 I ask members who are leaving the chamber to please do so, so we can move on, hopefully, very soon to the next item of business. I will be very happy. The next item of business is a debate on motion 294, in the name of Keith Brown, on justice, recovery, renew, transform. I would invite members who wish to speak in the debate to press their request-to-speak buttons now. I call on Keith Brown, Cabinet Secretary, to speak too and to move the motion. I'm grateful for the opportunity today to consider some of the most important challenges facing our justice system. I'd like to use this time to build on my recent, what I believe are productive discussions with the justice spokespeople of other parties on how we deliver on this Government's ambition, which is to achieve a faster, fairer and more effective justice system for the people of Scotland. As has been the case for jurisdictions internationally, the Covid pandemic and the essential public health measures have posed severe challenges to the operation of our justice system. We are under no illusions when we consider the major impact of the pandemic, and as members across the chamber will be keen to highlight, I'm sure, there were existing pressures building across the justice system pre-Covid. It's therefore appropriate to reflect on the actions that have been taken and progress made across the sector during this period. The Scottish Government responded swiftly to the immediate challenges of Covid-19, and the Parliament passed the two emergency coronavirus acts. Those continue to be vital in providing powers and measures to help protect the public, maintain essential public services and to support the economy during the current outbreak of the coronavirus. One such example are remote jury centres, one of which I was fortunate enough to visit yesterday. The use of jury centres based in cinema complexes has enabled jury trials, dealing with the most serious cases, to continue after they first restarted in July last year. The Scottish Courts and Tribunial Service quarterly statistical bulletin, published last week, showed that, despite the challenges in some recent months at the High Court, evidence-led trials have been running at an even higher level than their pre-Covid levels. That is a huge achievement, and the resumption of court business is only possible because of the collaborative efforts to innovate and embrace new ideas by our justice partners, third sector organisations, judiciary and defence community. We should, in my view in the chamber today, praise all those involved in ensuring the continuation of justice during this most challenging period. However, as is the position in England and Wales, the justice system in Scotland is facing challenges and significant backlogs in cases that cannot be addressed within existing capacity or resources. We have committed to an additional £50 million in this year's budget to further support recovery across the justice system, including increasing capacity in both the High Court and the Sheriff Court. Within our civil justice system, while backlogs remain, great progress has been made to manage recovery through the use of virtual proceedings, as well as electronic transfer of documents and innovative digital solutions. Throughout the pandemic, our community justice delivery partners, though greatly hampered by restrictions to deliver face-to-face service, have continued to support a wide range of community justice services, with a focus on prioritising vulnerable people and those who present an imminent and serious risk of harm. One of our key priorities throughout the pandemic was to ensure that victims continue to be supported, feel reassured and that they have confidence in the justice system. We were a particular way of the risks for women and children experiencing gender-based violence and provided an additional £5.75 million to front-line services, so they could respond to an increase in demand from victims of abuse. We also increased victim support Scotland's Victims Fund to help to meet the immediate financial needs of the most vulnerable victims during the pandemic. Our prisons are a unique setting, and additional measures have been required to keep those who live and work in prisons safe. Importantly, we took action to ensure that those in prisons could maintain family contact through virtual visits and mobile phones or in-cell phones across the estate. To the credit of prison and NHS staff, the virus has been well-controlled within our prisons, although we must remain vigilant. A challenge remains in relation to remand those who are in prison but have yet to have their trial or are awaiting their sentence. The number of people on remand has gone up during the pandemic at a time when overall prison numbers have reduced. While decisions on bail and remand are a matter for the independent judiciary, the Scottish Government has taken steps to ensure that community-based alternatives to remand are available. At the end of last year, the Scottish Government has brought forward regulations to allow bail to be monitored electronically. A number of justice partners have been working to prepare for this change, and, subject to all partners completing that work successfully, that can be fully commenced after the summer. If the proposed coronavirus legislation that the Government wants to introduce could potentially lead to an outcome where those in remand may stay in remand for up to a year if those powers exist. I am not sure to be perfectly honest about the connection that he makes between the coronavirus powers and the extension of remand, and I am happy to look at that further. However, the changes in terms of the pandemic, which have led to an increased level of prisoners on remand, are pretty self-evident from the backlog in the courts. The coronavirus restrictions and the new powers that have been taken have helped to reduce the backlog by some of the measures that I have introduced. If I am missing the point, I am happy to come back to the point that Jamie Greene is trying to make if that is not the point. As we emerge from the crisis, maintaining a legal aid sector will be crucial to recovery. We value and appreciate hugely the role of the legal profession and the role that is played during the pandemic, which is why we have committed to bringing forward a package of measures worth up to £20 million to help to support the legal aid sector, as well as delivering the first stage of a 10 per cent increase in fees in March. I will take that into consideration. Thank you, cabinet secretary. We have discussed this question, but when we did the reform of sentencing to extend sheriff's court powers to five years, I was always intended that, in complex cases, you would get legal aid for advocates. Does the cabinet secretary think that it is time to look at that, because it seems to be virtually impossible to get it now? I thank the member for intervention and say that we have discussed that previously, and she will know on that call where officials, and I am happy to come back to her with a fuller response. However, I think that if I can just lay out some of the measures that we have taken in response to the immediate pressures of the pandemic, that may give us some comfort, but I am happy to come back with a fuller response in due course. We have established a resilient fund worth up to £9 million, and I have recently provided another £1 million to help to support legal traineeships. I do acknowledge, though, the concerns raised by some in the legal profession with regard to the resilience fund. We remain committed to engaging with the profession and are working as a matter of urgency to explore options for the effective distribution of unallocated funds. Part of the issue was having the facts and the data that would have helped to support more rapid dispersement of that, so we are trying to work through that with partners. We are very clear that our ambition to recover the operation of the justice system also presents an opportunity to reinvigorate system-level improvements and to take forward our manifestal commitments to deliver a faster, fairer and more effective justice system for Scotland. Our manifestal commitments aim to ensure that victims' rights are at the very heart of Scotland's criminal justice system, to secure provision of support for children and young people, as well as the development of restorative justice services. Keita will be the appointment of a victims commissioner to provide an independent voice for victims, while investment of £250,000 over three years to fund a trauma specialist at NHS Education for Scotland will help to drive forward development of a trauma-informed and trauma-responsive workforce in justice services. We will also bring forward changes to ensure lifelong anonymity for complainers of sexual crimes, further increasing the confidence of victims to report crimes of the serious nature. We will engage with key stakeholders, including victims organisations, to give serious consideration to the full set of recommendations from Lady Dorian's review to deliver a justice system that survivors of sexual crimes can have confidence in. It is worth pointing out that many of those provisions and recommendations interlock with each other, and it is best that they are taken forward, or consideration of them is taken forward together at the same time. We have an aspiration to create our own bairns hoose in Scotland, an unashamedly bold aspiration. We believe that every child victim or witness has the right to consistent and holistic support, which enables them to tell their stories, access specialist services and recover from their experiences. We have committed to consult on the removal of the not-proven verdict. It is fairly plain to me that among the various parties in this chamber, there are different views within those parties, and it is right that we have a proper consultation and discussion on that. Once again, in coming with my previous comments, the not-proven verdict and what we do with that eventually will be very much dependent upon or have implications for other parts of the justice system, and for that reason it is best taken forward in that way. However, we do recognise that there is a very strong case that has been made for its abolition, but there are complex issues, and although I know that many in the chamber support the move, it is right that we consider that very carefully. Throughout the next period of renewal for our justice system, we will continue to commit to engage with the legal profession and victim support organisations on the reform of the legal aid system, taken forward by my colleague the minister. We will be taking a similarly collaborative approach in expanding the availability of mediation and arbitration and the regulation of legal services. The Crown Office has, at the direction of the outgoing Lord Advocate, significantly reformed the arrangements for the investigation of deaths and applied significant additional resources to this work. Those reforms have resulted in reductions in the duration of death investigations, and it is expected that they will continue to do so. Their full benefit needs to be allowed to work its way through the system, in my view, and the current Lord Advocate has welcomed engagement with justice spokespeople on this issue, and I look forward to future engagement with his successor. I am sure that he or she, whoever is appointed, will undertake that engagement with people across the chamber. Ensuring that people in communities across Scotland are safe and resilient is vital and will play a key role in supporting our recovery and renewal from the pandemic. Throughout the pandemic, we have continued to invest money recovered from individuals who have been convicted in order to support people, families and communities. I am very grateful. I wonder if the cabinet secretary is going to be addressing policing at any point. The reason is that I thought that there was a good question at FMQs today about body-worn cameras. I did not hear a clear answer at that point. I wonder if he can confirm that funding would be provided for a body-worn camera roll-out. I thank the member for the question. I understood the First Minister's response, but the member may well know that we are willing to investigate. There are a number of issues around body-worn cameras that I am sure the member is aware of, which the police themselves are aware of. We should look through those issues first of all, but there will be for the police officers who will be attending COP26 Police Scotland officers body-worn cameras for those armed officers, and we are looking at the further roll-out of that in due course. Throughout the period of the renewal that we have talked about for our justice system, we will continue to engage with partners. The Crown Office has, as I have said, at the direction of the outgoing Lord Advocate, significantly reformed the arrangements for deaths and applied significant additional resources to that work coming from the Scottish Government. We will ensure that people and communities across Scotland are safe as we do this. We will continue to invest the money that we recovered from individuals. So, phase 5 of the Cashback for Communities programme, running until 2023, is providing £19 million to support diversionary activity and life-changing interventions to those most at risk of being involved in anti-social behaviour, offending and entering the justice system. Coming to the final two areas, I would like to highlight community justice in prisons. It is helpful to consider the context from the hard edges Scotland report from 2019, which showed that people in the criminal justice system commonly experience severe and multiple disadvantage, including homelessness, substance misuse, offending, mental ill health and domestic violence or abuse. The latest statistics on prison show that individuals in the 10 per cent most deprived areas are over-represented in prison arrivals by a factor of 3, a finding consistent across the last decade. In addition, the proportion of individuals arriving in prison who report having no fixed abode has increased over a decade of austerity from 4.4 per cent to 7.5 per cent. Those are societal issues that need to be addressed beyond the justice system. By helping individuals earlier, we can also avoid the damaging impacts that are being visited on future generations. Our aim is that prisons should be reserved for individuals who pose a serious risk of harm and periods of imprisonment, particularly periods of remand and short custodial sentences, should only be imposed where there are no other alternatives. For those who end up in custody today, it is our commitment to continue to invest in the modernisation of the prison estate, ensuring that it is fit for purpose. That includes completing the construction of the new transformative female estate and progressing with replacements for HMP Barlinny and HMP Inverness. It is worth noting, of course, that the annual average cost per prisoner place for 2019-20 is over £38,000 a year. Short custodial sentences do little to reduce the likelihood of re-offending, which is why we extended the presumption against short sentences to 12 months or less in 2019. They disrupt families and communities, impact on life chances and adversely affect employment opportunities and stable housing. The very things that evidence shows support diversion from offending. The Government sustained in long-term programmes to promote community safety, crime prevention and rehabilitation of individuals have meant less crime and fewer victims in a decade ago. It is worth pointing out that the police service, as has been mentioned by one member, has done a fantastic job in helping to reduce crime over the last now 15 years. In developing a new national community justice strategy and exploring legislative options to divert people from prison, we aim to make our society safer for everyone, reducing re-offending, reducing recorded crime and ultimately reducing the number of victims. In conclusion, an example of which we will see that kind of preventative work undertaken by the cross-cutting work that will be undertaken by my colleague the minister for community safety, she will be taking forward in particular a thematic approach in relation to the interaction of women in the justice system. We will be taking that forward in the following parliamentary terms, setting out a clear and strategic approach to women in the justice system and we have one of the most, thankfully, diverse parliaments ever elected and very proud that my party has more female MSPs than male MSPs. We also generally have a more diverse parliament than previously and also I think potentially a more progressive parliament than previously. It's a real opportunity to harness this diversity to work collectively across different portfolios, hopefully across different parties as well, to address some systemic issues and bring forward progressive policies that will help steer us through the recovery to meet the challenges of the future. I move the motion in my name. I took on the education brief just a month before the pandemic hit and we saw 15 months of unprecedented upheaval in the system. I now take on the justice portfolio 15 months into the same pandemic, which has equally shifted the floor from beneath the feet of our justice system. I'd like to pay tribute to my predecessor Liam Kerr and I wish the new cabinet secretary well. This truly is a tough gig. Those in the chamber who I've worked with in the past will know that where there is common ground I will seek to find it and where there isn't, I will debate it respectfully and make my case. Reading today's motion and the amendments, I'm confident that there will be common ground on many issues, but perhaps not all. I don't expect agreement perhaps when we come to vote today even, but nonetheless I do want to kick off our justice debate constructively, because I accept that the events of the past year have created unexpected conundrums for us all. We are not alone in the emergence of criminal and court backlogs, but Covid only exacerbated an existing problem in Scotland because nearly 50 per cent of the current trial backlog existed pre-pandemic. We are not alone in the correlation that the emergency laws that we passed in