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:My responsibility as justice secretary is to uphold everybody’s rights in accordance with all our laws and expectations as a country. The 2021 act makes specific provision for variations of sex and transgender identity. It protects a range of people on the basis of age, race, religion, disability, transgender identity and sexual orientation. In my view, what we are doing in the regulations is proposing to fill a gap in our hate crime framework.

:It is about the perpetrator’s perception. If a perpetrator commits an offence against an individual on the basis that they perceive them to be of the Muslim faith but, actually, the victim is not, that is irrelevant. It is about the offender’s perception or belief. It is important to stress the fact that, to achieve clarity in the law around hate crime—we need clarity in the law—we tried to limit overlap in our framing of that. The debate was well aired during the passage of the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Bill, and, when the act was implemented in April 2024, we had to make particular efforts to make the point that it is about the perception of the offender.

:I will start, but I might ask Kristy Adams to come in.

The raison d’être of taking a UK-wide approach is based on recognition of the cross-border nature of some child criminal exploitation. We are all familiar with the fact that those who traffic people also operate on a cross-border basis.

Child criminal exploitation prevention orders vary in what they can do. An adult can be prohibited from doing anything that is described in the order, and it requires the adult to follow the restrictions that are imposed on them. The order must be in place for a defined period—a minimum of two years—or until a further order is granted.

The chief constable of Police Scotland will be able to apply for child criminal exploitation prevention orders. It is also worth noting that prosecutors can make an application for an order for an adult who has been convicted of any offence—it does not necessarily need to be a child criminal exploitation offence—or who has been acquitted through a special defence, has been found unfit for trial or has had successful appeals against their conviction.

There is potential for overlap, particularly in relation to human trafficking, but I do not think that that has been perceived as being particularly problematic. Such orders are another tool in the box, but I will check with Kristy Adams in case there are other relevant nuances.

:The partnership group has been established for a considerable time. I cannot recall the date of its establishment, but I suspect that it predates my time as Cabinet Secretary for Justice and Home Affairs. It involves a range of stakeholders with whom the Minister for Victims and Community Safety regularly engages. The group helped to drive forward the hate crime strategy delivery plan, which is broader but nonetheless an important underpinning to our legislative approach. If it is not going to be too late for the committee, and unless Patrick Down can recall the membership off the top of his head, I would be happy to supply more information about the group.

:I respect the views that have been articulated. Some members in the Parliament, including some who are sitting around this table, argued for a misogyny bill and for sex to be included in what became the 2021 act at the time. The Government most certainly was pursuing a misogyny bill in line with Baroness Kennedy’s recommendations. Indeed, a draft bill was published, so significant work has been done on a stand-alone misogyny bill.

However, it is a complex area of policy and law, and I do not imagine for a minute that anyone who has sat around this table for a considerable time would argue otherwise. Any bill relating to criminal law must be clear and unambiguous. For good reasons, members around this table have always pursued that goal.

There are policy implications following the Supreme Court judgment, so further work needs to be done. There was insufficient time to complete the next stage of that work prior to a bill being introduced and going through three stages of the legislative process in this parliamentary session.

I do not think that it is credible to say that a stand-alone misogyny bill is anything other than a complex policy area. It would certainly take our criminal law into an area that it has not been in before.

:I understand the question that Mr Kerr has raised—it is a more than legitimate one. My previous commitment was to ensure that we do not have a gap in the law. As members around this table will well understand, more often than not, there is a commencement period to allow for the preparation and implementation of a law. I wanted to take the opportunity to introduce the SSI under the super-affirmative procedure. It is not a simple, straightforward process. It is not overly complex, but it has particular requirements that demand more attention and time than an affirmative or negative procedure. We will address the gap in the law.

10:15

The commencement of the regulations will be on 5 April next year. Via officials, I discussed the matter closely with Police Scotland and the strong advice that the police gave me was that they need adequate time to train their officers in identifying offences and applying the law in the light of the change. I point out that, although the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021 was passed in 2021, it was not commenced until 2024, so I have explored and tested the matter with Police Scotland. It has been clear in its assessment and view that an achievable timescale for training its police officers supports a commencement date of 5 April next year.

:In November, I attended the committee to speak to the draft Management of Offenders (Scotland) Act 2019 and the Prisoners (Early Release) (Scotland) Act 2025 (Consequential Modifications) Regulations 2026, which was the first of two instruments relating to the early removal of foreign national offenders.

That instrument, which was approved by the Parliament on 17 December 2025, brought the point in a sentence from which the early removal period is calculated back into line with the automatic early release point for short-term prisoners, as amended by the Prisoners (Early Release) (Scotland) Act 2025. It also amended the existing order-making power enabling the Scottish ministers, by order, to change the proportion of a sentence that must be served before a prisoner can be removed from prison for the purposes of removal from the United Kingdom.

The purpose of the instrument that you are considering today is to facilitate the early removal from prison of individuals who are liable to removal from the United Kingdom or who have the settled intention of residing permanently outside the United Kingdom.

The instrument, utilising the recently amended order-making power, aligns the provisions with recent changes that have been approved by the Parliament to home detention curfew. Specifically, it provides that the minimum sentence required to be served, before removal is possible, is 15 per cent of the sentence, rather than one quarter. It also increases, from 180 to 210, the number of days, working backwards from the point of automatic release, within which the individual can be removed from prison. These changes will provide a longer and earlier timeframe for removal from prison for the purpose of removal from the country. As the committee will be aware, home detention curfew is not available to prisoners who are liable for removal from the United Kingdom.

