 I welcome to the 17th meeting of the Criminal Justice Committee in 2023. No apologies are made this morning, and Fulton MacGregor is joining us online. Our first item of business today is to consider whether to take item 6, consideration of today's evidence in private. Are we all agreed? The next agenda item is consideration of an affirmative instrument that is the draft international organisations, immunities and privileges Scotland amendment order of 2023. I am pleased to welcome the cabinet secretary for justice and home affairs Angela Constance and her officials to the meeting this morning. The Walter Drummond Murray head of civil courts unit, Connor Samson, justice corporation policy manager and Emma Thompson solicitor with the legal directorate at the Scottish government. I refer members to paper one and invite the cabinet secretary to speak to the instrument cabinet secretary. Good morning, convener and thank you. The draft, the international organisations, immunities and privileges Scotland amendment order 2023 confers various legal immunities and privileges upon the international criminal police organisation, more commonly known as Interpol and specified categories of people connected to Interpol so far as this is within the devolved competence of this Parliament. The UK government has negotiated a privileges and immunities agreement with Interpol in order to provide Interpol with the privileges and immunities necessary for it to function effectively within the UK and to enable Glasgow to host the 2024 Interpol General Assembly for which granting privileges and immunities is a prerequisite. The agreement regulates the privileges and immunities that are afforded to Interpol such as certain tax exemptions and immunity under certain conditions from legal process. The agreement obliges the United Kingdom to abide by the terms of the agreement. The order before the committee today fulfills those obligations insofar as they relate to devolved matters in Scotland. Equivalent provision in respect of reserved matters and devolved matters in the rest of the UK is being conferred by legislation at Westminster. However, to the extent that the privileges and immunities relate to devolved matters in Scotland conferral rightly falls to the Scottish Parliament. When respective parliamentary passage is complete, both orders will go before the Privy Council in July. In order to assist the committee, I will say a little bit more about the nature of the privileges and immunities involved. The immunities cover things done or admitted to be done by members of Interpol only while exercising their official functions in connection with Interpol and the General Assembly. There is an exception to the immunity in respect of road traffic accidents. All persons enjoying privileges and immunities are expected to respect the laws and regulations enforced in the UK and the Secretary General of Interpol must co-operate at all times with the appropriate UK authorities to prevent any abuse of those privileges and immunities. The order also provides for the inviolability of any private residence of the Secretary General, exemption and privileges in respect of personal baggage and exemption or relief from all devolved and local taxes. It is customary to grant such privileges and immunities to diplomatic missions and international organisations to enable them to function. The agreement is broadly in line with global practice and includes provisions to ensure that immunities and privileges do not impede the proper administration of justice. The privileges and immunities conferred by this draft order are granted primarily on the basis of strict functional need. They are no greater in extent than those required to enable Interpol and specified individuals connected with Interpol to function effectively. The immunity does not apply to a person who is a British citizen or any person who at the time of taking up his or her functions is a permanent resident of the United Kingdom. Immunities and privileges are therefore limited in that they apply only to official functions and can be waived. The immunity is analogous but more limited than that which has been for generations conferred upon diplomats working in foreign jurisdictions. As with diplomatic immunity, all individuals benefiting from privileges and immunities in Scotland are expected to respect Scots law, both criminal and civil. To conclude, convener, the draft order implements the agreement that the UK has reached with Interpol in line with global practice. It enables Interpol to hold the General Assembly in Glasgow and conduct their activities in the UK while ensuring and upholding protections for the effective administration of justice. As a good global citizen, it is the responsibility of the Scottish Government to bring forward this order to the Parliament for consideration and I commend the order to committee. Thank you very much cabinet secretary, that's very helpful. We'll just now open it up to questions. I wonder if I can maybe just kick off just to ask. I think you did cover it in your opening remarks cabinet secretary but it was just to confirm that the provisions that we're looking at today would be for the duration of the general assembly event if you like only and don't stretch beyond that. It was just a little bit of part of the policy note that we have speaks to, it's necessary to grant Interpol the relevant privileges and amenities that are required to operate effectively across Great Britain and Northern Ireland on an on-going basis, so it was just to confirm that that doesn't mean that once this is in place or if it is agreed today it would be a permanent provision. The policy memorandum indicates, convener, that there are two functions of this order. One is absolutely to enable Glasgow to host the general assembly of Interpol, so there is very specific consideration given to the operational needs of Interpol with respect to those functions. But there is also another purpose to this order and it's particularly important post Brexit to ensure that the United Kingdom can continue to collaborate with Interpol given the importance of Interpol as an international forum of co-operation in terms of law enforcement. So there is no end date to this order but of course it is for either party to terminate it either in terms of Interpol or the United Kingdom, so it's a necessary order both for the specific function of the general assembly and for the individuals who will attend that general assembly. But there is also a broader function in terms of what the UK Government have negotiated in terms of the agreement, in terms of securing an on-going relationship with Interpol. I would conclude, convener, that it is in all our interests for the UK to continue to engage with Interpol. That's very helpful. Thanks for that clarification. Okay, so I've got Jamie Greene wishing to come in and then Russell. Jamie? Thank you, convener. Good morning, Cabinet Secretary and other guests. I have two short questions. The first, to congratulate City of Glasgow on a successful bid for hosting this event in conjunction with the FCDO. But my primary question is in relation to comments you made about road traffic accident exemptions. Would that be a blanket exemption to all delegates for the duration of their time in Glasgow? Or could there be, for example, if an incident did occur, could the proposition be made that this occurred while they were exercising their duties, which I think is the language you used, and therefore could claim immunity in circumstances. So I was just a bit unclear as to how that would be applicable by Police Scotland if in the, hopefully, unfortunate event, which we hope doesn't happen, but if it were to happen, how that would be handled by the police. I'm grateful to Mr Greene for raising those matters. It's, of course, a great opportunity for the City of Glasgow. This is a prestigious international event. It's not as big as COP26. It will be on a smaller scale and won't last for the same duration. It will have less delegates than visited the City of Glasgow during COP26. Nonetheless, it's a great opportunity for the City to show that it is well-able to host such events. If I just perhaps reread the pivotal sentence in my statement, there is an exception to immunity in respect of road traffic accidents. That's an exception to immunity in respect of road traffic accidents. I think that that is very clear. I don't know if officials would wish to add anything to that, but I think that the facts of the matter is that there is an exception to immunity. It's more just in relation to somebody, for example, commuting from their temporary place of residence to the conference centre, for example, when something happened in that environment, where they could argue otherwise. That's fine. The other really is a more general question. That's just what discussions the Scottish or UK Government perhaps has had with Police Scotland on policing the event itself. If there has been any analysis on resourcing levels required or perhaps any finger in the air on perhaps the financial costs of it, not that that's an issue as such, but it's just important for the committee to keep a watching eye on those things. It will be for the UK Government to meet the costs that are incurred by the City of Glasgow and Police Scotland. The Home Office has been very clear with regard to that. We are still some distance away from the General Assembly. We are looking at November next year, so much of that work will be continuing in terms of estimating costs. Both Police Scotland and the City of Glasgow are confident that the plans that they have in place are appropriate, but there will continue to be very close dialogue between the Scottish Government, the UK Government and, of course, our partners in the City of Glasgow. I would also like to put on record that the United Kingdom Government has secured this prestigious event for Glasgow and I have decided to host it in Glasgow. I agree with the security minister, Tom Tuggenhatt, who says that it underlines the UK's role as a global leader in security and policing. I am also grateful to all the members who have supported my parliamentary motion, in which I will just take the opportunity to briefly plug. I was going to ask the same question that Jamie Greene asked about the road traffic, and it is an exemption. I understand that he would be taking the high profile case in which a young man was killed by an overseas diplomat in the UK. Do you know if that exemption has been arrived at due to that particular case? It is my understanding that past experience always informs future negotiations over matters and in and around these important agreements. The other thing that was more general with COP26 is that it is pretty much the same thing? There is no meaningful difference to the exemptions. I will now invite the cabinet secretary to move motion S6M-08712 that the Criminal Justice Committee recommends that the international organisations, immunities and privileges Scotland amendment order 2023, be approved. The question is that motion S6M-08712, in the name of Angela Constance, be agreed. On that note, I thank the cabinet secretary and your officials for your time. I suspend the meeting briefly to allow for a changeover of witnesses. Thank you very much. Indeed, our next item of business is an evidence session on tackling online child abuse, grooming and exploitation. This is the committee's second evidence session on this issue following our initial consideration back in May last year. I am very pleased to welcome to the meeting this morning Daljeet Deygon, programme manager at Bernardo Scotland, Stuart Allardyce, director with Stoppitt Now Scotland, Lucy Faithful Foundation, Wendy Hart, deputy director, threat leadership, child sexual abuse with the national crime agency, Joanne Smith, policy and public affairs manager NSPCC Scotland, detective superintendent Martin McLean, head of the national child abuse investigation unit specialist crime division, Police Scotland, Alison Penman, senior manager with Dumfries and Galloway council and deputy chair of the child protection group of social work Scotland. I warm welcome to you all and I thank you for providing your written evidence and I refer members to papers 2 and 3. I intend to allow up to around 90 minutes for this session this morning. We will move straight to questions. I think I will just kick things off and invite you each. I will go from my left across to the right. Perhaps I will invite you to make some short opening remarks just in and around the work that your respective organisations are undertaking and have been developing in relation to the issue. If I may, I will start with you, Daljeet Deygon. I suppose that from the perspective of Bernardo Scotland, we have been working on the issue of child sexual abuse and exploitation for around 30 years in Scotland. I personally have been involved with the organisation for over 25 years of that, so substantial experience. From our perspective, I suppose what we would want to say is that we still do not have an understanding of what the scale and nature and extent of child sexual abuse is in Scotland, and I think that that is a critical issue for us to consider. We also now need to be aware of the new and emerging themes and harms that are also relevant. Do you want me to wait until I have finished? I apologise for the interruption. We have just got the windows open because it is quite warm in the committee room. I think that we are fine now. I suppose that, again from my perspective in terms of working with children and young people, we spent too long expecting children to protect themselves and take responsibility for the abuse and harm that they suffer and encounter, and it is about time that we basically need technology. Organisations and companies take much more responsibility for both preventing abuse from happening in the first place but also looking at measures that that can continue to protect children from harm going forward. The last thing that I would like to mention is that, although we want to focus on sexual abuse today, it is also important to think about the other harms that children are exposed to online, and that, in