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Victims, Witnesses, and Justice Reform Bill: Call for evidence

The Scottish Government’s Victims, Witnesses, and Justice Reform Bill proposes really significant changes to the way rape and sexual assault cases are dealt with in the justice system. We believe that most of the changes it proposes will benefit survivors.

The Bill contains many proposals including

• Creating specialist courts for sexual offences
• Removing juries from sexual offence trials
• End the Not Proven verdict
• Introduce a legal right to anonymity in sexual offence cases

The Bill is not yet law. Before it becomes law, it must pass through several stages in Parliament. More information on these stages and what happens at each of them is available on the Scottish Parliament website.

The Bill is currently at Stage One. As part of Stage One, public bodies, charities and other organisations whose work is linked to the bill will have the opportunity to give written evidence about why they support or do not support the bill and include details of any amendments they think should be made to the bill.

Rape Crisis Scotland will be submitting written evidence about the impact the bill could have on the experience of survivors accessing the justice system.

We’re inviting survivors to tell us what they think about the bill so we can include this in the written evidence we send to parliament.

In our evidence, we’d like to include what survivors think about

• What parts of the bill they think will make a positive difference to survivors
• The difference parts of the bill might have made to their experiences
• Why we need to see justice reform
• What parts of the bill they think should be changed and why

If you would like to submit evidence, a submission form and guidance notes can be downloaded below. You don’t have to use this form. You can submit your evidence in an email or in a document if you prefer.

Please send your submissions to justicereform@rapecrisisscotland.org.uk by Monday 7 August.

Please only include information and details that you are comfortable sharing and that you would be comfortable being included in Rape Crisis Scotland’s submission of evidence.

Anything you include in your evidence submission form may be used in our written evidence to the Scottish Parliament. We will be putting our communications about our evidence on our website, to the press and on social media.