Chamber and committees

Welcome back. I am pleased to welcome our second panel of witnesses: Keith Brown, the Cabinet Secretary for Justice and Veterans, and Mr Willie Cowan, the deputy director of the Scottish Government criminal justice division.

I ask everybody to keep questions and answers as succinct as possible. I will allow up to an hour for this panel.

I invite the cabinet secretary to make some brief opening remarks before we move to questions.

I am very aware that time is tight. The cabinet secretary is waiting, and we have already pushed him back. I suggest that, with members’ agreement, DCC Graham should respond to Katy Clark’s question in writing. That would be helpful.

Pauline McNeill would like to come in briefly on this topic.

Thank you very much. We certainly look forward to updates on how that area of work is progressing.

We will move on to questions from members about taking statements.

Our next item of business is the continuation of our consideration of evidence on efforts to improve the ways in which we prosecute violence against women and girls and on how we support the survivors of such crimes. I refer members to papers 1 and 2.

I am pleased to welcome two senior representatives of Police Scotland: Deputy Chief Constable Malcolm Graham of the crime and operational support division and Detective Chief Superintendent Sam Faulds, the head of the public protection unit within the specialist crime division.

I will allow up to an hour for this panel. Before we start, I will go over a few practical points. This is a fully virtual meeting, and I intend to use the chat function as the means of communication. If you want to come in, please type R in the chat function and I will bring you in, if time allows.

If we lose the connection to a member or a key witness, I will suspend the meeting and try to get them back. If we cannot do so after a reasonable period of time, I will have to deem the person to be not present and we will continue. If I lose my connection, our deputy convener will take over. If we lose him, too, our colleague Rona Mackay will step in as temporary convener with the committee’s agreement.

Please keep questions and answers as succinct as possible. If that is clear and there are no questions, we will make a start. I refer members to the sheet with the order of questions on it.

DCC Graham, I have a question about Lady Dorrian’s review of the management of sexual offences cases. In the written evidence that was submitted to the committee’s September round table on violence against women and girls, Police Scotland listed which of Lady Dorrian’s recommendations had its support. Those included the creation of a specialist court for serious cases, independent legal representation for complainers and single-judge trials for rape cases

What action has Police Scotland taken in response to the recommendations, bearing in mind that the review was published back in March?

Would DCC Graham like to come in on that?

That is certainly an area that I am interested in watching closely as it develops. We have time for one more question. I will bring in Rona Mackay to cover the option for a pilot run of single judge rape trials.

I bring in Jamie Greene on that issue, followed by Katy Clark.

Thank you very much, Mr Graham. I am pleased to hear that update on the visual recording of interviews, in particular. I take your point about the challenge of that being part of a system change.

On pushing ahead with some of those changes, do you have a timeframe for what requires to be done to put visual recording in place, particularly for serious sexual offences interviews?

Good morning, and welcome to the 14th meeting of the Criminal Justice Committee in 2021. We have received no apologies. I ask everyone to ensure that their mobile phones are switched to silent and to wait for the sound engineer to switch their microphones on before they speak.

Our first item of business is to agree whether to take agenda item 5 in private and whether our work programme, reviews of evidence heard and approach to forthcoming legislation should be considered in private at future meetings. Does anyone disagree?

We are agreed. Thank you.