particular, from my perspective and our organisation perspective, also includes child criminal exploitation in particular as well, which is on the rise in terms of online coercion and abuse as well. I am sure that there are points that you raise in your opening remarks that members will certainly want to come back to. Stewart Dallardyce, can I bring you in? Thank you, convener. I stop in Scotland as part of the Lucy Faithful Foundation, a UK charity that focuses on the prevention of child sexual abuse. We were established in Scotland in 2008. The UK charity goes back to the 1990s. We do a number of different things. Our UK helpline works with several thousands of individuals every year who are worried about their sexual thoughts, feelings towards children, including people who are involved with online behaviour, and they can use the anonymous and confidential support that is provided by our child protection professionals who staff the helpline. In Scotland, we work with around 100 individuals who have been arrested for online offences and cannot get access to statutory supports until they are convicted. At present, that is taking around two years for individuals to be convicted. We also work with partners and family members of those individuals, and we also work with around 30 young people who have been charged with online sexual offences as well every year. We provide support, challenge and therapeutic care for those individuals. I think that the key things I would want to convey to the committee is that prevention of online harm has three components, one of which is safety by design, the stuff that tech companies need to take on board with their online safety bill is driving. The right messaging to young people and parents themselves, taking on board Daljeet's point that it is not the responsibility of children to stop themselves being abused, but there are messages that can be helpful for young people in this space. Finally, perpetrator focus prevention, making sure that deterrence and disruption and early help are provided for individuals in this particular space. All those components need to be in place. It cannot just be one that will define what prevention looks like. All of that needs to be locked into a strategic vision with the right kind of resourcing and scalability of solutions. I am sure that we will tease that out as we go through this today. The NSPCC led the campaign for the introduction of legislation to strengthen the regulatory regime around the online environment back in 2018. There have been a number of delays in terms of pushing that forward, a lot to do with political unrest at Westminster, so it has been deeply frustrating not seeing that level of momentum and priority given to children's safety online, given that we know the harm that has been done in the intervening years. I am really glad that the committee is facilitating this conversation now. We are involved in the development of legislation at a UK level, but we also see and feel the scale and nature of childhood sexual abuse online through increasing contacts to the child line. We are hearing, although children's experiences are wide and varied. We see a trajectory where unsafe design functions within online spaces are being exploited by perpetrators and putting children at risk. The scale that we are seeing is not inevitable. Prevention is possible. The technology exists now to build and prevention at the design stage. It is really important that we are pushing ahead and making sure that accountability is felt within the tech industry. We are increasingly upskilling young people to keep themselves online. We have a huge appetite from most parents to upskill themselves to keep their children safe online. The police are doing an excellent job in terms of better detection and moving to prosecution. It is really vital now that the tech industry step up to the plate and take their share of the responsibility to keep children safe when they are using their platforms. The only safety bill will go some way to do that, hopefully. Hi, thank you very much for having me here today. The national crime agency is focused on tackling CSA upstream online overseas. When I say that, it means looking at the architecture that supports this kind of criminality, the online space and those other international jurisdictions where criminality takes place. We have an active engagement in terms of understanding the threat through our intelligence collection capabilities and strategic analysis and investigating CSA. For the purposes of today, we have a system leadership role, which is defined in the Crime and Courts Act 2013, which is to secure an efficient and effective response to serious and organised crime, including online child sexual abuse. To do that, the national crime agency works through strategic governance arrangements of which it is Scotland a key and active members to work across the four Ps or, as the Scottish SOC strategy is, the four Ds to engage across prevention through to pursue responsibilities. I would agree with comments from colleagues that the scale is increasing and it is increasing in complexity and severity and that prevention performs a critical part of an early intervention. Child sexual abuse and exploitation remains a very high operational priority for Police Scotland. The scale is such that we continue to experience enduring increases in the latest figures for the last financial year show a 6.6 per cent increase on the five-year average of our crimes that are recorded as online child sexual abuse and exploitation. We also continue to see significant increases in the industry referrals, particularly from the national centre for missing and exploited children, an increase of 500 per cent since 2015 to 2022. Those referrals in the main translate into enforcement activity, largely carried out by my operational teams, and just by way of illustration last year alone translated to 712 investigations, 489 arrests and 782 children safeguarded. Police Scotland's approach remains the case that we want to be at the forefront of international good practice. We are utterly committed to robust enforcement and tackling perpetrators, but we totally understand the importance of our partnership working and the preventative approach that has been touched on already by some of our colleagues here today. The multi-agency preventing online child sexual abuse and exploitation meeting, and there is detail on that in the written submission, is a critical facet of this. The work with Horizon EU and the 2PS prevent and protect through support. The work with Child Light and indeed Ipscan Conference in Edinburgh later this year are all illustrations of our commitment to working in that international sphere. The moxie meeting has also been important in our engagement with both originally the Department of Culture, Media and Sport and the Home Office, but also our developing relationship with Ofcom Scotland in anticipation of its increased profile and regulatory role with the online safety bill. There are some more detailed matters in the written submission, but I hope that that is enough to start. From a social work perspective, our child protection responses are similar to how we respond to other areas of harm, although there are some things we would want, particular consideration taken into account. Across social work Scotland and in partnership, we are in the process of implementing the 2021 national child protection guidance with full implementation, expected by autumn of this year. Within that, there is particular attention paid to interagency referral discussions or IRDs, and that is where we have police, social work, health and often education at the table, making those very initial decisions together in terms of how we respond to children who have been harmed or indeed who are harming towards other. We particularly would like to see in the discussion consideration and recognition of children who behave harmfully towards others, who often require different approaches in terms of intervention programmes. Within that, we would like to see links being made to the Karen Justice Bill and the Age of Criminal Responsibility Act. I am thinking very much about where do children fit into this, particularly in relation to the Bairnshouse development, and how do we ensure that children who harm other children are properly supported to recover from their trauma, as well as addressing their offending. We work closely with CYCJ on our frame guidance, on how we implement care and risk management strategies for children who behave dangerously towards others. Ultimately, we will be looking for an overarching strategy, which brings all the different kinds of sexual harm that children experience together. Westminster has a sexual abuse strategy, but within that they barely recognise children who offend against other children or children who behave harmfully towards other children. There was potentially a missed opportunity there that we would not want to follow down that track. We would be looking for an overarching sexual harm strategy that looks at prevention, intervention and recovery, and that is properly resourced so that the partners have the facilities that they need and the resources to recognise, identify, respond and help children to recover from their experiences. Thank you very much. A lot, just even in your opening remarks, so lots for us to try and unpick in our questions. I am just going to open it up to members. I know there will be some questions that they will want to ask and we will start over the Russell family. Thank you very much. Good morning. I have a lot of questions, but I will ask a couple of them now if there is time perhaps to come back in. I can maybe suggest to members just so that we are using our time as efficiently as we can if you want to direct your questions to specific panel members. Absolutely. Okay, so I suppose this one will probably be for Martin McLean. Last year, Bec Smith, your Police Scotland colleague, told the committee about significant legislative gaps in relation to child sexual abuse and exploitation. She gave a couple of examples, one being not no specific Scottish legislation relating to prohibited images and the current criteria for an application for a risk of sexual harm order does not cover online offenses. What we later discovered, and it has been a year has now passed, is that the former Justice Secretary Keith Brown told the committee that the Scottish Government had indeed engaged with the Crown Office over these particular concerns that we are colleagues. He said to us in writing that the Scottish Government is assessing the Crown's feedback and will meet Police Scotland in due course to discuss our response to the issues that they have raised. I suppose that a year down the line, I would quite like to know if you have yet had that meeting, if you have yet had that feedback. Do you know what the Crown's position is in response to the requests that were raised by your colleague? Was the Crown's position put in writing? If so, perhaps we could see that and really just where we are at. There are a number of questions in there. If there are written submissions from Crown to Government, that is not a matter for me to comment on. We have had a meeting with Scottish Government colleagues on the notion of legislative gaps that were raised last year. On the specific point of the risk of sexual harm orders that is arguably academic now, because that has now been replaced by the sexual harm orders and the previous SOPOs are now sexual harm prevention orders and the replacement for the ROSHOs, I think I used it, sexual risk orders, the criteria are much more favourable in terms of being applied for. That gap, if you like, is no longer relevant, which is helpful. Those two elements seem to have been dealt with, but in the written submission made by Police Scotland for this particular session, it identified four serious issues that relate to indecent images of children, extreme pornographic material of a sort of CGI or cartoon format, child-like sex dolls and something described by Police Scotland. I am not entirely sure what that means as preparatory acts and collection of relevant information and these are still legislative gaps. Those matters are still extant, so to speak, and there's not been a definitive resolution as to the way forward, but there have been constructive meetings with the Government and my understanding is the plan for Government colleagues to bring back Police Scotland and Crown to the table to discuss further. Are you satisfied with the pace of this progress? There is detail to be worked through, but yes, I'm not unduly concerned by the pace. Yeah, okay, thank you very much. I've got a question for Stuart, if that's okay. In your written submission, there's a number of asks of the committee. One of those is the need for a Scotland-wide strategy to tackle online child sexual abuse. There isn't one in Scotland. There is, however, one in England and Wales. How long have your organisation been asking for this and do you know what stage we're at progress-wise? Well, we've been asking for this for two or three years now, and I know it's something that other children's charities have also pointed out as being a significant lack. There's an action plan for Wales and separate from that, a home office strategy for tackling child sexual abuse in England, but nothing in Scotland. That's not to say that there's a huge amount of activity going on both in the general field of tackling child sexual abuse and online harm and indeed in prevention, but it means that there's no strategic vision and it means that solutions often piecemeal and quite disconnected from each other and are not adequately resourced. All right, okay, thank you. Similarly, one of the asks is the need for a Scottish deterrence campaign. Again, there's a difference between there not being one currently, but similar things are happening elsewhere. Do you know whether that's progressing or not? To be frank, we haven't had extended discussions with the Scottish Government about that, but I think that we should. The reason being that our UK charity is funded by the Home Office to do specific deterrence work