Chamber and committees

Absolutely. There will be resource implications not only for the SCTS and the Crown but for the defence sector. If more cases per day are run than is currently the case, we will obviously have to provide sufficient resources to ensure that people are represented.

The concept of a specialist court is not new, and I hope that we can learn from the integrated domestic abuse courts. We accept that, if a large number of crimes are of a similar nature, they can be dealt with in a similar way in a central place, for example. What feedback has there been on domestic abuse courts from the Faculty of Advocates, the Law Society, the police, victims organisations and the third sector? Those groups will have had to interact with specialist courts in the past, so have any learnings—positive or otherwise—come from that?

Good morning, cabinet secretary and guests. The central question with regard to specialist courts is whether they are intended to be used instead of, or as well as, existing infrastructure. The fundamental issue, which is still unclear, concerns what would be taken away from other court mechanisms in order to specialise in those dedicated courts.

Would we be taking things away from existing mechanisms or simply adding to the capacity of the courts in order to clear the backlog? We need to clear the backlog—nobody disagrees with that. Each of those approaches creates its own set of very different issues, and I think that the committee is struggling with that. There is a top-level recommendation from Lady Dorrian, which seems to have a lot of positive elements to it, such as the importance of taking a trauma-informed approach. However, the devil is in the detail. What will the Government present to the committee and the Parliament, so that we can work through the detail? There will clearly be financial and resource issues in relation to how specialist courts might work in the future.

I am happy to leave it there.

That is helpful. Thank you for that. I know that we are tight for time, convener. Do I have time for one more question? I will then be happy to pass on to others.

My question is short but it might be difficult. In 2019-20, around 2,300 rapes were reported to police in Scotland, of which around 300 went to prosecution and 130 were successfully prosecuted. We all know that everyone wants to improve that ratio. What role can the police play in that? The taking of an initial statement is only one part of the process. More evidence must be gathered and robust cases must be given to the Crown to improve prosecution rates. What more could the police do to improve that ratio in the coming years?

I find it fascinating that, where the approach in question was trialled, the conviction rate for rape was twice the national average.

As my other question is about advice to juries, I will park it and let other members come in.

It is clear to us from speaking to people that, for many victims of such crimes, the current system is not necessarily fit for purpose. That is the premise of our discussion. I do not think that these are isolated cases. I have spoken to jury members who have been told different things by judges, and there is clearly an issue. For example, there is huge confusion about what the not proven verdict means and what happens as a result of it. That sparks the question about Moorov and different decision makers in different bits of a case, for example. There is clearly work to be done there, but we can take that up with the cabinet secretary and the Lord Advocate, so I will not press the matter any further now.

The specific scenario that I was thinking about is one in which a recording of the accuser being fully cross-examined by the defence lawyer is played back during the live trial, and the jury—whether it is in the building or not—watches that evidence. Does that happen at the moment?

Good morning. Before I move on to my pre-planned questions, I want to pick up on some aspects of the discussion that we have had. What has struck me, over the past few months, is that part of the problem is the number of justice partners. I can see why a victim of crime or someone going through a criminal procedure might really struggle to work out who is responsible for what, who to complain to if there is an issue and, if those complaints are interlinked, which body has overall responsibility for dealing with them. It strikes me that there is no such body, and that is part of the problem.

If someone has a complaint against a sheriff, a JP or a judge, there is a specific Government process to go through. If the complaint is against a deputy, it goes to the Crown Office, and, if it is against a defence solicitor or a QC, they have their own regulatory environment through the Law Society of Scotland or the Scottish Legal Complaints Commission. If the complaint is about the work that you do, I presume that it comes to you in the first instance, and you are governed by the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman. The process is hard enough for me to get my head around, never mind someone who has been the victim of a traumatic crime. Therefore, can you see why so many people feed back to the committee and Parliament that they find the process extremely confusing, complex and retraumatising?

I might come back in later with some supplementary questions on other issues, but I have one more question at the moment.

Obviously, the elephant in the room is the backlog of cases that we are dealing with. From evidence that we have taken from victims of crime, we know about the inevitable stress and trauma that that creates. It is not simply a question of the timescale; it is about the fact that many of those cases have been cancelled or rescheduled many times—sometimes dozens of times. A number of victims, particularly survivors of crimes of sexual assault and abuse and gender-based violence, have called for statutory maximum timescales for trials of that nature.

We are very aware of the backlog, and I appreciate that you are only one cog in the machine, but what can you do in that regard? Given that we are coming up to negotiations around the budget, what would you ask the Government to do to facilitate more trials more quickly, while, at the same time, not weakening the sanctity and effectiveness of those trials? Both parties have an absolute right to a fair trial. In an ideal world, what would happen in order for you to process those cases more quickly?