00:00Hello and welcome to the Scotsman's Video Bulletin for this Tuesday. My name is Dale
00:04Miller. I'm Deputy Editor of the Scotsman. I'm joined by our political editor, Alistair Grant.
00:11And Alistair, it's going to be a particularly busy, not just day, but also week for politics,
00:17both here in Scotland and more widely. We know Donald Trump, the US President, touches down
00:22approximately about 8.30 this evening at Stansted Airport ahead of a state visit. That will be
00:29significant over the next couple of days. The Scotsman will bring you all the very latest on
00:34that visit at our website. But firstly, we'll discuss the front page of today's paper.
00:40And we let on a push or request to boost the GP workforce to fix the NHS crisis
00:47message coming from doctors now. There's some fresh figures out around A&E today. Again,
00:53it makes for difficult reading. There's warnings that another NHS winter crisis
00:59may not be far away if there isn't something done to address the issues quickly. With September now,
01:06the flu is doing the rounds. A lot of kids at school getting the flu shots over the next couple
01:11of weeks. But it will be an issue again heading into this winter. And you can read that full story
01:17at scotsman.com. Also, pressure continuing around Marden and the Rangers management and leadership on the
01:26back of a poor start to the season where they remain winless in the league. Alistair, we're here to talk
01:33about a significant debate first that's taking place today and potentially a vote later today. Run us through
01:40the Victims' Bill and what's significant about it and what will be discussed today.
01:46Yeah, so today in Holyrood, it's the stage three debate, the kind of final debate and vote on the
01:51Victims' Witnesses and Justice Reform Scotland Bill. Now, this is a huge piece of legislation. It does
01:57lots of different things. But I think probably the headline change that it's enacting or would enact is
02:04that it proposes to abolish the not proven verdict. Now, this is kind of the idiosyncratic feature of
02:10Scots law. I think it dates back to about the 17th century, where in a criminal trial, we have three
02:15verdicts. We've got guilty, not guilty and not proven. And there's long been controversy and debate
02:20about not proven. And there's kind of a feeling that juries don't really understand what it means,
02:25that there's kind of inconsistent views around it. In effect, it has the exact same result as a
02:31not guilty verdict, the accused is acquitted, they're innocent in the eyes of the law. But some
02:36people think that the not proven verdict creates a bit of a stigma, that it's not kind of perceived
02:41by the public as the same as a as a not guilty verdict. So this would propose abolishing that.
02:48There's also some other major wide ranging reforms, there's about 160 amendments to consider
02:52over the course of stage three, it's down in Parliament, the debate is down to happen from about
02:5820 past two to 10 o'clock at night, when the vote would take place, it's very unusual for the Scottish
03:03Parliament to sit that late into the evening. We've only really seen things in the past with,
03:07for example, the gender reform legislation, which went very, very late into the night in the early
03:11hours of the morning, actually, as well. But it's these kind of massive bills where you sometimes get
03:17this happening. And so as well as abolishing not proven, it would change the jury majority for a
03:25not guilty verdict in criminal trials. I think that move is linked to the not proven change,
03:30because there's a perception among some lawyers that if you get rid of the not proven verdict,
03:35that might be unfair on the accused, because studies have showed in the past that juries might
03:41then be more likely to go for a guilty verdict, because they don't have that third option when they
03:46are a bit unsure. I mean, obviously, if they're unsure, they shouldn't return a guilty verdict.
03:51But that is the perception there would also create a special sexual offences court.
03:57So there's all sorts of different things here. As I say, that not proven, probably the headline one,
04:02when it comes to that change of the jury majority, the proposals that MSPs are being asked to consider
04:10having a two thirds majority for a guilty verdict, I think right now it's a straight 50% needed to find
04:14someone guilty. That would obviously be a big change. There were plans, people might remember,
04:20to pilot juryless trials for serious sexual offences. They were dropped last year due to
04:26opposition within Holyrood and also outside of Holyrood. Lawyers were very against it,
04:32kind of legal bodies. And the bill would also create a victims and witnesses commissioner,
04:39as well as making anonymity and sexual offences enshrined in law. Again, this is something that
04:43lots of people are not aware of, that the anonymity and sexual offences when they go through the
04:49court system is actually a convention that's followed by the media, by newspapers. It's kind
04:54of, for want of a better term, a kind of gentleman's agreement. And that's where it's often called,
05:00whereas a judge has to make a specific legal order for those witnesses to be anonymous. This would
05:08change that. So it's just a huge piece of legislation. And I think the fact that there's so many amendments
05:15going through Holyrood as well just shows the kind of level of interest in this, the various different
05:19aspects of it. There's different aspects of it that the different political parties are particularly
05:25interested in. So my colleague David Ball, deputy political editor, will be all over this today.
05:30He'll be covering it when it goes through Holyrood and he's going to be working on an explainer,
05:35which should be up in the website before then, just talking through exactly what these changes are,
05:39all the different aspects of it. And if you sign up actually to the politics newsletter, the STEAMI,
05:44which I obviously recommend doing, Rachel Amory, who writes that newsletter, had a very good explainer
05:50as well in today's newsletter, just talking through some of the various aspects of this. But it's a huge
05:56piece of legislation. And just going back to that not proven aspect of it alone, that would be just
06:00such a massive change to the Scottish legal system, really changing a thing that's been there for
06:06hundreds of years.
06:07As you say, Alistair, one of the biggest, most significant charges to the Scottish legal system
06:14in history, effectively. So the Scotsman will bring you all the very latest on that. As Alistair says,
06:19if you tune back in once we come to the debate this afternoon, that explainer will walk you through
06:24exactly what is going to be changing in the system and how it may impact just people more widely
06:32here in Scotland. It'll be a great piece. Just more widely on politics, I know we sort of flagged
06:39Donald Trump landing this evening, but also we've got a new Scottish secretary, Douglas Alexander,
06:46and he's been asked to come on the committee to give some significant evidence. Can you talk us through that?
06:52Yeah, so the education committee has written to Douglas Alexander, the new Scottish secretary,
06:59asking him to come before the committee to give the UK government's view on the issue of
07:04VAT on private schools. This is something that the UK government made changes on when they came into
07:08power last year, something that there's been changes on in Scotland in the past. It's a big issue in
07:13cities like Edinburgh, where proportionally more children go to private schools than elsewhere in
07:18Scotland. I think the committee has written twice to the UK education secretary before and they've not
07:24had a response. So they're hoping that Douglas Alexander will come before the committee and the
07:29Labour government, the nuclear Labour government has made a big show of working with Paul Rudd, of
07:34better terms between Paul Rudd and Westminster than there perhaps were under the Conservative government.
07:40And I think that's broadly true on many issues. So I think the committee will look to capitalise on that.
07:46It's Douglas Ross, the committee convener, the former Scottish Tory leader, who's written that letter to
07:51Douglas Alexander, and we'll be going to him today to see what the UK government's response to that might be.
07:57You'll be able to read a story on that from Alistair shortly at scotsman.com as well. If you ever can't
08:02find any of our politics coverage, there's a politics tab in the navigation bar that'll take you to all the very
08:07latest. And please, I'll encourage you to go out and pick up a copy of the Scotsman in print tomorrow,
08:13where you'll have all the details of what was discussed in the debate around the Victims Bill
08:19throughout today and into this evening. That will give you the full run through as well. Alistair,
08:25thanks to you and thanks to everyone else for tuning in to Jonas.
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