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Apologies, convener—I thought that we could vote on them all at the same time.

Having listened to the exchange between Liam Kerr and the cabinet secretary, although I was minded to support amendments 104 and 105, the cabinet secretary has satisfactorily answered the question. The fact that the Law Society of Scotland is going to be consulted is a good belt-and-braces approach.

I want to raise some issues in relation to the enforcement powers. Cabinet secretary, you said that you would check with the Crown Office. I think that that is vital, and I will say why. If we are going to give the commissioner enforcement powers against criminal justice agencies, I note that amendment 135 is quite far-reaching, in that the commissioner can report the matter to the Court of Session.

I do not know what the mechanism is—I am not familiar with it. Is it a new mechanism, or does a mechanism already exist? Usually, there is a process to get into the Court of Session, but the amendment does not say what that will be. Is it something completely new? We did not discuss that at stage 1.

My primary concern is about the requirement to supply information. If there was a dispute between the commissioner and the Crown Office as to whether the information to be supplied was relevant to the commissioner’s work, it seems quite a jump that the commissioner could, theoretically, just report the matter to the Court of Session, and the Crown would then have to defend itself in the Court of Session, which would consider the matter.

I am not saying that that understanding is correct, but I have been reading the provisions in the past few days, and I think that we perhaps need to qualify that further. The aim of the bill is to bring about a culture change as much as anything else, and there would be co-operation, but the black letter of the law always has to be clear.

I am a wee bit concerned that the powers of the commissioner should not necessarily override the view of the Crown Office that information is not relevant. Again, a bit more consideration could be given to the issue of supply of information in particular. That is my primary concern—there might be a difference of opinion about whether information is relevant, and we could end up with a battle in the Court of Session between the commissioner and the Crown Office as to the use of their enforcement powers. That may be an issue to consider for stage 3.

Sure.

Okay—thank you very much for that.

Several committees have scrutinised the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service—I think that Rona Mackay might have been involved in that work. The COPFS has gone through periods of change and it is probably a bit better resourced than it might have been a decade ago. That is relevant because Mr Findlay’s and Mr Greene’s amendments speak to notification, but there is a wider issue in relation to why pleas are taken.

I want to get on the record that it is very important that future Governments continue to resource the Crown Office and to recruit procurators fiscal who are particularly skilled at taking on cases that are not for every lawyer. I do not know whether the lawyers around the table would agree, but prosecuting is not for every lawyer. At the end of the day, you must prove that the person who is accused committed those crimes—that is what all prosecutors should be doing. Periodically, committees should look at their workload to see whether there are any barriers to their doing that.

The centralisation of decision making—the fact that discretion has become more centralised—has caused concern. We had a debate in the committee about how centralised decision making has become in the Crown Office. That is relevant, because it is all part of the picture of the impact on victims.

Thank you.

I will continue Rona Mackay’s line of questioning on whether murder should be included in the sexual offences court. Of course, the Crown does not make a decision—it is not required to make a decision, because it is a requirement of law that a plea of the Crown must be heard in the High Court.

As Ms Constance said, the Crown could make a decision on which court a case should go to. Is there not also an argument that, since murder is such a serious offence and is already tried in the High Court, notwithstanding that there might be sexual offences to prove, murder cases should go to the highest court, because the High Court will still be the High Court? Would that not make sense?

I have to say that I find it difficult to get my head round the issue. My understanding is that, in non-rape cases that are prosecuted in the High Court, there will still be advocate deputes and counsel. In the shift to a new court, you are trying to make sure that accused people have the same representation, but surely you need to make sure that there is the same level of prosecutor. There must be parity, as it were.

Good morning. I echo what Ben Macpherson has said: it is important that Parliament gets this right, and we appreciate your attendance at this morning’s meeting.

The current proposal in the bill is for a jury of 12, with eight required for a conviction. You have told the committee that your focus is on fairness, and I agree with that. Why do you think that a majority of 10 to five on a jury of 15 is fairer than what is in the bill?

Why is that fairer than what you had?

Can you tell the committee—the stakeholder, so to speak—who is supportive of this, apart from the senators? Are there others?