Chamber and committees

In your evidence, you raised the issue of the Lord Advocate’s code of practice on disclosure of information not being enforced with regard to criminal allegations that are made against police officers. Can you provide the committee with a bit more information and your thoughts on that? What do you think might be required to resolve that issue?

That is an interesting point.

That completes our deliberation on the SSI and the public part of our meeting.

Okay. Thank you, Maggie. On that very powerful final note, I will bring the session to an end but will hand back to you in case you want to make a very final point.

Thank you very much. As no other members wish to make a declaration, I refer members to papers 1 to 4.

I welcome Ms Stephanie Bonner to the meeting. It is vital that we hear the views of those who have personal experience of the police complaints system. The committee is very interested to hear your perspective on what is proposed in the bill.

I intend to allow around 45 minutes for the evidence session. By way of opening things up, I will ask a fairly simple question. Based on your experience, what should be changed about the police complaints system?

Can I ask you a question about the PIRC? Please tell us what you think about the introduction of a legal requirement for Police Scotland and the Scottish Police Authority to respond to recommendations that are made by the PIRC after it has dealt with a review. Do you have any thoughts on that?

That is very helpful.

Do any other members want to come in?

I know that this is extremely hard for you, Stephanie, so just take your time. We can easily suspend the meeting for a couple of moments if we need to.

That makes sense, thank you for that. That is a helpful response. One of the things in my mind is the role of family liaison support or a family liaison officer. Do you have any views on the benefit of that? Is it something that you were offered?

We will have a short suspension to allow a changeover of witnesses.