this place have added to the workload of our front-line police, and we are not alone in being forced to innovate to find new ways of allowing justice to proceed. Because whilst we were tucked up in our houses, our front-line police, our ambulance, our fire, our prison staff, they continued their work on the front line, nose to nose with danger, and I think that we all owe them a huge debt of gratitude. It's interesting that no one has sought to remove any words from the Government's motion today, but plenty has surely been added. Let me make two observations on that. First, the motion itself focuses very narrowly on the effects of the pandemic, with no real acceptance of some of the pre-existing problems that we face. Secondly, it refers to plans to reform Scottish justice, a promise to make it fit for purpose in a modern world, but it does not explain how. Justice is an area where the Scottish Conservatives have proudly stood on a platform for clear reform. We make no apology for that reform, which resets the balance of focus on victims, on their views, on their rights, and we make no apology for that either. The Government's motion states that it is the interests of victims that should remain at the heart of necessary reforms. I agree with that, but it cannot be just words. We must follow through on that commitment. Our amendment is a starting point. We will introduce to the Parliament a Victims Bill. The bill will contain a number of very specific actions that I think that the Government can take right now to truly shift the balance. The first of those two have been discussed in this place already, Michelle's law and Suzanne's law, and I think that it is important that we refresh our memories. Why? Michelle Stewart was murdered by John Wilson. He was approved for a temporary release and allowed back into the community after serving just nine years in prison. Michelle's family was informed of his release by letter and had no say whatsoever in the matter. Her sister put it at the time, the prospect of seeing my sister's killer on the street, on the bus or in the shops, is painful. They asked us why is this allowed to happen. We did not have an answer for them then, and I do not think that we have an answer for them today. Michelle's law will put that injustice right. Suzanne Pilly, Suzanne was killed by her partner in 2010, and he refused to say where her body lies. Margaret Fleming, Linda Spence, Arlene Fraser, the list goes on and on. Suzanne's law would ensure that those who refuse to reveal the bodies of their victims will not be eligible for parole until they do so. It is sadly too often the case that the legislative reform needed is named after the names of the individual victims and often women who have suffered at the hands of evil are a point that is validly raised by Labour's amendment, which I think seeks to try and find a solution to the trauma of how we process domestic abuse and sexual violence cases in our courts. However, I cannot support their amendment because I think that we should do justice and hold a proper debate into the findings of Lady Dorian's recommendations. There are many, but I would like to know the implications of those implications. I think that we can do that as a Parliament positively and constructively. Nonetheless, those are all very somber issues to grapple with, but I think that it would send an immediate and very powerful nod to victims in Scotland that we as a Parliament are on their side if we make speedy progress on those issues. I thank the member for taking the intervention and just say that I am more than willing from my part to engage in that discussion. He will have heard what I have said already about a victims commissioner and additional trauma support for victims as well, but would he acknowledge that the changes that we have very recently made, which came into effect in the 21st of March, both in relation to the cases of what he has termed Michelle's law and Suzanne's law, do take that substantially further down the road? When he does bring forward a bill if that is what happens, will he take into account those that I think are very welcome changes for the Conservatives? Jamie Greene? The welcome changes, but they are not going far enough nor are they going fast enough. We go back to November 2019, when then, just as Secretary Humsley used that, I stated that he would make speedy progress on this issue. The families of those victims, and there are many victims, are sitting there watching this Parliament, dragging its feet on those issues. That is why we are bringing forward a bill on those matters in the first 100 days of this Parliament, and rightly so. We also call for proper budgeting support for victims and support services around that. The third sector, and it is important to recognise that, plays a crucial role in supporting victims and being that first port of call, but equally the third sector can play a vital role in the preventative agenda. I think that that is one that merits sensible discussion across the chamber. I note that the Green Party amendment alludes to that. I do not disagree. Four in ten prisoners in Scotland report to have taken drugs in prison, not before, not outside, in the prison itself. Nearly half of them were under the influence of drugs at the time of their arrest. Scotland has the worst drug problem in Europe. Those two statistics do not live in isolation. Sadly, it is often prison staff who bear the brunt of that. Next, in our amendment, we are calling for the doubling of sentences on crimes against emergency services workers. This is a call that has largely fallen on death in recent years. Our view is simply clear on this. It is only right that those who go out of their way to harm our front-line personnel are punished accordingly. Why? Because Scottish police staff were attacked on average 20 times a day last year. 50 per cent of our police officers are facing burnout according to the Federation. The Scottish Police Memorial, which sits in the grounds of the Police Scotland College, should serve as a stark and very visible reminder of the sacrifice that they have paid for anybody in the chamber who is in any doubt about the gravity of the issue. I really have a lot to cover. Next, I want to reaffirm our position on the presumption against short sentences. I listened carefully to what the cabinet secretary said. I presume that the rationale behind that was that they wanted more offenders to have alternatives to prison. That is fine, but what happened to those alternatives? We know that 300,000 hours of community service sentences were white, slight and clean. The alternative must be meaningful. The alternative must command the confidence of the public—the public who has the right to understand that justice has truly been served. The final call on our amendment, as alluded to, is the anomaly of Scotland's not-proven verdict. I admit that there are mixed views on that in the chamber, perhaps, and also in the legal profession, but that cannot and should not be a barrier to ending what has long been a very curious, often misunderstood and often controversial verdict in the Scottish law. It is abundantly clear that there are structural issues that must take place in Scotland. How can our legal institutional frameworks be improved to truly better serve victims and their families? In my closing minutes, I apologise. That is a point raised, I think, by the liberal Democrats, so they have moved apologies. On fatal accident inquiries, a very valid point, a position in which those benches will support decision time. That also ties in with the much-needed reform of the role of the Lord Advocate. The First Minister herself acknowledges and concedes that following the saga of the Alex Salmond trial. The shambolic and wrongful prosecution of two men in relation to the sale of the Rangers football club, which cost the taxpayers £20 million and rising. I think that it points towards embedded flaws that still remain unaddressed, and they must be addressed if we stand the chance of full public confidence. None of the above is restrictive. There is a crisis of recruitment and retention within our legal aid sector. For example, one defence lawyer said that we are staring into an abyss. Trouble for the sector now is trouble for the entire system in the future, and he is so right. The whole system is creaking at the seams. I do not think that the topic of judicial reform should be controversial. A Parliament, which collectively agrees to reset the balance of our justice system, back into the interests of victims must and should find common ground to do so. But equally, where clear blue water exists in our approach, those benches are proud to be the voice of those in society whose own rights have often been lost in this debate. If the Government is serious about shifting the sands towards victims, then it must show it through action. If the victim's law does not materialise in Government time, then we will put it on the radar in ours and let others put barriers in its way at their peril. We owe it to those victims. It is time to act, Presiding Officer. I move the amendment in my name. I now call on Pauline McNeill to speak to and move amendment 294.3. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I move the amendment in my name. I begin by thanking Cabinet Secretary and Ashtenam Minister for meeting with me yesterday and I hope that we can continue to work in that fashion. I, too, like Jamie Greeneam, am delighted to lead for Scottish Labour on the justice brief in this new Parliament and I am delighted to say that I will be joined by Katie Clark, who will bring her knowledge and passion to the briefing. I look forward to her first speech today. It has been a long while since I have had any involvement in justice issues. I was saying that to Cabinet Secretary only last week. I served as the chair of the Justice Committee what seems like a century ago. I presided over the international around fingerprint evidence inquiry, so I have a lot of catching up to do, so please bear that in mind. The approach that I want to take is similar to the approach that Jamie Greeneam outlined this afternoon, which is to find common ground with the Scottish Government and the other parties, to work to make a difference to the everyday experiences of victims in our system, to apply human rights and fairness in sentencing and in our prisons, to recognise the work of Police Scotland, but to ensure accountability for the decisions that they make and not just in the tragic case of Shaco Bayer, who died in custody. We desperately need answers on that, but in all cases we need accountability. I do not understand why the previous cabinet secretary did not stand up for police officers on the front line in relation to early vaccination. We know that 40 officers caught the virus after proceeding over public disorder in Glasgow only a few weeks ago. The Scottish Government recognises the importance of a progressive justice system with alternatives to custody and investment in community service and other alternatives. There is an urgent need to tackle the backlog of cases that is left victims waiting longer for justice. We also need to ensure that our courts are not overusing remand in prisons, a practice that is putting pressure on already overcrowding prisons and people who we need to remember are not convicted prisoners. A recent report shows that for young adult prisoners aged 16 to 20, almost half of them were on remand and we need to answer as to why so many young offenders are in custody awaiting trial. I also want to indicate that some of my work in this role is looking and tackling violence against women in our society. It will be a central theme of my work, and that is why I particularly welcome the contribution of Ash Denham, who I know is going to be doing very serious work on this. Like everywhere in the world, violence against women and girls is widespread in Scotland, and at least one in five women in Scotland will experience domestic abuse in her lifetime, and an average of four rapes is reported per day. However, the crime is chronically under-reported. We have said so many times in this Parliament that these figures will mask the true extent of sexual violence. I am also pleased to work with Rhoda Grant, who will be summing up in the debate and the work that she has done on violence against women. If you need to be convinced of that after the high-profile cases of Sarah Everard, Libby Squires, Beba Henry and Nicole Smallman and the elderly lady Esther Brown who was raped and killed in her flat in Woodlands in Glasgow last Tuesday, and many other women, then listen to the eight-part podcast by Sam Pooley, BBC Scotland, on who killed Emma. Emma called Will, who was murdered 16 years ago, and her body found in Wood's near Roberton in South Lanarkshire, and it is the testimony of the women who knew Emma, who were working in Glasgow's red light areas that was known at the time, who say that they were regularly assaulted and raped by men, but the complaints were not taken seriously. I believe that any attack on any woman is unacceptable and every woman should be treated as a human being. No one has been brought to justice for Emma's killing. The case was reopened in 2015, but has stalled despite a key suspect that was named in the report to Kenoffice in 2018. The biggest manhunt in the history of Strathclyde police continues to be unsolved, and the killer of Emma called Will remains free, and that leaves the family of Emma still without justice, while also obviously threatening the lives of other women. I wonder if the cabinet secretary would commit that he and the next Lord Advocate will treat that as a priority. I would be happy to give way, if you wish. I thank the member for her challenge, but she will know that the decisions on investigations are for the investigatory authorities. Just to say that she has said in her own words about the level of resource and effort that the police have put into this, and I am sure that that will continue. I am happy to raise it with the new Lord Advocate when that person is appointed. I really do appreciate that. Talking about the prime suspect in the case, investigative journalist Sam Poling said, all the evidence that I have seen suggests that this man is incredibly sexually violent towards women and is serious questions to answer about the murder of Emma called Will. Sarah Everard's death also painted a clear picture of flaws at our society on the handling of gender-based violence. Authorities advise women to stay home to protect themselves and not walk alone at night, sparking outrage. Their recommendation is to put the onus on women to stop gender-based violence, as is often the case. We therefore must be clear in this Parliament that we will stand up for women and demand safer streets. Data on forecast schedule trials on Scottish Courts suggests that the number of criminal cases that are registered but still waiting trial at the end of April 2021 was nearly 50,000 more than double the number in April 2020. The Scottish Courts and Tribunal service has predicted that the backlog will not be cleared until 2025. Yesterday, I am aware that Cabinet Secretary for Justice was not able to put a date on the backlog and when it will be cleared, but I hope that we can have more detailed discussions on that. I will be happy to give way. I thank the member for taking the intervention just to say that, of course, that is what the court service says and that is what the figures suggest would be. The point that I was making yesterday should be down to all of us to see if we can truncate and bring forward that backlog by taking some of the measures that I have mentioned. That is the scale of the challenge that faces not just Scotland but other jurisdictions. However, if we can work together to try to reduce that, we will all benefit from that. Thank you. Let us see what progress we can make, but I have to acknowledge that point. Like Jamie Greene, I want to make a point about legal aid, which has become scarcity in many cases. It has driven many good lawyers from the profession, not only on the impact on the accused but on the whole of the system as a whole. It is not just good housekeeping. We need to make sure that it is good justice as well. Justice denied is not just justice denied to the accused but also to victims. I am pleased that the cabinet secretary has specifically mentioned that point. On wider reform, it is time to separate out the role of the Lord Advocate and the Solicitor General to protect the integrity of the Crown Office and procurate our fiscal service. In Labour's amendment, we highlight the review group chaired by Lord Justice Clark Lady Dory. I want to make it clear to the Conservative benches that we are not acknowledging or accepting all the recommendations, but we want to simply highlight them. Because she has recommended a new specialist court that should be created to deal with sexual offences. We must remember that men are victims of violence, of sexual crimes, although far fewer men and women are raped and sexually assaulted. The effects are just as devastating. Lady Dory said that the review was prompted in particular by the growth in the volume and complexity of sexual offending cases. Finally, it is clear that we need to have anonymity for complaints of sexual offences, and many people think that that is the case already, but it is not. In closing, I just want to say about the amendments. We will support the amendment by the Scottish Liberal Democrats. There is a lot in the Conservative amendment that we can support. We support the idea of a more victim-centred system. We believe that short-term sentences and alternatives to custody are central to a justice system. We also think that the emergency workers legislation and the current framework of legislation should give sheriffs the necessary provisions to be able to give heavy sentences to those who attack emergency workers. In relation to the Green amendment, I would be grateful if Maggie Chapman— Can you bring your remarks to close, please? Yes, you could just clarify. Sorry, I was told, but I had nine minutes. If the Greens could just finish on this point, if you do not mind, it would be helpful to us to know when it comes to decision time what the Green amendment means by institutionally