Scotsman Politics: FMQs Review - Thursday January 18 2024
Scotsman Politics: FMQs Review - Thursday January 18 2024
Scotsman Head of News Dale Miller and Political Editor Alistair Grant look back on FMQs
Scotsman Head of News Dale Miller and Political Editor Alistair Grant look back on FMQs
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NewsTranscript
00:00 (upbeat music)
00:02 - Hello, and welcome to the Scotsman's Politics Show.
00:11 We're here to review First Minister's questions.
00:15 Alistair, another day, another discussion
00:18 around the post office horizon scandal.
00:21 It's been an interesting one because of the variations
00:24 between the UK and the Scottish governments
00:26 and how the different systems dealt with prosecutions
00:29 and what were the questions about the answer to that?
00:33 - Yeah, so just a quick recap on this.
00:35 It's obviously the post office horizon scandal,
00:38 hitting the headlines again after the drama on ITV.
00:41 As you say, there's some difficulties
00:43 around this in Scotland because in down south,
00:46 it was the post office who led these prosecutions,
00:49 it's private prosecutions by the post office.
00:51 Whereas in Scotland, it was the Crown Office
00:54 that led these prosecutions.
00:55 So there's a slightly kind of complicated area there
00:58 and obviously separate legal system in Scotland
01:00 and in England and Wales.
01:02 Douglas Ross, the Scottish Conservative leader today,
01:05 trying to get to the bottom of what the approach
01:07 will be in Scotland because we've had Humza Yousaf,
01:10 the First Minister saying before that he's quite keen
01:13 to almost piggyback on any UK legislation there is
01:16 to follow the plans down south to have mass exonerations
01:21 of those who were convicted in courts,
01:24 cases involved horizon.
01:28 Humza Yousaf is very keen to mirror that in Scotland,
01:30 but then we had the Lord Advocate last week
01:32 in Scottish Parliament suggesting that actually,
01:36 there's kind of a case by case basis approach
01:39 might be better, pointing out that some of these,
01:42 not all of these convictions will be unsound.
01:45 Some of the people convicted will have been guilty,
01:48 essentially.
01:50 So there's some kind of dubiety around
01:52 how the Scottish government will approach this.
01:54 Humza Yousaf today trying to be very clear
01:56 that it's still his position that Scotland wants
01:59 to follow whatever UK government legislation there is,
02:02 wants there to be either through a legislative consent
02:06 motion in Holyrood, wants those mass exonerations
02:09 to apply UK-wide, and also saying that there are
02:12 contingency plans in place in Scotland to perhaps
02:16 look at doing its own legislation if that's just
02:18 not possible.
02:19 But it's a very complicated situation.
02:22 Douglas Ross bringing up as well some quite stark examples
02:25 of people that were prosecuted under the horizon,
02:28 under these horizon prosecutions, including one where
02:31 the post office had blamed the teenage grandchild
02:33 of one of the sub-post mistresses,
02:35 and she had actually died before ever getting justice,
02:38 essentially died one year before Alan Bates,
02:40 the star of that ITV drama, managed to get this case
02:45 into the initial civil case in the courts.
02:48 So very much a sense in Holyrood that action needs
02:52 to be taken, and mass exonerations are the way forward,
02:56 but still a lot of complexity around how that might
03:00 take place.
03:00 I was interested today as well, Hans-Josef was saying
03:03 that essentially he wants to get to a situation
03:06 where we've got mass exonerations, but in those cases
03:09 where people were guilty, we don't have guilty people
03:13 having their convictions overturned.
03:15 But it's quite hard to square those two circles,
03:17 and I think I'm right in saying that the UK government's
03:20 approach to this has effectively been to get people
03:22 to sign a statement essentially saying they're innocent,
03:26 and then I guess at a later date, as that turns out,
03:28 not to be the case, they've effectively committed perjury
03:31 of some kind.
03:32 It's not clear whether that's also Hans-Josef's preference,
03:36 but he very much wants to work with the UK government
03:38 on this, and he says that there's positive noises
03:41 on that too.
03:41 - Alistair, it was interesting in the law advocate,
03:45 Dorothy Bynes' evidence or statement earlier this week
03:48 as well that she said, she sort of highlighted
03:51 not every case may be overturned, which sort of went
03:54 slightly contrary to what HMSA had pushed for
03:58 or made a public statement about the previous week.
