Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 11 May 2022
I recall Liam Kerr choosing to kick off his time as the Tory justice spokesperson in the previous parliamentary session by leading a debate on restorative justice. That day, Mr Kerr’s speech managed to strike a progressive, conciliatory and consensual chord with colleagues right across the chamber. Back in those relatively halcyon days when David Gauke had the UK justice brief, Conservatives seemed to be less obsessed with whether justice was hard or soft than whether it was effective.
Sadly, Mr Kerr’s incarnation as a progressive justice reformer proved to be a case of mistaken identity. For crimes against the Tory party orthodoxy, Mr Gauke has been dispatched to the gulag, allowing ministerial code breaker Priti Patel to install herself as the new sheriff in town—rough justice all round, I fear.
I thank Jamie Greene for giving members another opportunity to discuss justice issues, and I associate myself with the gratitude that he expressed for all those who work in our justice system. I also agree with him about many of the challenges that are facing our justice sector, including the rise in the incidence of violent crime, the appalling rates of domestic abuse and sexual violence, and a fall in police numbers on the SNP’s watch, to which I add concerns about record court backlogs, solicitors leaving legal aid practice in droves, and a prison estate that is bursting at the seams and in desperate need of modernisation. However, I cannot accept much of Mr Greene’s analysis of what needs to be done in response.
By locking up even more of Scotland’s population, which we already do to a greater extent than any other country in Europe, but which seems to fall short of the number that Mr Greene and his colleagues feel is appropriate, we would not be making victims, the community or society safer. We would be doing quite the reverse, as all the international evidence shows. We are not failing because of the numbers that we are not locking up but because of what we do or do not do with prisoners who are inside and after their release.