violent, because there is a lot in it that we would like to support. Thank you very much for saying that. Thank you. I now call Maggie Chapman to speak to and move amendment 294.4, please. I move amendment 294 in my name. I would like to begin by expressing my heartfelt thanks to all those involved in supporting survivors and victims of all forms of violence throughout the pandemic. As is recorded in my register of interests, I have spent my most recent pre-election life working for a rape crisis centre. I have seen the consequences of lockdown and social isolation on people trapped in violent, abusive and unhealthy environments. We still live in a deeply unequal, a deeply patriarchal society in which the abuse of power causes life changing, sometimes life ending, physical and mental harm. We should not accept this as inevitable. What I have also seen is the mind-blowing resilience of so many survivors—the mutual support that they can give each other when adequate resources allow for safe and confidential sharing of stories, where they are believed and where they are not judged. I want to pay tribute to the work of all those who provide those safe spaces, supporting survivors of gender-based violence, often putting their own wellbeing at risk. Vicarious trauma is real. Workers who support survivors of gender-based and, I dare say, other forms of violence are subjected to the risk of vicarious trauma on a daily basis. Those workers do phenomenally important work and are also incredibly resilient, but we should not have to rely on the resilience of individuals. Gender-based violence, indeed, I believe that most violence is not inevitable. It is a product of oppression. It is a consequence of often intersecting inequalities. It is a direct result of imbalances of power. That brings me to what I fundamentally believe our justice system should be about. Our justice system should exist to correct imbalances of power. Equality in front of the law is fundamental to any democratic society. Our justice system should focus on doing what it can to correct the power inequalities that exist in our society as a result of gender, race, employment status, wealth and other issues that so often cause division. A justice system that seeks to redress abuses of power is of vital importance to a fair, equal, safe, secure and well society. The system that we have inherited is one that acts in the interests of the powerful in too many instances. The unjust use of power that leads to people being killed in the workplace, such as the stockline disaster of 2004, where nine people died and 33 were injured because a corporation did not take health and safety laws seriously enough. Their penalty is £400,000 fine, just under £45,000 per person per life. The woefully low rate of prosecution of men who rape and sexually assault women and the lack of trauma-informed support available to traumatised survivors. Abuses of power that mean BAME people are shamefully overrepresented in prisons and are often disproportionately the victims of hate crime. Abuses of power that result in prisons being used overwhelmingly to incarcerate the poor while failing to reduce offending. Where communities have to live with the negative consequences of environmental injustices, like those living in the shadow of Mossmorran, where the community have had their lives ruined by continuous flaring, visible from the other side of the fourth, sirens and dangerous hydrocarbon pollution. While the health and safety executive has finally submitted a prosecution to the procurator fiscal, do we really think that an individual causing this level of social damage would have been left unprosecuted for all of these years? In our prisons, we have shamefully high levels of suicide and self-harm. I know that I am not the only one to have been affected by the death just over three years ago of Katie Allen, a victim of bullying. Since Katie died, there have been more than 20 suicides in our prisons. We urgently need to transform the culture of our prisons so that they can focus on reducing offending. We have to right those roles. We must take a preventative approach. Prevention produces better outcomes for individuals, for families and for communities. Education, youth work and social work can play key roles in crime prevention. Those also help to create social capital, social solidarity and to build community, but they need to be adequately resourced. Communities should also be involved in the planning and delivery of these services. Spending resources on early intervention and education is vital and is also a crucial part of any justice and crime prevention programme. Early intervention can help to identify risk factors, as well as to explore ways in which people can develop to their fullest potential. Supporting interventions at the points where people come into contact with the criminal justice system is important. For instance, women in prisons are vulnerable. Many are there because of histories of abuse and substance dependency. They need support and treatment, often not incarceration. I will send Pauline McNeill the information on institutional violence that there is a lot in women's prisons, particularly that we really need to address. The Netherlands has done an interesting thing in that area. It has reduced crime by taking a radical stance against prisons. In fact, they have closed more than half of their prisons. That frees up resources that can be used to prevent crime rather than simply dealing with its effects. In closing, I have spoken in this chamber already about care and how the care ethic should form the foundation of our economy. I have also spoken about holistic approaches that take account of underlying causes of inequalities. Both of those are vital to our justice system, too. I look forward to working with others across the chamber to deliver the transformation that our justice system needs and that our country deserves. I now call on Liam McArthur to speak to and move amendment 294.2. I, too, start by welcoming the cabinet secretary, Jamie Green and Maggie Chapman, to their new roles and Pauline McNeill back to her old stomping ground. She will find that many of the issues have not moved on a great deal since last she was on the brief. It feels strange to be the lone survivor on the justice brief from the last session, but I look forward to working collaboratively across the chamber on some of the pressing issues affecting our justice system that have already been identified in the speeches so far. We are at a critical juncture everywhere we look. The pandemic has exposed and exacerbated existing weaknesses. In justice, the weak seams were already close to giving way. Victims often said that their experience of court was actually worse than the experience of crime itself. The court case backlog was a source of real concern over 12 months ago. Pre-Covid's Scottish Liberal Democrat research found that over 50,000 cases breached the 26-week target from caution or charge to verdict. That is around one in three cases. Against that backdrop, it is no great surprise that 2025 is perhaps the earliest we can expect the current backlog to be dealt with. New thinking and new ways of doing things are needed. That includes the Crown Office. It is not working for anyone, not for victims, not for witnesses, not for those who offend and not for the people working within it despite their best efforts. We need to be honest about the problems that we face and my amendment speaks to just one area crying out for reform. I know others in this chamber, and we have heard it already this afternoon, recognise that the current system of fatal accident inquiries is not working. In 2019, Scottish Liberal Democrats revealed the extent of the FAI backlog. We found an outstanding inquiry into two deaths that have been waiting for eight years. We found another completed in 2014-15 that occurred 10 years after the death. At the time, I said that waiting a decade to learn the circumstances of a loved one's death was scandalous, since then reports of decade-long delays keep coming forward. The inquiry into deaths of four in the Super Puma helicopter crash off the coast of Sumbra and Shetland in 2013 completed just last year. The inquiry into the death of Stanislaw Banya in 2010 concluded in August 2020. The inquiry into the death of Borgsloch Coppich, who died in March 2011, concluded in March 2021. Meanwhile, the inquiry into the deaths of John Ewell and Lamarra Bell in 2015 in that tragic crash on the M9 is yet to begin. I am not defending extraordinary delays, but do you accept that sometimes there has to be a health and safety inquiry, an aerospace inquiry, which will prevent an FAI proceeding, or if there is criminal proceedings yet again, that FAI inquiry is stopped in its tracks? I would certainly accept that there are mitigating circumstances in some instances, and therefore it would emphasise the importance of keeping families of those victims informed throughout the process. I do not even think that that has necessarily happened. However, that speaks to a system that is broken. It is difficult to imagine the pain and frustration that loved ones must feel when such tragedy is followed by such a long silence. Scottish Liberal Democrats, when a full independent review to consider if the FAI system should be removed as a Crown Office responsibility altogether, assurances from the Scottish Government and Lord Advocate, promises of extra funding to fix the problems have simply failed to deliver the change that is required. In England, Wales and Northern Ireland, a distinct service handles such inquiries, an independent challenge function that keeps things moving. My amendment calls for a review to consider this and other options for kick-starting reform of the checks and balances in our justice system. That would also open up the opportunity to reflect on whether the Lord Advocate's role as both a prosecutor and the Government's main legal adviser is appropriate. That is not a new question, but in the later months of the last Parliament, the apparent conflict of interest between those duties came into sharper focus and in sharper criticism. Separate positions with an independent director of prosecution to run the COPFS could bring both focus to the task of recovery and justice and with it a healthier separation of powers. Even the impression of a conflict risks undermining the integrity of such an important role. I raised that with the First Minister last month and we welcome more detail from the cabinet secretary on the Government's plans for a review. I am painfully aware of the many other issues that I have not been able to touch on, and I turn on to them in closing remarks, not least in relation to offender management and prisons. Are prisons full to overflowing? We have a rate of incarceration in Scotland that is shameful, higher than almost every other country in Europe. No less shameful is the conditions in which many of those being held, found themselves, cells built by the Victorians for one, are being used to house two experts, question whether or not this is compliant with human rights law. Moreover, a quarter of those being held have not even been convicted of a crime. The remand population is completely out of control. I am pleased that the Government's motion speaks of transformation and welcome to the amendments from Pauline McNeill and Maggie Chapman. I hope that there is a genuine willingness to take the steps that are necessary to deliver the transformation that we need to see in our justice system. I move the amendment in my name. Thank you. We now move to the open debate and members wishing to participate may wish to ensure that they have pressed their request to speak buttons. I call Michelle Thompson to be followed by Pam Gosall. I plan to address two areas in this short speech. First, I would like to commend the Scottish Government's commitment to creating a register of interests for members of the judiciary. I also congratulate the legal journalist Peter Cherby for his longstanding commitment to the principle stemming from his petition of 2012. In preparing for this, I have read with interest the arguments that were made against this proposal, particularly those of the right hon. Lord Carlaway. He draws heavily on the refreshed statement of judicial ethics in arguing that there is no need for change. I take a consequentialist or end result approach to the ethics of this matter rather than a rule-based or deontological approach. In other words, we as public servants in this place fully accept the need for a register of our pecuniary interests, not only because of the risk of our interests affecting our lawmaking but also because of the perception that they may influence our lawmaking. The end, in this case, does indeed justify the means. We fully accept that we have both a duty and an obligation to do this in bearing the privilege of acting and being paid as servants of the public. What makes judges different? Surely, as Professor Allan Patterson of Strathclyde University notes, transparency is part and parcel of accountability. Lord Carlaway further states, and I quote, I remain of the view that any monitoring of judicial conduct, including judges' interests relative to the performance of their duties, should remain a matter for the judiciary and not for government or Parliament. Really? That can only be described as judiciary marking their own homework. That leads me on to my second key section of this speech, that of the law society marking their own homework in the form of lawyers regulating lawyers. I must declare an interest in this area being one of the few complainants who have successfully navigated the vagaries of the law society processes. Despite, I hope, not being without intellectual means, as a consumer, I found the process complex, opaque and time consuming. It is my belief, and it is my belief, that the overarching legislation that governs this process is not fit for purpose nor of its time. Other disciplines, such as the medical or charity sectors, have long since moved away from marking their own homework and the application of beyond all reasonable doubt as a test. There are clearly critical issues with the processes adopted, which are contrary to the principles of better regulation and particularly the need to be consistent, accountable and transparent. I support the calls for reform from the Esther Robertson review. She said, I concluded that those who use legal services and those who deliver those services will be best served in the future by independent regulation that meets internationally recognised regulation principles. Ms Robertson was not alone. As more recently the CMA noted, separating regulation from representation will increase trust in the sector and result in better regulation. The cabinet secretary has accountability for a huge portfolio, and I respect the fact that the challenges to recover, renew and transform justice are significant. At some point, not today, I hope to ask the minister about the status of the public consultation that sought to seek consensus on the way forward with regard to the future of the legal services regulatory framework for Scotland. However, I note that this consensus or compromise may prove elusive, and that appears to be the view of some within the law society themselves. Recently, an article in legal practice management by Neil Stevenson, the chief executive of the Scottish Legal Complaints Commission, questioned if a compromise is found, is that a compromise in the best interests of the profession and the public, or a compromise between organisations with understandable vested interests? In closing, I note that Stevenson quotes Stephen Mason, who undertook a review of legal regulation in England and Wales. Mason notes, The regulatory framework should better reflect legitimate needs and expectations of the more than 90 per cent of the population for whom it is not currently designed, and that is consumers. I call Pam Gosall to be followed by Rona Mackay. First of all, I wish good luck to everybody delivering their maiden speeches today. I know how it feels and it's very proud that I stood here last week and I delivered mine. I welcome the opportunity to speak in this debate. This is my first speech in this debate in the chamber, and it's on an issue that everybody really here has something to relate to. Think about it. Do you really feel safe in our homes, at work, at work, kids at school, walking down our streets? Who is responsible for keeping us safe and who is supposed to protect us when we are most vulnerable? It does not give me great joy in asking people today whether they feel safe in their homes, at work or when walking down the streets—justice, victims, catching criminals. Those are issues that should be at the heart of the governing in our country, but what do we see those things really mean for the SNP? Before the pandemic, violent crime rose for the last five years, with non-sexual crimes of violence having risen by 50 per cent between 14, 15 and 1920. I ask you, as a susceptible Cabinet Secretary, that SNP spends double the amount of criminals than victims. It costs £43.1 million on offender services in 2021-22, but for those that are victims at the hands of those criminals, it is a miserly £18.2 million. I ask you, as a fair Cabinet Secretary, most areas in Scotland have fewer front-line police on the beat since the SNP police merger. I ask you, is this the SNP taking crime seriously? I am hoping that you can basically respond to when you are summing up, if I can get on with some of the words here. If I can speak to the SNP, two 16 promises broken on the flagship victim surcharge fund, the SNP did not provide a fifth of the money that they pledged. I ask you, is this supporting the most vulnerable society, Cabinet Secretary? Only half of the violent crimes are going to jail. I ask you, is this sending the message out that the Government is fighting criminals, Cabinet Secretary? The criminal court trials backlog more than doubled in a year and will not be cleared for years. I ask you, is this the Government that is taking the responsibility seriously, Cabinet Secretary? We are at breaking point due to the poor management and effectiveness of the SNP in Scotland. Presiding Officer, this is not what the Scottish people deserve from