Chamber and committees

I think that the suggestion is that that provision is being used more readily in Scotland than it used to be, and it seems to be going well. It gives victims and witnesses the opportunity to give evidence outwith court. Does your evidence suggest that we should look at whether that is impacting on conviction rates? You seem to be saying that, where pre-recorded evidence is used under section 28 of the 1999 act in England and Wales, it has an impact on conviction rates. Is that right?

I understand that, but as one of the parameters is to ascertain the effectiveness of the change, there must be one or two benchmark measures. I am struggling to see what they would be.

Good morning, Professor Thomas. My first set of questions are to you. In your submission—this is on page 9 of committee paper CJ/S6/24/4/1—you talk about why there appear to be substantial differences between England and Wales and Scotland in both jury trial outcomes in rape cases and juror attitudes. You have already explored that with the committee, but I want to focus on how you have qualified that. You say in your submission:

“there is a lack of clarity in Scotland about jury conviction rates.”

Am I correct in saying that, because we do not have clarity on the conviction rates, it is very difficult to come to a determination on which of the two factors results in that apparent difference, or are you suggesting that you would not really expect to see substantial differences between the two systems?

However, the two issues that you have brought to the committee are the lack of clarity on conviction rates and your concerns about our drawing conclusions without any baseline knowledge of how juries actually work. Would that be fair?

Would you see objections from the profession if, to change the experience of victims, it would be a requirement for the victim to be able to speak to those legal representatives—however it is legislated for?

The other witnesses might want to address my follow-up question.

I am trying to understand the proposed legislation before us and all the possibilities. It is possible to create a specialist court, as proposed in the bill. We can decide where that is in the hierarchy, but there could be different levels of representation and rights of audience, and sheriffs appointed by the Lord President would be able to sit as judges in that court. However, it seems to me that there is nothing to say that the pilot would not run in the specialist court as opposed to the High Court. Is that fair to say?

In other words, the specialist court with national jurisdiction, wherever it sits, is not the High Court. It would be possible under the bill to have a sheriff appointed by the Lord President, solicitors or any other representation—there is no ban on solicitors representing accused persons in the specialist court—and a single judge all at the same time. Is that right?

Sharon Dowey asked about victims having access to their advocate depute or legal representative. We spoke with one survivor who had a positive experience of proceedings, and it was loud and clear that that seemed to be because she had meetings with the lawyers before, during and after the trial.

Tony Lenehan, would the profession have any objection to reforms in that area? Some advocate deputes do it and some do not; some just go straight to court and do not talk to the victims, and others do talk to them. Is there a need to prescribe that more, in your view?

Do you have any comment on why the Government would want to include such a provision in legislation?

It is interesting that your first answer was that it would be the conviction rate. The Government has made it explicit that it is not going to look at the pilot in terms of whether it is more effective, because it says that that is not what it is designed to do, so that would not be a benchmark.

Is it fair to say that it is going to be difficult to benchmark effectiveness?

I wanted to ask about the jurors that you used in your studies. Had they sat on rape trials, or just trials in general?