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My view, and the view of Government and of stakeholders—notwithstanding the various views of those on the working group—is that no accused and no victim decides which court they appear in or which procedure they appear under. It may be the case that, when setting the criteria for the type of offence—for example, criteria could be focused on the single complainer, single accused and single act such as acquaintance rape—someone might dispute whether their offence meets the category. There was certainly some discussion about that, but nobody gets—

No.

We have still to make a decision as to whether the pilot—if we call it that—would take place in the sexual offences court or the High Court. Let me run through the pros and cons of both. If we want the pilot to look more at how the current system operates in the High Court, we could do that comparatively quickly in the implementation process. However, there are advantages to the pilot taking place in the sexual offences court, because, given the wide-ranging nature of the reforms in the bill, their sequencing is very important.

When the pilot is evaluated, we want it to be a clear evaluation of the added value—or otherwise—of the pilot, as opposed to findings being more related to other reforms. Therefore, the phasing and sequencing of the different reforms is particularly important. Again, no final decision has been made, but we could, for example, start with the jury reforms and the abolition of the not proven verdict. The introduction of lifelong anonymity is fairly straightforward, but the sexual offences court is a bigger undertaking. We would probably want to phase that in as the court recovery programme comes to an end. The establishment of a court would take approximately 18 months. If we run the pilot in the sexual offences court, to which there are advantages, we would introduce the pilot at that point.

No, no.

There clearly is confusion. I said to the convener that the evaluation would include outcomes—which, of course, would include the outcomes of trials.

That information will be gathered. Information will be available in depth about the written statements. What I was refuting, Ms McNeill, was the suggestion that the only thing that would be looked at, in isolation, was conviction rates.

The conviction rate is one of many criteria, but it is not the only thing that we are looking at.

We will want to look at the wide range of empirical evidence that is available. Why should they not be included?

The shortest way of putting it is to say that there are pros and cons. Bearing it in mind that there are many reforms, the advantage of running the pilot in the sexual offences court would be that that would give us other options regarding the nature of the pilot. If the pilot were to take place in the High Court, that would involve a single judge, whereas if it took place in the new sexual offences court, we might look at the option of having a panel of decision makers. That is what we are wrestling with.

As I have said, I hope to come back to the committee with further clarity on implementation and sequencing. On balance, my preference right now—and I am not closed to other representations—is for the pilot to take place in the context of the sexual offences court, partly because it might give us further options to have a panel of decision makers rather than a single judge.

Perhaps I can reflect briefly on some of my European engagement. I have already visited the Netherlands and Germany and, in the not-too-distant future, I will be going to Norway. I stress again that we cannot do a lift and shift from other people’s jurisdictions, but one of the reasons for Lady Dorrian’s focus on a single-judge pilot in her review was that it was not novel to our system. Our system is quite hierarchical, and there is not an endless supply of judges. When I visited other jurisdictions, I saw that they had flatter systems with many more judges. In the Netherlands, for example, I met a lot of judges who were younger—I hope that the lords and ladies will not mind my saying that. The diversity issue that they have in the Netherlands is that 75 per cent are women; however, it has a bigger judicial resource, because its structures are flatter.

When I met judges in the Netherlands, I found that there are single-judge trials, but for the most serious cases, there is a panel of three. That would be challenging in Scotland, given that we do not have an endless supply of judges. Other countries have mixed panels of judiciary and lay representation. However, when I engaged with the judges from the Netherlands, they spoke to the value of having peers and colleagues involved in the process of deliberation and in writing up written judgments. I am in favour of a time-limited single-judge pilot, but if we are talking about the sexual offences court, where there will be judges, temporary judges, sheriffs and principal sheriffs, we might have the option to have a pilot involving more than one decision maker.

I hope that I have not pre-empted any of my thinking on this, because our own conclusions have still to be completed. As with any proposition, there are things that you need to work through properly. I want to make it clear that I am absolutely in favour of a pilot of single-judge trials, but there might be other options that we could explore.