Seòmar agus comataidhean

Would the effect of amendments 68 and 69 be to revert to the original law?

In other words, the effect would be to isolate the Friday. The committee report spoke to the Friday being the problem. That is the effect of your amendments.

Jamie Greene and Russell Findlay have raised some pertinent questions about the sentencing of short-term prisoners. My understanding is that short-term prisoners are those serving four years or less. I am still not too clear about what Russell Findlay’s amendment would do, so it would be useful to hear about that when he sums up. However, my reading of it is that it would require that short-term prisoners could be released on licence only if recommended by the Parole Board. Would that change the current arrangements so that every short-term prisoner would need to be released on licence, meaning that, if they offended, they would go straight back to prison? That is what it means to be on licence, is it not?

I am trying to understand that. Do you regard that as quite a big change to the system?

However, it would go through the Parole Board.

That is helpful.

Everyone seems to be content that the Government should have emergency powers. However, I make a plea for clarity and for it to be easy to read the provisions and know what the power is about. It is about risk to life and, ordinarily, there will be regulations—it is about future proofing.

I do not know what the cabinet secretary’s position is on amendment 90, but, as I said, I am sympathetic to it. My only concern is that I do not know whether it is proportionate to say that, in every case, the period should be 180 days. It is important that we get section 8 right, so I make a plea that the Government give consideration to that if amendment 90 is agreed to.

On a point that Jamie Greene made, in the scenarios that we are talking about, I do not see why the bill cannot include a requirement to notify victims. That would be in line with a principle that we all believe in, but it seems to be missing from the bill.

That is helpful. You are saying that the hearing is on the day.

Maybe that was obvious, but I do not like to take things for granted.

Members might recall that the committee sat through a case at the High Court in Glasgow in which the advocate had an uphill struggle to get over the hurdle of exceptional circumstances. There was a massive string of previous convictions and even we could see that there was no chance that bail would be granted in that case.

I politely suggest that the committee and, I imagine, victims organisations are looking for that kind of reassurance for stage 3. I am not interested in introducing unnecessarily restrictive provisions for sheriffs making decisions, allowing them to use some discretion, but nor would I want to leave a gap if the organisations that have made representations to us still felt that the provisions left one.

Amendment 65, by agreement, withdrawn.

Section 3 agreed to.

Section 4—Refusal of bail: duty to state and record reasons

I am very sympathetic to all the arguments that have been made, especially with regard to the section seeming to go a little bit too far in starting to prescribe things with regard to judges. Indeed, I think that the committee was particularly in agreement on that.

Does the member agree that, in that case, it is the objective that perhaps needs to be defined? As far as remand is concerned—Collette Stevenson is on record as arguing this, and I support this view, too—supervised bail is a really important alternative for courts. I agree with the member that there needs to be a conversation about that, but we perhaps need to sort out the principles first. For example, if someone spends time on remand, it is only right that that time be considered in the sentence, because they have been detained in a prison. If we are talking about someone with a restriction on their liberty, which can be the case for people who have an electronic tag, I guess that that is the principle behind the provisions of the bill that we are examining.

Therefore, my question for Jamie Greene is whether it is necessary for us to sort out which principle we are adhering to here. I am slightly sympathetic to the viewpoint that consideration be given to cases in which people who have an electronic tag as an alternative to remand have quite a substantial restriction on their movements for a long period. I agree with everything else.

I was trying to intervene, too.