Criminal Justice Committee 02 April 2025
It is hard to know how to respond when there has not been a full debate on my amendments. First, I made an error when I spoke to amendment 157. I do not fully understand why my amendments on the separation of the High Court and the sheriff court have been separated in the groupings. I should have said that, as the committee knows, I fully agree with the cabinet secretary about the importance of sexual offences courts being trauma informed, so that we can change the nature of how such offences are dealt with. At the previous committee meeting, I argued that those matters should be decided by a division of the High Court and a division of the sheriff court. I apologise—I do not know why that is not being addressed in this group of amendments; I will deal with it when I speak to amendment 270.
On amendment 69, we all agree that trauma-informed practice is a fundamental basis of the proposal for a new sexual offences court and, in fact, should be afforded to any victims who are brought before the courts. Solicitors and judges will be trained in trauma-informed practice, so I do not understand why the same judges could not try those cases in the High Court. I take the cabinet secretary’s point that, if the Lord Advocate uses the discretion that the bill would afford her, she could indict murder in the sexual offences court, if there was a sexual element to the crime. Judges who are trauma informed could sit in the High Court—for example, the Glasgow High Court could hold a sitting of the sexual offences court, so in other words, the sexual offences court could look exactly the same as the High Court. I do not think that the argument against the amendment is solid.
One of the criticisms that Katy Clark and I have is that what is proposed could just look the same as what already exists. I do not see why there is a substantive argument that murder could be indicted in the sexual offences court, when we could do it the other way around and ensure that judges and practitioners, some of whom would be practising in the sexual offences court, could take such cases in the High Court. The substantive argument made by the senators of the College of Justice, which is clear enough, is that what the policy memorandum says about why the change is required is “anecdotal”.
When we are presiding over such a fundamental change to our criminal justice system, we have to make the changes that we think are right, but we also have to protect the integrity of what is, by and large, a good criminal justice system, with all its faults.