 Mae'r unrhyw ddweud o'r 15 oes iawn y cymdeithas cymdeithas. Felly nid oes gwybod o'r ddweud o'r ddweud. Felly, mae'r ddweud o'r ddweud o'r ddweud o'r ddweud o'r ddweud o'r ddweud o'r gyfnod gyffredinol yn y cyfnodol yng Nghymru. Rwy'n rhaid i'n ddweud i'w chymdeithas 1 a 2. Mae'n gweithio gwybod o'r ddweud o'r ddweud o'r gyffredinol, Barbara Nes, Helena Kennedy,uku, Whiddi, member of the Mesogyny and Criminal Justice in Scotland working group and Mr Bill Brash, Mesogyny working group team leader of the Scottish Government. I invite Barness Kennedy to make some brief opening remarks. First of all, it is great to be here. I want to thank you all, because you might not realise it, but you had an input into this in a considerable way, not least because mae'rdym锁etod yn ddigonwch i'r ddweud edynodd yn ddigonwch â'r gwahodd iddyn nhw. Mae'n ei ddweud i'ch gêm gan bob bilydd eich cymryd ar borders i'ch gyd ar gyfer ysgol, a'r ddweud i'ch gêm yn dweud yn yr hyn yng nghymru oherwydd yr aelod yn rwyf ydwedd o fwy줄u am y Cyfyrd y Llywodraeth. Ydw i'ch gweithio'r ffluidau, ac wedi'u gweithio, na gweithio'r gweithio yn ei ddweud ti'u gweithio. Felly, mynd i ddodw i'n gweithio credu'r cyfnodau i'r byw. Rwy'n gweithio am yr ystod eich cyrdydd iddynt o'r ystod i'r cyfrannu cymryd yw'r iawn, i'r ffawr o'r cyfrannu cyfryd o'r cyfrannu cymryd yn cyfrannu cyrdydd o'r gwyman nhw. Yna hynny yw'r cyfrannu cyfrannu cyfrannu, ond yw'r cyfrannu cyfrannu i'r cyfrannu cyfrannu i'r cyfrannu cyfrannu a thinking. Mae cyfrifonwyr hwnna gwrth ferno. Mae'r ffordd a chyfrifonwyr o'r ddau mae'n mynd â gwaith i'r ffordd a chymwyll Nobody, i chi amlaing, mewn bydd yn ni wnaeth yn diolch gan y Llyfrgell, a phrygwyr yn maen nhw'n dod yn gynnwys. gan unig ymwneud yn ysgolodau hyn, a gweld i'r cyfathodrfaneidau, rydyn digud eu gwasanaethol i gael ymwneud. Mae'n oes i chi maen nhw'n gwybod i ddod, ond y cyfathodrfaneidau nid yn y cyfrifysgau. And ydym ni'n cael eu chi'n gwybod i ddim yn ddigwydd, mae'n cael ei gyrfa yn gyffredinol sydd yn ddigwydd yma y gyrfa'r rhaid, mae'n ddigwydd yn fwywyr arfer y cyfathodrfaneidau. was saying something has to be done and that's the message that I come to all of you with which is that there is a very strong sense amongst women in the Scottish public that something has to be done about the high level of harassment misogyny that they experience in their daily round and that this is affecting girls and women in their lives and that it really does in a very serious way undermine their sense of self-confidence, self-worth and the ways in which they conduct their own lives and what their own aspirations are. I just wanted to say that to start off with was that the evidence was shocking and it therefore allows us to justify certain departures from normal ways of dealing with criminal matters and I see that because I know how the legal profession responds to things and there's a sense in which we always seek to play change inside the normal set of rules and we don't want to depart from them but I want to explain why I think that having a piece of legislation specifically for women actually is justified even in the context of the equality legislation which of course informs how we deal with things but that we're actually talking about doing something that justifies a departure from the normal thing that all law is neutral because of the high level of targeted behaviour directed at women and so I'll be happy to be tested on that on that issue. The thing that came across to me very strongly was that social media has changed our environment. The ecology in which we operate now is different because of social media and for some of us who are of an older generation it doesn't play the same part in our lives as it does for the young and one of the things that has happened as a result of social media is that there has been a disinhibition about what people are prepared to say to each other, what people are actually able to prepare to throw at each other and let me immediately say men receive horrible messaging too but there's something in particular about the ways in which women experience social media and girls from a very young age and how it impacts on their lives. That disinhibition that happens online has now kind of spread its wings and it now is actually in the public square, it's actually happening in the public spaces too and so the staff which is of threatening rape, of speaking in very hostile language, abusive undermining in many ways almost pornographic or times actually pornographic. It now lives on the streets, it lives in our playgrounds, it lives in the outside clubs and inside clubs in bars and in places where people gather so that things are said which some of you probably have never experienced and would never know about the ways in which young women are going out with friends to an event and coming out of a club or a place where they've been socialising and being met with groups of men and sometimes individual men saying to them an inviting sexual congress. The thing is that I can't use the language that would be necessary to display the full invasiveness and sense of encroachment that this means and the transgression that is involved in this of talking about sexual matters, describing women in sexual ways, talking about what they'd like to do to the particular individual person and then when they're dismissed and told to get lost being then insulted and further abused and told how ugly and unattractive and fat and unwanted they are and the ways that that actually impacts on the self-worth of young people. So I just wanted to say that you cannot underestimate the impact of this on the lives of half of our population, more than half of our population. Thank you very much indeed, Baroness Kennedy. That's a really helpful overview if you like and it leads us neatly on to questions. If I may, I'd like to start off by asking you a question about the legislation that you're proposing in your report. You recommend the creation of a statutory aggravation of misogyny operating separately from hate crime legislation. I'm interested in what your view is in terms of the aggravating factor working and why the issue of misogyny should not be dealt with as a type of hate crime in and of itself? One of the things that had to be emphasised at the very start was that hate itself is not a crime and nor should it be. I think that we have to hold on to that as something that's really important as we protect ideas, the imagination, what goes on inside people's heads should be protected. The purpose of criminal law is not to seek to criminalise that which people think and even giving expression to ideas or to thoughts which are unattractive should not in any way be criminalised save where it moves into the area of harm and that is a sort of foundational principle inside criminal law and so it's the acts that flow from hate that you're seeking to criminalise and the behaviours and so what became very clear to us was that there's something actually significantly different about what women experience in the form of misogyny it doesn't follow the normal tracks of hatred which is about wanting to basically almost see the disappearance of minorities in our community not to have any truck with them to deal with people who's sexuality is different as if they didn't exist at all a sort of elimination of those things that's not true for women misogyny is about wanting women to behave in a way that is suitable to the man who's being misogynistic and so when we struggled at the beginning to say what is our working groups definition of misogyny we came to believe that it was about something that was different from actual hatred it's about a sense of male entitlement keeping women in their place maintenance of a sense of male primacy and that leads to the subordination and disempowerment of women and so it's about something that is is rather different from hate and that that is important the other thing is that this is not about a minority issue most of hate crime is to try to protect minorities in a majority in a majority in a system which democracy inevitably is and