04:00 So I clearly want to watch.
04:02 Just another story live on our side as well,
04:04 those victims impacted by Professor Al-Jamal
04:08 have also reportedly spoken to TV producers there,
04:13 keen to see a TV drama made about their situation
04:17 and how much has been done with the post office.
04:20 We've seen what a difference that has made
04:24 to those who were unfairly prosecuted
04:27 over the past couple of weeks.
04:29 Alistair, as we record this, there's a statement
04:32 to come on Excel bullies, but it did come up
04:35 at FMQs as well.
04:36 - Yes, this was raised by Scottish Labour leader
04:39 Anna Sarwar, kind of tying it into the wider issue
04:43 of dangerous dogs and the Dangerous Dogs Act
04:45 and how the kind of safeguards are in place
04:47 to protect the public.
04:49 And Anna Sarwar effectively saying more needs to be done.
04:52 And I think he had this figure of 7,000,
04:55 sorry, victims treated in hospitals 7,600 times
04:59 for injuries related to dog attacks in one year.
05:02 So it is obviously an issue that people are concerned about.
05:06 Anna Sarwar saying more needs to be done,
05:08 Humza Yousaf saying that the Scottish government
05:10 already brought in dog control notices.
05:13 There's 1,200 active notices in place at the moment.
05:16 Just 2% of them relate to Excel bullies,
05:18 so this is very much a wider issue.
05:21 And he's saying that the kind of system in place
05:24 in Scotland already has a kind of strict regime of controls.
05:27 But Anna Sarwar effectively disagreeing with that,
05:31 saying that more needs to be done.
05:32 As you say, statement expected in Parliament
05:35 by Siobhan Brown, the Community Safety Minister
05:38 this afternoon on Scotland, effectively mirroring
05:41 the legislation that was introduced by the UK government
05:43 for England and Wales to effectively ban Excel bullies
05:47 as a breed.
05:48 People can still own them who have them,
05:52 but there's gonna be restrictions in place,
05:54 gotta be muzzled on a lead.
05:56 You can't breed them anymore, you can't sell them.
05:59 So Scotland expected to mirror that.
06:01 It's quite a journey the Scottish government's
06:03 got on in this.
06:04 Even today, Humza Yousaf was saying that his preferences
06:07 did not breed.
06:08 Scottish government seems to have a position
06:10 where it doesn't like banning breeds in this way.
06:13 It doesn't think it's effective.
06:14 And to be fair, that's mirrored by charities
06:17 like the SSPCA, animal welfare groups
06:19 don't like this either.
06:21 And effectively Scottish government's position was
06:23 that it didn't actually need to introduce this ban.
06:25 Then it changed its mind.
06:27 It seems that the catalyst for this change
06:30 was media reports of Excel bullies being brought up
06:33 in large numbers over the border into Scotland.
06:36 And Scottish government's effectively got itself
06:38 into a position where it feels that it has to do,
06:40 it has to act effectively, it has to do something about this.
06:43 There's perhaps a fear within government
06:45 that if there was an attack involving an Excel bully
06:48 that they would be blamed for this,
06:50 that people would say they hadn't done enough,
06:52 that they should have done what the UK government
06:54 has put in place.
06:57 So yeah, expecting that statement to be in parliament
06:59 this afternoon with perhaps a little bit more details
07:01 about the Scottish government's rationale for doing this
07:04 and how it will work in practice.
07:06 And the timeline that will be in place.
07:07 Another thing that's worth saying is that
07:09 the UK government's timeline for people registering
07:12 their dogs and getting these licences
07:14 to still own current Excel bullies is the end of this month.
07:18 So it'd be interesting to see what Scottish government
07:20 does about that because that's now very, very close.
07:23 And so you would have thought they'd have to put
07:25 a lag period in place in Scotland,
07:27 but we'll have to wait and see.
07:29 - You can read all the latest about what comes out
07:31 of that statement at scotsman.com.
07:33 If you want to read back every blow for blow from FMQs,
07:38 we ran a live blog.
07:40 You can look at the recap of what was debated
07:43 and what questions were put to Hums of Euston.
07:45 Alastair, thank you very much for joining us from Holyrood
07:48 and thanks everyone for tuning in.
07:51 (upbeat music)
07:53 (upbeat music)
07:56 [MUSIC]