the SNP Scottish Government. We need to do better. The SNP Government is playing with people's lives and livelihoods. The Scottish courts and the tribunal services say that it will take four years for the court backlogs to reach a sense of normality. This is not good enough. How many victims will have to wait for justice to be served? How many families will have to go through emotional torment while the perpetrators and the criminals are able to evade justice? After 14 years of failure from this Government, letting down the people of Scotland, I am surprised that the Government is still pushing its dividing separist agenda. Before they blame the United Kingdom Government, let us remind you that justice is a devolved power, meaning that the SNP Scottish Government is responsible for ensuring people's safety in their communities. Our communities deserve to see their police force on the streets. When is it last time that you saw some police on the beat? Today, they are nowhere to be seen. Why? The SNP centralisation. There was once a time when victims were at the heart of the justice system and criminals were treated like criminals. Today, criminals in Scotland are treated better than the victims. Why? Is the SNP favour of that? Our emergency workers are true heroes and have showed incredible bravery during the coronavirus pandemic. It is disturbing to see that there has been 851 assaults on emergency workers in the west of Scotland during the pandemic when those workers are keeping Scotland safe. I would like to move on to knife crime. Knife crime is a blight on our communities that has no place in a civilised society, but where I live in East Dunbartonshire, there has been a worrying spike in knife and violent crime just two weeks ago. A gang of youths out of a car wearing balacalavas stabbed a 17-year-old before chasing him nearly half a mile. In addition to this last week, a 24-year-old man was rushed to hospital with serious injuries after being attacked by two men with knives. I want to stand here today and give confidence to our residents, but the reality is that those crimes could happen to any one of us. It is just not good enough and the SNP needs to step up, take the fight to the criminals or step aside and let the Scottish Conservatives do the job that they are failing to do. The Scottish Conservatives would keep dangerous offenders off the streets, restore local policing and champion victims' rights. That is a change that we would see for 100 days—the next 100 days—from the Scottish Government, actions not words. If the SNP is serious about tackling crime, it will work together with the Scottish Conservatives to give victims the protection that they deserve, with the victims' law, and put the criminals behind bars. There are no excuses. Rona Mackay Before I start my speech, I would like to say that Pam Gosal asked an awful lot of questions there but was not prepared to listen to the answers, which seems very odd. I am very pleased to be speaking in this important debate this afternoon. It is such a challenging time for our justice system on many levels. First, I reiterate the Scottish Government's motion to commend the commitment and innovation of our justice partners and stakeholders in keeping the wheels of justice turning during the pandemic by introducing the many innovative solutions that have been adopted to address the mounting case log and to clear the backlog. As deputy convener of the Justice Committee in the last session, I know how quickly and efficiently resources such as remote duty centres and cinemas were set up to address the mounting case load and tackle the backlog, while civil business was moved online. All that was helped by an additional £50 million in this year's Scottish Government budget to support recovery across the justice system. Setting up these centres has enabled pre-pandemic capacity to be restored for solemn business. It is hugely inventive and state-of-the-art solution to the challenges around jury trials faced by jurisdictions around the world. As we slowly emerge from the pandemic, the SNP Government will undertake a review of Scotland's prosecution system to deliver fairer, faster and more effective justice. Criminal justice system must now focus on three things—recover, returning to the pre-pandemic capacity and addressing backlogs across the whole system. Good progress has been made, and with the resumption of Sheriff Court summary criminal trials in April, those have already returned to 61 per cent of the pre-COVID average. However, we must be realistic about the backlog and the effect that this has had on victims whose trials have been postponed, particularly victims of sexual crimes. Their pain has increased immeasurably. Their pain has increased immeasurably due to the unavoidable delay caused by the pandemic. We must renew, prioritise the resolution of cases at the earliest opportunity and embed new ways of working. Crucially, our manifesto sets out a wide range of commitments aimed at ensuring victims' rights at the heart of Scotland's criminal justice system. I am pleased that we will continue to support victims groups and appoint a victims commissioner to provide an independent voice for victims and witnesses. We need to transform change outcomes for those affected by the criminal justice system. That brings me nicely on to a subject very close to my heart. As convener of the cross-party group on women's justice, we know that there are many issues that affect women and their families that we must address as previous speakers have outlined. I am pleased that there is a new focus on that from the Government. I thank the minister for meeting with me earlier. There are still far too many women in prison, women who have been the victims of much more serious offences than they have been accused of. Many are victims of physical, emotional and sexual abuse, including coercive control or childhood trauma, which can of course be a driver for their offending. Colleagues, if you remember anything from my plea to keep women out of prison it is this. It is estimated that eight out of ten women in custody at any time have suffered head injuries predominantly caused by domestic abuse. It does not take a genius to see that prison is not the place for them. It wrecks families and lives. Holistic mentoring can be the alternative to prosecution, and I am pleased that we have been able to provide that with so many excellent agencies. Our cross-party group wrote to the previous cabinet secretary for justice, asking for diversion from prosecution alternatives to remand and residential rehabilitation pathways for women. I know that those are being considered. I am delighted that the review will consider reform of corroboration and the three-verdic system, including in recognition of the strong case that can be made for abolition, a consultation on the removal of the not-proven verdict, as the cabinet secretary outlined and that Lady Dorian's review will be part of that. I welcome this discussion. Corroboration and not-proven are the key reasons why for such a low prosecution rate in sexual crimes, and that needs to be addressed urgently. The Scottish Government will develop a new funding regime for victim support organisations and introduce a justice-specific knowledge and skills framework for trauma-informed practice. I am overjoyed that we will reform how children and young people are treated by the justice system and introduce the Bairns Hoos. In the last session, the justice committee visited Norway to see a model of the Barna Hoos, which most Scandinavian countries have introduced. It is safe to say that we were blown away by what we witnessed. At present, young people caught up in the justice system have to go to many multiple different services in multiple locations. In the Bairns Hoos, all the care and support of a child and their family needs is delivered under one roof in a welcoming and safe environment. The Scottish Government is also investing significant levels of funding and front-line support services to ensure that victims of gender-based violence can safely access the support that they need. I echo all the comments from Maggie Chapman and Pauline McNeill on this. Of the recently reported rise in convictions for violence in 2019-20, more than half were accounted for by the new offences under Scotland's new domestic abuse act. By strengthening our domestic abuse laws, such as the introduction of domestic abuse protection orders passed in the last session, the Scottish Government has provided police and prosecutors with greater powers to tackle this insidious crime. In conclusion, I look forward to the Government's progressive and transformative review of justice to address issues in modern Scotland. We know that the legal system in Scotland has a proud and world-renowned heritage, but that should not mean that it is keeping it an aspect and that improvements can never be made. I believe that that is the point that we have now reached. I call Katie Clark to be followed by James Dornan and this is Ms Clark's first speech in this chamber. It is a huge pleasure to be able to make my first speech in this Parliament and to take this opportunity to thank everybody who supported me to get here, to be a Labour representative for the west of Scotland and to all in this Parliament for their kindness during the first few weeks. I welcome this debate about how we return to pre-pandemic capacity in the justice system, how we address the backlog in cases, what can be learnt from our experiences during Covid and, most importantly, how we transform a system that so often in the past has failed victims and, indeed, sometimes accused to. And also often a system that has failed to prevent crime or provide rehabilitation. As Pauline Kinley said, I have experienced working as a solicitor in the Scottish courts and I have also been involved in campaigning on civil liberties and human rights issues over many years. I also worked for the trade unions unison as a lawyer, taking legal cases on behalf of workers and with a team that dealt with thousands of criminal injury compensation cases on behalf of workers who were injured at work. The criminal injury compensation scheme was designed to give compensation to victims of crimes but has been eroded again and again over the decades indeed by the UK Conservative Government, which is quite interesting given some of the comments that we have heard in this chamber today. However, whilst criminal injury compensation is a devolved area, the Scottish Government continues to take part in the UK Government scheme, so I hope that during my time in this Parliament I will be able to persuade the Scottish Government to introduce a scheme in Scotland that adequately compensates the victims of crimes for injuries. The amendment that Labour has put down today puts emphasis on the continued prevalence of violence against women in society. Pauline McNeill, Maggie Chapman and Rona Mackay have already spoken powerfully about the importance of women in the justice system. The amendment acknowledges that Covid-19 restrictions have increased the risks for women who are victims of violence and has hindered their access to justice. The amendment calls for the creation of specialist domestic abuse and sexual offences courts. I urge the Government to look at that as a matter of urgency, because the reality is that violence against women is endemic in society. Recent figures yet again have shown the numbers of crimes that are linked to domestic violence and, indeed, the levels of convictions for offences such as rape and attempted rape. Out of the 2,344 reported rapes and attempted rapes, in the most recent statistics there were only 130 convictions. The criminal justice system fails women and this Parliament's job is to ensure that they get justice. It is also our duty to make sure that everybody's fundamental rights in society are protected and that that includes the right to protest. When we are debating issues around justice, we must remember that the backdrop to the debate is the emergency Covid legislation that has given the state unprecedented powers in all parts of the UK. As we go forward, we have to make sure that we fight to defend our fundamental civil rights and human rights in this country. That is not the first time that I have spoken in a Parliament, but it is the first time that I am speaking in a debate where a leader of the Labour Party has appointed me as a front bench spokesperson. I thank Anna Sauer for offering me a role in the justice team. I am particularly delighted to be working with Pauline McNeill. I hope that Pauline does not mind me saying this, but we have known each other since 1985. I am very well aware of her campaign on many issues. I met Pauline McNeill just after the minor strike, and I strongly welcome the independent review of the convictions of minors that took place during that strike, fought for by Neil Findlay, the NUM and Thomson solicitors. I strongly urge the Government to legislate in the first year of this Parliament for the pardon scheme that has been proposed. The Covid pandemic has, of course, had a massive impact on the justice system. There is a huge backlog in civil and criminal cases, which has denied justice to victims, survivors and accused. SAGE has recognised that prisons are a high-risk environment for Covid and have recommended the universal vaccination of prison staff and prisoners. I would ask that the Government look at what the Prison Office Association is saying and make vaccination priorities in prisons. All my experience in the justice system has told me what a highly political arena it is. It has often suggested that justice is impartial and is applied without regard to wealth power of status, but the reality is that the justice system is often dealing with some of the poorest in society and class as a major issue. We need to look at who ends up behind bars and why. Most are male and male violence is a major issue in offending, and most offenders come from very deprived communities. The reality is that the victims of crime also mainly come from working-class communities. I look forward in the coming period to working constructively across the chamber to solutions to long-standing and often difficult challenges about how we prevent crime, how we ensure that all in society have justice, and how we deliver the kind of society that means that crime is something that we do not need to fear. I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in today's debate on the recovery, renewal and transformation of justice post-pandemic. I add my colleagues' impassioned words on justice with a few observations of my own. I want to acknowledge the Scottish Police for their work throughout the pandemic. All of us here in the chamber have had the luxury of working from home and their courage and commitment to providing peace and security during this grim year has not gone unnoticed. Sometimes, under the most extreme of circumstances, we will forever be indebted to them. However, just because it feels that the world was put on hold does not mean that the pursuit of justice and an equal and fair society should be put on hold. There still exists an institutional injustice within Scottish society that has continued to flaunt and flourish during the pandemic. We were all witnesses to the disgraceful scenes in Glasgow this spring when a quote-unquote small minority of Rangers fans took over George Square, costing the city a significant amount of money, reputational damage and dignity. I will not delve into this too much, as I have already done so in this chamber, but I will say that although those incidents would have been out with the scope of my initial draft members' bill, it is clear that the background to these riots has kick-started another debate on strict liability. Maybe we are all used to the chaos and vitriol that can surround football and make excuse this behaviour as a result. It is all just part of the game. However, every country plays football, and not every country has to deal with it. And we, as Scots, must be better. We are better than this. Quite rightly, the Scottish Government is committed to a multitude of radical steps that can transform our justice system after the pandemic, most notably through the consultation on the removal of the not-proven verdict. Therefore, innovative steps such as the introduction of strict liability should be kept on the table too. Signoffs have a great deal of sympathy for both Pauli McNeill's and Maggie Chapman's amendments and support any protection for women and the BAME community. I also recognise that the Scottish Government has a strong record in challenging racism and funding initiatives to combat it, whilst always working with third sector organisations that include our diverse minority communities in Scotland. I welcome the commitment in the SNP manifesto to create a new programme of anti-racist education schools, modelled after a successful Thai campaign. We all know that education is the key to stamping out hatred, and I applaud the Scottish Government for investing over £15 million to sport anti-sectarian education in our schools and workplaces. Yet, by its absence, from the face of the Greens amendment or anywhere else in this debate, it appears clear that there still exists what seems to be the last acceptable form of racism here in Scotland. Catholics make up at least 16 per cent of our population, and just over 5 per cent of our non-British born population have come here from Ireland to live and work as Scots. They are sizable, but to many still an invisible minority. One is also victim to institutional prejudice within Scotland. That is not just an issue for Glasgow, of course. To my knowledge, no-one has questioned Lothian Bus' decision to cancel the evening buses on 17 March. Edinburgh, our second largest city and our capital, was still in level 3 lockdown on St Patrick's Day. Lothian Bus is restricted travel for what could only be essential workers commuting on a Tuesday evening. They briefly mentioned the rise in anti-social behaviour as a reason. That was the only day that that action took place. I can only assume that Lothian Bus has concluded that it was one of two things. That I would be out celebrating my birthday, or that Irish Catholics were to blame for this rise in anti-social