so what you're trying to do is create those kinds of protections from harm but women are 52 percent of the population and the evidence of the extent of this the endemic nature of this was that we felt that misogyny and shoulds it needs you need an aggravation and we aggravation exist for example in domestic violence aggravation don't have to exist in the hate framework but we felt that it should exist in a piece of legislation on its own and please let me emphasise that the very fact of creating a piece of law that it says misogyny in its title misogyny and criminal justice is one of the recommendations I'm making because that it means making a radical statement about wanting the criminal justice system to embrace women and to regain its confidence of women but also to highlight and to sort of shift the dial so that we look at the behaviors that are particularly atrophying women's advancement that thanks very much and you mentioned just there about for example domestic abuse and aggravators that that can be applied in that type of of crime but interestingly in your report you outline that this aggravation that you're proposing should not apply to rape sexual offences domestic abuse which might for some appear at odds with the spirit of what's happening and what you're proposing and obviously the rationale that you give partly is that the these offences and crimes are already to a certain extent imbued with misogyny so I'm just wondering if there is a bit of is there the possibility that there might be some confusion and how do we articulate that the starting point is that it's not to some extent imbued with misogyny I would argue that rape and domestic violence are misogynistic crimes they're crimes in which are either keeping women in their place or are transgressing women's autonomy without their consent those those are misogynistic offences they're already I think that for most of us are recognised as as offences of misogyny I mean there are some people who seem to imagine that rape is about suddenly you know is about lust and desire when in fact you know there's nothing where we can all be subject to lust and desire however it's about the overriding of one person's will by another and it's about power and control and it's a power and control in the context of the status of men and women in society you don't get very often women apart from being complicit in the crime of rape actually committing rape and there are all kinds of reasons connected to that but but those are offences of misogyny they already exist your criminal law is explicit in giving and creating an aggravation in relation to domestic violence we expect because we've struggled over many of the recent decades to have rape taken much more seriously and sentenced appropriately and with a seriousness so you don't need an aggravation there now what women will say to me I mean particularly women but men too is that and rape is not confined to as an experience to women but it is mainly women and what women will say is well you know we're not even getting the cases into the courts or beyond the threshold we're not getting convictions and but that's all to do with the fact that the system the thing that we're trying to struggle with is something that is absolutely you know imbued with misogyny and so we have to find ways of dealing with misogyny in our wider society and in our criminal justice system in order to create this sort of if you like the the subsoil in which it's going to be much more possible to get higher conviction rates better prosecution and better investigation of rape cases so the starting point is let's get this right and let's deal with the underlying problem which is using misogyny. Thanks very much, thank you for that. I'm just going to hand over to Russell Finlay and then I'll bring in Fulton McGregor Russell. Hi there, thanks to both of you for coming along. I wanted to ask about the Scottish Government's proposed reform of the gender recognition act and how you think that might play against what you're proposing or what impact that might have in relation to what you're proposing. It was one of the first things, I mean I say in my introduction to this report that many people would have seen it as a hospital pass why was I wanting to get involved in a debate which was going to inevitably involve the great sort of if you like a schism that seems to have taken place between many women who've struggled for a very long time for on women's rights and the whole issue of trans rights and I really do not think that this piece of legislation that I'm proposing has got anything to do with that. It really hasn't and Parliament is making its own decisions and you all as parliamentarians will make your decisions on the business of transgender recognition and how that should be done. That was not my job. My job was to deal with the fact that women, you know, over 50% of the population of Scotland are experiencing this stuff and they're experiencing it all the time and in fact women have experienced this. We all have as women and I'm sure that trans women will experience misogyny too as they live out their lives. So the thing was that it was interesting there was a debate on this in the House of Lords not on this but there was an amendment being put into a bill and a number of people sort of raised the thing of saying but there already is protection for trans women so why should they be included in any way or covered by a piece of legislation that is to prevent misogyny or misogynistic harassment and the answer to that is that sometimes the harassment you have to look at the individual case and we as lawyers know that is that it would depend on the facts in an individual case. If somebody is being traduced in the streets and shouted at as you're not a real woman then of course it would then be falling under the hate crime aggravation to do with transgender but in other cases a transgender woman might be experiencing somebody sort of saying I want to come and do whatever to you and describing in detail what they'd like to do to that person disregarding the fact that and perhaps oblivious to anything to do with the past history of that woman. So it will depend on the facts of a case. I have made it very clear in this case I am not going to be lifting people's skirts to see whether they're whether they still have genitalia on what their genitalia is like that is not our purpose nobody should be having to prove that they're a woman in order to bring down this kind of protection from abusive behaviour. I completely understand that perspective but if indeed the gender recognition act reforms do what they say they might do does it not cause a problem I think you've said in Hollywood magazine that that's for other people to fight over so like it or not there is going to be this fight and it could risk undermining what you're proposing. Why do you give me an example of where you think it will be a problem? Well if the gender recognition act comes into being in the way it's proposed you will have individuals been able to self identify their sex whether as someone is a complainer or a victim and that could I believe and I think this is what some of the women's groups are saying could be in conflict with what the misogyny legislation is seeking to do. I'd like you to explain to me in what way? Well if an individual says I am a female because the new gender recognition legislation allows me to do so whether as a complainer that fundamentally alters how the misogynial law comes into play or as a perpetrator even. Let's look at the offences that are included in this legislation. It's saying that if somebody is assaulted or experienced threatening behaviour or breaks through and through their window or their car is smashed up or scraped and abused written on the side of it you're an FAC and the person reports it to the police you immediately in what I'm hoping is that you're shifting the dial here so that police officers when they're dealing with something that involves a woman at the receiving end one of the questions they have to ask themselves is is the misogyny involved in