targeting those who are either at risk of online offending or who have started online offending but are unarrested but may be available to seek early help in anonymous and confidential spaces. What we've seen is a significant increase in the number of people who are using our online platforms for help in England and Wales and a significant increase in the number of calls that we're receiving to our helpline in England and Wales. We're seeing a slight increase in Scotland but not the same kind of increase in Scotland. The reason for that is mostly that the deterrence work that is funded by the Home Office does not extend to Scotland and there is no ring-fenced funding for deterrence and disruption work in Scotland at the moment. We have done work in partnership with Police Scotland, which has shown significant uplifts in the number of people coming forward and accessing early support and help with respect to that kind of behaviour but without the right kind of resourcing then we won't be able to drive people to that that those forms of early support. Can I have another one? Can I maybe come back to you and let some other members come in? Pauline McNeill, you'd like to take this? Thank you very much. Good morning everyone. The last session that we had was very much into instill. I'm interested in image-based abuse across the board. I've done a bit of work since we had that conversation at the last committee and I'm now convinced that there is a gap in the law in relation to abuse of sex-based images, particularly in relation to consent because it's about the shearing of those images and the damage and the harm that can be done to children in particular and young people so I suppose that's the context. So Alison, you mentioned this specifically so I wanted to ask your view in relation to I suppose it's young people how we want to categorise older children. I know everything in the submissions about the importance of how you message to young people and you wouldn't do it the same way as you would to adults and most of the work does focus on the risks presented by adults so I'll talk to the conscious of that but since we're talking about children I wondered if you thought there maybe was a gap in the law because of the harm that can be done. I mean she's a shared and I know there was a student mentioned as a very live issue now about fake images I'm not convinced the law is adequate at the moment I just wondered what you thought Alison about that. I think yes we would agree with that and whilst the majority of online sexual abuse and harm continues to be perpetrated by adults I think Stuart you have some figures in relation to the increase of children who are also offending under that legislation and the investigative and justice responses to those children are similar they're more similar to the responses to adults in many instances than they are to children so it's about remembering that when children behave in dangerous or harmful way to others that is quite often coming from a place of trauma and that needs a significantly different response to that so I don't think we are where we should be in terms of understanding what that needs to look like I think we need to see online sexual abuse and exploitation as part of an overreaching sexual harm strategy as I said in the beginning and I don't think there is enough in relation to that I think in our production we made reference to how we link in with schools and how we support schools to be having those conversations with children schools already a lot of schools have mentors in violence prevention mvp mentors where we have six year pupils who mentor and support younger children recognising that from a child development perspective influence is often greater coming from other young people than it is coming from adults so schools are doing that actively but schools are struggling to provide those interventions because of their resource shortfalls as well and what we're seeing increasingly in schools particularly since Covid is an increase in children who are displaying communication disorders or traits of communication disorders whether that's artistic spectrum disorder where they are sometimes struggling to understand social interactions what's acceptable behaviour what's not and for children understanding what constitutes criminal behaviour and what constitutes behaviour that is normal because their peers are doing it is a real struggle but particularly more so for those children who might have additional communication needs thank you can I follow up on your last sentence um but it may increasingly seen as normalized now this is borne out by some studies in england which we don't have in scotland i'm interested in the victims mainly girls but not always girls and the harm that can be done to girls because of i mean i would imagine you would include this in the you know the broad definition yes and the harm because of course we don't have control over the tech companies that we would like which is the current controversy around how far that online safety bill goes so i know what you said about how to deal with young people and how the trauma can be the basis of which you know people's behaviour is maybe what it shouldn't be but we've got this normalising in schools as acceptable i just wondered if you'd come back at me on that because that's the area where i think maybe there needs to be stronger messages in the law in relation to sharing of images because once those images are shared very difficult to get them back that's right so children often don't know when because that activity taking place within schools is usually children sharing them with other children quite often children still don't know that they're breaking the law by doing that and they don't understand the far reaching consequences of such behaviour if somebody was to complain if they were investigated if they were charged now it's likely that would be dealt with through the children's hearing system but that's still on their record you're right in terms of the impact the impact for victims of that kind of behaviour can be life changing it can be absolutely life changing so that's why we need to be able to look at this thing from that legislative perspective but also from that identification recognition prevention and intervention i know that stewart might want to answer that question but could i ask to the superintendent martin mclean if you think what are the powers that police scotland or in fact i'm not even sure it's out there your jurisdiction have to delete let's let's see well the issue is is a great area but whether it's actually contrary to the law but are there any powers on the deletion of images yeah so police scotland specifically doesn't have any specific power in that regard but the internet watch foundation tend to take the lead and there's report and remove tools that so police can refer on behalf of a victim for example or or indeed victims and their families can report themselves or prefer themselves or the image at stake to the likes of the internet watch foundation to then assist with the removal of that image of the internet so is that answer your question yeah that's enough i don't have any further questions but i thought maybe the other panel members like stewart alladice might want to just answer the same no no thank you and i mean i think your point is very well made and the clearly it's important for children and young people to know that the sharing of self-produced images is illegal but we need to be cautious here about messaging and the reason i say that is that we now have a kind of growing body of research which tells us that zero tolerance approaches to young people being involved with self-produced sexual imagery sharing often images of themselves within consensual context initially with with peers that the more that we tell children not to do this the more difficult it is for young people to come forward if they have worries the 14 year old girl who shared a photograph of herself with her boyfriend and then is worried that actually maybe that was a mistake maybe i should go and speak to an adult about that but if you consistently have messaging saying at school saying this is against the law you'll get into a lot of trouble if you do this you must never do it it's very difficult for that young person to come forward so there's a couple of things that i want to be specific i'm talking about where that scenario the image is then without the consent shared so i understand because i did the early legislation way back i understand the difficulties in where do you draw the lines is where that image is shared i don't think the law covers it but i could be wrong so in that scenario i might defer to modern on that because i think there is legislation the so-called revenge porn offence covers the offence but as your question then for example there's one thing if the former partner of the person who sent the image initially sends it on in a malicious way so you can send to the image but you didn't consent to it it's the sharing it's the sharing aspect of it obviously if you put it there's one thing posting on the internet that then potentially could be taken down via the processes i've described but if they're simply sharing that with another person on whatsapp or some other social media platform it's not if it's a social media platform it's arguably on the internet if it's a private messaging exchange then it's not on the internet as such if you see it i mean this i don't think that's what you're asking how the the victim then regains control of that image and that's the difficulty it's almost impossible to do that yeah short of knowing it's one other person that's been shared if the former boyfriend shares it with one person and we can identify that person and recover that device in the phone and get it deleted that might be the tight set of circumstances that i think would be what you're describing where we could definitively state it's all been removed as it were but it's almost impossible to get to that point somebody just said you know somebody might share it with 10 15 20 people is that unlawful to do that to share it with you of course yeah that is of yes thank you the messaging really needs to be about actually this is this is risk taking behaviour because you don't know what will happen to your image over a longer period of time and also probably the more critical issue here is actually coercion and control within relationships and young women in particular being forced or pushed into sharing images against their their own their own will so i think there are a number of things that we need to get in in here but they're probably more about education than they are about legislation bring in Jamie Greene thank you i'll maybe continue on this topic a little bit i don't know i just listening to as having a conversation about it as middle aged adults is there a sense of naivety perhaps in the discussion that actually what there's a huge amount of normalisation in this type of behaviour now amongst young people and i know speaking to parents teachers and of course young people themselves when we do visits classes and schools sometimes you engage in these conversations about the realities of life as a young person i haven't been a young person for a very long time but i know some of the charitable organisations and another third sector organisations here do work with them on a daily basis i mean are we trying to police the unpoliceable and i'm not talking about the issue of people committing horrific serious online sexual assault exploitation and abuse i'm very interested in the subject of the peer-to-peer world and living as a young person you know in some cases even those in primary school not not teenagers where this sort of behaviour has become normalized because of technology advancements and the fact you have a mobile phone before you get to p1 when i didn't get one till i was 17 so i think the world has changed hugely over the last decade and i wonder how realistic we're being about these conversations and our messaging and education and whether there's a reality check at our level amongst politicians and stakeholders and policing uh whether we're you know we're taking the right approach with this issue and we're trying to police something which is simply unmanageable and we should be really thinking differently about how we deal with this issue i'm just chucking it out there because i'm not meaning to be controversial but i'll perhaps maybe start with some of the children's charities first i don't mean coming in so i'm just looking at you because yeah no that's fine i'm coming in i think you're spot on because none of this is new behaviour it's it's been exacerbated by technology but it's not new behaviours and i'd like to think it wasn't that long ago that i was a young person but it is but i'm thinking back and i suppose the one thing i often say when i'm having this conversation with practitioners is around if you think back you know sharing imagery consensual imagery do you know what i mean in a consensual environment was the norm when i was growing up the only difference was it was a disposable camera and depending on how much money you had whether you had the money for express or a seven day you had opportunities to intervene before you went to boots and got those images before they were shared whereas now it's all right i'll do it and then you click that button and then you think i wish i hadn't done it we also have numerous young people and it's interesting how we spoke a lot about girls today because actually the conversations that we've had with boys is that they're often excluded from these conversations almost as if it doesn't happen to them which makes it even harder for them to then actually have those conversations and share what's happening to them and they do feel underrepresented in some of those conversations but i think certainly from young people's perspective it's it's what we've had people say is it's better to get it over and done with because actually if you don't consent to it then you just get pestered again and again and again and that's worse than actually sharing the image in the first place because