Hansard

I acknowledge that the bill contains some improvements, and I welcome the fact that the Government backed my amendments to toughen up non-harassment orders and allow for a review to notify victims when fiscal fines are issued. However, taken as a whole, the bill fails to deliver the meaningful changes to the criminal justice system that victims in Scotland are crying out for. As Katy Clark said, the bill is far too big. It should have been broken up long ago, but, instead, it has been made even bigger, with significant changes introduced by the Government at the very last minute and without proper scrutiny, as Liam Kerr and Pauline McNeill made clear last night.

Let me turn to what the bill will do. It will create a victims commissioner, which, on paper, sounds wonderful. If we had limitless resources, that would be one thing, but we do not. The truth is that the commissioner lacks teeth and has no ability to intervene in individual cases, which will provide false hope to victims that it could directly help them while taking away resources that could be invested instead in victim support services, as Scottish Women’s Aid warned us. During stage 3 proceedings, I tried to strengthen the role by giving the victims commissioner the power to obtain information from local authorities and social housing providers, but my amendment was voted down.

The Parliament set up a cross-party committee to look into the role of commissioners, which concluded, a few months ago, that creating new bodies to address public service failures or perceived public service failures is not necessarily effective nor sustainable. Meanwhile, Children First has said that a commissioner should not be brought in as a substitute for concrete actions to improve the experiences of victims and witnesses, and I agree. Victims are being failed, but all that we are doing is creating yet another commissioner of debatable effectiveness and saying, “Job well done,” without having changed much.

I admit that the Government has done a great job on the branding of the bill, because creating a new sexual offences court sounds brilliant. However, as Douglas Ross said during the stage 3 proceedings yesterday, when we scratch the surface we realise that it is little more than an expensive sign on a door—in the same court buildings with the same judges and the same staff. I welcome the requirement for training in trauma-informed practice. However, as Pauline McNeill outlined, instead of setting up a new court and the huge expense that will come with that, we could create a specialist division in the existing courts, focusing our resources where we know that they are badly needed. The Faculty of Advocates and the Law Society of Scotland both said that that would be more effective, while Children First said that it feared that creating a new court would distract from making the changes that victims and witnesses argue would make things better. Simon Di Rollo KC even called it “window dressing”. Once again, we are patting ourselves on the back without having addressed the real issues.

As Liam Kerr said, the issue of jury majorities was decided without any hard evidence, despite the liberty of our constituents literally being on the line, with the changes based largely on mock jury research that experts such as Lord Renucci KC warned do not in any way mirror what really happens in the courts. I tried to stop that by lodging an amendment that would have put us in line with the tried and tested system in England and Wales and in other jurisdictions, but it was defeated in favour of a step into the unknown.

It is hard not to conclude that the bill does anything other than waste millions of pounds on cosmetic solutions that will make little difference to victims while ignoring the real issues. Victims deserve real change, but the bill does not deliver that.

What is most disappointing is what could have been. We urged the Government to accept our amendments, which would have made fundamental changes and delivered a victims bill worthy of the name. Russell Findlay tried to deliver a real Suzanne’s law—meaning that if there is no body, there is no parole—and commonsense reforms so that victims would not be left in the dark regarding plea deals. Liam Kerr tried to deliver a Scottish grooming gangs inquiry. I tried to ensure that victims would be notified about decisions not to prosecute. However, all those amendments were voted down. As a result, this is a victims bill in name only, and it is with a very heavy heart that I will vote against it at decision time.