Meeting of the Parliament 16 September 2025
I will speak to amendment 109 and also to amendments 110 to 113, 116 to 121, 125 and 126, which are all consequential amendments. I will not go through them all.
The amendments relate to the creation of a sexual offences court. We all acknowledge the growth in the volume of sexual offence cases. The last time that we were notified, 69 per cent of cases in the High Court involved sexual offences. The Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service has said to the Criminal Justice Committee that the only realistic opportunity is to create a stand-alone court, but it is not the only option. My amendments deal with what I believe would be a more sensible option.
I do not intend to move amendments 110 and 111, because they just set out different ways of doing the same thing as amendment 109.
Amendment 109, along with most of the amendments that run from 112 to 160, would allow the High Court to make the sexual offences court a division within the High Court. There would also be a sexual offences division within the sheriff court. I understand that we would have the same number of courts, because the High Court uses nine locations and there are 38 sheriff courts. The High Court is a peripatetic court, so it could extend the number of locations that it uses if it so wished—it has previously done so.
As with the proposed sexual offences court, there would be judges and counsel dedicated to dealing with sexual offences. It is important to note that the figures show that High Court judges already deal with a high number of rape and sexual offences cases, so they are specialists in what they do to some degree. However, rape cases will no longer be heard in the High Court as a result of the Government’s proposals but will be heard in the new sexual offences court. I am sure that the Government will say that the new court will have the same sentencing powers, but let us be clear: it is not the High Court. The highest court will still be the High Court of Justiciary, which currently operates. The new court could be trauma informed, but I do not believe that we need legislation for a trauma-informed court—it could be done now, although the bill talks of “trauma-informed practice” throughout.
Having a stand-alone court in the bill has created many problems that the Government has had to go back and fix. One of the substantial issues that it had to fix was on rights of audience, which is not an insignificant matter and proved to be quite a serious omission from the bill as drafted. The Government did not consider who would represent whom—for example, senior advocates who represent people in the High Court would not necessarily be in the sexual offences court. However, the Government has now corrected that, and we have to hope that it has got that right and that there are no gaps. My proposal would not require to fix that at all. I could have been persuaded—