Hansard

Thank you. I add for members' information that Margaret Ann Cummings will today present the committee with a petition containing 6,000 signatures in support of a review of the current arrangements for monitoring sex offenders.I think that there has been some misunderstanding, in that Margaret Ann Cummings thought that she would be able to speak today. She thought that she had returned the relevant form, but there appears to have been a discrepancy. As a result, she has asked me to speak to the petition on her behalf.PE862 calls for a review of the current system of monitoring and dealing with sex offenders. There are a couple of important points that I want to make. It is important that I amplify local concerns, although not everything that I will say will necessarily reflect my views. First, I want to say something about the disclosure of sex offenders in the light of what has been called Sarah's law and the more recently proposed Mark's law, following the death of Mark Cummings. The petition calls on Parliament to at least interrogate the possibilities of disclosure. So far, there has been no interrogation by Parliament—I refer to interrogation through the committee system in particular—of the various possibilities that exist throughout the world. In other parts of the world—the United States in particular—there are disclosure programmes and there is mass disclosure of sex offenders. I am not saying that such an approach would necessarily work in the United Kingdom, or in Scotland for that matter, but the petitioners call for interrogation at least of whether that approach can be replicated in Scotland. They call for not only the Executive but for perhaps one of the subject committees—a justice committee—to consider the matter.Another issue is how housing for sex offenders is allocated. Currently, there is no coherent strategy for housing sex offenders. Stuart Leggate had been identified in another part of Scotland and therefore took up residence in the Charles Street area, where Mark Cummings was murdered. There is a misconception out there that sex offenders are carefully managed through the social services system: in fact, they are not. The process was not managed—Stuart Leggate managed his own housing prospects. He decided to stay where he was of his own accord. Margaret Ann Cummings is concerned that he was placed in a multistorey flat in Charles Street, which was predominantly populated by young children like Mark Cummings and she strongly believes that there must be a housing policy to deal with such matters.It is important to discuss the sentencing tariffs that are currently available to sheriffs. We have seen what I am about to describe in other cases. Stuart Leggate was sentenced to five years for sexual offences against children. It is certainly inadequate that a person should serve only two years of a five-year sentence. I am amplifying Margaret Ann Cummings' concerns. I keep using an analogy. We have moved the agenda on in respect of how we tackle those who are involved in trafficking drugs and so on; in my constituency, for example, a person is serving 19 years for drug smuggling, which is welcome. However, Margaret Ann Cummings and others have said that we must replicate that approach when we deal with sex offenders against children, given their predatory behaviour.There is another important issue about which Margaret Ann Cummings has been particularly concerned. A close relationship was formed with the police following the tragic murder of Mark Cummings, but how the police react when children go missing and the need to highlight where sex offenders are located when they do so are issues. Margaret Ann Cummings has called for a much more effective strategy so that we know exactly where every sex offender is when a child goes missing—she feels strongly about that. She has also raised the issue of the pace of our consideration of the matter on a number of occasions. We keep saying that there should not be a knee-jerk reaction, but Mark Cummings was killed in June 2004, which is well over a year ago. There has been talk of change and there have been various committees, but she has raised concerns with me a number of times and she wants to see change once and for all. It might not be that everyone can agree with such a change but I, too, feel strongly about it; we have to make a once-and-for-all change.I have one final point that Margaret Ann Cummings would also make. The press and media are obsessed with the vigilantes, stories about sharing information and vigilante action that has happened in the past. I make it clear that communities do not, as a rule, act in such a manner. We have seen that that is the case in my constituency and in other parts of Scotland even when people are angry and it is particularly true with Margaret Ann. I have already paid tribute to her and will do so again today. She made a constructive case on behalf of her child, who was murdered in the most appalling circumstances anyone could imagine. She is asking for people to get involved not in vigilante action, but in peaceful demonstrations such as the one that took place in George Square after Mark's death, and in other peaceful forms of protest such as petitions, the New of the World campaign and other media campaigns. We want to move forward and make this change so that we give maximum protection to children in the future in Mark's memory and, tragically and more recently, in Rory's memory.