Seòmar agus comataidhean

Yes, please. I would like to ask everyone a question, but we just do not have the time, so this question is for Moira Price and Dr Marsha Scott.

The court churn issue has been with us for decades, if not for ever, and, in my past life as a journalist, I often reported on cases that had been subject to extreme delays. Without identifying any individuals, I can say that one case involving a victim of serial and serious domestic violence took three and a half years to be concluded while another case involving an alleged stalking victim was concluded just this year after four years. Both female victims spoke not of being revictimised, as though their experience was a one-off occasion, but of living in a perpetual state of revictimisation that had consumed their entire lives, and both said that they would not engage with the system again. I know that improvements have been made and that there has been Covid to deal with, but my question for Moira Price and Marsha Scott is this: what can and should be done about male offenders who appear to use the criminal justice process to sustain their victimisation?

My questions, which are on the not proven verdict, are for Ronnie Renucci and James Chalmers. I will ask them one after the other.

Mr Renucci, on the not proven verdict and what might happen to it, the Faculty of Advocates highlights the need

“to identify the changes in our criminal justice system”

that would come along with any such change and that failure to do so would risk “jeopardising reliable justice”. Can you expand on what those fears or potential unforeseen consequences might be?

I have a question about the victim surcharge fund, which is also for Kate Wallace. The Scottish National Party’s 2016 manifesto pledged that more than £1 million a year would be paid out through that fund. It took until 2019 to set it up. Earlier this year, it paid out in the region of £157,000. Your organisation received some of that money for your own victims fund, which, in turn, paid out £285,000. In your submission, you cited “an unprecedented demand” for that fund. Some of the money in your fund came from charitable donations. Is it the case that charity is being left to pay for an SNP manifesto pledge? Is that a disincentive for the Government to finally get the £1 million-a-year fund up and running?

That is very interesting.

Let me move on to Professor Chalmers. Your evidence, along with that of your colleagues Fiona Leverick and Vanessa Munro, is really informative and interesting. To many people, it might deliver a fairly damning verdict on the not proven verdict. In the light of what Ronnie Renucci has told us, do you believe that getting rid of the not proven verdict requires a change to the majority structure of juries?

In your submission, you talk about the history of the not proven verdict and the fact that, in 1846, a Lord Cockburn was very critical of it. We, in the Scottish Parliament, have probably been talking about it since the Parliament’s inception. Is there intent on the part of the Scottish Government to make the change, or will we still be talking about it in another 176 years?

As things stand, the public have no means of knowing when individuals are granted parole. Is there any move involving the Parole Board and the Scottish Government to change that and to bring in increased transparency?

That is good to know.

My question is for Bruce Adamson, who has already touched on the issue of young people being remanded in prison and the initial cycle of violence defining them and setting off the whole chain of continual offending. When we visited the Lord President of the Court of Session a couple of weeks ago, he told us that we would look back and regard how we have treated young people as “barbaric”—that was the word he used.

I note that this morning brings news reports that the Scottish Sentencing Council is calling for the courts to make rehabilitation rather than punishment the primary consideration. The judiciary seems to be on the same page on the matter. Have we turned a corner, or is this just more of the same from a Scottish Government quango?

I declare an interest, in that I have recently submitted objections to a prisoner being released—the prisoner is in custody for attacking me. My question is for John Watt. In the first line of your submission, you describe the Parole Board as “Scotland’s parole court”. How can the public attend these courts?

This is another question for Teresa Medhurst.

We all understand the reasons for introducing mobile phones and the incredible logistical challenge of doing so at pace. However, in the ITV news report, one prison officer said that those supposedly tamper-proof devices were hacked “within hours” of their arrival at Barlinnie.

Did you or any of your staff raise the issue with the Scottish Government? If so, what consideration was given to disclosing these serious problems to Parliament and/or the public?