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Correlation is not causation. However, if you could supply data that shows France bringing in legislation and then having a decline in prostitution, that would be very helpful for the committee.

Pam Gosal, on your point that the provisions in your bill would act as a deterrent, I note that you based the notification requirements on those in the Sexual Offences Act 2003. Some organisations, in their responses to the consultation, have said that there is no evidence that those requirements have had an impact on the behaviour of offenders, and thus your proposals would not reduce or prevent domestic abuse offending. How do you respond to that? Do you have evidence to show that your proposals would have such an impact?

Amendment 50 relates to section 6, which will permanently increase the limit of the fixed penalties from £300 to £500. Sections 6(1)(b) and 6(1)(c) allow Scottish ministers to further increase that by regulations should they wish to do so. My amendment 50 seeks to simply delete that power, thus preventing ministers from straightforwardly increasing the fixed penalty amount to a higher level.

My reason for lodging the amendment is that I am concerned about the knock-on impact of a further increase to the fiscal fine level, which could mean that far more serious crimes are dealt with by fiscal fine. The increase to £500 can be entirely justified on inflationary grounds and we know that, at that level, it will cover offences such as shoplifting—which is, admittedly, causing huge problems for retailers, but that is another matter that we will need to address in another forum.

However, if ministers used the power in the bill to increase the maximum fine to, for the sake of argument, £1,000, it is not difficult to see how that would lead to more serious crimes being dealt with by fiscal fine. A £500 fine might not be considered sufficient punishment, so a matter would be dealt with in another way, but a fine of £1,000 might well be seen as a sufficient punishment. To me, that seems to bring problems.

The committee’s report illustrates some of those problems when it states:

“One final point made about the use of fiscal fines for offences such as shoplifting was that the public might perceive their use as diminishing the importance with which the justice system treats such offences.”

It goes on to say:

“Simon Brown of the Scottish Solicitors Bar Association commented: ‘At a practical level—this has been picked up in the press—we see the effective decriminalisation of shoplifting. Shoplifting becomes an offence that is viewed as a low-level crime and is dealt with by fiscal fines.’”

A related point is that the Scottish Conservatives obtained statistics that show that, between 2018 and 2021, more than one in three people who refused the offer of a fiscal fine had no further action taken against them—so, in effect, they faced no punishment for their crime. I can supply that data to the cabinet secretary afterwards, if she wishes. The more fines are issued and the higher they are, the more serious the crimes are that people are, in effect, getting off with.

For that reason, I move amendment 50.

In that case, does the cabinet secretary concede that, if the Scottish ministers set the level at £500 and decide that that is the appropriate level, it should simply go up with inflation, rather than be tied to any decision by ministers to include more crimes within the ambit of fiscal fines?

I understand the point that is being made but, as I said, Simon Brown of the Scottish Solicitors Bar Association told this committee:

“At a practical level … we see the effective decriminalisation of shoplifting. Shoplifting becomes an offence that is viewed as a low-level crime”.—[Official Report, Criminal Justice Committee, 22 January 2025; c 32.]

I understand the point that the cabinet secretary is making, but we have to consider how the offence is viewed, and that is the point that was made by that witness to this committee.

Finally, there is one more reason why I am not persuaded by the cabinet secretary’s arguments. She said clearly that she has no plans to increase the level of fiscal fines and that she has other things to deal with. Of course, I completely understand that. However, there is a reshuffle going on right now, as I understand it, and an election pending in less than 12 months. I would argue that, when the cabinet secretary said in her remarks that we need to future proof the legislation, she made my point for me.

For the reasons that I have outlined, I press amendment 50.

I have a question on that point, which relates to Rona Mackay’s comment. If the cabinet secretary is not persuaded that amendment 54 is for this bill, would she be receptive to Maggie Chapman lodging it at stage 3 of the Victims, Witnesses, and Justice Reform (Scotland) Bill?

I listened with great interest to the cabinet secretary, and I am sympathetic to an awful lot of what she put before us. I might counter that, although the Lord President is, of course, the head of the service and is independent, surely, in the system that we have, ministers must have some oversight of what is going on. Bear in mind that I am not asking for an opinion; I am asking for some way of scrutinising compliance with the timescales and the ability of the service to meet the timescales, and for this Parliament and the Government to help to properly resource the system to make sure that it works as well as possible.

We heard very powerful testimony, which I referred to earlier, about what is happening in the courts and what might happen when the timescales revert, which I am sure causes fellow committee members great concern.

That said, I think that the cabinet secretary spoke persuasively, and I accept that my amendment is perhaps not the right route to achieve my aims, so I will not press it to a vote today. I would like to work with the cabinet secretary offline to work out what the best way of achieving the end game is—I know that the cabinet secretary is receptive to that sort of thing—because I suspect that we share the drive to do things as efficiently as possible and in the best way that we can. However, I accept that there might be a better way to do that than through amendment 55. For that reason, I seek leave to withdraw amendment 55.

Amendment 55, by agreement, withdrawn.

Section 9—Domestic homicide or suicide review

Has any research and investigation been done, prior to the laying of the instrument, into the impact of reducing the threshold for time served to 15 per cent on victims and/or on the general public’s respect for and perception of sentencing in Scotland, given that a criminal can be sentenced to prison but may serve only 15 per cent of their sentence inside?

I am grateful for the answer. I say that with great respect, because I enjoy our exchanges, cabinet secretary, but I am not sure that it answered my question, which was about the data and the research that has been done on the impact that the reduction will have on rehabilitation in prison. If you have that data, perhaps you could outline it in your response to my next question.

In your opening remarks, you said that there would be no change to the risk assessments. However, if people are in and out of prison sooner, it would, logically, be more difficult to risk assess them and to address any issues that they are bringing with them from the outside. You say that there will be no change to those assessments, but has there been any investigation as to whether there might be a need for such a change, or has it just been assumed that there is not?

I thank the cabinet secretary for her contribution to the debate, but I am afraid that I do not accept the argument. If the issue was truly about sticking at an appropriate level and not crime inflation, as it were, I cannot see why we would not make rises from the £500 level based only on inflation. The committee has already seen the consequences of fiscal fines, with the Scottish Solicitors Bar Association telling us its view that shoplifting is effectively decriminalised, which I mentioned earlier.