behaviour. Why else cancelled buses only for the night of the ubiquitous Irish Catholic holiday when pubs were not open and there was a stay-at-home order in place? Can you imagine if this had happened round about 12 July, or if it had happened round about a Muslim festival or a Sikh festival? It just is not acceptable. Two months later, almost to the day, Rangers fans were given what appeared to many as a de facto licence together by the thousands in George Square, with even an off-duty police officer or two joining the reveal. Our largest city looked like a war zone. Police officers were attacked, anti-Irish racism and anti-catholic bigotry was clearly heard being chanted and sung, with even reports of Rangers FC staff and players singing such vile nonsense. When I saw this video, I contacted Police Scotland only to initially receive a vague and dismissive response. However, I'm happy to report that after explaining the importance of a fuller response, I'm content that Police Scotland had a third investigation, including an electronic investigation, and that the video was, as I had always hoped, a fake. The people who post these things do not help in our fight for fairness and equality. Presiding Officer, we have a chance to recover our dignity, renew our commitments to a multicultural Scotland and transform how justice handles bigotry and equality's post-pandemic. I look forward to hearing more in due course of the efforts that the Scottish Government will make this parliamentary term to tackle anti-catholic bigotry, anti-Irish racism and all other prejudices. I'd like to wish the new cabinet secretary well on his role and have no doubt that he will build upon the good work of his predecessor. Thanks to the SNP Governments, there are now over a thousand more police officers in Scotland than when we came to office, although you wouldn't believe that if you'd listened to some of the earlier speeches. And crime, including violent crime, has fallen over the last decade. Presiding Officer, reform to justice was key to our manifesto, and this SNP Government has a renewed and overwhelming mandate from the Scottish people to transform the justice system for the better and to keep our communities safer. We've already made Scotland a safer place, but we can, we must, and we will do more. Thank you. I thank Alexander Stewart to be followed by Audrey Nicholl. Thank you, Presiding Officer, and may I welcome the cabinet secretary to his new post and congratulate Katie Clark on her maiden speech. I am delighted to be able to participate in this afternoon's debate on the recovery, renewal and transformation of Scotland's justice system. As was the case across the society, Covid-19 pandemic and the necessary restrictions have allowed and ensured that nothing more has changed, and there have been severe challenges across our justice system in Scotland. It's incumbent on us in this Parliament, Presiding Officer, to work to ensure that our streets are safe. For those who break the social contract, they should be punished, and we are here to protect the rights of the victims. That we need to do in a timely, effective and efficient manner. The most pressing concern facing the criminal justice system in Scotland is our court backlog. Whilst I would acknowledge that there has been some innovation, and the cabinet secretary touched on that earlier, with cinemas and remote jury centres, there is still a lot to do to ensure that we get the backlog sorted. We have seen that criminal courts have doubled within the last year, and we have been told by the Scottish courts and tribunal service that we will not get back to levels until March 2025. The peace courts have only started this week to resume, and they have a lot to manage as well. We need to be much more constructive about how we manage the Scottish Government and how it tackles the backlog of that. As someone who served on the joint police board for Tayside for 15 years, I have been saddened by some of the new developments in recent years since the SNP's merger with local police forces. Constituents have raised with me that they have real concerns about the loss of community policing in their area. However, the fact is that fewer officers on the streets who are now having to work over much larger geographical areas is what is happening in our society, and we need to ensure that we restore more bobbies on the beat. That is important. I thank the member for taking the intervention. Will he acknowledge the fact that there are, on average, around a third more police officers as a percentage of the population in Scotland, England and Wales, and that they are paid a higher rate, and that we have invested substantially in the police, unlike the Conservative Government in England? Alex Stewart, I thank the cabinet secretary for that response. You indicate that we have a disproportion here in England. I am sorry, cabinet secretary, but there have been 739 lost police officers in Scotland. That is not the case south of the border. We are investing in ensuring that that takes place. As also the police are properly resourced, we have talked about this in the past. Police Scotland requested nearly £86 million's worth of capital funding, and that has not been fulfilled. The SNP has only given £50 million, and what we have seen in recent years is shocking stories about the state of our local police stations. That is totally unacceptable, Presiding Officer, and we must support and ensure that our officers and their support staff are working in conditions that are not falling apart, that roofs are not coming in, that water is not coming down walls. That is not acceptable. Also, we have to talk about the loss of over 100 police stations across Scotland, and that makes the majority of constituents feel that there is an increasingly remoteness that the police have with the public sector. It is clear that we have seen that the Scottish Government will not review fundamentally the policy of Police Scotland. We have seen that over the last session, and I would ensure that that will probably be the same over this session. There has ever been opportunities for us to discuss and move things forward. We, in the Scottish Conservatives, would like to see the reinstatement of local police scrutiny boards across Scotland that would allow for greater input into policing decisions and how they are affected. I would also like to ask the cabinet secretary to consider carefully any measures that might address those problems. There are also some worrying signs that the SNP is failing to tackle the crime and the justice system. We have seen that just over half of violent criminals going into prison of the SNP's presumption against short-term prison sentences. That, we have seen violent crime increase from 8,080 cases in 1819 to 9,316 in 1920. As one of those questions we have to ask about, is the Government really on the side of the victims? In that way, I would ask that we add our support. I add my support to the comments that Jamie Greene made in his opening address to ensure that we do enhance the rights of victims. Too often in debates within the chamber, victims' interests are treated as an afterthought. It is wrong that we have to change that mindset. What is needed is that we ensure that we understand the effects of crime. That is why the decision for the SNP to reduce the budget of victims and witnesses' support by £0.5 million is truly staggering. I would also encourage the new cabinet secretary to look again at that cut and effect for the victims. It is very important that victims are looked upon. It is vitally important that the opportunities are seen and ensure that victims have statements during court proceedings and at parole hearings. In conclusion, we in the Scottish Conservatives are committed to ensuring that Scotland's communities are safe. Before the pandemic, violent crime was already on the rise. There was a growing sense that Scotland had—the criminal justice system did not protect the victims and that policing felt that they were distant and were more remote within their communities. The pandemic has helped to ensure that the situation has been exacerbated and that needs to be managed. I look forward to working with the Government where we can find common ground but also to hold them to account where their performance is below what Scots would expect of their Government and their police force. Thank you. I call Audrey Nicholl to be followed by Foisal Choudhury. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. Over the last few weeks, the chamber has facilitated a number of important recovery debates on issues including health, our economy, education, tackling poverty and, of course, Covid-19. This afternoon, we are debating justice. The golden thread that, in my mind, ties those and other issues together, the cog in the wheel of our wellbeing, our livelihoods, our economy and our future prosperity. The global pandemic impacted numerous functions within the justice system, however the sector could not simply transition to essential business only. Front-facing services had to continue, justice staff protected and new potentially life-saving Covid legislation used to protect our wider society. Police officers had to balance an education approach when engaging with the public with enforcing the law. Prison and healthcare staff had to manage Covid-19 and prevent its spread within the confinements of our prison estate. Court staff had the huge challenge of reconfiguring court processes so that they could operate effectively and safely. Today, I wish to pay tribute to everyone across all justice agencies and on the front line for their commitment to ensuring justice processes adapted and responded to the constraints that Covid-19 placed upon them. Last week, I made my first speech as a newly elected MSP in the health recovery debate and I spoke about the growing intersect between policing and public health. In support of that wide-ranging motion today and based on my own experience in policing, I would like to return to that theme, which I believe directly impacts both on our court system and our prison population. The justice vision and priorities delivery report, published back in March, provided an update on the progress made in delivering on priorities set in 2017 for justice organisations and partners. It included improving health and wellbeing in justice settings, focusing on mental health and substance misuse. The report highlighted the progress made towards increasing the number of mental health workers across Scotland, including in justice settings. I am pleased that this is now under way and that health professionals are now working in some, but not all, police custody settings. We know the devastating impact of Covid-19 on our mental health, regardless of our background or experiences. We also know that people in contact with the criminal justice system have higher levels of mental ill health than the general population and generally live in communities that face social and economic disadvantage. We also know the incidents of police interacting with people with poor mental health increased during the pandemic and, inevitably, some were taken into custody. That is at odds with a range of legislation, operating procedures and protocols around place of safety, not least of all the Mental Health Care and Treatment Act 2020, that specifically states that a police station should not be used as a place of safety unless there is no suitable alternative available. Entering custody, especially for the first time, can be traumatic, particularly where the pathway there was not connected to offending. Rather, it was the result of someone's circumstances and experience. In situations such as this, rather than making someone who is already, at a low point, even more vulnerable, entering police custody should offer an opportunity for health and other professionals to connect with individuals who often do not traditionally engage with health and other services. I am aware of the work that is being developed by the Scottish Government, the Police Care Network, NHS Police Scotland and others to take that important priority forward. I am pleased that some aspects gained attraction during the pandemic. I very much hope that the new cabinet secretary for justice will support the transformational work and the innovative opportunities that exist to improve and develop nurse-led models of care, custody exit processes and pathways to support. Perhaps, just as important, pathways into care and support that circumvent police custody in the first place. Perhaps that is a debate for another day. Policing in Scotland has evolved in recent years, prioritising keeping people safe, protecting victims' rights and dealing effectively with offenders, while upholding the fundamental human rights of everyone coming into contact with the service. The fact remains, however, that a population of people continue to enter custody having committed no crime or offence, frequently experiencing poor mental health, essentially criminalised by a system that exists to protect them. As the justice sector moves through the pandemic, there is no doubt that there will be challenges ahead, but there will also be transformative opportunities to place police Scotland on a contemporary and innovative footing in respect of custody provision, developing a truly person-led approach that has trauma-informed care, dignity and compassion at its heart. I call Foisel Choudhury to be followed by Christine Grahame. This is Mr Choudhury's first speech in the chamber. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I hope that you'll be kind to me. I stand in support of labour amendments in the name of Pauline McNeill. I would like to begin by expressing how humbled and honoured I am to be serving as a newly elected member of the Scottish Parliament. As is only right, I show my appreciation to the people of the Lothian region who have helped me to get here, and I promise to work hard to repay this debt of gratitude on their behalf. My mother and I moved to the UK from Bangladesh in 1982. We moved to join my dad to build a better life for our family, settling initially in Manchester before moving to Edinburgh. A city I'm proud of to have called home for nearly 40 years, a city where I have put down my roots and raising my family, a city where I can, as proud to say, I'm a member of ethnic minority community, as I can say, I'm a Scottish and British. Over the years, I've built on my father's legacy, working hard to establish thriving and successful business, giving opportunities for employment in the city, and I will draw on my business background to help inform my work as an MSP. My late father and my uncles took the opportunities available and became pillars of the community, and as they were helped, they have helped those gain footholds by establishing and running orphanage abroad and setting up charities at home. I was taught from an early age to help those who need a hand to support and develop local communities. These are the values I gained from my parents and these are the values I live by. I've been involved with Edinburgh and Lothian Regional Quality Council for over 20 years, chairing it for 11 years. I have been advocating for equality and justice my entire adult life, not just for people from minority ethnic communities, but for people disadvantaged economically. People outside this area think of Edinburgh as a rich city in a rich country. This belief hides the fact that some of our people are forced to live in inadequate housing, suffering from the injustice of poverty and the quality of their lives are reduced as a result. It's a shameful truth that people in the most deprived areas of the city often die years before others who live in more affluent areas. The COVID pandemic with which we are still struggling has highlighted poverty in our country. The impact on some areas and communities has angered many. I have witnessed this hardship firsthand when delivering food parcels to those who have been hit hard by this tragedy. It is not possible to exaggerate the seriousness of the situation that I have witnessed. I understand their suffering having lost a close member of my own family during the pandemic. We debate justice this afternoon. During COVID-19, as a chair of LREC, I was aware of an increase in contacts from BME community who had experience being racially abused both physically and verbally but felt let down by the police and other agencies. In order to thrive our local communities, must feel safe and free from the fear of crime. Many of us still have concerns following the centralisation of police service with creation of Police Scotland. Following COVID-19, we need to restore connection between the policing and local people, building trust and ensuring community feel safe to come forward. We must also ensure that action will be taken with other agencies working together. Our communities need police force that is from them and for them. As a member of the BME community, I have experienced discrimination and how cruel it can be. Leading to feeling of isolation, I will use my position to speak up for those who are not adequately represented. With that, I recognise the privilege of being elected as the first Bangladeshi-born Muslim MSP, just as their other firsts have done before me and those elected at the same time as me. I hope to make my own contribution and will work to improve civic and political engagement amongst all minority groups, because this will serve to enrich and strengthen the lives of our people. The Parliament must truly be a Parliament for all the people of Scotland. I am of the view that education plays essential role in rooting out discrimination and making for a fairer and more just society. For example, the school curriculum should recognise historic injustice and this should be taught truthfully. As legislator, we have a special opportunity to ensure that our young people understand the truth of our country's history, including that a significant part of its wealth was built on the exploitation of people of colour across the globe. I was pleased to learn last week that the Welsh Parliament had passed legislation to integrate BME history in the curriculum. Why can't we deliver the same in Scotland? I am delighted to have been appointed by Annas as the