Chamber and committees

I will intervene at this point and pull members back to part 1, focusing on the victims commissioner. I do not like being too precious about questioning, but can we pull it back so that members have the opportunity to explore part 1 first? I apologise for interrupting you, Stuart Munro.

No, that is fine.

Thanks very much. Pauline McNeill, I will bring you in.

Before I bring in Russell Findlay, I come to Stuart Munro. The Law Society’s submission welcomed the proposed restriction on the commissioner intervening in individual cases. Are there any additional points that you would like to make about that, following the response from Jamie Foulis?

I will ask a final question and then we will move on to look at embedding trauma-informed practice.

We heard concerns from Scottish Women’s Aid that a commissioner post would essentially add an additional layer of bureaucracy into the system. It might limit what it described as fairly positive current access for organisations such as Scottish Women’s Aid to policy makers and justice agencies. Do you have a view about how a victims commissioner might interfere with or change the current process of communication?

A very good morning, and welcome to the 26th meeting in 2023 of the Criminal Justice Committee. We have received no apologies this morning. Pauline McNeill is running a little bit late and will, I hope, join us shortly.

Our first item of business is the continuation of evidence taking on the Victims, Witnesses, and Justice Reform (Scotland) Bill. As a reminder, we are in stage 1 of our scrutiny of the bill, in which we are focusing specifically on taking evidence on parts 1, 2 and 3, which cover the establishment of a victims and witnesses commissioner, the embedding in the justice system of trauma-informed practice and the extension of special measures to civil cases. We expect stage 1 to run until about mid-November, after which we will move on to consider other parts of the bill.

We are joined by a panel of witnesses from organisations that represent the legal profession. I welcome Jamie Foulis of Balfour and Manson, who is a member of the Family Law Association; Stuart Munro, who is convener of the criminal law committee of the Law Society of Scotland; and Jonathan Campbell, who is president of the Edinburgh Bar Association. Welcome, to you all.

I refer members to papers 1 and 2. I intend to allow around 90 minutes for this session. Before we get under way, I ask members to be succinct with their questions and panel members to be succinct with their responses. If we can, let us try to work through parts 1, 2 and 3 in turn in our questions.

I will begin with a question on part 1, which deals with the proposed establishment of a victims and witnesses commissioner. In broad terms, are you supportive of the proposal for a statutory victims and witnesses commissioner and, if so, why? We will begin with Jamie Foulis.

Thank you very much. As we still have a number of members who want to come in, I must ask for fairly succinct responses. I call Fulton MacGregor, to be followed by Katy Clark.

I must ask just one panel remember to respond to that, please. We have a wee bit to get through.

That is an interesting point that speaks to some of the commentary that we have heard previously about a trauma-informed environment in addition to trauma-informed practice. Thanks for raising that issue.

I think that Rona Mackay wants to come in.

Thank you for that update.

We will draw our session to a close. I thank all the panel members for attending the meeting. I will suspend the meeting for a few minutes to let our witnesses leave.