this. Now in many cases misogyny will not be involved if somebody breaks into a shop or assaults the shopkeeper in order to steal something they would do that to a person whether they were male female whoever was behind the counter and so the assault on a woman in that context is not a misogynistic crime drawing down the aggravation if you throw a bottle in a rage into a pub where you're being expelled from the fact that it hits a woman on the head does not make it a misogynistic crime the police are forced in investigating these things to shift the dial and to start asking that question is misogyny present here is this being done to a woman because she's a woman and I'm letting this woman know and as he's kicking her on the ground saying to her you're an FAC and you you know so it's a very different thing and and if you're doing that to somebody who happens to be a trans woman why should it be any different you know it's not a problem you see this problem about should it apply to someone who's a woman or perceived to be a woman it isn't a problem you know it's and it depends on the individual facts in the individual case the way that you're looking hate crime always involves on the looking at um what is being probably said at the time um or what we know about the person who's the perpetrator and and that is what informs whether you think it's racist or homophobic is what's being said as you're assaulting someone or when you're or when you're threatening them and so so I don't see how it in any way complicates things when I said in the in that interview and that will have to be fought out it will be dealt with sometimes in a courtroom where someone will say but I didn't open my mouth as I as I kicked this woman um and so why are you saying it's misogynistic and the reason why you'll know it's misogynistic is because he's a badge on his lapel which says f all women you know I mean how do we know so it's it's a it really these things always law always in the end when you're delivering justice requires looking at the facts of an individual case and in individual cases a trans woman will experience misogyny too but sometimes it will be transphobia that she's experiencing and that is when the the court and the prosecuting authorities will draw down the appropriate piece of legislation in order to deal with it yeah okay thank you I think pauline do you want to come in with a follow-up on that and then I'll bring in fullton thank you very much good morning firstly um in public I wanted to say I know we said this privately I think the work you've done is really tremendous and I thank you for it when you'll see on the record that that I'm on record is voting for the in the hate crime legislation I did think sex should be an aggravated offense and I felt quite strongly about that I felt it was missing however I think that your rationale for not doing it is it seems to me to make sense um and I just wanted to ask you about like as legislators what you think the problems we might come up against when I suppose we'll now have to define something that isn't already defined so I suppose the simplicity of it is that sex is defined in the equality act whereas um misogyny is something we're going to have to look at in some detail so as you've said the working group definition male entitlement in subordination of women and importantly you talked about male power now for me this whole area is so central to everything we're doing not just for this legislation and I know you agree but as the committee looks at a whole range of things that we should do in this parliament my question is um you got any concerns at all about how we're going to go about defining because we'd have to find the sergeant obviously and they would presumably have to define things like in subordination of women and things that your your ordinary understanding well we know what that means but when it comes to legislating as we all know things aren't as simple as they first appear I just wonder if there's anything you wanted to say to that to the committee because we'll be doing this further down the line. The Parliamentary draftsmen of course and I know that they perhaps go by a different title in Scotland but those who draft legislation are particularly skilled in trying to draw out those sorts of the subtle ways in which things can be misunderstood and what I was doing in this report was seeking was not playing the role of being a parliamentary draft person but trying to deal with what we know is the lived experience of women and and and let me immediately say because there are quite a number of men I'm happy to say in this on this committee and my experience in discussing this with you know all my male colleagues in the law but I suppose that they by and large they are fairly you know progressive around issues of equality but but even in having conversations with people across the divide in the house of lords across benches people on the conservative benches we all have taken the view that something has to be done about this kind of behaviour and the way to deal and it is about power and that people recognise that this is about women being disempowered and and how you maintain that even if you don't know that that's what your purpose is as a young man something happens in the whole way in which we grow up which which informs the genders in different ways and and we're trying to somehow change that shift that dial and that's why I've introduced for example the word of contempt you see contempt helps us to deal with subordination contempt because there is a question which is why you move away at all from the wording that's included and we discussed this in in the working group because I had some fabulous lawyers on that group I have to tell you really terrific lawyers and and they really would bang away at particular issues should we not keep the same language as the language that's in the hate crime legislation and as the tests of prejudice and and I've introduced the word contempt because contempt is about treating as lesser there is something not respecting another human being and I see this business as being about misogyny and human rights human rights is just about treating people with dignity and respect as another human being and so it's that business of somehow lesser the lesser nature of it and I thought that the word contempt and I kind of rather sort of persisted in my wanting that word there because I felt that dealt with that idea of disempowerment of lesser of maintaining somebody as not having equality with you and and so that that was really important the other thing that's a difficult thing in the issue of misogyny and is that it's when you discuss things with with colleagues often men will say I have no problem I love women I'm married to one you know I've got sisters I've got daughters I care about women but then they'll say the women that I don't like are and it's always in this kind of order is feminist women maw the women that are pushy and that somehow I don't like women that are are aggressive and they then start deciding and telling you the kind of women that that basically most of us are shouldn't be included in their idea of worthy women and so it's one of the reasons why in our sense of what is womanhood is that you you mustn't get bogged down in that this legislation is is is where it doesn't matter whether people are being a woman is being attacked because she's a lesbian because she's a woman who is campaigns on certain issues because all of it is about the underlying thing is about reducing another human being and the status of the other human being and it is about power so Pauline all I would say is that I really believe very strongly that shifting this is difficult and it involves nuance and it involves subtlety but I'm hoping that with enough of the goodwill of parliamentarians and the legal world behind it you could make this work. Thank you. Thank you very much. Katie, you want to come in on this topic because I know Fulton's been waiting patiently. I'm happy to come in later. Okay that's fine in that case I'll bring in Fulton. Thanks. Thank you to