Hansard

Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I know that you would have wanted to speak in today’s debate but are prohibited from doing so.

I welcome the cabinet secretary to her new position. I want to start on a note of consensus by welcoming the much-needed shift in tone in the Government’s motion. I hope that it marks a decisive change in approach by the justice secretary in how we deal with such matters. The publication of the trauma-informed justice framework is very timely. Indeed, it could not be more necessary right now.

It is also nice to hear the Government using victim-centric language. Language matters. Conservative members have been using such words and language for many years, which have been translated into action, and even bills: a victim’s law, Suzanne’s law, Michelle’s law, the domestic abuse register law, the spiking law and the local policing law. We will hear about all those proposals today from the Conservatives—they were all tenets of our manifesto commitments. Of course, we do not have the privilege of introducing those bills as a Government, but we are diligent and will introduce them anyway, as member’s bills, which is not an easy process.

We are doing so because we—and more importantly, the public—have seen the pendulum swing disproportionately towards the side of offenders in the past decade. I think that the Government knows that and acknowledges that more needs to be done to improve processes for victims and witnesses in their journey through the justice system. As we have heard, victims and witnesses of crime face an uphill struggle throughout that journey, from the initial reporting of the crime, to being kept in the dark about how their case is proceeding, to the lengthy wait for trails and the endless postponement of those trials, as well as the court experience itself. Even if a trial leads to a conviction—and that is a big “if”—the punishment does not always fit the nature of the crime. We have debated that issue vociferously in recent months.

As we heard, even when an offender is released, the victim is more likely to bump into them in the supermarket than be told of their release in advance. If someone breaches their release conditions, those breaches are often repeated offences and the victims have little to no recourse. It is no surprise that so many people have simply lost trust in the system.

Many victims who were consulted during the preparation of the trauma-informed justice consultation said that their lives were in limbo. They suggested that, if they had been given the right support, they could have given better evidence in court, which might have led to better outcomes.

We also learned this year that 60 per cent of those who report domestic abuse to the police have a negative experience, while 50 per cent went so far as to say that they had not been taken seriously. Those statistics should shock every one of us.

We have talked a lot about delays to court cases. I commend the work of Kate Wallace of Victim Support Scotland, who warns that delays and repeated adjournments lead to many victims simply withdrawing from the whole process. That is completely unacceptable. The most recent statistics show median journey times—as they are called—for victims in the High Court sitting at two years and 10 months, which is a 70 per cent rise on pre-pandemic levels. For sexual assault victims going through the High Court, the median time was around four years for a case to come to fruition; four years is a long time for a victim of a crime of that nature.

I remind members that, although the court backlog was exacerbated by the Covid pandemic, it was there long before that. We know that the delays are having an effect on the victims and on their mental health, resulting in increased stress, anxiety, depression, insomnia, self-harm and even suicide attempts.

I also commend the work of Sandy Brindley, of Rape Crisis Scotland, who was absolutely clear that we need to see real action on those delays. Kate Wallace and Sandy Brindley are proud advocates of victims of crime in Scotland and I commend them for the good work that they do.

As we heard at topical question time today, there have been delays in getting evidence from victims—we heard about that in relation to spiking. I welcome any proposals on that, especially those from my colleague, Russell Findlay. I was pleased to hear the Government respond positively to that line of questioning.

We also need to improve the court experience. It is fair to say that it is traumatic for many people. One witness who was quoted in the framework paper said that they felt entirely unsafe at the High Court. They said:

“there’s all these people that you’ve just had a case against and you’re a witness ... there’s no safe place to go and sit.”

I think that we all agree that victims and witnesses should never have to come face to face with the accused outside the courtroom setting. These are antiquated buildings, and many are in dire need of much capital investment. I have no doubt that they are staffed by diligent court staff who are trying their very best to clear the backlog.

I think that there is consensus in the room that more needs to be done to improve outcomes for victims, but the question is what we reform and how we go about it. I am of course talking about the Government’s plans for juryless rape trials. Lady Dorrian, in her review of how we deal with sexual crime in this country, made a number of recommendations, many of which I support, but that one, now that it has been seen in the black and white of the law, seems to be facing the harshest opposition.

Today we learned that pretty much every defence lawyer in Scotland would boycott a pilot for such juryless trials. No defence solicitor in their right mind would advise their client to participate in a pilot of a judge-only trial for the most serious of crimes, so I have to ask the cabinet secretary, if the accused has no solicitor, how on earth can it even be a trial, never mind a fair one? What sort of pilot, if it is a pilot, would publicly admit to the world that it has failed in any way? That would surely leave the door open to miscarriages of justice.