it's over and done with and i remember when a young person first told me that i was kind of shocked i think wow do you know what i mean but the same time i can also understand that constant you know almost kind of a bullying behaviour to say do you know what i mean and it is so much easier just to get it over and done with and it has become the norm but these are not new behaviours and i think from again from a young person's perspective we also need to stop talking about online it's an integrated world for young people they do not differentiate between what's happening in the digital world and what's happening in the physical world it's the one thing so we need to get our heads around that as well so the language that we are using and i think there are gaps but i think anything when we're doing anything going forward we need to think i think of online as part of that so any strategy we come up with you know so i mean i commend Martin for in terms of chairing the online the the oxygroup that we've got but i think it's about how we integrate that into the wider world and there was an earlier conversation about a Scottish government doing enough and one of the things i would say from our organisation's perspective is that we often have the same conversation but with different parts of the directorate and it's about how do you bring all the directorate together and that's what we're doing in a couple of weeks time so rather than having a conversation just with colleagues around the online safety plan or trafficking or child criminal exploitation or contextual safeguarding it's about bringing those you know kind of governmental people together to see actually we're talking about the one thing but the spaces and places can be different and how we look at it might be different but it's the one strategy we need to have rather than individual style working that we've got yeah thank you for that i mean that's interesting for others to come in i mean it sort of touched on the point Stuart was using about the language you use and not putting people off where there are actual issues as opposed to day-to-day behaviour that they don't deem to be inappropriate for example and i guess you know who's best placed to get that message across is it in the classroom from teachers is it peer-to-peer is it is it educating parents on how to have very frank and normal conversations about these things without being embarrassed given that as you say we are in an integrated world where you know snap chatting in the playground to somebody who's three meters away is normal behaviour so you know i guess when you're putting together all these wonderful strategies and and getting governments to come together and legislate for change to improve things i'm surely that you know grassroots on the ground talking to young people at the earliest opportunity is the best way to get positive messages across by how to deal with problematic situations i'll put our spring join and see broke a lot of experience in this yeah no i think you touching a really critical issue it's vitally important that we recognize that children are the experts in this space now we we increasingly understand the value of co-production in terms of policy development and the participation of children in in a developing kind of constructive solutions to the problems that they face and nowhere is that more important and relevant than in the online in the policing of the online space so actually bringing children's expertise into the development of regulatory processes is really critically important they absolutely understand the emerging risks that they're facing they're on the forefront of the new challenges in a rapidly changing context and they have to be central to the decision making process we are actually supporting an amendment and the online safety bill for the creation of a user advocacy body for children and that's about just really creating a mechanism to bring that expertise right into the heart of overseeing the implementation of a new regulatory regime so that children are testing out whether the measures that are being put in place are going to strengthen protections for them or otherwise so the body would have the similar kind of advocacy powers to something like the citizens rights bureau you know that kind of model because what we see is a real gap for children's voices it's largely absent in the legislation as it's currently drafted and we feel that it's really critically important that their experiences are incorporated to make sure that they are informing how this new measures have been rolled out so i completely agree with that the user advocacy body is i can a step in the right direction to make sure that we're swiftly responding to emerging risk and managing risk on an ongoing basis question i guess i'll direct to wendy and possibly martin we've spoken about the huge increase in the statistics and figures that you have for recorded online child abuse do you have any notion or can you even hazard a guess at the actual level because you're talking about recorded levels you know i'm not a difficult question but i mean how much more do you think is actually going on that's not recorded that's a difficult question to answer understand um as you say uh there have been increasing numbers of online reports so the national centre of missing exploited children which martin referred to uh received 316 900 industry reports referred them to you to the uk last year that's a slight increase on the year before um the nca has estimated that there are likely to be between 550 and 850 000 people in the united kingdom who pose varying degrees of sexual risk to children including contact offending and online offending those various forms so that is our best estimate at this time of the square quite a wide range quite a wide range it's a difficult topic because it is an estimate we are working to refine that estimate and to understand the threat better but we think it is consistent with the numbers that are seen in other western countries so we are not different in that it is simply that we have tried to estimate it using the intelligence we've got but it is a large number yes what would you make of do you think there should be a larger public awareness campaign you know directed at this subject and you know is that an ongoing thing we need we need to increase the amount of public awareness and on the subject do you think there has been an increase in public discussion recently and events like this are very important to do that i think i would agree with with the colleagues and comments previously there is no real distinction between the online and real world any more and as we've just discussed children don't make this distinction educating adults around this threat is particularly important and educating adults and parents and carers how to talk to children about this is particularly critical we produce in the national crime agency we have an education section which is a child exploitation online protection c op education team we produce materials which are to be used by parents and carers and teachers on how to talk to children about the online threats and because of our unique engagement and understanding of the threat we're able to respond to emerging threats such as how do you talk to your child about the dark web and what is it and how do you talk to them about sharing images or what are the risks and how do you talk to them about keeping themselves safe without putting the onus on children and victim blaming so it's really really important to have that education angle that is only one part of education and it's certainly never going to be enough for the entire country although we did see a significant increase in downloads during covert in particular of that material so i absolutely agree that education on this and more widely needs to be done but that has to be done in the multi-agency way and understanding how government can intervene at different opportunities okay thank you Alison if i could ask you in your statement you mentioned the bairns house and i'm just wondering if you could maybe expand a bit on how you think that will help in what you're trying to do to support offenders and victims i think that's an ongoing discussion that needs to be had in relation to how children who behave harmfully towards other fit into that environment i don't think we've concluded on that yet but i think it needs further discussion i think we need to think about that if we're going to consider children who behave harmfully towards others as behaving in that way which comes from a place of trauma then they are as entitled to and still need the support of that trauma support and recovery in relation to their behaviours and if we want if we're talking about a preventative strategy this is about supporting children now to not become the offenders of the future and that's what we would want to do can i maybe just see one thing in relation to the previous point which is about the normalisation of this behaviour because it does make me think is that what we want for our children and from a children's rights perspective is it good enough that children feel unsafe whether it's online whether it's in their real world at school if you were to ask children in school what was the thing that they felt least safe about and that they needed protection from it is unlikely to be about extra or intrafamilial abusers it is about each other they don't feel safe in school they will say bullying is the thing that scares them most and i suppose for me i don't think we should normalise it i think we should be striving for more and it is about that messaging it's about i don't know if people have seen the varnish advert about a child who has autism a girl and it was it was an advert developed by a company but there's some messaging around that that brings these things right home for teachers as well a lot of our teachers are maybe a little bit out of their depth i'm thinking about some of these issues children know and understand this so we need to be considering how we can implement strategies that allowed children to say no this is not good enough i'm not going to accept this how do we support that and in doing so you asked about is it schools is it peers is it parents and adults it's everybody it's everybody and it's everything so we're talking about empowering children really to say no and i think that from a child's rights based approach is that not what we want for our children to not accept that they're coerced into sharing images or that they feel they have to or they have to get over and done with is that good enough for scotland's children i would say no thank you that that's helpful just one more question is that's okay stewart i just wanted to ask you how do you sort of evaluate your success and that's a very sort of bland question but you know from the work that you do what outcomes how can you evaluate the outcomes of what you do yeah so the our UK helpline is funded by the home office and the ministry of justice and each year as a condition of funding we have external evaluation that that's provided and that evaluation is taken different forms but we've had agencies such as canter and budden speaks that have been involved with the update those evaluations one of the evaluations in particular looked at our work with unarrested offenders so doing survey work with them and also doing anonymized interviews with individuals and the key questions that were asked were after you engaged with stop it now did you do things differently and did you stop offending behaviour and the majority of cases that was in fact what people did people made tangible things changes in what they were doing you know whether it's talking about the behaviour with a with a partner whether it's about putting up particular restrictions on their their access to things online whether it's about making particular lifestyle changes so we do know that that prevention does make a difference that's interesting yeah and can you just give us an idea and I may have missed this in your opening statement on the sort of gender balance of the people that you're supporting what you know if you can give us an idea is it mainly so yeah yeah in terms of the scotland team we work with around a hundred online offenders every year generally um we would work with maybe one or two women the the remainder of men so it's almost predominantly a male issue okay thank you thanks computer okay thanks very much yes of course sorry I was just going to come in on that there was a um totality of the threat report done by the nca actually and it was wider than just online child sex abuse defining but i mean largely speaking you're talking about 80 percent male perpetrators and 80 percent female victims so it's heavily gendered sexual abuse and crime yeah i mean interestingly a subset within that of indecent images of children and the point that Daljeet made there's an increased level of male victims than the wider subset if you see what I mean which is an interesting facet but yeah okay thank you that's interesting thank you um still got a couple of members wanting to come in but I wonder if I can maybe just pick up on the the discussion um and um raise the issue of data so thinking about and this is an issue that we talk about quite a lot in the committee in terms of if we're moving forward and trying to underpin work in and around whatever it might be tackling gender-based violence or in this case tackling the sort of online space um what I'm interested to kind of understand what your views are about what data should we be collecting how do we do that when there are a lot of moving parts there's our different organisations have different roles and responsibilities within the overall work that's being done so I'm just trying to think about what as a committee is helpful for us to understand um in terms of developing that underpinning data set so I might be come to maybe Wendy and Martin first and then I might be come to Stuart after that so maybe Wendy thank you um the recent uh HMIC FRS inspection of online csa which applied to England and Wales highlighted the challenge of better management information and data which I think