Baroness Kennedy I think the work has been really really good and I welcome your opening statement as well and I think it's fair to say that you know you challenged men to support the legislation you're proposing as well and I do and I'm sure that the other people do as well and I can't help but saying that you know I'm sure I speak for colleagues both other members and you know clerks and other workers you know when you were speaking at first we should feel uncomfortable as men we should and that's that's important and probably Bill's sitting there as well he's smiling in that. Yes but I think it's really important because we might not be those men who have said those things that you're saying or done those things but you know we've all been men for all our lives and we've been younger men and maybe we've been in situations where we could have done more and I think that's what pieces of work are important and they're important about changing you know the culture in the society that we live in and challenging men and I think we've got a big role and that's I want to thank you for that and actually in a personal note I became a dad to a daughter in the last year and I've you know when you were actually speaking there about some of the things that you know you were getting reported that people were saying to others outside night clubs for example percent shivers down my spine you know to think you know that you know if we don't do something to change that culture in society that you know you know someone that I love so much could be in that position as well so I think it changes your own mindset as well but thank you for challenging us in that way and thank you for making us feel uncomfortable because it's very very important and I'll say that on behalf of all the men around the table today. The question I've actually got is about funding by Ms Gimdy you asked you you've said that the you think that the Scottish Government will need to provide additional funding in support for the legislation I wonder if you could expand on where do you think that funding should go specifically in terms of the legislation? I mean one of the first things that I think that all of us would agree about is that um is that you need you're going to need work done on education and training and so you want it more you know want it to be introduced into police training which it would be inevitable with new legislation there's always additional police training but you also want to see it being introduced into schools into into those parts of the curriculum where you know you can appropriately raise those business the whole business of what what is at risk here. Now one of the things that we felt very strongly was that the Scottish police gave evidence to us and I should say on the record and off the record because I also had meetings with women in the in the Scottish police who did not want to go public because they felt that it would make life within their working environment more difficult if they had and they spoke about their experiences but they also spoke about what they felt was needed and one of the things that they they do all say and I and I have great sympathy with that which is we do not want to criminalise boys when they're still young for what we know is that strutting thing of wanting to be part of the gang and wanting approval from your pals and therefore a lot you know being drawn into behaviours that could lead to you having a conviction which has long-term consequences at the same time you can't you can't make it a rule there are going to be circumstances in which somebody's behaviour where an older teenage boy you know really behaving in disgraceful ways towards girls who are 11 and 12 you know who are still at school and speaking to them and showing them sexual material and stuff that is just horrible but also being abusive and and there's evidence of that inside the reports so I do think that the courts are going to have to you know yes there's a principle and and some of that training is going to have to be about putting some money into the training of sheriffs and so on around this legislation so that's where I'm imagining that you would have to have a bit of an additional resource we recognise that so do you think that the additional resources are going to be specifically criminal justice tailored so that you know like when people maybe a young person maybe gets themself involved in trouble like that there may be those diversion schemes that bring in misogynate or do you think it's more about you know in schools generally and changing the culture or a bit of both I guess I think that you want to do both and I think that one of the things that we would I would like to see developed that was on our group was a really terrific guy John Devaney who's a professor at Edinburgh University and his whole thing is dealing with male violence and looking at alternative strategies how you can divine sort of courses which are really about bringing people close to close close up with the impact of this on people's lives it's like your experience of having a baby daughter and you think do I really want my my child when she's eight and nine suddenly being confronted with hardcore porn being shown to people on on on phones do I really want there to be ways in which she is made vulnerable and and that we have to tell her not to go to the park not to go to places where she might be at all vulnerable where she has to start tailoring her life which is about the threat of what can happen to her because once you introduce that of course into a girl's life that we have to be frightened because we could be raped and we could be made pregnant by strangers and so on and not even just by strangers but by people whom we know and touching has to be and we have to start training up and we're particularly concerned with our daughters we don't spend enough time saying to our boys you know you shouldn't be doing that and we think about how that might feel if it's being experienced if we don't do something about those early stages then um I and we don't have training programs to doubt to divert people if you like which is a misogynistic uh um you know addressing misogyny program I don't know if what you would call it but you can have really effective ways of letting young people see the impact of what they're doing and I think that that's one of the things we should be doing and doing it with some of the men in their 20s who do this as well um and of course it's not even confined to to those age groups so it's about finding ways of diverting people forcing them into confronting their own behaviour where it's coming from and what their attitudes towards women are and so on and I think that there are ways that you can do it and that there are terrific people working in this field and particularly men who are addressing male violence and it is a form of violence you know this is this is about violence really it's about it's about aggressive behaviour which somehow is about an idea of masculinity which also has to be addressed thanks very much we've still got a number of questions to get through so i can ask for questions and answers to be brief and as brief as possible this is my subject so i'm afraid that i'm and on that note i'll bring in Rona Mackay thank you thanks convener good morning baronist kennedy and mr drash um yes just a quick first question have you had any discussions with the Scottish government about the timing of the bill that would might bring forward your proposals i'm really i'm really in it's out of my hands i have indicated that i would really i really think that if it's not done in a timely way it will be a great disappointment to the women of scotland certainly those that i heard from i think that there is an urgency about this and so i would hope that somehow in the parliamentary timetable that time is found for it i hope there isn't a isn't sidelined and and if you like pushed you know into into a uh into a different track by turning it into a discussion that's um that's uh somehow about um posing the rights of women against the rights of trans