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My concerns over the budget are whether we are providing the right resources to achieve our aim, whether it is a real-terms increase and whether it will cover all the training that will be required under the bill.

We heard from somebody that, if we had better-prepared witnesses, we would probably get the verdicts that we were looking for. However, if we get those verdicts, more guilty people will go to prison, which will increase the prison population. We already have issues with the prison population just now. To get people out of prison and on to community payback orders, we need the budget for criminal justice social workers, who are basically saying that they have had a flat-cash settlement for the past four years. I still have concerns about the financial memorandum and whether we are providing the required funding for all the areas of the service that will require it.

I might already know your answer to my question, given your previous comments. At the moment, juries are being directed by the judge on rape myths. There is also the Lord Advocate’s recent reference to that. We have not yet been able to assess the impact that that has had or the outcomes—we do not have any details on that—and we are now proposing huge changes to the judiciary. Again, it will be a long time before we manage to assess the impact and outcomes of all those changes.

Given that there is a lack of clarity about the pilot process—as we have said, it is not really a pilot, because it involves real lives, real cases and real outcomes—would it not be better to remove section 6 of the bill, wait until we have done a full assessment of the outcomes of all the other things that the bill will implement and then bring the pilot process back through clear legislation, rather than bringing it in through secondary legislation?

I do not see it as kicking anything down the line; I see it as ensuring that we have all the evidence that we need to make the right decision so that we do not have bad legislation. We all want what is best for victims and we do not want miscarriages of justice, but the evidence that we have already heard has been contradictory and dependent on who was giving it. We are hearing both sides of the story.

We do not want to put something in place that will affect someone’s life. There will be real results and a real verdict. Someone could be found guilty or not guilty during the pilot. That is different to the research on juries, which was done with mock trials and not in real life. We have looked for evidence about the use of the not proven, guilty or not guilty decisions in real trials, but we do not have that evidence.

We do not want to make a poor decision now, when we do not seem to have the backing of many of the judiciary and when even victims are saying that they do not support juryless trials. We want to ensure that we make the right decision. Why did the Scottish Government suggest that when it is not in the bill? Why would it be brought in through secondary legislation? It feels to me as though there is a rush to include it in the bill, which is a massive one that could have been broken down into smaller chunks.

Will that not be seen as rushing or as trying to avoid scrutiny?

What training would you expect parties involved in the sexual offences court to undertake? How would that be different from the trauma-informed practice set out in part 2 of the bill?

If we are not going to pause to take account of the effect of all the other things that we have implemented, why is the detail of the pilot not in the bill? Why is that coming in secondary legislation?

There are criticisms that there has been a lack of research on changing jury numbers. The bill would change the jury size to 12, as it is in England and Wales, but it would also provide for a two-thirds majority, which differs from the situation in England and Wales. Why have you decided to go down that road?

Did you say that there was 40 per cent support for the two-thirds majority?

That is not even half.

We have mentioned some of the other measures that have already started, such as juries now getting direction on rape myths. There was also the recent reference from the Lord Advocate. Should we wait until we see the results of those measures being implemented—and whether they affect the conviction rate—before we take any more decisions?