is precisely your question we are working with policing colleagues throughout the country and particularly with Ian Critchley who is the national policing lead in England Wales to understand how we better collect data from law enforcement that is absolutely one aspect of this um there is some journey to go because of different data systems different legacy systems and different recording of crime across the united kingdom so that's definitely something that we we do need to work on and we're working with Scottish partners on that past that conversation in terms of the future and looking forward the national crime agency will have a role under the online safety bill as a designated reporting body for csa content that is either um that has a uk locus that will give us a much better understanding of the uk nature of the threat and will hopefully inform a better strategic assessment of totality um offcom of course will have their own information gathering powers and their own ability to ask companies um what is required but um that will certainly be an important step forward for us to be able to understand in more detail uh csa reporting in the uk yep thanks as well i mean i'm just thinking about you know we've got an escalating sort of issue and challenge so we need to be thinking about how to sort of direct resources in and around that so martin i'll maybe come to you yeah i mean i've got quite a lot of stats here in front of me which um i think sometimes and i have to stop myself at times for becoming so immersed in them and trying to keep an eye on what the bigger picture is and some of the points just we talked about in decent imagery for example and you know within that basket of online child sexual abuse crimes that i mentioned at the beginning that's up 6.6 on the five-year average then decent imagery is up 18 on the five-year average so it's a much more significant increase but you know within the enforcement activity that i also described we keep a weather die on how many perpetrators are existing registered sex offenders or archived registered sex offenders which tends to be about the 10 to 12 percent feature how many of the offenders that we arrest are children under the age of 18 which is about 14 percent of that you know 489 arrests um so that we do have quite a lot of data that we work with to try and help inform um what we do we take on board feedback we've had instances of younger people being arrested that steward's team had spoken to our people had called steward's team and young people being liberated either with an undertaking to appear at court for example on a late on a friday or indeed it was a public holiday weekend it was a saturday court so we've undertaken to take enforcement earlier in the week so they're not stepping out on a saturday when there's a lack of services round about them in a way that otherwise might be the case so there's lots of facets to the data that you can look at and you know suicide both in perpetrators and in victim wise is another thing we keep a weather die on we're not seeing significant trends in either aspect of that we do see quite regular suicides of perpetrators at various trigger points in their journey post arrest and it can be very immediate sometimes it can be quite a bit down the line with court dates etc or the anticipation of appearing at court and so we do monitor that as well and we again have done so what was sure to try and do what we can to help mitigate that wherever possible so that's all a wee bit scatter gun i suppose it just shows you the kind of stuff that we do try and keep an eye on but that there is so much and so many facets to it um can i just first there was a couple of points just to pick up on in jimmy green and mentioned it in allison did to the script it was everybody's job to keep children safe teachers parents absolutely got a role but but of course we all have a professional responsibility as well um in the notion i think my viewpoint niel mentioned it about um i think the child protection system in the ird process which is a cornerstone of our system is very good at assessing risk and making pragmatic decisions and not rushing to criminalise young people unnecessarily i was just to give the committee somebody assurance about that certainly from a police perspective and then the point that daljeet makes about online and offline we've talked about that quite a number of times at the moxie meeting and it's just young people just to live their lives you don't think about it online and offline and also i get vexed about the notion of a hierarchy between contact offending and online offending because the intensity and invasion of privacy into somebody's bedroom and inescapability at times of the online criminality is really quite significant and i sometimes refer to in person offending if you are being abused live stream wise i mean it's near as damn it in person offending it might not be physically in the room but it's not you know it's it's there's some really really horrific offending and abuse it takes place particularly through live streaming that you know to try and create this hierarchy between contact offending and non-contact or online is unhelpful yes gosh thanks very much and i mean that brings in a whole discussion about how we resource this but i'll come to stewart just to come back to your thoughts on how do we make our collection of data as sort of robust and targeted as possible i mean as other people have said this is this is a complex problem and you need a kind of multi-dimensional kind of view what a data set would would and should look like and indeed some work of that nature is done in scotland we provide data directly to mortin and his team with respect to kind of the development of a scottish threat assessment what i would say is it's perhaps best to think about this issue as an iceberg that recorded online sexual crime is just the tip of the iceberg as nca colleagues have pointed out i mean the um the threat assessment is is massive here and in fact if you look at population based studies that have asked questions about people's online behaviour most of the population based studies tell us that between kind of one and two percent of males have looked at illegal images of children one or two percent these are shocking statistics so what you need to do is clearly map things in terms of recorded sexual crime and reports that are coming from tech companies the nick mic data that was being talked about early on but some of the stuff that we passed to to mortin for instance we know that there were on 12 000 individuals who used our online platforms in scotland because they are worried about their online sexual behaviour and we can provide some granular data in relation to where they are geographically not a lot more than that but the reason why that's important just to quickly throw this in here i think there's sometimes an assumption that those who are involved with online offending are motivated pedophilic kind of serial offenders working with people who commit offences day in and day out we understand the different kinds of pathways into this behaviour and actually there are pathways it's generally a kind of shifting towards more and more transgressive and indeed illegal material over time by individuals who often viewing large amounts of legal pornography initially and then shifting towards more more legal materials now if we think about it as a process going back to points that were made early on there's enormous scope for public awareness campaigning here because if you're worried about your own behaviour you can do something about that which is why actually the data about people who are help seeking in some way needs to be figured in any kind of data set that exists in relation to this particular problem. Yes, that's your a lot in there. Okay, I'm going to bring in Russell and then collect Stevenson. Thank you very much just quickly in respect of data this social work Scotland submission talks about Scottish Government statistics of child protection registered data and right now that does not cover or does not give specific data in relation to online harm and abuse or grooming is that something that's in discussion with Scottish Government to amend that or to include that in some way? Not in discussion at the moment it perhaps is something to think about I think probably what we know is that in relation to all forms of sexual abuse and sexual harm there is probably under reporting and not always the recognition of it so it does not always come through the child protection processes in the way that it should so that's something that's recognised at a national level in relation to a learning and development programme for social work staff is that training in relation to sexual abuse is a priority across Scotland and sometimes that's about thinking that unthinkable where people find particularly if harm is taken place within a family even if that's within an extended family and particularly more so if that family happens to come from a professional or a middle class background it is quite difficult for people to acknowledge and to think about the horrors that are sexual abuse and sexual harm to children so there's a psychological approach to that so it is a priority in terms of training and learning and development I think there could be further work done to look at that I think that's something we can take away thank you the social work scotland submission also had some very interesting stuff about the development of child giving evidence out with a court environment so the the development of the scottish child interview model yes which I note that the project team was first set up in 2017 so it's been six years of work almost and it goes on to say that these are being implemented across all areas in scotland but do you have any more detail about when and what stage it's at and whether it's universal and I do although martin might be better placed to respond because he chairs the national governance group it's interesting when you were speaking before martin I thought I really should have spoken about scottish child interview model in my opening speech but there is amazing progress being made in relation to the implementation across scottland martin do you want to as the chair of the national group so I co-chair the national joint investigative interviewing governance group alongside a cosla colleague for enough it was a meeting yesterday in fact but the current position to answer your question so you're right that the project team was set up in 2017 the first two years of that work was developing the new training course and just to very quickly put that in some context you're talking about a course that previously was a five day training course for police and social workers to effect a joint investigative interview of a child in a child protection context that is now effectively almost a six month training programme comprising five modules with the best part of five weeks face to face training and both pre read and post modular work to be completed by the students so the course itself represents a significant enhancement in our investment in how we interview amongst the most vulnerable witnesses and victims in society so since late 2019 through to date there's been a succession of initial cohorts trained for various local authority and policing partnerships around the country we are now 10 testing me here 10 policing divisions and 22 local authorities and it's either nine or 10 health boards forgive me I've told my head we're not quite having that and so we're probably about 80% of the way there with the initial funding for that team due to expire march 24 so some of those areas are smaller than others naturally and some are managing to affect near 100% of their joint investigative interviews of children using the new scheme model and other areas are much bigger and I've only been able to access one cohort of trained individuals and are working towards full installation of the scheme model so just to understand the stats the remaining 20% will be part of that funding as well or yes so yes so by the conclusion of spring time 24 there'll be scheme trained officers in all local authority and police divisions of Scotland and that'll be policing but then there's additional in respect of health boards and social work yes so health are involved in the IRD process which is critical to the commissioning of a joint investigative interview hence them being referred to but it's only police officers and social workers that attend the training and that affect the interviews right okay thank you there's another thing that's quite interesting in respect of child protection statistics in scotland there's 22 children per 100 000 in the child protection register but the data elsewhere in the uk is significantly higher so england's 43 northern island 45 wales 52 and I don't quite know what to make of these figures I don't know whether that means there's a overly cautious approach elsewhere and children are being added on grounds that they wouldn't be added in scotland or whether scotland perhaps sometimes isn't adding children where they arguably should it just it's such a stark difference I just wonder whether I don't quite know whether that would be for nspcc or burnard officer social work scotland but okay it's really difficult when you look at red statistics around child protection registration because it's difficult to understand what they mean and they mean different things to different people and to be very clear child protection registration doesn't on its own protect children it's the professionals in the family that are around the child and planning around the child that offer that protection interestingly I think you'll be aware england did away with their child protection register and they now refer to children who are subject to child protection plans but they don't actually have a child protection register what you will see that's an average you'll see huge variations around the country at any given time and that can be because of a number of different factors if there has been a very publicized significant case review or child death review you will automatically see an increase