people i don't think that's at all helpful and i think some of the language in which that's been conducted has been unhelpful um and i mean in many ways i share many of the concerns that pauline has which is that i think that much of women's experience of abuse and struggle we're not there yet it's an unfinished business the business of trying to get equality for women and for women to be able to live their lives without this stuff and so we've got to make sure that we don't end up um forgetting the work that still has to be done on on securing protections for women and girls i mean look at our girls and remember that and so rona i haven't i haven't uh i don't know that i have that influence and i think that you all may have much greater influence than i have thank you thanks for that um an unrelated question um i want to ask you about the media representation of women um just last week we saw a woman politician being a subject of blatant misogyny by a newspaper um and you know does that make you think we've got a long long way to go it is that you know do you do you ever see a time when the media don't portray women and and use misogyny to discredit them or for political reason i i i i i actually think that we're going through a period of change i mean of course there are going to be those hard uh you know hard bits of our of our world are going to take longer to change. But just think about it. We would not have been talking about misogyny even five years ago, I think. We're actually now talking about it, and I think that the numbers of women who are speaking publicly about the things that they experience has changed things considerably, and that has come out of the me too movement, and it's When they have feeling that they've got to give voice to what's happened to them, and I'm being supported in it. I'm more hopeful than you sound. Of course we're going to get this kind of nonsense and it's disappointing what is still there and so prevalent. I do feel as a shift in the air that it just meant i'w gawes sydd cymdeithasu, i wneud digon dda o'r bwyllt-dymiad ar y rhaid felly ac yma i gyddoddiadiaid i amgylch i'r wneud i'r cyflawn i hynod o'r rhai sydd yma i ddim ni i gyfleu. Mae'r bwysigau i amser, mae'r fawr yn fawr i'r cynnigu i'r cyflwyrig a gyflwyrig yn fawr i'r cynnigu'r i'r cynnig i rhaid i'r cynnig i welwyd. Felly, we were seeing something that persists, but I do think that we've got a lot of work to do, particularly with our young, to make sure that we don't just repeat the old problems. I don't think that we've made enough headway, so this idea that we've all got equality, therefore we don't need legislation specifically for women, we're all there now, is just so unreal. That's why I challenge the idea of neutral law. Neutral law is right across most of the board, but when it comes to the experience of women, we need to target law to deal with what is targeted at women. The point that you raised about the backlash that came from that probably wouldn't have happened five, ten years ago, and that is really encouraging. If that had been published in a Scottish newspaper, if there are such things still, could the publisher have been prosecuted under this new law? No, this law wouldn't be designed for that. I mean, I want to just to remember, there's an aggravation so that the aggravation could be used in relation to some of the things that are online, so if somebody is being abused online, then you could use the aggravation in order to say that it's misogynistic and therefore to enhance the sentence that's available under the Communications Act. So there's the aggravation, the business of stirring up hatred, which is really about those groups that now exist of particularly young people who are sort of encouraging a sort of hostility towards women and women who are politicians in public life and journalists and stuff. That stuff I think has to be dealt with and there's more of it. It's multiplied in the last year by sixfold. The third thing actually came out of, the public harassment I think is crying out to be dealt with and I really hope that Scotland leads on this because I think that it will happen in England before very long anyway. But I think that leading on this would give energy to it happening in other parts of the United Kingdom. But back to the business of the fourth thing, which is about threatening rape or disfigurement. That came out of my meeting with the Justice Committee when I met all of you and I know that not all of you could attend. But in the discussion that took place there, it was members of the committee who raised the fact that there was a prevalence of this and reminding one of the ways in which particularly women from minority communities could be threatened with having an asset attack and so on. So far from that business, nobody will look at you when I'm finished with you. Nobody is going to want you when I'm finished with you or somebody should take that smile off your face permanently, that sort of threat. We deliberately couched it in language, which was about invoking it because sometimes it's not a direct threat of I'm coming to get you and I'm going to rape you or I'm going to come and I'm going to disfigure you. Somebody should do this to you. It leaves the person at the receiving end with a feeling of fear that this person might not be going to do it to me, but it's now being jumped on by lots of other people and there might be just some mad person out there who will do it to me. And so it really starts in women closing down their activities and their willingness to participate. So it was the committee that raised that because we then did some research and we found that it was absolutely right that the committee joined our attention that threats to disfigure were a serious problem. And we found that actually there was a significant presence of it online. So I want to attribute to you that contribution to the recommendations that we expanded it from rape to include disfigurement because we suddenly went off and did some research to see if that was supported by evidence and indeed it was. And this is an evidence based report. Let me make it clear. This is an evidence based report. None of it came out of the blue. All laws looked at is there a problem here. Is this a problem is remedial by law or is law not necessary? And we found that there was a role for law to play. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Okay. I'll bring in Katie Clark and then on. Thank you. Yes. And I was wanting to ask really about the drafting and the obvious importance of the precise words that are used in the legislation that we look at. And I suspect that's something that this committee would be looking at in detail in due course. And this debate is obviously happening in many jurisdictions because this isn't just a Scotland wide problem unfortunately. And I just wondered whether you'd looked at the debate in other countries, whether what you had looked at in terms of options for how the legislation was drafted. You've specifically used the term prejudice or contempt. But really what advice you would give us as a committee as to how we ensure that the legislation is robust as possible, that it covers as many scenarios as possible, which may mean a longer definition with different options. And how is a committee, you know, we should be looking at these issues. And if there's anything in particular, you would suggest that we might want to look at to make sure that this legislation is usable and actually makes a difference. The lawyers on the group were very, I mean, a bill will confirm this. The debates, this was not a, you know, we struggled, we went on a journey, you know, the easy course would have been for sex to be added in as an aggravator. And so, and then we were hearing more and more evidence about this being, is that going to cure the problems that we're talking about? And it became very clear to us it wasn't. When we got down to the fine print, the struggle was incredible, I have to tell you. There were many drafts that went back and forth. Then we argued about the different points in it. As I