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From what Mr Cowan has said, it is likely that the Crown would have criteria for referral of a rape or other sexual offence case to the High Court or the specialist court.

To go back to the issue of downgrading, the concern is that, if there is a cap of 10 years on sentencing in the specialist court, that makes it look like a lower court—similar to the sheriff court. The sheriff court has a range of disposals, and if a longer sentence is desired than is within its powers, the sentencing aspects are referred to the High Court. I understand that the thinking is that that is how the specialist court would operate. Even though a High Court judge was sitting in the specialist court, they would be able to impose a sentence of up to only 10 years and, if they thought that a sentence of more than 10 years might be appropriate, that would have to be referred to the High Court.

Will the kinds of issues that the governance group looks at include consideration of whether the specialist court is subject to that sentencing cap or has a full range of disposals? Is that still a live issue, cabinet secretary?

That is helpful. My main question is: does DCC Graham believe that there is a cultural problem?

I have a further question about the court establishment. When you listen to victims of sexual offences, you hear that the physical process of going to court can be very traumatic. The cabinet secretary has already referred to the family of a murder victim having to sit in a court with the accused. Is it envisaged that the new specialist courts will have separate facilities? Would that have big resource implications? At the moment, we are developing facilities at Inverness for witnesses and so on. Will there be significant resource implications with the specialist courts and will they have separate facilities that will be designed in a different way? Alternatively, is it envisaged that they will operate within the current court estate? Are those issues going to have to be discussed?

That is helpful, thank you. Finally and briefly, could I ask—

That would be helpful.

Have any of the recommendations already been implemented? Is there any particular reason why there has been a delay in implementing recommendations that could already have been implemented?

You said that I used examples from outside Scotland. I said that the Sarah Everard case, which, obviously, was a case down south, would erode women’s confidence in the police. However, there are many examples in Scotland. If you are suggesting that the problem exists elsewhere but not in Scotland, I want to draw you on that.

I am quite happy to put cases to you. A lot of the information that I have is from the media, and you will know about it better than I do. For example, the Channel 4 “Dispatches” documentary “Cops on Trial”, which was shown in October, reported that 166 police officers and special constables within Police Scotland had been accused of 245 counts of sexual misconduct. We can go through some of the Scottish examples.

I mentioned the Sarah Everard case because the saturation media coverage of that case and its details erodes women’s confidence in the police. Are you trying to suggest that the problems that might exist down south with domestic abuse, for example, are not a problem in Police Scotland? I would like to know whether you are trying to suggest that you are in a better position on those issues than the police down south are, for example.

I fully understand that your role is to implement the proposal, so I am not asking you to justify anything. We are just trying to understand what you think is happening.

I will ask about domestic abuse, which is different from sexual offences. I understand that it has been possible to pilot certain practices in domestic abuse cases without the need for legislative change and that there have been specialist domestic abuse courts. Will you outline what difference that has made to the way in which cases were dealt with before or, indeed, are dealt with now in many situations?

I apologise. I appreciate that the proposals do not necessarily come from you. Perhaps I phrased my question wrongly. I was just trying to gather your understanding of what is proposed. Are you saying that, if the sentencing judge in a specialist court felt that the disposals that they had available to them were not sufficient, they could refer the case to another court for sentencing?

Did those courts take place in the court buildings where such cases are normally dealt with? I presume that you did not have anywhere else and, therefore, that those cases took place in a very traditional court setting.