Chamber and committees

That strikes me as being absolutely consistent with the aspiration for trauma-informed practice to minimise the negative experience for a witness.

Please do.

I would like to raise with you an issue that follows on from Katy Clarke’s point about the flow of information. You chaired a whole-system review group, which was in recognition of the fact that whole-system issues are involved. Will you share with the committee what else you think needs to be improved to get us to a position in which we can look back on the reforms as a seminal moment in improving the experience of complainers and ensuring that the process operates in a more timely fashion, given the premium that you have attached to evidence being gathered in a timely fashion, so that recollections can be tested in the most effective way and when they are strongest during an individual’s experience.

Thank you very much, convener.

Lady Dorrian, one of the remarks that you made just a moment ago was, I thought, of enormous significance, and I would like to develop the thinking a bit further. You talked about the concept of embedding “a new culture”.

Your answer opens up a wider question. Much of this concerns how court proceedings are handled, but an awful lot of it is about a whole-justice-system approach: it is about the actions of Police Scotland, the operation of the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service and the roles of the Crown, defence agents, the Faculty of Advocates, the Law Society of Scotland and, ultimately, the judiciary, in shepherding the process. There are quite a number of players.

I am struck by how, in order to eradicate delay in the system, everybody needs to improve their performance and to act more quickly and more effectively. What is the best means of driving that? It strikes me that all those organisations—Police Scotland, the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service, the Crown, practitioners and the judiciary—are self-governing institutions, so who drives the process? The Government will be criticised if it drives it too aggressively, because that would be interference. Where, within the system, will the necessary drive to eradicate the delays come from?

To put it in a better way, how can we ensure that those various players, who are all critical in the process, are focused on eradication of delays?

Lord Advocate, a comment that you made in response to Russell Findlay’s questions this morning—in relation to your point about the difference between the views about the system that have been expressed by Rape Crisis Scotland and the Faculty of Advocates—was that, in your judgment, the ordinary adversarial approach is not suited to cases of this type. I will explore that comment, because, in a sense, it gets to the heart of some of the points that I explored with Lady Dorrian about court culture. I am interested to know the nature of the changes that need to take place in a specialist sexual crimes court and what approaches are necessary for living up to the challenge that you set out in your comment that the ordinary adversarial approach is not suited to such cases. What needs to be different?

That would be helpful. Thank you.

Can you share with the committee any data on the level of spare capacity in the court and tribunal infrastructure in Scotland? What is the utilisation level of the court infrastructure in the country?

That is what I am getting at. The ground that you have covered in that supplementary answer, which is very helpful, addresses some of what I am keen to air as part of the evidence for the committee. It does not have to be about the building of new buildings, because court processes have changed dramatically as a consequence of Covid. Changes will have taken place that people have been trying to make for 50 years, but nobody has been interested in them. They had to happen because of Covid, and, thankfully, they have been retained. Some of the emergency legislation that some people in the Parliament complain about, and which is still in force, is actually quite helpful in addressing some of those challenges. The more you can write to us about that, Mr Fraser, the better.

My final question is about the procedures of a specialist court. I am going to raise specific material from the bill, although I acknowledge that it is not for the Lord Advocate to argue for the bill. Section 55 states:

“The provisions of the 1995 Act apply to proceedings in the Sexual Offences Court as though the proceedings were taking place in the High Court of Justiciary”.

My reading of that, as a layman, makes me a little worried that that means that we will not have a fresh start. Reassure me on that point.