mentioned earlier, I held out for the word contempt. And the reason why was because of trying to do that thing that is hard, where you're trying to talk about somehow diminishing somebody. And it is the subtlety of what we're trying to talk about in misogyny. It's about, and it's why it's about human rights. It's about not recognising the full humanity of somebody. And so we tried to make it both broad, but at the same time get that subtlety into it. And it was not easy, I can tell you. And I'm sure that you will on this committee have many debates about it. And I would be very happy for any of you to contact with me when you're struggling with any one of those bits. But to take us back to some of the discussions. But we really did, it didn't come easy. I can't pretend that it did. We really struggled. We tried different combinations and we tried different things. And then in the end we felt that we got consensus from everybody. And it was very interesting. Because of course, Muno Rishmawi, who was there from the UN, is really looking at this because this is an issue, as you say, that is not confined to the UK. We didn't find legislation anywhere that helped us enough. So that's why this would be groundbreaking if Scotland leads the way on it. And of course it then creases a particular burden to make sure that it works and that it works well. I think that she was really interested in how this could play in different kinds of jurisdictions, which are not based on a sort of common law precedent type situation like we have where law develops and where you. And so she was thinking of countries that are further flung, but where these are serious problems, but where law like this could be used. And I think that she ended up being really impressed with the outcome. And Jamie, it was very interesting that Jamie Lipton, who was really there without carrying a badge for anything, but who was there to answer law questions and who did point up the problems. We went to, we sat with other lawyers, we wasn't just us, and I think that Jamie, I went on that journey that Fulton was talking about, where I mean Jamie's, you know, a civil servant with, you know, whose position is, I don't go there. But in the end he said, you couldn't listen to this evidence and not feel that something has to be done and something really sharpish has to be done. So it was an interesting thing to see the way in which we all got to different places. Chloe Kennedy, very highly intellectual academic lawyer, very rigorous, very demanding of us all, and eventually got to this place of feeling that, I mean, she for example, at some stages thought, you know, what do you do about threats of rape online? Because, I mean, gay men receive threats of rape online. I mean, it's not confined to women. The problem is the prevalence of what, of it, towards women was the thing that shifted the balance. But, you know, she was very much saying, but, you know, gay men are often, you know, can't, you know, could you make this also about men? And I came down eventually in the end saying that she would agree with it. And I do think that one of the things about this is that it starts shifting people's way of thinking about all those ways in which people are experiencing abuse. Thanks very much. Ginny Greene, hand over to you. Thank you, convener, and good morning. Love it to see you, Gin. Love it to see you too. It's always a pleasure. I mean, we haven't got a lot of time, unfortunately, so I'll keep these brief and we'll try and get through as much as I can. But can I just ask some more fundamental question? I think people watching from the outside who have maybe not been as involved in this topic as we as committee or indeed you as heading the working group on this report will wonder what it is we're trying to do. And we'll maybe have reservations about where the legislation may end up because the hate crime legislation that we passed was hugely controversial. How do we ensure that we're not as legislated as in a Parliament passing law for law's sake as a direct response to public mood or pressure or a live issue which could be dealt with in other ways through education or enforcement of other pieces of legislation? And how do you think that we could possibly scrutinise that legislation in detail in a way that we cannot be accused of either not supporting the principle of dealing with misogyny or indeed being misogynistic ourselves in any way? I mean, it was one of the things that I met when I, even before embarking on this, I spoke to a number of different people in Scotland in the legal world, I have to say. And some of my Scots colleagues were saying, you know, do we need more law? And the truth is that, and that will come from women too, who will say we don't need law on misogyny. And the truth is that we're trying to deal with something here that is about the normalising of behaviours that actually lead to the more grievous kind. I mean, because one of the responses is, do we need more law? Shouldn't we just be concentrating on trying to get rape dealt with properly, domestic violence dealt with properly? Do we really need to be dealing with lesser stuff? There is law to deal with it, you know, breach of the peace and all sorts of things. And the point about it is that this is actually the seedbed of all that worse stuff because if you normalise lots of this kind of behaviour, you miss the signs of stuff that is going to actually become more serious. The perfect example is the police officer in the horrifying case of the young woman who, Sarah Everard, where here was a man who had committed sexual offences and the evidence says that he had been flashing at people. Now, of course, flashing is a source of hilarity to many people. They think it's deeply amusing. It's also illegal already. And it's also illegal already, of course, but it's not dealt with by the police very often. And people don't report it because they don't think it will be dealt with seriously by the police. And the police themselves didn't deal with it with a colleague who was having these accusations being made because it was all part of the kind of normalising of stuff that is going on. And if you don't deal with this subsoilist of misogyny and aggressive behaviour, which is so sexualised, if you don't deal with that, then I'm afraid it gives rise to all the other stuff. And if you don't find a way of concentrating police minds, sending people on a training course doesn't do it. If a police officer on the ground is having to say, something's happened to a woman, is misogyny part of this? And has had to think, what is misogyny? Is he doing this to her because she's a woman? Is he saying, and it's always, and I can't, on morning television and in the Parliament, give you the examples. But it's shocking what women are exposed to in terms of the language and the vitriol and the sexual explicitness of it all. That is so demeaning and degrading what it does to women in their self-confidence and it does create a harm. To press on your thing about is there law in existence, can't we just deal with it? There isn't law to deal with this particular element, which is targeting women. Law doesn't do that. We don't get the data as a result. Out of all the law that we have, we can't data collect how much of this is going towards women and how much of it has misogyny as part of the rationale for doing it. You're not looking at the reasons. In criminal law, we don't need to know what the motive is for something. You can convict somebody for shooting somebody and never know why they did it. The why is not an essential element. Jury's like to know why. Most of us like to know why, but you don't have to know why. It's enough that they did it and the evidence shows that they did it. Here, you want the police to be asking that question, why? Is misogyny part of this thing? That very process shifts the dial away from the victim where it's always been examining whether he has this woman made this happen to her. Did she encourage this? Did she skirt up to her bottom? There's no reason why this wouldn't happen to her. She should have known