Chamber and committees

I am particularly interested in Isabel Vaughan-Spruce’s perspective on the matter. I think that you mentioned in your opening comments that your volunteers in Birmingham now pray outside a church, much further away from the abortion provider. If it is prayer rather than protest, is it not okay to do it at or outside the church rather than at the abortion provider?

I will press you a wee bit on that. The bill provides for 200m zones. In some cases—certainly in Scotland—a person would still be on the provider’s campus even outwith that 200m zone. I want to ensure that I am getting your perspective correctly and that we are recording it correctly. Are you saying that it would be acceptable for no protest to take place on the provider’s campus, even if it was beyond 200m, but that, when the area is a public space or a public highway, that should not be restricted?

I completely understand why the emphasis is on the provisions around silent prayer. What is your perspective on vigils, or what some people characterise as protests? Your perspective is that silent prayer should certainly not be restricted, and I completely understand that perspective. Where do you come down on the issue of the placement of people holding placards with provocative messages on them or images of an unborn baby or a fetus? We have seen examples of that, and we have heard evidence of images being projected on to the wall of a hospital. Obviously, walls have windows, so the images would also be projected into the rooms of a hospital.

I understand and respect your perspective on silent prayer, but it is really important for us to understand your perspective on other kinds of activities that have taken place in Scotland which are more visual and provocative. I know that people would characterise things differently, but what is your position on activities where there is more to them, if you understand what I am asking?

That takes us to quite an interesting place. There is a large amount of overlap between what you and the previous witnesses have said. We have heard quite a lot of evidence that existing laws cover breach of the peace, harassment and so on. The challenge is that Parliament has been presented with instances, which have been well covered in the media, that the vast majority of the population would regard as unacceptable behaviour, and in which they would consider that harassment and intimidation had taken place, but the police felt unable to intervene under the current legislation.

I am not talking about the vigils, protests, prayer groups and so on that take place; we have heard about images being projected on to the wall of a hospital and into a hospital. We heard evidence about instances outside the Sandyford clinic in Glasgow, where people have used a speaker system so that, as well as their having harassed people who were going in, people inside the building could hear the people outside as they said very provocative things.

The challenge for the committee is to assess why action was not taken in those instances. Was it because the law as it stands is inadequate, or is there a barrier to enforcing the law as it stands? I am interested in Catriona McMillan’s and Eilidh Dickson’s perspective on that. Many of the discussions come down to questions about how we expect the bill to be enforced and about the judgment that would have to be made, as per the example that was given in the previous evidence session about the arrest that did not lead to a conviction, which Stephen Allison mentioned.

I would be interested in your perspective on the extent to which this differs from other areas of law, where we expect, in the first instance, the police to make a judgment and then the procurator fiscal to do so at the next stage. How many of the concerns could be addressed not in the bill but through guidance, which could be either Lord Advocate’s guidance or operational guidance for Police Scotland?

The Rev Stephen Allison’s comments respond in part to questions that I posed in the earlier part of the meeting, and were really interesting. I agree that, in general, we should not legislate on the basis of theology. However, some religious practices are prohibited in law for reasons that we would all generally regard as justifiable, because they are about the balance of rights, protection of vulnerable groups and so on.

I am interested in the Free Church of Scotland’s perspective on a question that Dr Gulhane posed to the previous panel. Do you agree that it is unacceptable for protests that display graphic images to take place in proximity to a hospital or an abortion provider? In the previous session, Dr Pickering mentioned images of dismembered fetuses. I am interested in your perspective on that, given the previous panel’s very valuable evidence, which was largely from the perspective of the Catholic system of belief.

Thank you all.

Something like that would be ideal, thank you.

I understand the example that you gave and the instances where the situation may start with a referral in relation to a CSP and then escalate to a claim under the 2010 act, but I am interested in cases where children or their carers make a claim under the 2010 act directly. We have heard about how few CSPs there are—0.2 per cent of children with a recognised additional need have one—and part of the reason for that, based on some of the evidence that we have heard previously, is that children and the adults in their life are not aware of the existence of CSPs or their right to access them. I would be interested to know whether you have cases coming to you that go straight to claims under the 2010 act that could perhaps have been resolved through a CSP, but information on CSPs had simply not been provided to the child or their parent or carer beforehand.

May, can you explain whether there are significant differences between a referral in relation to a CSP and a claim under the Equality Act 2010 or in what way you would handle those differently?

On the point about the letters in particular, if you have any anonymised or generic examples of letters that you could provide to the committee—while recognising the confidentiality of each case—we would find that really interesting. I recognise that that might not be possible, given their nature.