Chamber and committees

Again, I am more than happy to pick up that point and ask for some more information and detail on it. Are members happy with that?

Members indicated agreement.

If members have no further points to raise, that concludes our business for this morning. I will now close the meeting, and we will take a short break before moving into an informal private session.

Do any other members want to come in?

Thank you very much, minister. That was a very helpful overview.

We will now move to questions. I will ask the first one. Do we understand what the scale of the problem is at the moment in the UK, but also with reference to Scotland? I imagine that it is quite difficult to measure it, although we know that it is escalating. Are there any indicators of the scale of the problem?

Secondly, will you say a wee bit about the challenges that we might face in applying the new legislation?

I appreciate that those are quite big questions, but I would be interested to know the answers to them, given the online sphere that we are looking at.

A number of members want to come in. Jamie Greene will be first.

Thanks for raising that. There are a couple of points to make here. First, time is against us—we are under pressure of time. I am assuming that, if there was an update regarding the Lord Advocate’s position on the matter, and if she felt it appropriate to share it with the committee or with the Government, she would do so. The key issue concerns timescales, unfortunately.

I thank committee members very much for raising those issues. We will ensure that they are included in the committee’s report.

On that note, the question is, that the committee agrees with the Scottish Government that the Scottish Parliament should not give its consent to the relevant provisions in the Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill, as set out in the Scottish Government’s draft motion. Do members agree?

Members: No.

There will be a division.

For

Clark, Katy (West Scotland) (Lab)
MacGregor, Fulton (Coatbridge and Chryston) (SNP)
Mackay, Rona (Strathkelvin and Bearsden) (SNP)
McNeill, Pauline (Glasgow) (Lab)
Nicoll, Audrey (Aberdeen South and North Kincardine) (SNP)
Stevenson, Collette (East Kilbride) (SNP)

Abstentions

Findlay, Russell (West Scotland) (Con)
Greene, Jamie (West Scotland) (Con)

The issue will now move to the chamber for all members to debate, based on our report. With that, I thank the cabinet secretary and her officials for attending this morning.

We will now have a short suspension while we wait for the next team to come in.

Good morning, and welcome to the 19th meeting in 2023 of the Criminal Justice Committee. We have no apologies, and Fulton MacGregor joins us online.

Our first item of business is consideration of a supplementary legislative consent memorandum on the Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill. I am pleased to welcome to the meeting the Cabinet Secretary for Justice and Home Affairs, Angela Constance, and her officials Clare McKinlay, who is a solicitor in the Scottish Government’s legal directorate, and Michael Halpin, who is defence policy manager in the directorate for safer communities.

I refer members to paper 1. I invite the cabinet secretary to make some opening remarks on the supplementary LCM, after which we will move to questions.

I remind members that we will be having a public evidence session next week on the issue of police officer suicide, which I hope will be an opportunity to raise some of the issues that Russell Findlay has outlined. I know that he is very interested in that particular issue.