Permanence of Coronavirus Recovery and Reform Act measures: consultation analysis

1. Introduction

Background

This report summarises responses to the recent Scottish Government consultation on the permanence of certain measures from the Coronavirus Recovery and Reform (Scotland) Act 2022.

The consultation

This consultation is a key part of a far-reaching programme of work that aims to make fundamental change to the operation of Scotland’s justice services, ensuring that its processes and laws meet the needs of people. The consultation takes forward Scottish Government’s Programme for Government 2022-23 commitment to modernise justice processes through greater use of digital processes. It also delivers on the Scottish Government’s priorities for justice as outlined in Equality, opportunity, community: New leadership - A fresh start.^[1]

The consultation sought views on proposals to make permanent several specific aspects of the 2022 Act, and other considerations around digitising elements of the criminal justice system. Consultation topics included conduct of business by electronic means, virtual attendance at criminal court, national jurisdiction for callings from custody, fiscal fines, digital productions, modernisation of the law on copy documents, and other modernisation of procedures through greater use of digital processes.

The consultation opened on 6 November 2023 and closed on 12 February 2024. It asked 22 questions, of which 20 had both ‘closed’ and ‘open’ elements with the remaining two questions being entirely open. The consultation paper is available on the Scottish Government’s website.

Profile of responses

In total, 30 consultation responses were received, of which 22 were from groups or organisations and eight from individual members of the public. Where consent has been given to publish the response, it may be found at Citizen Space.

A breakdown of the number of responses received by respondent type is set out in Table 1, and a full list of group respondents is appended to this report at Annex 1.

The consultation exercise also gathered responses from a small number of those with lived experience of the justice system, based on a shorter question set specifically relating to provisions allowing attendance at criminal court by electronic means. The background and methodology to this process has been provided at Annex 3. The views of these individuals have been integrated with other consultation responses at questions 2 and 3.

Analysis and reporting

The report presents a question-by-question analysis of answers to the closed questions and further comments at open questions. Both the proportion of respondents answering closed questions and the number providing written comment varied from question to question, and this is noted in the body of the report. Non-response has been excluded from the analysis of closed questions.

As with any public consultation exercise, it should be noted that those responding generally have a particular interest in the subject area. Therefore, the views they express cannot necessarily be seen as representative of wider public opinion.