Chamber and committees

As I have said, I hope to come back to the committee with further clarity on implementation and sequencing. On balance, my preference right now—and I am not closed to other representations—is for the pilot to take place in the context of the sexual offences court, partly because it might give us further options to have a panel of decision makers rather than a single judge.

Perhaps I can reflect briefly on some of my European engagement. I have already visited the Netherlands and Germany and, in the not-too-distant future, I will be going to Norway. I stress again that we cannot do a lift and shift from other people’s jurisdictions, but one of the reasons for Lady Dorrian’s focus on a single-judge pilot in her review was that it was not novel to our system. Our system is quite hierarchical, and there is not an endless supply of judges. When I visited other jurisdictions, I saw that they had flatter systems with many more judges. In the Netherlands, for example, I met a lot of judges who were younger—I hope that the lords and ladies will not mind my saying that. The diversity issue that they have in the Netherlands is that 75 per cent are women; however, it has a bigger judicial resource, because its structures are flatter.

When I met judges in the Netherlands, I found that there are single-judge trials, but for the most serious cases, there is a panel of three. That would be challenging in Scotland, given that we do not have an endless supply of judges. Other countries have mixed panels of judiciary and lay representation. However, when I engaged with the judges from the Netherlands, they spoke to the value of having peers and colleagues involved in the process of deliberation and in writing up written judgments. I am in favour of a time-limited single-judge pilot, but if we are talking about the sexual offences court, where there will be judges, temporary judges, sheriffs and principal sheriffs, we might have the option to have a pilot involving more than one decision maker.

I hope that I have not pre-empted any of my thinking on this, because our own conclusions have still to be completed. As with any proposition, there are things that you need to work through properly. I want to make it clear that I am absolutely in favour of a pilot of single-judge trials, but there might be other options that we could explore.

I want to build as much consensus as possible, because that is in the interests of our justice system and of victims, witnesses and the accused. I have spoken on that point at length.

With respect, I have answered that. It is not uncommon for secondary legislation to flow from any piece of primary legislation. I have already given a commitment, in response to what I have heard not only from this committee but elsewhere, that there will be more detail in the bill.

As anyone who has been through the trauma of a sexual offence goes through the criminal justice system, they encounter decisions that are not in their gift or are outwith their control, such as which court the case goes to and what process is applied. We must be open to choice on some matters. You will have heard many examples that support the move towards prerecorded evidence, but some victims might want to have their day in court, and having that sense of control and choice can be imperative to recovery.

Your point about the single point of contact is well made, and I am cognisant of the difference between independent legal advice and independent legal representation. Do you want to add anything that might be useful to Ms McNeill, Jeff?

I will not go into the prison population issue, because, as I said yesterday in reply to Mr Findlay, I will come back to the Parliament in the not-too-distant future to make a statement on that. I refute some of the remarks that Ms Dowey has made and point to the investment in criminal justice social work that is in the draft budget. However, I will lay all that to one side for now.

At the end of the day, we all want guilty people to be convicted, and we all want victims to receive the best support so that they can give the best evidence. It is always fair to scrutinise resources, and it is, of course, fair for me to say that the Government’s funding has not kept pace in real terms. There was a 1.2 per cent real-terms reduction in our block grant funding. That equates to £500 million pounds, and that is before we even get to capital funding, which will contract by 10 per cent in real terms over the next five years.

Nonetheless, when it comes to our resource and capital investment in the Crown Office and in the courts service, the justice budget has a very good settlement in comparison with other areas, despite the real-terms cuts to what the Government has to play with as a whole. There are significant increases—of 11 per cent, 10 per cent and, in some cases, 28 per cent—to budgets, which I hope will give some comfort to Ms Dowey, and I hope that she will support the budget when we come to that point in the parliamentary timetable.

I acknowledge that I have heard Ms McNeill make the point a number of times in this committee that we need to be careful about the scope of powers and the decisions that we make about powers being retained or additional powers being given to other parts of the system.

Our consideration of that is at a fairly early stage. I would always seek to take seriously the views of the Lord Advocate, given her independent role. She has many years of experience and, in particular, a long-standing interest in seeking justice for complainers in sexual offence cases.

That is quite a left-field question, Ms Mackay, if you will forgive me for saying so.

Our proposition is that the jury system will operate across all offences. I think that we would need to give very careful consideration to whether you could have a different—

I take that point on board. We are not at the end of the stage 1 process yet. As I have said before, the bill is a marathon as opposed to a sprint.

It is important to recognise that, as the jury evidence shows, the not proven verdict is seen as the compromise verdict. In a two-verdict system, juries do not have that option. They have to decide whether someone is innocent or guilty.

At this point, without prejudging the rest of the parliamentary process, the Government’s view is that we should make a small adjustment. A simple majority in a jury of 12 would be seven out of 12. We propose a majority of eight out of 12. However, I am also conscious that there continues to be a live debate about the role of corroboration across our system. The Lord Advocate touched on that and spoke powerfully on the impact of corroboration across all cases, especially in sexual offence cases.

I suppose that I am looking at the mountain from a different side. I will come to my officials in a moment. Although we have taken the spirit and the majority of the detail of Lady Dorrian’s report, I contend that some of the changes around unlimited sentencing power enhance the status of the court. I am genuinely struggling to see why it would not be seen as a court of equal status.