us start with police numbers, which are mentioned in my motion. The latest figures tell us that there are currently 16,805 full-time police officers, which is a full 691 fewer than there were before the Scottish National Party created Police Scotland and is the lowest level since 2008.

I want to share with the cabinet secretary what the Scottish Police Federation chair, David Hamilton, said about declining officer numbers. He said that it is a

“detriment ... to the public at large”

and that police are now

“scrabbling around trying to keep the wheels on the bus”.

They are “scrabbling around”—those are his words, not mine. That situation is not at all helped by the cliff edge that we face with the exodus of retiring police officers, which has also gone unaddressed.

The predictable response from the minister on the issue of police numbers, which we always hear, is to talk about another force, in another place, in another Parliament. I have to say that that is no comfort whatsoever to Scottish police officers who are sitting in leaky buildings, with out-of-date information technology systems, no body-worn cameras and rising mental health problems in our police force.

Of course, if the police service had been given the capital budget allocation that it asked of the Government, that would have been a good start. So too would have been giving our courts the budget that they needed—the extra £12 million that they asked for from the Government to tackle the backlog. They did not get that, either. What about the legal aid sector, which asked for fees to rise so that it could desperately tackle its unacceptable 43,000 court case backlog?

Every justice partner and every cog in that wheel deserves the resource needed to tackle the sort of crime that I have discussed today. All of that is an entirely devolved matter—end of—and it is about time that the Scottish National Party accepted that.

I want to ask the Government whether it has full confidence in its strategy on tackling crime. These are political, policy-driven decisions of the Government: its strategy on automatic early release, the presumption against short sentences and the increased drive to divert from prison through community sentencing. They are all fine, but they come with their own philosophical and moral controversies.

Last week, I asked the First Minister whether she has full confidence in those policies, and she does, but the next question is whether the public share that confidence. The victims of crime I speak to do not. They ask whether it is too much to ask to be given a voice and to ask the Government for fairness. Does 250,000 hours of community sentences written off by the Government sound fair to them? No, it does not. Does 670,000 hours of community sentences that are yet to be carried out sound fair to them? No, it does not. The public will have confidence in alternatives to prison only if the alternatives are meaningful, proportionate and actually carried out.

When we consider that crimes such as rape, homicide and domestic abuse are caught up in those sentences, I challenge the Government to speak to the victims of those crimes and have a frank discussion about fairness. Does that sound fair? The whole system “stinks to high heaven”, in the words of a victim I met last week. If the SNP spent more time listening to victims of crime, it might be more contrite in its responses to debates like this.

My final point in today’s short debate is a challenge to the Government. I am introducing a victims bill, which is currently under consultation. There are two parts to that bill: Suzanne’s law and Michelle’s law. Both of those were repeatedly promised by consecutive cabinet secretaries. Humza Yousaf promised us that he would deliver them and the SNP manifesto promised it would deliver them. Where are they?

The title of today’s debate is “Tackling Violent Crime”. I want those on the Government benches to respond to the substance of the debate in their comments. I want them to spell out what the Government is doing to tackle the rise in violent crime—the what and the how. They should give no excuses and use no deflections, because victims of crime deserve nothing less.

I move,

That the Parliament notes with concern that the number of police-recorded violent crimes is at its highest level in a decade; further notes that Scottish Government decisions have contributed to this rise by underfunding the police, which has led to full-time police officer numbers being at their lowest level since 2008 recognises that the Scottish Government’s justice strategy is failing victims of crime, as is evident through the 931,991 hours of community sentences that have been written off or not yet carried out; notes that organised crime and domestic abuse contribute to a deteriorating picture of crimes of violence in Scotland, and urges the Scottish Government to take action to address this; recognises that the Scottish Government’s justice strategy is failing to keep the public safe by diverting dangerous criminals away from prison, instead allowing them to carry out inadequate non-custodial alternatives; believes that proposals such as those outlined in the Scottish Government’s consultation on bail and release from custody arrangements, which include proposals to automatically release offenders after serving just a third of their prison sentence, do not address the shift in balance in the justice system away from victims, and further distil a lack of confidence in sentencing, and calls, therefore, on the Scottish Government to change strategy by acknowledging that punishment remains an important part of the criminal justice system, and to support proposals contained in the proposed Victims, Criminal Justice and Fatal Accident Inquiries (Scotland) Bill, such as the introduction of Michelle’s Law and Suzanne’s Law, to improve the landscape of support for the victims of crime, which it believes is currently letting down too many in society.