better. Instead of doing that, you're shifting the dial. Why was he doing this? That's what we want to see happening. That's what women want to see happening. It's a shift in the nature of how law is operating. In principle, you're saying that there are either holes or gaps in existing legislation, hence the need for new legislation. That's the fundamental argument in favour of a new piece of legislation. That was our driving commitment. Bill would agree. We said, is there a gap here? Is there enough law that can already deal with this? We do not want to be making more law. That was the starting point. We came to the position that there needed to be law. The best way was to signal what the law is for. What is the purpose of the law? You do that by labelling it clearly and driving it by the ways in which the offences are framed. I suspect whether the debate will centre around what is there in or not in that legislation, what it covers, what it does not cover. More importantly, how laws are applied and then enforced. Ultimately, parliaments pass laws every day, but they're not always up to scratch. They're often open to challenge as well. That's something that we like to try to avoid in advance, passing the law in the first place. How has this been received, you think, by some of the key stakeholders who will be involved in the application and delivery and enforcement of the legislation? For example, Police Scotland and the Scottish Police Federation will have to, on the front line, deal with inquiries and complaints in the first instance. For example, the Law Society or the Faculty of Advocates or the Lord Advocate herself, how have they responded to the practicalities of the legislation or have they raised any concerns with you? First of all, one of the ways in which police usually respond to things is that we are a policing service and that we basically respond to the law that parliaments make for us or the society makes for us. However, if you speak to the women police officers, they are very positive about this because they think that you need to have something that changes the environment around this. They would say that it happens inside their own organisation and therefore they would like to see mechanisms that help to focus people's minds. That is one of the things about this. It is about focusing the minds of those who investigate, those who prosecute, those who defend too but also the courts and the judges. It starts focusing people's minds on misogyny. I think that you need, and law has an important role in our society in creating change. It really does. It does not work on its own, and having law on the books on itself does not work, but you do need law. By telling boys that this is bad behaviour and that you should not do it, it will not create the change. If they think that there could actually have consequences and there could be long-term consequences, there is going to come a time where the idea that you have anything that reflects your behaviour being of a misogynistic nature is going to be a serious blot on your copybook. People are not going to want to have it. That is good. That is positive. When I came before the committee, we discussed that. It is the same way in other parts of our society. There is a way in which a process of change is about respecting difference and recognising that we are all different. In some ways, we have to do something particular about the long, historic disadvantages that there have been for women. Pauline McNeill, I do not know if you have another follow-up question that you would like to ask. I will try to be quick. I was going to ask you about international examples, but you did say that Scotland would be ground to breaking if we did this. I wanted to say this to illustrate what you are telling the committee. Yesterday, I gave another example of male power, which was Tim Westwood, a well-known DJ of 30 years standing, but this is every day. It is global, and we know that it is global. My question is, is there any countries at all that you could point to doing something similar? Secondly, you mentioned Ronar. Is it Russiawe from the UN? If we committed one to two, is that someone that we could get some access to through you? Just because I think that if Scotland is going to be ground breaking, it would be helpful just to get an international perspective, because obviously this is an issue which is global. If you have a look at Annex 3 in the report, you will see the frameworks from different places. There were places that we got lessons from. Washington has introduced a whole set of changes, and they have introduced an act of a piece of legislation. It defines street harassment, and you will see it. Is there any disrespectful offence over threatening statements, gestures or other conduct direct to individuals in a high-risk area? They are talking about public spaces without the individual's consent. There is that legislation. The focus is on prevention and intervention, rather than criminalisation. Their big fear was that they have a massive race problem, and they felt worried about putting any powers into the hands of police, where there was a concern that it might be used in a seriously discriminatory manner towards black men. We had discussions with the Washington people about it. In Paris, France has introduced a public harassment offence. They do on-the-spot finding, so the police on public transport and so on. For men who rub themselves up against women or who make sexual, all that stuff. They have lots of plain clothes police in the underground and so on in Paris, and they will find people there and then. We were kind of disinclined to go down that sort of route, because we thought that that was not the sort of way of creating the kind of change that we wanted to see. We were absolutely informed by those experiments that are taking place. As you see, it is a reflection of the problem being a problem everywhere. This is not just happening here, it is happening everywhere. Australia is very interested in this stuff, and in some of the states that have been experimenting, and we had evidence from people in Australia who are going to follow this very closely, because they want to introduce it at a state level if Scotland is following whatever Scotland seeks to do. We have a look at the report, because it pans that out for you about where the change is. To go back to the business that Jamie Greene raised about, Bill just reminded me. The law society gave evidence and came and interacted with us about it. For example, one of the things that they raised was the business that there are occasions when women can behave in rather ribald ways in a public space. Of course, they can be charged with behavioural offences and a breach of the peace and all that kind of thing too. It tends to be about raucous public, the stuff that we know drunken folk can do. They say that it is not a great thing to experience if you are a taxi driver. All I can say is that there is law to deal with that sort of thing. You do not need special law to protect men from that. We have got law that protects people from that. What we do not have is stuff to deal with the business of people sitting on a public tram or bus. The guy sits up close to you in the two seat and he is watching hardcore porn on his phone and he is directing the face of the phone at you so that you are exposed to this stuff and it is to discomfort you, make you feel unhappy and worried. Also engaging with women when they do not want to be engaged with and the woman being frightened to get off the bus because she thinks she will be followed home and then having to try to, but not being worried about ringing anybody in his presence in case he does something, all that stuff. We could have filled several books with the evidence that we had and I want to particularly mention young women of colour because this is really important about intersectionality, the ways in which there is a sort of multi-layers of discrimination. Young Muslim women at the bus stop and men coming up to them and whispering into their ears the stuff that they would like to do to them