in child protection registration statistics around that we saw some really we spent quite a lot of time examining our child protection registration statistics during Covid because it was interesting to see what was happening where more children at risk were less children at risk did we know children were at risk and for any of you that have read some of the absolutely horrendous child death review or there have been convictions particularly in england and wales of late all of which happened during Covid so there were some increases in child protection registration during Covid so it can be variable it can also vary across the different local authorities in scotland particularly in relation to rural areas as opposed to urban areas i mean there was a case in 2014 in which a baby died in west lowland baby j i'd raised this a few on a few occasions in this child social workers and the nurse attempted to put this child on the child protection register and others decided that the child shouldn't be and it's still not clear as to what went wrong and why that happened but i suppose that illustrates the point you're making which is with or without registration interestingly as well scotish government removed categories of registration a few years ago so we do still gather statistics in relation to the type of harm that children are experiencing but what's difficult about that is there are a number of different risk indicators and it's whether you measure that in relation to the type of harm the child is experiencing or the type of behaviours that adults around the child are exhibiting that are causing the child to experience harm which means that even our statistics when we look at them are not easily explainable because people are measuring things differently and putting different interpretations on the the information around registration the national guidance from 2020 2021 should have clarified some of those points and it did take on board learning from a number of significant case reviews to try and make it as straightforward as it is but again i think the interagency referral decision i think we should be proud of that in scotland it's a very robust model it means we are getting information from all relevant parties immediately same day the concern comes in we're making sense of that and there is a national group that is in the process of developing training police have always had that training in relation to our days but bringing social workers and education colleagues on board and a lot of that is about the analysis of risk how do we make sense of risk how do we understand it in terms of the impact of the harm in a way that allows us to predict the possibility of that harm happening again so that there is a lot of work nationally through the implementation of the national cp guidance that's helpful thank you very much thank you yeah can i just come in chair thank you just a couple of quick points to add and probably Alison's opened the door already but the decision making ird an effective ird with effective decision making risk assessment and safety planning can almost prevent a child having to go on the register the child protection register by the time the pop used to be a child protection case conference and I was planning to come around so actually sometimes I think that gets lost in the mix that you know looking at the cpr figures alone is a bit binary forgive me and then in terms of england and wales we've championed our work both in terms of skim and in terms of ird through the national police chief council child protection abuse investigation working group conzi title that i sit on represents scotland and we've had a number of people come north from the metropolitan police and psni to to look at our processes in particular in back of some of the national safeguarding panel reviews into the deaths and murders of our filibino hues and star hopson where some of the recommendations that came from that I remember kind of ticking them off thinking that's ird ird should if it works well so I understand what you're saying about the comparative figures but the wider systems that you put into the context of that comparison and I think we're in a healthy place that makes us thank you very much thank you very much so bring in Colette and then Jamie thanks convener one of the in several of your submissions you've mentioned indirect victims and I was wondering if I could ask Stuart because within your submission Stuart you say better outcomes need promoted for indirect victims could you maybe just elaborate on that and explain what an indirect victim is yeah so um we work with partners and family members of those who have been arrested for online offences um of the individuals we work with every year who have been arrested for an online offence probably about half of those we work with are in relationships and have a partner um and a significant proportion also have dependent children themselves um usually the partner is completely unaware of their husband or boyfriend's behaviour um and the first time they know of the offending behaviour is when the police arrive quite lightly often in large numbers because there is a forensic investigation of devices in the house at the time but you know we're talking about four or five six police officers that can arrive often early in the morning to make sure that everyone's in the household obviously this can be incredibly distressing for um uh partners for children affected within those families and indeed for other family members let's let's remember that when somebody is arrested for an online offence they are likely to have a mother and a father they're likely to have brothers and sisters they're likely to have you know colleagues and friendships within the community um so those who are indirectly affected particularly those who are very close to a loved one who's been arrested will often experience social stigmatisation will often experience lots of guilt and shame themselves and indeed the piece of research that we published last year suggested that in a survey of 120 partners of online offenders uh around 60 percent described some kind of symptoms relating to post traumatic stress disorders so significant support needs we do have a group that we're facilitating with police scotland and social work scotland looking at improving better outcomes for family members affected by this that group's been running for about six months now but i think where that group will inevitably go is there will need to be some recommendations made about kind of proper resourcing of supports for family members in this space okay thanks very much it's interesting actually because we it's a touches upon we were at an event last night that was hosted by rona and it was families outside and there was several a panel there actually touching upon the impact it has when a person is imprisoned and the stigma that even the cost involved in that as well and they've done a fantastic report on paying the price i'm just wondering stir you know i'm doing a bad networking here if you've worked with families outside or if it's something that you maybe link in with we've been working with families outside for about eight or nine years now partly because when they were running the helpline they were receiving calls from family members in relation to individuals who have been arrested for for sexual offences and at times the the helpline staff felt unequipped to be able to respond to those kind of issues with high levels of shame and stigmatisation so we've continued to provide support to families outside for several years well that's good to know okay thank you the other question is on the actual online safety bill and it's about the obviously the bills seeking to make social media companies you know legally responsible for keeping children and our young people safe as well online but do any of yous have any views on on whether is this actually going to be feasible how what's that going to look like and do you think as well that the bill is actually robust enough to achieve those aims and you know is there maybe significant amendments required as well and I'll maybe ask Wendy game first of all thank you I won't comment on the substance of the bill as it's going through parliament right now but in terms of these ability there are obviously very specific requests and requirements for the national crime agency we are working very closely with Ofcom to understand how Ofcom will seek to fulfil its responsibilities and duties under the bill including the publication of codes of conduct which will guide social media companies and and other companies in scope of the bill on how they are to fulfil their responsibilities and we are working very closely with the home office and Ofcom to understand the scope of the designated body as I mentioned earlier which is the specific requirement that the national crime agency will fulfil and we are working hard to meet the deadlines if the bill comes into force relatively soon we're working very hard to meet the deadlines for that it is not a small undertaking to create an online reporting centre but we are being supported by the home office in terms of funding to take that forward I think that's probably all I can say right now it is hard because the scope of the bill is not yet set and there's potential scope for change so we have to factor that into our design okay thanks I don't know if anyone else wants to come in on that we'd come in just in the point about making sure that it's get teeth essentially and it is massively complex and inevitably it means that kind of accountabilities everybody's responsibility and none so I think that there are measures in it that could provide that kind of strength and accountability mechanism and we are supporting the amendment around the introduction of a senior manager liability and that is proven to be a successful tool to drive kind of culture change and behaviour change by making senior managers accountable for failure to take appropriate steps to keep children safe online now the amendment as introduced would make managers accountable where they have there is evidence that they have failed to take steps to prevent children seeing harmful content but we would argue that it doesn't go far enough because there isn't that same accountability embedded within the proposals that's currently drafted for the more pervasive stuff around grooming and sharing of images in bread crumbing in those types of events so that has the potential to be a really kind of robust tool we see where senior liability was introduced in construction for example you know numbers of deaths and a serious harm dropped dramatically as soon as people have responsibility and that the box stops with them in terms of making sure protections put in place so it is an effective tool but as it's currently drafted it doesn't go far enough and we'd like to see it in strength and to cover the suite of risk to children so that we can be confident that it's an appropriate vehicle for driving the culture change we need to see across the tech sector so just on that I'm just thinking like you know you get TikTok that's you know hosted by china effectively so when you're saying like a senior management liability amendment or clause put in how do you actually apply that if it's TikTok see it's TikTok how do you apply that when it's in another legislator in another country I'm just wondering how I don't know if Wendy wants to come back in there on that that's how feasible is that really and I know you didn't really want to touch upon that the bill is because it's still going through but you know I think these are there are questions that everybody needs to hear no it's an important issue TikTok do have offices in the UK so I think it is yet to be determined at what point that senior management liability kicks in and I think that we would seek for I think more discussions from the home office to understand the nature of that particular liability I think that's all I'll say right now okay the other thing I just wanted to ask is I use currently work use work and set a collaborate with inside the like TikTok Facebook currently to use collaborate with them you know with each of your organisations I don't know if you want to come in on that shirt yeah our UK charities worked with a number of of online platforms probably the first was actually google but seven or eight years ago where we worked with Google Google to develop warning splash pages meaning that if you put in particular search terms into Google which I suggest of that you're looking for illegal imagery involving children then you'll get a splash page coming up saying it looks like you're looking for illegal images of children if you have something that you want to report in terms of an image then here are the details of the internet watch foundation if you're worried about your own online behaviour then you should contact stop it now and here's how you do that so we've been running those splash pages for some time we've also worked with Facebook um in relation to to to these we have had to discuss discussions with TikTok rather bizarrely some of the online platforms who have been most proactive and wanted to work with ourselves have been um uh adult entertainment um platforms so Mind Geek which is the owner of Pornhub uh we've worked with for the last two years both developing warning pages with them but also then with the internet watch foundation launching a chatbot uh which approaches people online who are looking for illegal material on Pornhub and some of their other platforms so um we have seen i think an openness in the part of tech companies to work with child protection charities such as us ourselves and indeed we're doing a project at the moment trying to scale up some of the other work that we're doing around warning pages um but it would be safe to say that there's still an enormous distance to go here okay thank you i don't know if anyone else wants to come in on that i had some other um kind of relationship with some of the companies that Stuart's mentioned but interestingly the ones that we struggle to engage with are Twitter and Snapchat the other two who don't come to the table and talk