Shadow Minister for Culture, Europe and International Development. I look forward working with Sarah as a longstanding friend and comrade. Finally, I would like to pay tribute to my predecessor, Neil Findlay, whose vigorous campaigning saw in live and debates in this chamber. He worked with so many community organisations. For example, on issues such as vaginal mesh scandal, his pioneering work with trade union and the treatment of the striking miners. We will not forget his intervention of the terrible sad consequence of discharging Covid positive people into care homes. I wish Neil well for the future and promise that I will continue his work helping people who suffer injustice. My promise to Llewdian people is that I will contribute to Scottish Labour's efforts in restoring public trust and confidence in our political institutions so that, together, we can foster a more diverse, inclusive and tolerant society. Every day, I will bring a voice to those who feel that they are not here in this place. Thank you. Thank you. I now call Christine Grahame to be followed by Edward Mountain. Thank you very much, Deputy Presiding Officer. Good speech, Mr Chowdy. I think that I would not just have used one in livened of Neil Findlay, but there you go. I think that what I am interested in is that I want to focus on civil business, because most of the debate, quite rightly, is being about the criminal process in court. For most people, for the public, most of the interaction that they have with the court process is in the civil courts, whether it is to contribute in a contractual dispute, delitial action, matrimonial disputes, divorce, contact, residency, confirmation of an executive, interdicts and so on, and, of course, in our commercial courts. Already much in the process has been simplified, which I welcome. I welcome the fact that we are moving to more online work and this will reduce costs, as will electronic transfer of documents. However, delays in court business, the impacts on civil business, of course, matters as much to the individuals involved, whether they are pursuer or defender, as they do in criminal proceedings. Of course, in the sheriff court, criminal proceedings must take precedence, quite rightly, because custody is involved and loss of liberty and a criminal record. However, to the pursuer or the defender in a civil case to them, it is urgent. Now, even impartially, some are, of course, urgent to anyone, for instance, interim interdicts against a really bad neighbour, against something that's going on, then you need that pretty quick. Interim orders in relation to children, particularly young children, because if a parent or a carer doesn't get to see a child for a while, the whole relationship can disappear into the mists. Exclusion orders—we've talked about abuse in domestic abuse in the criminal setting, but in the civil setting—exclusion orders to prevent an abusive partner getting in to the home and so on are all important. In passing, to Pauline McNeill, I'm sympathetic to domestic abuse courts. Actually, specialist courts, specialist sheriffs and family law and so on, do exist and it's very important that they take an interest in it, just as we have specialist sheriffs and judges in commercial actions. I want to turn to commercial cases. It maybe doesn't sound like something that we should be bothering about in the courts of session, but it is. Those two often require timious action. Indeed, the pursuer may have a choice of which jurisdiction to bring a very substantial court case. If they're going to choose Scotland to bring that case—a large commercial case with legal ramifications and a large amount of money involved—they want to know that it's going to progress timiously. If it doesn't progress timiously, they may take that court case somewhere else to another jurisdiction. There are ramifications for our senior courts in progressing high cases timiously and, of course, in pursuing and progressing Scott's law. It's important that they maintain the status of Scott's law. There was a reference somewhere to mediation. I don't know where we are with that, but it seems like decades ago, when I chaired the Justice Committee, I went to Baltimore with a whole lot of high-falutin justice people to look at the way mediation operated there. Mediation there was not just in family cases. It was in large commercial cases because the pursuer and the defender of these big guys were in these cases. They knew at the end of the day that there had to be a resolution. It's better to get it done in mediation than all ramifications of huge expenses, because, as we know, when you're in court, you may get judicial expenses but you will not get all your expenses. I make a clear distinction between mediation and arbitration. Arbitration is when a decision is made by the arbiter. Mediation is where the parties engaged in dispute come to a mutual agreement. I would like to see that pursued. Again, I think there are ramifications here, not just in our matrimonial cases and family law cases, but in commercial cases when you might get disputes brought to Scotland if you have a very robust mediation service in operation. I don't know where that's got to. Perhaps the Cabinet Secretary can tell me over the years how that's developed. I think that it's something that's pushing a great big rock up a hill and it's coming rolling back quite often to landing your toes. Turning now to civil legal aid, I appreciate funding is not a bottomless pit, cabinet secretary, and I do appreciate that the criminal legal aid system again has to take priority. The funding must go there because again we're talking about criminal conviction, possible criminal conviction and loss of liberty. However, is there a potential for savings if we are using those more efficacious ways of progressing civil court cases online, electronic transfer, all of which used to cost money in court process and in documentation? Is there any way that we could actually be better funding to the civil legal aid system? For example, raising the bar on the earnings you have or on the capital you have, because if you're very poor, you can use the civil legal aid system. If you're very rich, you can afford to go to court, but a lot of people are jam-packed in the middle and there is a decision there about whether they go to court because their contribution might be very high, they might even be excluded from having legal aid and justice should not depend on the depth of your pockets. I'll be brief—oh, I'm not that brief, I'm going to say five minutes—while I understand the majority of focused on criminal matters, I do think that it's important to shift the balance. Remember, for most people out there, it's in the civil courts that justice is where they meet it. Thank you very much for Mr Mountain. I know that you borrowed it from me, but the pen gesture is not necessary. I conclude. I now call Edward Mountain. I congratulate the members of Parliament who gave their maiden speeches this afternoon and for the insight that they have brought to the Parliament. Justice is, of course, the cornerstone of all democracies and Covid-19 has definitely challenged the timely delivery of justice. We've seen the criminal court backlog more than double in size, leaving many feeling without meaningful access to justice. While I welcome the use of digital courts to reduce the backlog and their use in hearings, those solutions are predicated on having good broadband, something that we can't take for granted across Scotland and especially in the Highlands. Reducing that backlog needs to be a top priority for the Cabinet Secretary, but he will be also facing a number of other pressures that don't purely come as a result of the pandemic. It is clear that his predecessor left him with an overflowing intray of problems, fewer front-line police officers since 2013, record numbers of criminals flouting electronic tag sentences, and long delays to the delivery of new modern prisons. It's a sorry state of affairs and it highlights how much a soft touch to justice has not been working for Scotland. Moving forward, I think that the Cabinet Secretary needs to try a new approach, tackling problems head-on. In doing so, he must restore local policing, put victims first, and ensure that our communities are kept safe. If he does this, I will happily support his ideas. However, most of all, Scotland needs a justice secretary that delivers on the promises that his party makes. In the Highlands and Islands, we have now waited over a decade for the promised new prison to be built in Inverness. Ten years of broken promises which are costing taxpayers more and more money. Back in 2011—I'm sure that the Cabinet Secretary will know—the SNP Government promised to build a new prison that would cost £52 million. It failed to deliver. In 2016, the SNP made another promise to build the new prison again at a cost of £66 million. It broke that promise, too. This year, it made another promise to build the very same prison again by 2024 at a cost of £110 million. Will we be third-time lucky or will there be a hat-trick or broken promises? This Government cannot keep kicking the can down the road and make Highlanders wait for a modern prison that is so desperately needed. By doing so, it is letting down our dedicated prison staff at HMP Inverness who are working in a Victorian-era prison that, I quote, is costly to run and no longer fit for purpose. That is the conclusion, Cabinet Secretary, of Scotland's chief inspector of prisons, who has called for this Government to expedite its replacement. There is every reason for it to be fast-tracked. It is a shovel-ready project. The site has been purchased, planning permission confirmed and let's not underestimate the importance of the many jobs that this project will create. Cabinet Secretary, if you want to intervene, I will ask you the question now. Will you and can you step up to the plate and deliver on the three promises that your predecessors have singly failed to do and a simple answer of yes or no will do for me? I am very pleased to answer a question that I was not able to do in response to a previous Conservative member. The member will know the answer to that question if he has read our manifesto and I would commend our manifesto, the one that won the election to him if he wants to read that. There you go. There is no answer, no yes or no, no prison guaranteed. I would have loved to have heard it from his lips, but I haven't. Let me turn to another issue. I also believe that it is time for the SNP Government to launch its long overdue consultation on Scottish courts fees for the period 2021-2024. It has not been launched yet. It is overdue. I hope that this consultation can pave the way to making access to justice fairer and less expensive. In particular, Cabinet Secretary, I believe that we need to look at the setting up of annual fees for guardianships, which are essential to help the lives of those who are vulnerable or disabled. Currently, the fees are set by the value of the estate, meaning that those who have an estate value between £50,000 and £250,000 are forced to pay £600 a year to have their accounts assessed. Those with the estate valued with more have to pay over £1,000 every year. That could add up to thousands of pounds over the course of a guardianship. It is questionable how justifiable this is, especially considering that guardianship may also be the lifelong partner of the person who has to pay the fee. Those fees are, in my view, excessive. As one constituent explained to me, why should his wife pay a fee for somebody to check his work that he does on her behalf? For me, that is frankly no more than a tax on the disabled and the vulnerable. Surely Scotland can do better than that. Perhaps it is time, Cabinet Secretary, to consider whether we should follow the system in England and Wales by having a much flatter fee structure. I call on the Cabinet Secretary to include that as part of the consultation, which no doubt he will now undertake. Presiding Officer, an effective justice system requires fair and timely access for all. That is why this Government must prioritise reducing the court backlog, fast-tracking the building of modern prisons, including our long-promised Highland prison, and ensure that guardianship fees are far more reasonable for her. I urge the Cabinet Secretary as he settles into his new desk to add both of those issues to his to-do list and not to leave them in the cupboard for his successor to tackle. I would like to congratulate the Cabinet Secretary on his new role and the members across the chamber who have done their first speeches today. I welcome the debate and the Scottish Government's vision for a safe, just and resilient Scotland. That ambition will ensure that our justice services have the resources required to meet the challenges presented by the Covid-19 pandemic and to bring about lasting change and positive transformation as we move forward. I echo James Dornan's thanks to all our police officers throughout the pandemic who have worked tirelessly on the front line. Today, I would like to focus my contribution on three key areas. Those are around some of the lessons that our justice system can learn from the pandemic, access to medications and custody settings, and on the arrangements that surround youth remand and detention. First, I welcome the Government's commitment to additional £50 million in this year's budget to support recovery across the justice system. That includes the court recovery programme that will increase capacity in both the High Court and Shared of Courts across Scotland. Indeed, I welcome the recommendation from the Lord Clark trial working group for the continuation of remote jury centres as the most effective solution to increase trial capacity and reduce delays for cases going to trial. That is an important change that could bring about a lasting impact by people not having to physically travel to attend jury service. That will also have an impact on emissions reduction and, as the debate yesterday said, tackling climate emergency applies across all portfolios. Similarly, the option of people and police Scotland custody suites attending court via video link is also welcome. Evidence has shown that that has reduced the stress and the cost of people in custody being physically transferred to a court then to be detained until the court can hear the case. Such innovations are extremely positive, and I would hope to see them and remain in place as the Government takes forward its review of Scotland's prosecution system. I have no doubt that those changes will work towards our aim of delivering a fairer, faster and more effective justice. However, I want to raise the issue with the cabinet secretary that jury trials in Dumfries and Stranraer, Shared of Courts, have been moved to air over the course of the pandemic. Although the majority of jurors and those accused have been able to appear virtually, I ask for an assurance from the cabinet secretary that this arrangement will be considered in the Government's review and that those involved with the justice sector in Dumfries and Galloway will be able to feed in. As our justice system moves into the future, there is room to explore better health arrangements and for access to medications and indeed medical technologies in custody and detention centres. I recently contacted Police Scotland and the Scottish Prison Service to seek further information on the current policies relating to medication. I found that in Scotland the management of medication for a person in custody is the responsibility of a healthcare professional and that an assessment of a person's needs and vulnerabilities is carried out upon the arrival at the police station by the health professional. However, there is no set time for when a person in police custody or a prison setting must be seen by a healthcare professional. An example would be if a person who is arrested is wearing medical technology, such as continuous blood glucose monitor or insulin pump for diabetes management, the devices will have to be removed when entering a cell. As a person with type 1 diabetes myself, even one hour without my insulin pump can cause serious hyperglycemia and that is a health emergency. Equally, Police Scotland and the Scottish Prison Service have medication classes as either urgent or non-urgent. Some examples of non-urgent medicine include anti-anxiety medicine. I had a constituency case where a young person was not able to access his anti-anxiety medicine custody which caused much stress and frustration and of course increased anxiety. Given that and the opportunity we have to transfer to transform our current policies, I would ask the cabinet secretary whether he would be open to exploring those issues so that we can further look at how we can improve the experiences and wellbeing of those in custody. The last issue that I want to raise is around youth remand in Scotland. Previously, I had another case where a young man was held on remand at HMYOY Polmont. Because this young man was on remand, which can last for anything up to 140 days, he was unable to access any of the organised events and activities within HMY Polmont. He was kept in a separate wing with 21 hours of isolation each day with only three family visits each week. Given the Government's commitment to implementing the Barnahus model, which is a multidisciplinary or interagency approach for dealing with young people going through the justice system, I would ask the cabinet secretary to prioritise youth remand and implement Barnahus, as he mentioned earlier. My constituents and I would be happy to help to feed into this process. The Scottish Government's firm focus on community safety, crime prevention and the rehabilitation of offenders has meant less crime and fewer victims than a decade ago. Maybe that will help to answer one of Pam Gosall's questions. Alexander Stewart, you can't just quote one year of figures, that's not a trend. The Scottish Crime and Justice Survey 2019-20 captures incidents not reported to the police, as well as those that are, shows that crime in Scotland has fallen by 46 per cent since 2020, 2008 and 2009, with violent crime down by almost two-fifths. I used to live in Los Angeles I'm in my last 10 seconds. I used to live in Los Angeles, Presiding