I hope that the committee is content to approve the instrument, which helps to provide greater consistency in the management of short-term custodial sentences and may help, albeit in a limited way, to mitigate the high prison population.

:I do not know that I would describe it as a veto. I do have something in my papers about governors’ responsibilities, if you will bear with me, convener. It reads:

“Prison governors in Scotland have the final say on whether a foreign national offender will be removed during their early removal window and must authorise all removals under the scheme.”

That is crystal clear.

I am grateful for the opportunity to discuss the legislative consent memorandum on the amendments that have been tabled to the UK Government’s Sentencing Bill. I thank the committee and the Parliament for their co-operation in expediting the work so that the Parliament’s view can be expressed before the final stages of the bill’s progress in early January.

The UK Government introduced its Sentencing Bill on 2 September this year to take forward recommendations that were set out in the independent sentencing review led by the Rt Hon David Gauke, the report of which was published in October 2024. The bill intends to make significant changes to the sentencing framework and the management of offenders in the criminal justice system in England and Wales. That includes making changes to the sentencing for lower-level offences, release provisions for some prisoners, community order requirements and restrictions that are available for post-prison supervision. The areas of law that are covered by the bill are largely reserved, or the provisions extend to England and Wales only.

However, on 14 October this year, during the bill’s progress, the UK Government tabled amendments that seek to extend the sentencing and release arrangements that currently apply to individuals who have been sentenced for terrorism offences to individuals who have been sentenced for a national security offence. That means that all such prisoners will be considered for parole after serving two thirds of their sentence, rather than those who are serving short sentences being subject to automatic early release after serving 40 per cent or 50 per cent of their sentence, or those serving long sentences being first considered for parole halfway through their sentence, as would otherwise be the case. As a result, several consequential and technical amendments are required to ensure that those provisions can operate as intended in Scotland.

The Scottish Parliament’s legislative consent is required in relation to those amendments, as we consider that the changes that are being proposed will alter the executive competence of Scottish ministers in relation to their functions concerning the release of prisoners of that type. Operationally, both the Parole Board for Scotland and the Scottish Prison Service have confirmed that those changes will have little to no impact, as no individuals are held in Scottish prisons under a national security offence.

The legislative consent of the Scottish Parliament is essential to ensure that there is consistency between Scotland and the rest of the UK with regard to the sentencing for national security offences. Reflecting those changes in Scotland will also ensure that Scotland cannot be seen as a more attractive location for state threat actors compared with England and Wales.

I therefore urge the committee and the Parliament to support the LCM.

Thank you, and good morning. I am very grateful to the committee for allowing me to make a short statement, so that I can put on public record the apology that I gave privately to Alexis Jay for the fact that there has been so much focus not on her eminent work or on the substance of child protection, but on remarks that I made in the chamber. It was never my intention for Professor Jay to be the subject of so much intrusion and attention, and I very much regret that.

With regard to Liam Kerr’s urgent question on 19 November, I unfortunately could not attend chamber, due to being away from Parliament on Scottish Government business, so another minister had to reply. On reflection, I should have written to Mr Kerr and provided then the information that has been provided since.

I wrote to Mr Kerr twice in relation to two of his stage 3 amendments to the Victims, Witnesses, and Justice Reform (Scotland) Bill—which, incidentally, I am very proud of—to explain why I could not support those amendments. Work led by experts was already on-going, through the national child sexual abuse and exploitation strategic group and Police Scotland’s review of historical and existing cases. The research that he proposed, which was to be undertaken, within three years, by a commissioner who had yet to be established or appointed, would have been a duplication of that work. I repeated that argument in the grouping debate on 16 September.

In a later intervention on Mr Kerr regarding data, I quoted what Professor Alexis Jay said in an interview in January with BBC Radio 4. I did not state that Professor Jay was commenting on Liam Kerr’s amendments; I was making a general point on Professor Jay’s views on calls for further inquiries.

As the committee will be aware from reading the Official Report, I started by saying:

“Is Mr Kerr aware of the work led by Professor Alexis Jay, who was the chair of an independent inquiry into child sexual abuse in England and Wales and who currently sits on our national strategic group? She shares my view and has put on the record and stated to the media that she does not support further inquiries into child sexual abuse and exploitation, given the significant time and resource already spent in the review that she led, the Casey audit and other reviews. She says that it is now time that

‘people should just get on with it’.”—[Official Report, 16 September 2025; c 31.]

Professor Jay wrote to me on 26 September, noting that, although I had correctly quoted her, her comments were made in the context of a public inquiry in England and Wales, not Liam Kerr’s amendment. She said that

“the Scottish Government should urgently take steps to establish reliable data”

and that she had already been in discussions with officials about how that might be achieved. She also asked for her position to be clarified.

Officials contacted Professor Jay on 3 October, proposing to do that at the meeting of the strategic group that was scheduled for 8 October and noting that minutes of such meetings are published. Professor Jay responded on 6 October, agreeing to that. That was done as planned, and the minutes were published on 18 November.

I conclude by addressing the most important people in all of this, who are the victims. I have been driven in my work by the experiences of victims, who must have their voices heard. That is why I established what is now the Scottish child abuse inquiry with the education secretary and why I took forward the Victims, Witnesses, and Justice Reform (Scotland) Act 2025.

Although the focus of some in the past few weeks has been on the way in which I quoted Professor Jay, I hope that, after today—I note that the education secretary will make a statement this afternoon—attention can rightly turn to victims and survivors and the work that we all need to do together to protect our children.