so it's a bit so i think like Wendy and others have said um people are working incredibly hard um and we still are working with hope that we will we will get over the line and we've got cross party support for some of our amendments as well um so i still think there is time but it's it's getting extremely hard i suppose when when you've got some key partners who are who are refusing to come around the table and talk to you okay no thanks for that it's really interesting actually so i'll get no further advice please thank you thanks very much before i'm going to bring in Jamie as just finally but before i do that i wonder if i can just come back to um collects early questioning just around um the impact um on victims families and i'd be interested Dalgi just to hear a little bit about the work of Bernardo's um around supporting children now whether they are obviously victims or whether they i think as Allison mentioned in in your opening remarks about um becoming perpetrators for want of a better word in in their own right what are you seeing within Bernardo's and around that certainly what we have done is we've um certainly spent quite a bit of time particularly with our with our centre of expertise which is based in England and Wales and funded by home office spent quite a bit of time on trying to understand skill and nature trying to understand what the barriers are for practitioners to have conversations because our practitioners often see a lot of the signs a lot of the indicators that give them cause for harm give them cause for concern but we seem unable to take the next step and have that conversation so we've been doing quite a lot of work around building practitioners confidence and resilience around signs and indicators but also communicating with children because again reinforcing the point that it's not about it's not children's responsibility to say do you know what i guess what guys this is what's happening to me it's about us being able to identify from behaviours and not just conversations do you know what i mean because it's so it's so we've spent quite a bit of time trying to upskill practitioners around how we can have those conversations because sexual abuse more broadly is something that we struggle with never mind thinking about it from an online perspective it's not something that we've been very good at you know and even going back to you know earlier conversations about child protection registrations and i take all everything that people have said in terms of that caveat about how we record and and sometimes why children might not be registered because other measures have been put in place but we've also tracked the kind of last 10 years of registrations in scotland and our registrations for child sexual abuse have not changed it was nine percent in 2012 and it's eight percent in 2022 so but however our registrations for emotional abuse for instance have rocketed so it's thinking about those connections and and i think it's about how we try and build workers confidence to ask questions about what else might be happening other than what we are what they're can initially responding to but certainly in terms of impact we've also alongside the lucy faithful foundation also produced a kind of resource recently about around looking at a whole safeguarding response to online behaviors and taking into account you know the impact on those who haven't who have had no knowledge of what of what's been happening because because even when you know as a steward described the knock when you know multiple police officers come to a house you know and taking devices away what people need to understand is that includes the smart tv it includes all the devices that belong to the children and young people as well it's not just about the devices that are that the offender has so an exclusive use of so it has a huge significant impact just in terms of how because because the other thing that we've not really talked about is people get a lot of support from online as well do not mean so if you're taking that support network away as well that has a huge impact so i think it's about how we build the kind resilience of workers to be able to feel confident about having conversations so that young so we are proactive about it rather than waiting for children and i think also other i think it was joanne who made reference to the fact that children will talk to other children and other young people so it's about how we build the resilience of other young people to be able to have the confidence to to kind of share concerns and worries and so we spend a lot of time just i suppose building up that network of support around children and recognizing that that can be a number of people so not necessarily about targeting but thinking a kind of holistic approach that thanks there's a lot in there and i think maybe some of them or other panel members would like to come in allison i think just briefly i think from a social work scotland perspective we totally appreciate that the exactly what you're saying in terms of encouraging children to talk to dig a little deeper to look beyond the presenting concerns that is relational practice and i think when i was here last time i said that's absolutely what we should all be striving for but you will find both teachers and social workers really struggling to have the time to build those relationships to get down underneath social work scotland produced the setting the barn taking the bill report that identifies that actually to have those meaningful relationships which would then allow you to have those meaningful conversations social workers should have no more than 15 children on their caseload that's not happening anywhere in scotland currently likewise for teachers if you were to ask teachers how much pupil support time was calendar into their schedule it's very very little so the main point about that is you want to be able to respond when a child is ready to speak to you but our environments don't always support that because of the resources that are not in place it's about building those relationships of trust building those relationships take time and unfortunately that also requires the resources that we don't have sufficiently currently and what children tell us is what makes a difference is when someone notices and asks the question so you don't necessarily need to have a long-term relationship for that and i think it's about social workers and teachers and having the confidence to reach out to other partner agencies who are able to offer some of that support as well and working in partnership as people have mentioned and in collaboration is really important so it's recognised and understanding each other's roles within that and trying to prevent and i know the skin model is very much a part of it but trying to prevent children having to tell their story multiple times to different people that thanks very much got a lot to think about i'm just going to finally bring in jamie i think maybe martin you want to come in at some point but i'll let jamie come in with this question yeah thanks i mean there's so much we could talk about in not enough time so i think all these i'll just truck my questions out then if you want to answer it just grab my attention that way not everyone has to respond but i'd one very specific one is if anyone in the panel had a view as to what role it could or should a i have in the blocking or sharing or forwarding of intimate imagery where the sender or receiver is known to be a young person on any platform it's a very specific question which would i presume require legislation of some sort to get involved at uk or Scottish level the other question is around what the view is on what is perceived to be an increased exposure among some people to pornography or sexual imagery and the fact that it is so much easier now to self generate content on platforms such for example as only fans there are others not to be specific and pick any out where it is very immediately possible and accessible to very quickly monetise content of the sexual or intimate nature with a view to either make money or to increase one's popularity amongst peers in a society where being an influencer apparently is a career these days and i just wondered if there's been a massive shift in the perception of young people around this type of content and it probably links in a little bit to my earlier line of questioning as well so just wave your hand if you want to talk about any of those very specific issues i'll start with Stuart. I mean to take that that second point first i mean it's a good point Jamie and we're certainly aware of you know 16 and 17 years who have been involved with only fans and indeed that stuff around you know the commercial kind of economy that's generated by these kind of platforms then being a driver in terms of exploiting kind of young people in all this but we're a child protection charity so we don't pay an awful lot of attention to what happens to people after the age of 18 but i think there's maybe a bigger issue sitting underneath what you're saying which is the pornification of society and indeed children more generally so the key documents on this are the reports from the children's commissioner in england and wales that have come out this year which have shown that you know in terms of young people being exposed to pornography for the first time on average that's taking place at age 13 but we have children at age 11 and 12 who are being exposed to such materials in fairly large quantities as well so by the time those young people get to 16 and 17 and become aware of only fans you can see that's a certain trajectory that that's set up here so so the take home messages are we begin to resolve perhaps some of the stuff around only fans by being able to have meaningful conversations with children and young people at the right stages around pornography in school settings that's what young people are telling us and also we need to be clear that the teeth that are in the online safety bill in relation to age assurance will absolutely work in this space the stuff around e.i i don't really want to go to apart from just the police colleagues could maybe back up but there is some work in that that area being done i'm thinking particularly of there's a web crawler called on project arachnid that canada has developed that that's been running for several years doing precisely what you're describing interesting okay any others i know it's very specific about legislation i don't necessarily think it would need legislation i think any private company could use and deploy such a i as it's all fit for the greater good if it chose to do so but i don't think that would require legislation i don't think if i might come in on that we are doing some more work to understand a i the risks it poses as well as the opportunities which may become available to us it is not the only i wouldn't say future tech because it's here now it's not the only piece of technology that we are looking into there's also the metaverse the use of haptic suits which give a much more visceral experience of being in an online space and present particular particular threats for csa we are looking at a range of technologies and how they may affect and manifest in the csa space it comes back to the importance of safety by design which was mentioned right at the beginning of the of the session and the importance of companies having the responsibility to design spaces which are safe for children that's really interesting in fact i guess why it's very nature a i is designed to create unnatural fancy environments in the real world which do not hither to exist that could definitely be problematic in some circumstances so anyone else before i come in the latter point jamey and because obviously from a bernardo's perspective that's that in terms of the increase in pornography that's something that we're seeing right across our services and just as jurist mentioned it's very young people you know we've had 11 12 13 year olds and we are extremely concerned in terms of the impact on mental health but also in terms of their understanding of what is and what constitutes a healthy and respectful relationship but also on your point in terms of only fans and it's interesting how only fans is getting the same kind of attention but we kind of came across advertising websites like lecanto for instance where children were being encouraged to advertise on site as well and coupled with the cost of loving crisis and the impact in terms of fuel poverty and food poverty we have had young people who have actively gone on those sites in an attempt to make money and they've been very vocal about that and it's quite difficult because i think that's one of the kind of challenges that we are finding in terms of online that the the kind of reach to young people is so significant in terms of providing them with opportunities that we can't provide them with in terms of income and that's something that we need to think about in terms of and particularly in terms of how we then i suppose try and respond to those young people in terms of harmful behaviours and not criminalising those young people and i know colleagues in police and particular are working really hard not to criminalise but i think it's it's also against a backdrop of media who do want to criminalise children for some of those behaviours as well so it's it's it's quite tough so fascinating we could probably have a all-day symposium on that subject alone i just i'd if permitted one final question and i feel a bit like an audience member on question time with this one but what does the panel believe would be an appropriate level of sentencing for someone who is charged and prosecuted for possessing in decent images of children to start with the police i'm afraid it's not a matter for policing for me when i had a discussion about sentencing yesterday and arguably an increased vexedness in England and Wales about it from a policing perspective but yeah of course privately individual officers might have a view on what's an appropriate sentence but and the main do we see lesser sentences in scotland in terms of years in jail across the board of a