Criminal Justice Committee 26 November 2025 [Draft]
There is rather a lot in that question. I counted about four different things and will take them in turn, starting with the final point.
I have not spoken to the Government since last week, although I have had several meetings with the minister and her team while I have been developing the bill. The most recent of those meetings was some months ago. I attempted to get a meeting with the special adviser about two weeks ago, but that meeting did not take place. I imagine that the Government will watch this evidence session, and I think that it would be appropriate for me to meet the Government again soon after today’s meeting.
As I had an opportunity to say last week, I want the bill to work. It is important that we put it into law for the reasons that I am sure we will speak about. I think that some of the issues that the Government has raised are reasonable—quashing is the obvious example.
The policy intent behind quashing past convictions is that many women and girls who are groomed into prostitution and end up with criminal convictions find it very difficult to move on with their lives. Over the years, I have spoken to a number of women who have found that to be a real barrier to moving on with their lives in the way that they want to. They feel as if their convictions hang over them, and they have had to disclose them, for example for employment or housing purposes.
The committee will understand that there have been changes to the disclosure rules in Scotland, and that the situation is not as it used to be. The minister touched on that last week. Such a conviction will now remain on someone’s record for only a year and, after that, will not be disclosable for level 1 or level 2 checks. However, the principle remains that someone can be criminalised for their own exploitation, so there is a symbolic element here.
The policy intent behind the quashing of past convictions and the repealing of offences is to send a message, and it is one that has been echoed elsewhere. I do not know whether committee members have had the opportunity to read the report from the Casey review, which came out a couple of months ago. That is the review that was ordered by the United Kingdom Government and by Prime Minister Starmer into grooming gangs. There were only 12 or 13 recommendations, one of which very clearly said that girls who had been groomed into prostitution should not be criminalised for their own exploitation. That is an important principle.
The original policy intent was to have automatic quashing, which I felt would send out the right message. It also seemed to be the simplest way to do it: it would be automatic and would apply across the board.
However, I have very much taken on board the evidence raised at stage 1. Maren Schroeder and I have had a number of meetings with the Law Society of Scotland and others to discuss the issue. I intend to lodge amendments at stage 2 to put into practice something that will fulfil the same policy intent but will do so in a more appropriate way, and that is to move to having an automatic pardon. That would have the effect of saying to people that they should not have been criminalised for their own abuse.
There would also be a voluntary disregard process, which has appeared in other pieces of legislation. I am sure members are aware of that process, which is familiar to our justice partners, such as the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service, who already amend people’s records.
The approach also respects the idea of being trauma-informed. We do not want to be sending letters out to people who may have had a conviction 40 years ago. That would not be good practice. I think that the new approach will achieve all the policy objectives that we set out to achieve, but does so in a way that respects the law. It certainly picks up on points made by the Government, by Liam Kerr at a previous committee meeting and by the Law Society.
That deals with those two points. Do you want me to move on to enforcement?
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