and how they would not get it from their own men and suggesting to them what they might look like naked and really shocking, abusive behaviour. That kind of thing is something that we have to be making a public statement about how it's just unacceptable and will not be permitted. Thank you. I think we've just got time for one final question, sadly, and I'm going to bring in Russell Finn. Thank you. I'll be very quick. Speaking to women who've been the victims of sexual violence or domestic violence or stalking or crimes of that nature, one of the common themes we hear is that they then enter the criminal justice system and that can almost re-victimize them in a sense that it could be a male-dominated, world-quen intimidating environment. I know Jamie has already asked about the delivery of this law, but I suppose the question is what can be done about the culture within the courts and the prosecution service and even the police that they experience and how that can be worked on. I know it's perhaps not your remit because you're looking at legislation and I know the direction of travel. There have been great improvements, but just whether you could give us your thoughts on that. Russell, I actually do think that one of the things in a reading of the report you'll see is that we do think that this concentrates minds about misogyny because you will go through a process of introducing it into Parliament, having debates and discussions about it, what is misogyny. Lots of learning takes place as a result of that and an awareness training is taking place by virtue of the discussions that will take place and they will take place around dinner tables and in homes and in workplaces and people will dismiss it and other people will say that they're in favour of it. Those discussions inevitably lead to a heightened awareness and it concentrates minds. I do think that you start shifting things, you create cultural change, it doesn't happen overnight but by the very virtue of the sort of debates and discussions that happen around this. That's why I really think that we've got to see the business of trying to enable equality as between the sexes. We have to enable that and it's not finished yet. We've got a way to go and it can't continue while there's any kind of abusive behaviour being targeted at women. I think that having that discussion, most men that I have that discussion with agree with that and most men will start shifting. There was a time when judges everywhere, I'm not directing it at Scotland, would have said that rape was an offence of sex and they saw it purely as somehow like the washing machine that once a man was turned on. There was no going back, the cycle had to be completed and that women were responsible if they in some way triggered that sexual arousal. Judges would be mused at the idea that that's what rape is about nowadays and they understand that it's about power, that it's about consent, the absence of consent, that you can be willing initially, but then because of the way in which you're being treated, there's a withdrawal of consent. Judges recognise all of that now. There was a time, I think, that that journey has now, and of course it's generational too, that new generations bring new learning to it. I think that that's how cultures change and I think that the law has a contribution to make in creating those cultural changes. Thank you very much indeed. I'm sadly going to have to bring this session to a close. I'm sure we could ask many more questions and have a much longer discussion, but in the meantime, grateful thanks to you, Barnas, Kennedy and Mr Brash, for joining us today. If there are issues that committee members want to pick up further with Barnas, Helen and Kennedy, we will certainly do that in writing. In the meantime, thank you very much. We'll just have a short suspension in order to allow our witnesses to leave. Thank you very much indeed. Our next agenda item is consideration of a statutory instrument, the electronic monitoring relevant disposal's Modification Scotland regulations of 2022. I refer members to paper 3. Do any members have any comments to make or are we content? Jamie Greene. I appreciate negative instruments are usually waved through nicely and quickly and apologies for taking any time, but I wanted to refer to the policy note accompanying the instrument. Essentially this is about changes to electronic monitoring and bail conditions. Is not the policy objective that this is a technical change to ensure that the policy intention of having electronically monitored bail includes specific reference to two further ways that a person on bail can have conditions varied? My question quite simply is what are these two further ways and what variations to bail conditions would they induce? It says that there had been extensive consultation with SCTS, but they are not contained in the papers or their response. It says that extensive impact assessments were undertaken, and according to the policy intention paper that this will have limited impact on the wider use of electronic monitoring of bail, but how do we know that because it does not quantify it or indeed define it? Personally I do not really know how much of an issue this is as part of the problem. I would have preferred the Government to explain a little bit more about what these variations are and what potential changes to bail would have come of it. Now they could have done that in person, which is unusual, I appreciate for negative procedure, but they could at least have done it in writing, but as a committee we are none the wiser as to what we are actually passing and for that reason I would be uncomfortable with it. I appreciate the process only that of annulment is an option available to us, but I wanted to put on the record that I do not think it is suitable just to put a one-page policy note and it does not actually explain what it is that we are being asked to pass. I just think that is a bad precedent, I am sorry. Thank you very much. Take your points that you have made so I think that the best suggestion is to follow up your queries in writing with the Scottish Government. We will do that. Anybody else got any other comments first of all? We will presumably come back next week. The committee does not need to return to this next week specifically. Obviously the committee has agreed to follow up this in writing on which we will do so on the committee's behalf and get a response back to you as soon as possible. We will try to make sure that that is in time for next week's committee meeting, but on the basis of that if any member did feel that they were still in a position not to be able to support this instrument then we would invite them to speak to the chamber desk about a motion to annul. That could be brought forward to next week's meeting and dealt with then. There is still time. This instrument has to be disposed of by 9 May. I am not suggesting that the committee should do so, but there is time available if any member wishes to do that. We will ask the Government for the response in writing and on that basis members can decide what to do. Thank you, Stephen. Pauline, do you want to come in? Thank you, Jamie Greene, for raising this. By reading of the policy note, I think that it could have been clearer where it says that there are two further ways in which a person on bail can have conditions varied. I am struggling to find out what those two variations are. If that is the substance of the SSI, I do not understand why that was not set out to the committee. It just kind of looks as if it is a technical change. You do not need to worry about it. It is just Jamie's suggestion that you should rubber stamp it. I think that that is maybe for future reference. I think that if we get an SSI note, that needs to go a wee bit further and tell us what are the two ways and what we have been asked to sign off here. Thank you. We can include that in our correspondence to the Scottish Government, so thanks for raising that. That concludes the public part of our meeting. We will now move into private session. We will have a short suspension.