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Justice 2 Committee, 28 Mar 2006

28 Mar 2006 · S2 · Justice 2 Committee

Item of business

Police, Public Order and Criminal Justice (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2

Maxwell, Stewart SNP West of Scotland Watch on SPTV

I will not keep the committee very long. On Jeremy Purvis's amendment 235, Bill Butler, Maureen Macmillan and Jackie Baillie raised entirely appropriate points about evidence, consultation, costs and the fact that there is a new sentence on which we did not take any evidence at stage 1. Amendment 235 contains interesting ideas, and perhaps it should come back to the committee later. If we had had more time to discuss it at an earlier stage, we might have come to a different conclusion, but I will not support amendment 235.On amendment 202, we heard evidence about balancing the stuff that Colin Fox talked about on one hand, and appropriate sentencing for those who carry knives in public and use them on the other. It is entirely appropriate that we consider sentencing. Jeremy Purvis's comment that it is not all about sentencing was also appropriate. That is why amendments 4 and 7, to which we will come, and the things that we do outwith legislation are extremely important. We are talking about the balance between the bill and the amendments that deal with sentencing and giving information to the police—we will talk about that in a moment—and trying to change the culture.The structure of legislation, the rules that we put in place and the acceptability or otherwise of certain types of behaviour help to change the culture. Society must speak with a single voice, using legislation and sentencing.I am greatly concerned about Jeremy Purvis's proposal to change the indictment maximum from four to seven years, not just because of the gun element that the minister and Jackie Baillie mentioned, but because other serious crimes would effectively be downgraded in the public's mind. I do not want to pick out particular sentences, but I will mention one. Often, people who rape women receive sentences of approximately seven years, or sometimes shorter. Although carrying a knife in public is very serious, it is not as serious as rape, so I would be concerned about bringing the sentences for the two offences into the same ballpark. I could not accept that.Maureen Macmillan and the minister asked why we should insert my proposed provisions into the bill now. I will break down the figures, some of which Jeremy Purvis mentioned earlier: there are approximately four attempted murders with a knife in Strathclyde every single week and 72 murders a year, which is more than one a week. Although I accept the minister's point that legislation to change sentencing powers in summary cases will follow just a couple of months after enactment of the bill, the logic of including provisions to change sentencing in indictment cases in the bill suggests that we could also include provision for summary sentencing. If that would deal with some of those who carry knives and commit crimes in the intervening eight or nine weeks—or however long it is—we should act sooner rather than later, assuming that it would not cause inordinate problems in the forthcoming legislation, as the minister suggested. I think that the minister said that he was open-minded about making slight changes to the Criminal Proceedings etc (Reform) (Scotland) Bill to accommodate my proposals. I hope that the committee will support amendments 2 and 3.

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Justice 2 Committee, 28 Mar 2006

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