Seòmar agus comataidhean

I am grateful to the committee for the opportunity to speak to PE2136. I pay tribute to the petitioner Fiona Drouet, who is here in the committee room. Fiona lost her daughter Emily in the most tragic circumstances after her boyfriend abused her while they were students at the University of Aberdeen. I first became aware of the devastating physical and psychological impact of choking a sexual partner during a parliamentary event that I held with the women’s support service, Beira’s Place, towards the end of last year.

The issue had not come to my attention before then, but once you know about such a thing, you have to do something about it. As you said, convener, there are devastating effects. Within six to eight seconds, a woman loses consciousness. After 15 seconds, her bladder will be incontinent. After 30 seconds, her bowels will open. She will be brain dead within four minutes.

As Fiona has said herself, no one—no woman or girl—could ever consent to this; indeed, there comes a point where a woman or girl is physically unable to do anything about it. How can you consent to something if you lose consciousness? It is not “breath play”—that is a euphemism that men use. They say, “Oh, it’s just breath play during sexual intimacy.” It is not; it is truly frightening, and it can be a predictor of dangerous and potentially fatal behaviour.

The petition, as you have rightly said, convener, calls for a stand-alone criminal offence for non-fatal strangulation. My view is that the common-law offence of assault does not adequately capture the complexity of what is a startling and ever-growing problem. In recognition of the fact that, as the committee has just heard, non-fatal strangulation can occur without obvious physical injury, England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Ireland have already introduced stand-alone offences with robust penalties.

I note, as does Fiona Drouet, the concerns expressed by the Cabinet Secretary for Justice and Home Affairs about unintended consequences and what she has said to the committee about having a separate law, especially its interaction with existing domestic abuse legislation. However, that response does not cover two key points. This is a form of abuse and control; it can be part of domestic abuse, but it is also part of violence against women. It is also a non-consensual act. So, although I acknowledge the need to stress test any changes to the current law in Scotland, I am massively concerned that the Scottish Government is kicking the can down the road. This feels like yet another issue impacting women that is being pushed to the bottom of the legislative agenda.

Finally, convener and committee, as a Parliament, we have a year to go—please do not allow this to be lost. We could be talking about your daughters or your nieces. Something needs to be done. The Scottish Government now has an opportunity to signal a zero-tolerance approach to non-fatal strangulation, and I urge it to act with the urgency that the issue deserves.

Thank you.

It might be a request, then. Before you put water through the pipe, you need to check the pipe. Minister, if the committee has an important role in your work, my request is that you consider providing any guidance to the committee first. I will leave that request with you to take away.

Last week, Vic Valentine, who was representing Scottish Trans, said:

“we are always clear that our advice and guidance is not legal advice ... We would never say that we were giving legal advice to organisations ... We do not provide legal advice.”—[Official Report, Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee, 11 March 2025; c 56.]

That was said last week and it is included in the feedback in the committee’s papers. However, the following day, ahead of the debate on single-sex spaces in the public sector, Scottish Trans sent MSPs a briefing that said on at least two occasions that it would be unlawful not to allow trans people to access single-sex spaces in certain situations, which legal experts have refuted.

On one day, in front of the committee, Scottish Trans said one thing, but the next day, it issued a briefing that basically said the opposite. Minister, do you believe that it is appropriate for activist organisations to offer guidance that leaves public sector bodies vulnerable to costly legal challenges? Will the Scottish Government, as a funder of such organisations, distance itself from such guidance?

I am interested in the balance of protections for different groups, which we explored with the previous panel, and the conflict of rights that has emerged. You use the words “dignity”, “fairness” and “proportionate”. I agree that those three words are very important. Is it the Scottish Government’s view that public bodies can provide for single-sex services or spaces as a matter of policy; that is, not on an individual or case-by-case basis?

Finally, I have noted that you have said that you want to provide leadership on the PSED and that you want to put your money where your mouth is, yet 80 per cent of respondents to the committee’s call for evidence said that public bodies do not understand and have not implemented the PSED properly. So, there is an issue with public bodies. During the previous evidence session, the EHRC said that there was an issue with the education sector and we have highlighted an issue with hospitals. I have also talked about big issues with Police Scotland.

In relation to the lack of implementation of the PSED, your leadership and putting your money where your mouth is, should you and/or the Scottish Government not suspend the pay rises of the leadership of those public sector bodies that are allegedly in breach of their duties? As a head of HR, if there were a specific issue in a part of an organisation, I could not take money off people, but I could and would suspend pay rises. If you have concerns and you are providing leadership, would it not be a practical thing to say, “Hang on a minute, let’s just suspend pay increases and review the implementation of PSED?”

Thank you, Jennifer. I interpret that as meaning that it is almost not a hard target in the objectives of chief executives of hospitals or councils. The councils are under financial pressures, the hospitals have huge financial pressures, yet the floodgates will be opened on non-implementation or interpretation of the law, and the costs could go into millions—for Scotland, it could be billions. Would you not consider suspending the pay increases until the outcome of this? If you say no, you are saying that it is very difficult and that you have not got the levers at your disposal to implement something that is really important in this space, which is dignity, fairness and a balance of proportionality in relation to the nine protected characteristics.

Thank you. I will probably write to you after the meeting.

I think that you have answered the question, thank you. That is really helpful.

You talked about organisations that offer. What about the organisations that receive? You used the word “balance”, so do you mean that those organisations must receive balanced feedback?

Do you agree—a yes or no answer would be helpful—that impact assessments of policies or policy changes that affect sex-based rights should involve input from those with the sex-based rights?

What about balance and prioritising one protected characteristic over another?