Scotsman Politics: FMQs Review - Thursday January 18 2024 - video Dailymotion

The Scotsman

Scotsman Politics: FMQs Review - Thursday January 18 2024 Scotsman Head of News Dale Miller and Political Editor Alistair Grant look back on FMQs

Transcript

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]

Scotsman Politics: FMQs Review - Thursday January 18 2024

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