Officer, and that actually is somewhere you might worry about being safe. But this shows that the SNP and the reduction of violent crime, the SNP's approach to justice is working and in closing, I again welcome this debate and the steps being taken to improve our justice system for all. Thank you. I now move to closing speeches. I would advise we are tight for time, and I would ask members to stick to their limits. I would point out that we're missing one member who spoke in the debate, and it is a courtesy to be in for closing speeches. I call Liam McArthur to wind up for the Lib Dems up to six minutes, please. Thank you, Presiding Officer. Can I start by congratulating Faisal Traderay on his first speech? I think that the Parliament will benefit from his insights and experience, and his constituents will benefit from the passion with which he represents him. With my Deputy Presiding Officer, I discourage him from taking on the mantle of his predecessor when it comes to points of order. I also congratulate Katie Clark on her first speech. I think that she and Pauline McNeill are going to be a formidable double act on the justice brief, which has been grotesquely gender imbalanced over the course of the last Parliament, so I very much welcome them both to their posts. Again, I thank the cabinet secretary, as others have, for the early engagement that he had with me and other justice spokes. People following on to be fairer trend that his predecessor was very committed to. The motion that we've been considering today is about the recovery, renewal and transformation of our justice system. I don't think that anybody would disagree with the appropriateness of that. Covid has had a massive impact, albeit that many of those issues, as I said, predate the pandemic. I also acknowledge the very important point that Christine Grahame made about the impact that it has had on the civil justice system, as well as the criminal justice system. By that said, we have seen innovation over the course of the last 15 months, which is very much to be welcomed, whether it is in terms of the way in which our courts have been able to transform and operate remotely, the roll-out of electronic monitoring of bail and, indeed, the provision of phones for prisoners in order to maintain contact with family members, which has to be a step in the right direction in terms of maintaining the contact that allows the rehabilitation and reintegration into the community to take place more successfully. Maggie Chapman talked about the power and balance in our justice system, and I think that the questions that we have heard about the legal aid system go to the heart of that. I recognise that there have been moves in the right direction over recent months, but much more is needed. I would argue that there are risks, real risks, of legal aid deserts in certain parts of the country, not least in the parts of the country that I represent. Jamie Greene was right to quote a system that is creaking at the seams. Much of Jamie Greene's contribution focused, as his amendment does on the issue of victims, and while I am not in a position to support his amendment, I think that I would very much commend the characteristically constructive way in which he put across his argument. Of course, in relation to victims, Holly McNeill, Katie Clark, Rona Mackay and others focus very much on the impact of crime on women. Anybody who has listened to Ms M, to speak out survivors and others' campaignings cannot fail to be impressed and, indeed, persuaded that the argument for change in that area, not just in terms of not proven, the issue around corroboration needs to be addressed seriously. There is now a commitment across the chamber to do just that. I welcome to the moves in relation to providing anonymity for victims of sexual offences, which is in place south of the border, but I think is a lacuna in the Scottish system. I would argue that there needs to be more safeguards for the way in which victims of sexual offences are interrogated within court. I would commend the work of Dean Helena Kennedy in looking at a standalone misogyny offence, but that will be limited in what it can do. I commend to the cabinet secretary, as I did to his predecessor, the idea of my colleague Karen Lindsay, for a commission to look at the wider issues of violence against women, because I think that that goes far more broadly than just the standalone offence on the misogyny. In the debate, we have also heard much talk about the impact on policing. Again, like others, I would pay tribute to the role that they have played, particularly over the course of the last 15 months. Liam Kerr made an intervention following on from FMQs earlier on today about the use of body-worn cameras. While our rights-based approach needs to be taken to that, I think that all the evidence suggests that there are benefits to be gained in terms of early pleas, the resolution of cases and easing some of the burden on our court services. However, we ask a police to do difficult, often dangerous jobs on our behalf, and it is only right that we then provide them with resources in terms of the buildings that they are based in, the equipment that they have to do that job. I think that there are particular concerns around the lack of support in relation to their IT capital budget, which is absolutely essential for them in terms of matching the sorts of crimes that they are being asked to deal with, is a point that the SPA and Police Scotland have been making. I said earlier that we have a shameful level of incarceration in this country. It is far higher than anywhere in the UK and far higher than anywhere else in Europe, save for Russia and Turkey. The remand population is particularly alarming in that context. I think that there are specific concerns about the way that it engages with women, many of whom themselves are the victims of crime. Again, I applaud Audrey Nicholl for reminding us of the link between the criminal justice system and health, particularly mental health. We need to properly fund robust community-based measures that are far more effective in dealing with many of those issues. We need through-care and support back into the community that help the individuals, but also help to make our communities safer. I just mentioned all the points that were made by Michelle Thompson in relation to the Peter Cherby petition in the Esther Robertson review, both under the finished business for the Justice Committee in the last session and, likewise, Rona Mackay on the burner, which, again, is getting under way. I look forward to supporting those efforts, as I do many of the other points that will be made in the debate. I thank the cabinet secretary, and I should have done this in my opening remarks for your contribution this afternoon and the constructive discussions that we have already had about how we progress priorities in this important area of the coming parliamentary term. I share his vision of a faster, fairer and more effective justice system, and while I am sure that there will be much that we disagree on, particularly perhaps the focus of and approach to how we deliver this, I am pleased to hear his commitment to restorative justice, mediation and arbitration, and genuinely trauma-informed services. Never again should a survivor of rape be told by a police officer that, and I quote, the sex might have got rough, it does not mean that you had to enjoy it. I welcome to the constructive approach taken by Jamie Greene, almost uniquely perhaps from that side of the chamber, for there to be any agreement between Greens and Conservatives on justice issues is quite something. Surely this will be the parliamentary term in which we abolish the not proven verdict. I look forward to future conversations with Pauline McNeill, Katie Clark and Liam McArthur and others in this chamber over the coming term on tackling gender-based violence, investment in communities, the overuse of remand, timely resolution to FAIs, improvements to legal aid and so much more. I am one of the new kids on the justice block and sometimes fresh eyes on seemingly entrenched issues can help shift things in different directions. I am keen that we use the opportunities provided by the context of this debate at this time, recovery, renewal and transformation, to consider what a justice system based on human rights and equalities really should look like. I alluded to this in my opening remarks but I think it bears a little bit more focus. What the Netherlands has achieved in reforming their prison system is truly remarkable. They have closed more than half of their prisons and yet they still cannot fill the ones that they have. Their crime levels are such that they now import prisoners from other countries. They have achieved this by taking a mental health approach to justice. Rather than focus on punishment, the first response is care. Identifying what mental health interventions are needed by people who are accused of breaking the law and treating that first. We know that prisons, as they are currently set up here, increase re-offending. They are also where many offenders start a lifetime of dependency on drugs. We must change that. There is a lot more I want to say about reforming our police system, its accountability, its use of force, of surveillance, how it engages with communities, how it understands power inequalities and diversity, but those big issues will have to wait for another time. However, there is work to do to ensure that our police are genuinely part of and reflect the communities that they seek to protect and that they understand the issues faced by different survivors and victims. If we do that work, if we make the transformations that we need to see and shift resources into prevention work, education, social care, early intervention and so on, we will at last bring the recommendations of the Christie commission into the justice system in a genuine way. It will allow us to tackle some of the often overlooked crimes that damage our communities, corporate and environmental crime. Justice at all levels can only be achieved by a collaborative and inclusive approach in partnership and solidarity with civil society and local voices. I look forward to working with colleagues in the chamber and those in third sector and other organisations across Scotland to deliver a justice system that is genuinely based on human rights and equalities. Can I start by paying tribute to my colleagues Katie Clark and Faisol Choudhury, who made their first speeches in the Parliament today? There were excellent speeches moving, and I think that it reminds us all while colleagues stepped down and retired at the last session and we thought that we would miss them and we do miss them very much. We see new people coming forward with fresh ideas, new perspectives and feeding them in, and I think that that renews the chamber and is good for us all. I am really pleased that they are here and it was delightful to listen to their contributions to this debate. Can I also pay tribute to police and, indeed, all emergency workers, police officers and all those who were on the front line during the Covid pandemic. Police and emergency workers, prison officers had to face the dangers of the pandemic. They could not keep themselves safe and did that on our behalf and I think that we should all be grateful to them. Our amendment focuses very much on violence against women and I want to start with that because we all know that inequality leads to violence against women and we need a society to deal with that inequality. Despite justice interventions, violence against women continues to grow. Our whole justice system is geared towards keeping citizens safe, yet women are expected to protect themselves from predatory males. If they fail to do that, our justice system will be blamed towards them rather than holding the attacker totally responsible. That was a point that Pauline McNeill made when she talked about the tragic case of Sarah Everard. One of the things that was pointed out to us all when she went missing was that she was walking home late at night, as if she should not be out late at night. Pauline made the point that women should not be forced to stay home at night just because men are unable to behave themselves properly and leave women alone. The public outcry to that was rightly loud. Even in the situation of a pandemic, women gathered to take back the streets. I would never encourage anyone to take risks during a pandemic. I absolutely understood what they were trying to do and we need to join forces. Not just the women in this chamber, but the men as well, to make sure that those voices are heard and we change our whole society's outlook towards violence against women. We saw as well during the pandemic that domestic abuse continued to increase at 5.7 per cent higher last year than in 1516. That emphasised the distance from access to services. That was initially a huge problem for domestic abuse services while keeping their staff safe and trying to support those who needed their support. Robert Gordon University looked at the North East and Orkney and pointed out that telephone services were helpful in that respect because they could have someone available at any point at the end of a phone. We need to look at the lessons that were learned and make sure that we carry them forward. Katie Clark talked about domestic abuse courts and the need for them to be in place. I have pushed for that for a long period of time. They work well where they are, but we need them all over Scotland just because they live in a rural area. I appreciate Ms Grant's intervention. She raises some very grave and valid points, which I totally agree with. However, I want to clarify Labour's position on the establishment of those new courts for other to Lady Dorian's recommendations. Is it the case that Labour's position is that whatever happens in those courts we will still protect the sanctity and importance of trial by jury and there will be no watering down of the justice system as those accused go through that system. In that case, we would be minded to support your amendment if that can be clarified. Those courts need to be robust. It is about understanding the nature of domestic abuse and violence against women. We want to see those in those courts that lead those cases, that lead defence, lead the prosecution of those cases to have an understanding. Far too often, a woman is blamed for the abuse that she suffers at the hands of the courts. Of course, we need juries, but we need juries that are led and made to understand the nature of domestic abuse. I have teachers and social workers who do not understand the nature of domestic abuse when I am dealing with constituents. People who are picked up from the street, as they do with a jury, have the same issues. They need to be led and guided by the professionals in those courts to ensure that they do that properly and offer the protection. We just see the very low conviction rates for domestic abuse and sexual abuse that comes from our courts and we need to do something about it. We cannot continue the way we are. We need those specialist courts in place. We also need to tackle commercial sexual exploitation, which underlines the inequality, the perception that men can access women and that women are available and for sale in our country. It is simply wrong. We need to change the position of women in our society and make them truly equal to tackle violence against women. We need to hold the men accountable because it is not a women's problem, it is a men's problem, so we need to make sure that they are held to account. Maggie Chapman, in her opening speech, made that point, but she carried it further into how abuse of power can really be difficult in our society and that we need to deal with it. I had wanted to touch on a lot of the other aspects of the debate, because I think that it was really important, but I am noticing that I am already running out of time. Can I just highlight and maybe take the moment to highlight a local issue? Edward Mountain talked about Inverness prison. We have an ancient prison in Inverness that has been subject to Covid outbreaks because you cannot distance and you cannot treat prisoners properly. We desperately need that now. We also need a prison facility that is fit for women. Women have to go to HMV Grampian and HMV Courtenville miles away from their families, and that simply is not right. We need a justice system that is there to protect, prevent and rehabilitate it. It must change and renew to provide the protection in a never-changing world, and we must provide the same protection to all, regardless of their gender and, indeed, their ethnicity. We must all be equal before the law and, therefore, we must all be equally protected by the law. I now call on Russell Findlay to wind up for the Conservatives. Up to eight minutes please, and this is Mr Findlay's first speech to our Parliament. George Beattie is innocent. In 1973, a year I was born, George Beattie was convicted of murdering Margaret McLaughlin in Kerluk. The BBC's rough justice programme later exposed serious concerns about his conviction. Last year, a new book identified a more likely suspect. This prompted Bob Alexander, Margaret's former fiance, to break his 47-year silence to state that George Beattie is innocent. He thought that this miscarriage of justice would finally be put right. Nothing happened. We do not have time to rehearse all the evidence here today, but I say with confidence that George Beattie is innocent. I am not the first politician to stand in a Parliament and say so. The late Labour MP Jimmy Hood did just that in the House of Commons 28 years ago, despite all this, George told me he expects to go to his grave as a wrongly convicted murderer. This case shames Scotland, but having spent decades working as a journalist, trying to shine a light on injustice, it does not surprise me. Willie Beattie devoted his life fighting to overturn his 1981 conviction for armed robbery. Credible and independent people are certain of his innocence. Willie died suddenly last year. His family vowed to keep up the fight. Some might say that this is history. Society has changed. I would say in response, open your eyes. Injustice is rife in modern Scotland. It has a corrosive