Victims, Witnesses, and Justice Reform (Scotland) Bill: factsheet

Bill overview

The Victims, Witnesses, and Justice Reform (Scotland) Bill was introduced to the Scottish Parliament on 25 April 2023.

The Bill responds to concerns raised about the need to improve the experiences of victims and witnesses within Scotland’s justice system, especially the victims of sexual crime. It also continues to safeguard the operation and principles of the system and protects the rights of those accused of crime.

The Bill passed Stage 1 of the parliamentary process on 23 April 2024. This meant that the Scottish Parliament agreed the general principles of the Bill and it could move on to Stage 2 of the process.

Some changes were made to the Bill during the Stage 2 process, between 12 March and 2 April 2025. Further information about these changes is provided below.

A date for Stage 3 is still to be set. Stage 3 is the final stage of the process, when further changes can be made to be the Bill. The Scottish Parliament will then decide if the Bill becomes law.

Note on terminology

There are different words to describe those who have experienced crime, particularly sexual offences. Views on which terms are used can be strongly held. Terms such as ‘complainer’ are used during legal proceedings, while ‘victim’ or ‘survivor’ are more commonly used when referring to a person in a broader context not restricted to the legal system. When talking about the Bill, we use a mix of these terms depending on the context.

Aims of the Bill

The Bill aims to:

• ensure victims are treated with compassion and their voices are heard
• ensure justice meets the needs of survivors of sexual offences, the majority of whom are women and girls
• ensure our laws and legal processes meet the needs of modern Scotland and enable public confidence in the justice system

Evidence used to develop the Bill

The work of the Victims Taskforce has been key to the development of the measures in the Bill. The Taskforce brings together senior decision-makers from justice agencies, the legal profession, academia and the voluntary sector, including direct representation of victims.

The Bill has also been informed by Lady Dorrian’s Review into Improving the Management of Sexual Offence Cases and by the findings of the Governance Group set up to consider approaches to implementing the recommendations of that Review.

Proposals relating to the measures which have been informed by the Victims Taskforce and Lady Dorrian’s Review were included in a public consultation on improving victims’ experiences of the justice system. This consultation ran May to August 2022 and received 69 responses.

Research and engagement on juries and verdicts has also been used to develop the Bill. In 2017, we commissioned independent research into how juries reach decisions. The main element of this research was a mock jury study - the largest of its kind in the UK to date - involving 64 mock juries made up of 863 individual mock jurors.

We then held jury research engagement events to discuss the research findings between November 2019 and March 2020. The findings from the research and engagement events fed into a public consultation on the not proven verdict and related reforms. The consultation ran from December 2021 to March 2022 and received 200 responses.

The independent review of the Victim Notification Scheme has also helped shape the Bill. Changes were made to the Bill at Stage 2 to include measures that will help us to progress recommendations from the review.

Topics in the Bill

The policies listed below were included in the Bill when it was introduced to the Scottish Parliament. They remain in the Bill following the completion of Stage 2 process:

• establishing an independent Victims and Witnesses Commissioner for Scotland to champion the rights of victims and witnesses
• embedding trauma-informed practice across the system and requiring justice agencies to make efforts to reduce re-traumatisation
• safeguarding vulnerable parties and witnesses in civil cases by extending special measures and protecting people who have suffered abuse from being cross-examined by their abuser
• establishing a specialist Sexual Offences Court that is distinct from existing court structures, which enables complainers to give their best evidence while minimising the potential for re-traumatisation
• introducing an automatic lifelong right to anonymity for victims of sexual offences and certain other offences, including human trafficking, modern slavery, female genital mutilation, hymenoplasty and virginity testing
• providing an automatic right to independent legal representation for complainers when applications are made to lead evidence of their sexual history or ‘bad character’ in sexual offence cases
• abolishing the not proven verdict in all criminal trials in Scotland to help create a clearer, fairer and more transparent decision-making process
• jury reforms to require a two-thirds majority for conviction, to increase confidence that verdicts are returned on a sound, rational basis while ensuring balance and fairness to all parties.

Policies added to the Bill at Stage 2

There were new policies added to the Bill at Stage 2, including:

• changes to the Victim Notification Scheme so that it operates in a more trauma-informed and person-centred way
• amending the Contempt of Court Act 1981 so that further research into juries can be conducted, including research into the impact of rape myths on jury decision-making
• enabling communication support to be available for jurors who require this to participate in jury deliberations
• amending the power in section 20 of the Prisoners and Criminal Proceedings (Scotland) Act 1993 for Ministers to make Parole Board Rules so that decision-making by the Board must consider whether a prisoner who has been convicted of murder or culpable homicide has disclosed the location of the victim’s remains.

There were also policies removed from the Bill at Stage 2.

The section that would have enabled a time-limited pilot of single judge trials of rape or attempted rape was removed. The pilot was intended to gather evidence about the effectiveness of these types of trial, following research that suggested rape myths may have an impact on jury decision-making. This issue remains a concern for the Scottish Government. The new sections added at Stage 2 that enable further jury research are an alternative way of considering the impact of rape myths on jury decision-making.

At the end of Stage 1, the Criminal Justice Committee said it had reservations about changing the size of juries from 15 people to 12 as proposed in the Bill on introduction. The Cabinet Secretary for Justice and Home Affairs considered this and concluded that she was satisfied that the abolition of the not proven verdict does not require an associated change to the jury size. This meant the Scottish Government proposed taking out the section of the Bill that reduced the jury size at Stage 2. This was agreed to by the Committee.

Further information

Read more information about the Victims, Witnesses, and Justice Reform (Scotland) Bill, including the stage it is at in Parliament, on the Scottish Parliament website. This includes a policy memorandum, which sets out the background and policy intention of the Bill, and a financial memorandum which sets out estimated costs. A supplementary financial memorandum that looks at estimated costs for changes to the Bill at Stage 2 has also been published and can be found on the Scottish Parliament website.

We have published the following impact assessments in relation to the Bill:

• business and regulatory impact assessment
• children’s rights and wellbeing impact assessment
• equalities impact assessment
• island communities impact assessment screening record