Seòmar agus comataidhean

Thank you for that. It sounds like a good example of you and the local council—in this case, North Lanarkshire Council—working closely together to deliver a fast and effective result. When you identified that there was an issue and spread the message to other local authorities, what was the response from them? Has that been positive as well?

That raises a question. You do not have to mention the individual council—I would not ask for that or expect that—but given the serious nature of your work, should there be some process in which there is a contact for you?

So you have an emergency contact that you should, in theory, be able to contact.

As the committee will be aware, the petition before you calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to abolish the option of an absolute discharge in cases where the accused is found guilty of rape or sexual assault and to introduce a statutory minimum sentence for those offences that includes the convicted person being registered as a sex offender. The petitioner is a constituent of mine and has met me to discuss the issue on several occasions. It is an issue that she is very passionate about.

It should be noted that I have written to the Cabinet Secretary for Justice and Home Affairs on the issue as a result of the discussions that I have had with my constituent. The cabinet secretary has outlined the narrow scope whereby someone who is convicted of a sexual assault can receive an absolute discharge, as well as some of the reasons that a change to legislation might be difficult to implement here. With permission of the cabinet secretary and my constituent, I could share that correspondence with the committee if it is interested in seeing that.

The petitioner acknowledges that an average of three people each year were granted an absolute discharge as a result of receiving a guilty verdict for sexual assault, which underlines the rare circumstances in which that occurs.

However, at its core, the petition seeks to address an apparent loophole. Being convicted of an offence that is listed under schedule 3 to the Sexual Offences Act 2003 makes the offender automatically subject to notification requirements—that is, they become a registered sex offender. The notification requirements are not dependent on an order of the court. An offender who becomes subject to the requirements does so automatically, because they have been convicted, cautioned, reprimanded or warned for a “relevant offence”. There is no discretion exercised by the courts or the police in imposing the notification requirements on relevant offenders.

However—this is the perceived loophole—absolute discharges do not trigger the notification requirements. In solemn proceedings, even when an offender receives an absolute discharge, a conviction is still recorded. Despite the conviction, an absolute discharge means that no duration is assigned for notification requirements, creating the said loophole that means that the offender is not subject to notification requirements. The petitioner feels that that should be an automatic process as part of the conviction.

The petition has perhaps come at an apt time as the Scottish Sentencing Council is currently at stage 2 of its process to develop sentencing guidelines on sexual assault and at stage 4 of its process to develop sentencing guidelines on rape. As the council must consult Scottish ministers and the Lord Advocate before submitting the guidelines to the High Court, there might be some scope for the committee or the Parliament to impress upon the Scottish Government the nature of the petition and what it is trying to achieve.

Ultimately, the petition is based on the notion that my consituent has asserted to me very clearly that they do not believe there is any circumstance that is exceptional enough to allow a person who is convicted of sexual crimes not to be subject to the notification requirements. Part of the assertion comes from how difficult such convictions are to obtain, through every part of the criminal justice process, which is something that the Criminal Justice Committee is very aware of. There are a small number of people who receive guilty verdicts and whose sentence is absolute discharge. However, where victims later learn that they are not subject to sex offender registration, that could and does have a devastating impact on victims.

I conclude by thanking my constituent for submitting the petition, for getting the number of signatures that she did and for bringing the matter to the Parliament. As I said, she is very passionate about the issue and she wants to see change in that area. I will continue to support her in my role as her local MSP.

Back to you, convener.

Thank you, convener. I have no relevant interests to declare. However, for the purposes of the committee, I want to put on the record that I was a local authority councillor in North Lanarkshire Council between 2012 and 2016.

I have one more question. The Government has said that the recommendation on severance payments for councillors who lose their seats needs further consideration. Could you expand on that and say where the Government’s thinking is?

Good morning. I will pick up on that point about the public perception of politicians’ salaries. Cabinet secretary, do you think that there is any more that we can do as a Parliament—across the parties, as you mentioned—to educate the public a wee bit more? I think that MSPs and MPs are very well paid, but—let us be frank—councillors are not. I am not sure that the public always understand that. I have seen many criticisms about councillors’ massive salaries, both on social media and from people who come into my office. When they are told what the salary is, it often comes as a surprise. I am sure that everybody in this room has experienced that.

Do you think that there is anything more that we can do? I think that you are right that it will not be a popular move—I can already write the headlines for the next stages, although we might all be agreed. Is there anything that can be done so that people know what councillors get paid and that they do not get paid the same as us?

I would probably disagree with some of the commentary from the previous panel of witnesses. In my opinion, the situation cannot be described as SLARC saying that there was a breakdown in communication with the Scottish Government. One of the earlier witnesses commented that they noticed a tailing-off of attendance at meetings around a specific time. This is my first day as a member of the committee, and when I picked up this piece of work, I got the impression that it was a good piece of collaborative work with more or less everybody being on the same page. The only contentious issue, which has been the focus of discussion with both panels this morning, is around where the funding will come from. As I say, that is just my opinion.

On that note, do you think that there is any risk of some councils choosing not to pay the increase? COSLA said that that was a possibility, and we obviously do not want a postcode lottery situation. What more can we do to work together to avoid that? Does the main opportunity to do that come through the budget negotiations, as you have already said?

Good morning. I want to ask about the work that was done for the recommendation on the uplift or the reassessment—whatever we call it. I am in a similar position to Willie Coffey on that. I declared my interests earlier. The recommendation on increasing councillors’ pay is very welcome and overdue, as councillors’ pay has increased only minimally since I first became a councillor in 2012. Therefore, I welcome it.

I want to ask about an issue that has occurred to me while the discussion has been on-going. What did you find out in your investigations about the role of councillor being a second job? Often, that is the case through necessity. Most councillors I know have another job. Whether they say that their job as a councillor or the other job is their second job is neither here nor there. They usually have two jobs. Did you undertake any analysis of what impact the uplift or reassessment might have on that?

There are two sides to that coin. The first aspect is one that we have already talked about. Do you think that the uplift or reassessment will take away the aspect of low pay being a barrier to being a councillor, with the result that more folk will be able to go for the role of councillor? Conversely, do you think that the reassessment will mean that councillor pay will go up to what we could call a high enough level, whereby it more represents a fairer or a “normal” wage, with the result that some people might feel unable to do their other job, and that it might therefore act as a barrier in that way?

I hope that that question makes sense. That thought came to me today. Did that issue come up in any of your discussions?

Thank you very much for those answers. I reiterate what I said in my opening remarks: I very much welcome the proposed uplift, which makes a lot of sense and is well overdue.

Jane, you mentioned in answer to other questions and, I think, in your opening statement the possibility of people in the same council being pitted against one other on the issue. I want to take that a bit further. Is there a risk, depending on the final decision on how the uplift will be paid for, that we could be left in a situation in which—I do not think that we are set up for this just now—local authorities end up making individual decisions, which could mean that X local authorities agree to the uplift and Y do not, or do you think that that will not happen and that the uplift will go ahead across the board or not at all?