Hansard

:The affirmative instrument makes the necessary changes to secondary legislation made under the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 to allow information about spent convictions and alternatives to prosecution to be shared with a domestic homicide and suicide review in Scotland.The committee will be aware that the creation of a statutory footing for domestic homicide and suicide reviews was established by the Criminal Justice Modernisation and Abusive Domestic Behaviour Reviews (Scotland) Act 2025, which gained royal assent last year. The provisions to bring domestic homicide and suicide review into effect will commence in full on 1 April this year. The reviews are designed not to apportion blame but to ensure that lessons can be learned following deaths where domestic abuse is known or suspected to have taken place, with the aim of better protecting victims in the future.Sections 25 and 26 of the 2025 act place a duty on designated core participants in a review to co-operate with and provide information to a domestic homicide and suicide review and on others to provide information to a review in response to a notice requiring it. Sections 25(3) and 26(2) of the 2025 act, however, generally prevent a holder of information from being required to produce it to a review where it is not information that they could be compelled to produce in Scottish court proceedings. Sections 25(4) and 26(3) of the 2025 act specifically disapply that restriction when the material is covered by an exemption under the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974. That was done to ensure that information about spent convictions and alternatives to prosecution could be obtained by a review when needed. These are the exemptions that will now be created by the affirmative SSI.To fully understand the circumstances surrounding domestic abuse deaths, the review will need to be able to wholly understand a perpetrator’s relevant history, including when a conviction has been spent or an alternative to prosecution was offered. The reason for that is clear. Having access to all the relevant information about the background to a death will ensure that the review can provide meaningful and maximum learning and recommendations.Importantly, in cases in which that information is sought, the review panels will not make any determinations about a person’s legal rights or liabilities. There will therefore be no direct impact on the person convicted should information on their spent convictions or alternatives to prosecution be disclosed to a review. If a case review report is published, section 28(2) of the 2025 act requires it to be anonymised first, including to prevent jigsaw identification.As a further stopgap, each report will go through a process of quality assurance. Police Scotland and the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service will form part of that process. Furthermore, prior to publication of a review report, a risk assessment will be undertaken and the Lord Advocate’s approval will be sought.Collectively, these measures not only help to protect those who have died and their families, they also help to ensure that those with previous convictions are not identified. The SSI will therefore ensure that domestic homicide and suicide reviews in Scotland will be able to access all the information in order to make effective recommendations and, ultimately, to prevent future deaths from occurring. I commend the SSI to the committee.