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Are members content to proceed on the basis of Mr Torrance’s recommendation?

Members indicated agreement.

PE2181, lodged by Paul Blaker on behalf of Accountability Scotland, calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to introduce measures to stop teachers backdating or altering school records in SEEMiS and other education management information systems. SEEMiS, which is the management information system provider that is used by local authority schools in Scotland, holds the core student records.

The petitioner believes that the practice of altering school records after they were created is open to abuse and could cause significant harm to children. The SPICe briefing cites the particular case mentioned by the petitioner in which a local council in Scotland was censured by the Information Commissioner’s Office for backdating education records, and it adds that, in a separate case, a different council was found by the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman not to have consistently recorded incidents reported in pastoral and other recording systems.

In its response to the petition, the Scottish Government makes clear its expectation that local authorities and schools should keep accurate and timely records in compliance with relevant legislation and Government guidance. The Scottish Government also expects local authorities to ensure that staff and teachers understand how information should be recorded and to have clear audit processes and procedures in place to track who has accessed such systems and what changes have been made to pre-existing information, together with the reason for those changes.

SEEMiS explained to our SPICe researchers that the ability to backdate or update records in pastoral notes is intended to align with the day-to-day practice in schools. Teachers or staff might not be able to update records immediately and, therefore, may create or update records when they have non-contact time. SEEMiS also clarifies that, following the issues highlighted in the first case that I mentioned, changes were made to the system to allow local authorities to access the content history of an entry, rather than just the dates and the authors of any changes.

Colleagues, do we have any suggestions as to how we might proceed?

Are colleagues content, on that basis, to draw the petition to a close?

The last of the new petitions to be considered today is PE2182. Lodged by Hannah Doig, it calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to review the definition of domestic abuse in the Domestic Abuse (Scotland) Act 2018 and to introduce a minimum sentence for severe offences.

The petitioner’s view is that the current penalties for severe cases of domestic abuse are too lenient and fail to reflect the severity of the crimes or the lasting trauma that victims endure. Her petition states that increased sentencing is necessary to properly address domestic abuse and its devastating impact on the victims.

The Scottish Government’s response to the petition states that it is long-standing policy on sentencing in Scottish criminal courts to give discretion to the court to decide a sentence, based on the facts and circumstances of a case. The penalties available for almost all offences are generally provided up to a maximum, but with no minimum sentence required. The response also states that that approach gives the independent court the greatest discretion and flexibility when sentencing.

The Scottish Government’s view is that establishing minimum sentencing would remove discretion from the court and mean that the court would be unable to apply full discretion when sentencing, after considering the full facts and circumstances of any case. The response also sets out the protections that are in place to guard against sentences that, as a matter of law, are considered too lenient.

The Scottish Sentencing Council is currently working on producing further sentencing guidelines in several areas, including developing a draft guideline on sentencing in domestic abuse cases. A domestic abuse working group committee has been established to help take forward that work, and the next stage is for the council to conduct a full public consultation on the proposed guideline.

The petitioner has provided a written submission that acknowledges the Scottish Government’s commitment to judicial independence and the support for the Scottish Sentencing Council’s on-going work, but she challenges the assertion that current measures are sufficient to address the scale and severity of domestic abuse in Scotland. She states that sentencing guidelines, although useful, are not binding, and she believes that introducing minimum sentences would establish a clear baseline of accountability while still allowing judges to apply discretion within a defined range. She also argues that such an approach would preserve judicial independence while ensuring consistency and fairness.

These are important issues. Do colleagues have any suggestions as to how we should proceed?

We will therefore close the petition, but I will say to the petitioner that she has raised an important issue. Unfortunately, I do not think that there is time left to us to properly explore in detail or interrogate the response that we have received. However, given the consultation that the Scottish Sentencing Council will be conducting, the issue might well be the basis for a petition in the next parliamentary session, and I am sure that the Parliament will have the opportunity to consider it in more detail at that time.

That is the end of the public part of our proceedings. We now move into private session.

I agree that MSPs and others, including members of Parliament, could do something to help to promote that. Is there a graphic available that we could, for example, post online to encourage community groups to register a defibrillator if that has not already happened, or to check whether their defibrillator is registered? If there is not a graphic, could something be produced that we might endeavour to use as a tool to try to encourage registration?

Fergus Ewing will pursue some of the training issues later.

You were in the brownies later than I was in the cub scouts—we just did a lot of marching.

Do you have anything else to add, minister?

Welcome back. The next petition on our agenda, under continued petitions, is PE1876, which was lodged by Lucy Hunter Blackburn, Lisa Mackenzie and Kath Murray. The petition calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to require Police Scotland, the Crown Office and the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service to accurately record the sex of people charged with or convicted of rape or attempted rape.

The Citizens Participation and Public Petitions Committee has considered the above petition throughout the current parliamentary session. It is one of our longest-running petitions this session—it was lodged back in 2021—and the committee has been pursuing extensive work on it since then. We have a large volume of petitions, and our practice is to do a considerable amount of work on every admissible petition by securing a research briefing, a Government response and committee consideration for each one.

We also try to progress the ask in petitions on behalf of petitioners as far as we are able to do so. We are not the Government; we are a committee of the Parliament. To ensure fairness for all our petitions and petitioners, we consider them in turn, which sometimes means that there can be a wait after a petition is considered before it can be rescheduled.

At its meeting on 30 October 2024, the committee agreed that it would be appropriate to invite the chief constable to give evidence at a future meeting. The committee does not hear evidence on every petition. In fact, it takes evidence on relatively few of the petitions that come before it. As a result, we want to make sure that we get the most out of any sessions at which we hear from witnesses.

After issuing our invitation to Police Scotland, we were advised that there was a full review of the policy on recording sex and gender that was due to conclude this autumn. To make sure that we could use this valuable opportunity to hear from the chief constable as effectively as possible, the committee agreed to wait until autumn 2025 to take evidence.

I am pleased to say that we are joined today by Chief Constable Jo Farrell, and by Deputy Chief Constable Alan Speirs, who has responsibility for professionalism and enabling services. I warmly welcome you both. I understand that the chief constable would like to make a brief opening statement before we move to questions from the committee.

Exercising my discretion as convener, I now invite our three parliamentary colleagues to join the questioning. Tess White is first.