impact. Its effects are profound, often consuming lives or cutting them short. It does not just mean wrongful convictions. Take the family of Kevin MacLeod, who was found dead in Wick Harbour in 1997. For two decades, the authorities dismissed this young man's death as not suspicious, then admitted that it should have been treated as murder or Emma Caldwell, who was murdered in 2005, as we have already heard so powerfully from Pauline McNeill. Detectives blindly pursued the wrong suspects when a much more likely perpetrator was right in front of them or Sheikou Bayou, who died in police custody on a five-street six years ago. Yet his loved ones still do not know what happened, or the countless families who have suffered medical negligence sometimes resulting in the loss of a loved one. While stricken with grief, they have to contend with a confusing and intimidating legal process. Then there are their former Rangers administrators, innocent men, maliciously prosecuted by the Crown Office. This left taxpayers with a bill for unknown millions, yet the former Lord Advocate responsible today sits in the High Court bench dispensing justice. I have been inspired by the resilience, determination and dignity of many ordinary people plunged into the abyss of injustice. Among the first were the so-called four Bampots of Milton in Glasgow. Those brave local fathers objected when Labour politicians and the police handed control of their community centre to a drugs gang. They defintely embraced the term Bampots, which the council had used to smear them. Labour defended indefensible for years. The gang was only evicted when people started getting shot dead on Glasgow streets. No one in authority was ever held to account for this perversion or for many other of these scandals. That is a common theme. While injustices will always occur, they are compounded when there is no address and no accountability. Too often, public bodies use unlimited funds to crush legitimate complaints, wage war on whistleblowers and use non-disclosure agreements to hide the ugly truth from the public. Bad faith, back covering and secrecy contaminate too many of our institutions. In Scotland, legal regulation is not fit for purpose, as we heard from Michelle Thomson. Our police complaint system betrays both the public and honest officers. Our prosecution service is capable of malice and routinely betrays victims. Our courts are secretive, self-serving and chronically inefficient. Our parole system treats victims as a nuisance. Our judicial complaint system is a toothless charade. In Scotland, sudden deaths are not automatically subject to public scrutiny, often leaving grieving families with no answers. That was very powerfully touched upon by Liam McArthur. When rigged systems close the door in victims and close ranks to protect wrongdoers, what hope is there for ordinary people? Elsewhere in the United Kingdom, many of these very same serious problems have been identified and reformed to the benefit of the public. One of the most nauseating aspects of nationalism is the myth of self-righteous superiority and exceptionalism. The injustices that I am speaking about here are entirely made in Scotland. This Parliament has the power to fix them, but the SNP preferred to dupe our citizens with our relentless diet of manufactured grievance and dishonestly blaming all our ills on Westminster. Scotland deserves so much better. Rampant injustice and the dangers of Scottish nationalism are two reasons that I decided to seek election. Is that a maiden speech? I believe that it is not convention. That's okay. But you can if you want. It's not. There's no rule against it. I'll track on. I'm sure there will be another time. I'm fairly certain of that. But the catalyst for me standing here today came in the morning of December 23, 2015. I answered my front door to a man dressed as a postman. He was in fact a hit man. He threw sulphuric acid into my face and tried to stab me. My young daughter witnessed this horror. She could have witnessed my murder. My subsequent personal experience of the criminal justice system confirmed everything that I'd seen as a journalist. It made me angry. It made me realise that unless people stand up and be counted, nothing will change. To be thrust into the public eye has been a daunting process for me. I spent almost 30 years hidden from view because of the very real threat from organised crime. These gangs have become obscenely wealthy and immensely powerful. Their drugs kill record numbers of our people. There is much more to be said about this than I will be saying it. It surprises me today in a debate about justice. Not a single word has been spoken about organised crime. I'm grateful for all who have supported me and for the voters of the west of Scotland who put me here. I pledge to work hard for my constituents. Deputy Presiding Officer, I will conclude by returning to matters at hand. Today we have heard important contributions from members across the chamber. Not least from Katie Clark and Faisal Chowdhury, who are also doing their maiden speeches today. It is heartening to hear so much consensus between the various parties. I will simply add that today's Scottish Conservative amendment offers significant practical measures to begin the process of creating a fairer Scotland. Thank you, and could I now call on Keith Brown, cabinet secretary, to wind up the debate for the Government? Moving to decision time around five would be very helpful. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I'd like to thank all members for their contributions to today's debate. My first is cabinet secretary for justice and veterans. It has generally been informative and certainly wide-ranging, demonstrating a collective ambition to achieve a more effective justice system for the people of Scotland and, of course, a wee different views on how that endeavour might be achieved. I welcome the honesty and commitment that most members have shown to help inform that journey. I opened the discussion with a commitment to try and build consensus. You can see how difficult that is going to be, but where it is possible, I will try and do that. I have tried to do that in the discussions that have already taken place with Opposition spokespeople. I want to firstly repeat the aspiration for collective progress by this Parliament. It is a genuine aspiration. Today's exchanges have in no way diminished my appetite for collaboration both in the context of the Government's extensive and ambitious programme of commitments, but also as we look to ensure that a justice system is exemplary in its handling of victims, witnesses and the accused. I look forward to genuine ideas and suggestions as to how that best might be achieved. I have no doubt that that will lead to, if it happens, even more productive debates going forward. It is also important that we discuss in greater detail the range of levers that are currently available to justice partners as we emerge through the recovery phase of the pandemic and consider what greater action may be possible. I said previously how impressed I was with the remote jury centre initiative, which I witnessed yesterday, recognising those early concerns that were rightly raised by representative bodies at the start of the pandemic and the need for appropriate on-going assessment and analysis. That innovation has raised questions and delivered opportunities. Previously, if we are honest, it was not considered appropriate and it is now a feature in our justice system, and it has been looked at by justice systems worldwide in terms of the Covid environment and how to respond to it. Indeed, Scotland has been compared to other jurisdictions in leading the charge on that initiative. It is a clear example of where further thinking on how those centres feature in the medium to longer term that that thinking is required and should be done so openly and publicly. If I can try to pick up on some of the key points that are made today, there have been so many, so please forgive me if I miss anybody out. It is not intentional. Many of them have common themes. First of all, I congratulate the other justice spokespeople, newer ones and those more established in that role to their positions. I will come back to the first of the speeches by Pam Gosall if I could towards the end of my remarks. Rona Mackay, I thank her for her remarks especially in relation to the different approaches to justice, a human rights-centred approach. Katie Clark, I congratulate her on her first speech. I also was a unison branch officer and shop sure. Never reached the exalted ranks of solicitor, but it was a great time to be in unison. I listened to the comments that she makes and found that there was a lot of areas where I think that we can agree. James Dornan alone raised the very important issue of sectarianism and anti-catholicism, which we have to have regard to. Michelle Thomson mentioned the register of interests, which we will take forward. Many of her other comments are ones that I am sure will be picked up by the minister who will have responsibility in the areas that she was talking about. Alexander Stewart, I was keen to listen constructively, but you can only do that from the basis of facts. You can have your own views, but you cannot really have your own facts. The simple fact is that in England there has been a reduction of 17,000 police officers. In Scotland, we have over 1,000 more police officers than when we came to office. Crime has gone down substantially more in Scotland than it has elsewhere. Police officers are paid more in Scotland than they are elsewhere, so you cannot invent or change these facts. If you want to have a discussion about that, which I am happy to be involved in, at least have regard to the actual facts that apply. Audrey Nicola thought that a fantastic speech, in particular mentioning wellbeing as a feature both of our justice system and of policing, is much more than simply law enforcement, is about the wellbeing of society. Like others, I thought that Fuzzle Childress was an excellent speech. Although education is not my responsibility, the point that he made about using education to teach some of the history—some history might not want to face otherwise—about how we accumulated wealth in this country in the UK is a very good point. I made it myself in a debate before the election, and I am confident that the education ministers will take that forward. However, I thought that it was an excellent speech by Fuzzle Childress. Christine Grahame rightly highlighted the civil side, which is a huge part and probably impacts more people than the criminal side. In mediation, can I make a genuine offer to say that I am happy to mediate between her and Edward Mountain, as to whose pen that is, but I would warn Christine Grahame that possession is nine-tenths of the loss of the balance of... I will do very quickly. Christine Grahame, your offer is rejected. I can also say to Emma Harper that I made a number of very good points. Again, some of those points will be areas that the minister will be responsible for and the other points that I am responsible for. I am happy to respond to some of them in writing. It will take too long to do just now, but I have made a number of good points, not least in the location of duty centres. Femm goes all very much like Alexander Stewart. It may be the case that simply a litany of anti-SNP diatribes is the way to go. I just think that if you want to have a genuinely constructive debate, that is not the way to go. Also, a dialogue is better than a monologue, so accepting an intervention, and it would have been a constructive one, I hope, would have been, I think, more helpful in terms of a genuine debate. I hope that, in time, she will be able to take genuine interventions and try and have a dialogue rather than a monologue. We are not going to get anywhere if we have, as I think we had before the election, simply trying to trash the entire justice and policing system in this country. Let's start from the fact that, if there are things that are wrong, I accept that and I am willing to take on those challenges. However, let's not try to trash the entire system and say that it is the worst in the world or whatever else it is. Russell Finlay's points are right about serious organised crime. It was not mentioned and it is extremely important. I would offer genuinely to him the offer made to me by the chief council and others to talk about some of the work, not all of which we can do in the public domain, that is going on, very serious work and very good work. I realise that he will have reservations about how effective it is, but I think that that would help inform some of his views about what the police are doing. I thought that the attacks on the SNP were just pointless, to be honest. It could have been a much more productive contribution to make. Once again, if we want to have a genuine dialogue, I am happy to be involved in it. In some of the historic cases that he mentioned, he knows more about them than I do, and I accept that. The criminal cases review commission will look at those cases. I am sure that they have tried that before. It is not for me to reopen former cases, but I am not saying that some of the points that he raised, especially the one about Mr McCloud, which I am aware of, are not serious cases. However, those injustices are looked at in a particular way. Again, I am perfectly happy to have a genuine discussion with him about that. Very quickly, I can turn to the amendments, convener. There is much across them, which I am happy to agree with. There are a few areas that I wish to highlight in the specific amendments. First, Labour's amendment supports our overall ambition for the justice sector. However, it is worth noting that decisions around domestic abuse courts and, indeed, all specialist courts currently is a constitutional matter for the Lord President, the President and the senior judiciary. Those are issues that I think should be considered. I think that Jamie Greene made this point as well. The relationship between jury size and other aspects, or jury juries, and some of the changes proposed by Lady Dorian, should be considered in my view in the round. I cannot accept that, but I am willing to come back to that. I am sure that we will do that very soon. I really do not have much time. I am sorry that I am trying to wind up for the last time that the Opposition speaks so far. I apologise, but I do not have time to do that. In relation to the Lib Dem's amendment on fatal accident inquiries, Parliament has agreed substantial reforms to the inquiries into fatal accidents in sudden deaths in 2016. It was passed with unanimous support and additional resources have been applied, and it is having an effect. I do not deny that there are cases, some very high-profile cases that give cause for concern, but currently, I think that less than 2 per cent of the fatal accident or sudden deaths have resulted in FAIs, which have lasted more than two years. I will continue to work on that, but I cannot accept that amendment. On the Conservatives' amendment, there is much that we can agree on in relation to that. I agree with the need to continue to place victims and victims rights at the heart of the justice system. I tried to cover that in my opening remarks, and I know that we will come back to that, both by the Government and the Conservative Party, also on restorative justice and secure funding, but there is so much else, not least on not proven. If you are going to go with the proposal that the Conservatives mentioned, you really have to consider the other aspects that are not proven in terms of size of juries and many other things in the justice system. For that reason, it is important that we take that forward, and that is what the consultation will do. I am not by any means shutting the door on that, but I cannot accept the other points in the Conservative amendment. Additionally, some of the courts can already use their maximum sentence powers in dealing with attacks on emergency workers. It was only the Conservatives that refused to support the legislation on emergency workers back in 2006. We are happy to support the Greens amendment today, including the commitment to human rights very well articulated by Maggie Chapman and the need to ensure holistic approaches to addressing underlying causes. However, it is worth noting that issues of enforcement, as I mentioned in the amendment against corporate and environmental crime, are operational matters for the appropriate regulatory authorities. On the point about institutional violence that Pauline McNeill raised, I have spoken with the prison service and we have seen reports from the inspectorate of prison services that say that there is a very good relationship between prisons and prisoners, but the general thrust of the Greens amendment, especially in relation to human rights approach and some of the other innovations, we are happy to support. With that, and with those positions on those amendments, I am happy to conclude for the Government. That concludes the debate on justice, recover, renew, transform. The next item of business is consideration of business motion 347, in the name of George Adam, on behalf of the parliamentary bureau, setting out revisions to next week's business. Any member who wishes to speak against the motion should press their request to speak button now. I call on George Adam to move the motion. No member has asked to speak against the motion, therefore the question is that motion 347 be agreed, are we all agreed? The motion is therefore agreed. The next item of business is consideration of parliamentary bureau motion 350 on a variation of standing orders. I ask George Adam on behalf of the parliamentary bureau to move the motion. Thank you, Presiding Officer. Once again, formally moved. Thank you. The question on this motion will be put at decision time. There are six questions to be put as a result of today's business. The first is the amendment 294.1, in the name of Jamie Greene, which seeks to amend motion 294 in the name of Keith Brown on justice, recover, renew, transform, be agreed. Are we all agreed? The Parliament is not agreed, therefore we will move to a vote and there will be a short suspension to allow members to access the digital voting system.