range of offenses in scotland in contrasting in Wales yes we do um is there a reason for that well there must be um but no the background of any individual perpetrator um is wide and varied and needs to be taken into account and obviously other bodies will introduce guidance for sentencing that's not very diplomatic of you the reason i ask is that the last time a survey was done on this and it was pre-covid i don't know if it's been updated since but public perceptions of sentencing showed that seven seven percent of the public believe someone should receive a custodial sentence for a crime of that nature very few believed that something such as a community payback order or even some form of educational mandatory statutory treatment or education it would be an appropriate sentence so i i'm not i'm not putting forward a view i'm simply asking for your opinion i appreciate it's difficult for policing to comment on what our independent guidelines are supposed by the sentencing council but i'm sure others have a view Stuart you must have a view on this yeah i don't really want to present a view particularly because you're talking about an incredibly wide range of of different things yeah one end of the spectrum where you are 14 year old he sends some sexual images of themselves to a number of peers who haven't asked for those images it's an offence it probably needs to be dealt with as a as a legal matter as well as a child protection matter through to you know adult who's been involved with live streaming or indeed isn't being involved with first generation images meaning that he sexually abused a child filmed it and put that online you know we can't have one sentencing option for all those different situations you can have guidelines and i know the research that you're talking about jamey because some of that's described really well in the the sentencing council literature review on indecent visits of children that came out last year and there's a big section on on public views in all of that i think these are questions for society more more general love than third sector organisations such as us but one thing i would add and i'm saying this partly in my work as a kind of social worker in this field but also i'm the chair of of nota the national organisation for the treatment of abuse which is the main membership body for those who work with sex offenders in the uk we have 1300 members and what that would suggest the research would suggest that given custodial sentences for individuals who may be at relatively low risk of reoffending will probably make things worse for them and actually may make them more dangerous the reason being that if you give somebody a short sentence in prison you're not giving enough opportunity or time for them to do any direct work in relation to their offending behaviour but when they come out they're likely to be homeless they're likely to have lost their job and they're likely to have lost the the social anchoring that they had in their community and all those kind of things are the kind of things that then can tip people through stress into going back into offending behaviour so although there's a simplistic answer about well it takes people out of of society who have committed what we need to recognise as really serious offences we also need to have a kind of pragmatic and grown-up kind of conversation about actually what are the kind of things that we need to do here to make sure that children are better protected in Scotland thank you thank you very much martin final word a small point to pick up on an analogy i'm sorry to to contradict you slightly about it it's just to let the committee understand how we operate currently which so the taking of the televisions and all the devices out of house will have happened in the past will happen in the future but in the main and one of the significant practice improvements that we've made post HMI CS thematic inspection in 2020 is the uplift and resourcing of our digital forensic teams so their triage teams come with us so they're not with the police officers part of that group unfortunately of many people that go through the door include digital forensic staff who triage the devices on site so in the main and most occasions now every turn or enforcement activities accompanied by such officers who will you might have 10 devices in a house just for argument's sake and two come away for if they're positive in the restaurant in our left in situ so that one of the benefits is lessons to some degree the impact that Daljeet is describing that as I say will have happened in the past and will in the future but in the main we only take the devices that prove positive on triage for a whole host of reasons but that's one of the benefits that thank you very much for that very helpful clarification so I'm going to draw this session to a close it's been fascinating a lot for us to think about in terms of the the work that is clearly going on that is really welcome to hear about the commitment in and around this issue but also the challenges in the work required going forward so I'd just like to thank you all for your your time today and we'll just suspend the meeting very briefly to allow our panel members to leave thanks very much thank you thank you very much members so our next item of business is consideration of correspondence that we have received from the Scottish Government and rape prices Scotland on access to court transcripts for survivors of rape and sexual offences and I refer members to paper four and I would like to begin by placing on record the committees thanks to one of the survivors that we met informally in November 2021 for her bravery in telling us about her experience of the criminal justice system and for raising the important issue of a lack of access to court transcripts for survivors of rape and sexual offences and how this can impact on recovery and I very much welcome the commitment made by the cabinet secretary for justice and home affairs in her letter to the committee and by the first minister last week to consider a pilot to support access to transcripts for complainers in sexual offences cases so I'd just like to open it up to members to ask for any views that you might have on the correspondence that we've received Jamie thank you and can I thank rape crisis Scotland for their correspondence I may perhaps at a contrary view to the convener unfortunately I don't welcome the letter I welcome the letter itself but not its content I'm afraid this is an issue which we as a committee have been raising for a very long time since the instigation of this particular committee it's sure it's not the first time this issue has been raised in parliament the second to last paragraph of the letter from the cabinet secretary whilst in its tone is helpful and positive I don't doubt that and I don't doubt the intentions of the cabinet secretary but in terms of detail it's lacking considerably the cabinet secretary says that she's committed to exploring a pilot to support access to transcripts for complainers in sexual offences cases initially however it is at very early stages and initial discussions with the scts are taking place I thought those discussions had taken place given that this issue has been raised repeatedly by this committee and other stakeholders on numerous occasions over a prolonged period of time I do not understand why this discussion is still either yet to happen or is in very early stages the letter also sort of infers that the forthcoming victims witnesses in justice reform bill which has come into parliament may provide some form of platform for providing a solution to this in the long term I mean personally I don't believe you need primary legislation to resolve this matter it just needs a bit of will and a bit of way we've you know talked in numerous committee meetings about we understand the financial considerations that are involved in improving the situation but as we then hear straight from those directly affected by this in great volume when you read the survey responses that were sent to us by rape crisis Scotland then I think we should put on record our thanks to the victims who've given permission for that to be used there's two very common themes coming through at one is that very few victims feel like they remember the day in court due to the trauma involved and they believe that access and transcripts would form a part of the closure perhaps or perhaps they are seeking justice in other ways through civil cases and so on many had a difficult experience in the court many actually believed that they were not treated particularly well or indeed there was there were miscarriages of justice in some extreme cases and I think that the language that they've used we should take note of and I think they should give us more impetus to push the government on this you know the comments made include things like this lack of access to my transcript has hindered my ability to complete a complaint against a case it was cost prohibitive I heard there was no point allowing me not to achieve closure part of me still seeking justice and so on and so forth in fact one went on to say I had no idea I was even allowed to have access to them so it's a real shocking spectrum of opinions on this and I suspect this is just a small number of those who are trying to try to access these transcripts I just feel like the letter just says you know we're having a conversation with the courts it's very early stages and we'll get back to you that's what we heard last time we had correspondence from a previous cabinet secretary it's what we heard from the previous cabinet secretary before that and the content of the letter is always positive and you know don't worry we're looking at this issue but we never ever see any detail of it and it pains me to say that I'm afraid because I do believe that the new cabinet secretary of justice will take this issue very seriously and we'll try and make progress on it but we're not seeing progress we're just seeking one page letters promising action that we never see action on and I think people out there want some concrete detail about how this either pilot will go ahead what it will look like and how people will be how it will be communicated to people stakeholders and victims so I'd like to see more done faster okay okay thank you Jamie Ronan I think you want to come in thank you thank you convener yeah I mean I agree with Jamie about you know the rape crisis communication and I don't think there's an issue about anybody not thinking that court transcripts should should be available I don't take such a gloomy view of the letter I have to be honest I think the paragraph where the cabinet secretary says look forward to working with the committee and also as we progress the victims witnesses and justice reform bill I think Jamie was perhaps conflating the two she's she's saying yes she's looking forward working with the committee on the issue of court transcripts but also you know because this is a huge bill it's coming down the line she's just mentioned that I'm not sure that the two could be conflated and also she's in the couple of paragraphs I mean she's absolutely stated her commitment to doing this I do think that's an issue that we could follow up with you know can we get a timescale you know so that we're clearer on that but I think on the whole it's a very you know it's just sort of stating what what we had thought was happening and I know it's gone on for a long time so I think for me it would be the issue of well when when is the pilot starting and more detail on that would be fine but I don't think it's as gloomy as Jamie's making out okay thank you very much anyone else want to come in at all no okay um thanks very much Rona and Jamie I've certainly noted your your comments about timescales I probably wouldn't disagree on that it does seem to be that we've been looking at this for for quite some time what I would just flag if it's helpful for members is last week the First Minister in the convener's group meeting in response to a question that I asked about progress in terms of access to court transcripts and I'll just read out his response which and I quote the cabinet secretary for justice and home affairs was planning to write to the committee this week expressing the government's commitment to supporting a pilot to support access to court transcripts and initially focused on complainers in sexual offence cases so it is an issue that I am well aware of given my previous role as a cabinet secretary for justice and we will absolutely commit to a pilot focused initially on complainers in sexual offence cases so I'm certainly happy to hear that I think that that's where we would want to be I absolutely take the point about timescales and if members would wish I'm happy to write to the government just seeking perhaps a little bit more clarity in and around timescales and I would also suggest if members are in agreement that we send a copy of the cabinet secretary's letter to rape crisis Scotland for their information and Scottish women's aid and victims support Scotland who have all been interested and active in this issue for their information so are members agreed with that proposal Jamie? Thank you very much and that update from the First Minister is very helpful it's perhaps even goes a step further than the letter we have in terms of language I think rather than as well as timescales I think some even just a broad sketch of the the potential of what the pilot might entail just so I think we could manage expectations among stakeholders I think if there's a large cohort of people who may feel that that's something that would be advantage to them to later discover that the pilot is limited in nature I think it would be disappointing for them so I think just to make sure that we're you know heading in the right direction to make it as broad and comprehensive as possible yeah I'm happy I think it's appropriate that we maybe ask for or keep track of progress and ask perhaps to be updated as and when there are developments okay thank you very much indeed so that concludes our business in public for this morning and we'll now move into private session thank you