Emma Cowing: MSPs must not let down abuse victims

Demonstrators outside the Scottish Parliament calling for Bill Walker to resign. Picture: Julie Bull

He’s got a fair bit of free time on his hands after all, while he waits to be sentenced for 23 counts of domestic abuse and one breach of the peace charge against his three ex-wives and stepdaughter over a 28-year period.

I wonder if he has seen the reports about the demonstration yesterday outside the Scottish Parliament by campaigners – including Scottish Women’s Aid, Zero Tolerance and the National Union of Students – calling for his removal? Or noticed that 91 MSPs, at the last count, have signed a motion calling for him to resign? I wonder if he’s concerned that a proposal to strip him of his parliamentary salary if he is jailed is being closely considered by the authorities in Holyrood? Or if, as so far seems to have been the case, he simply doesn’t care.

Walker is a wife beater. He hits women. He is a serial offender. Two weeks before his wedding to his first wife, he gave her a black eye so bad she had to cover it with make-up when she got married. He assaulted his second wife 15 times. Once she was treated in hospital for “blunt force trauma”. In 1978, he repeatedly struck his stepdaughter on the head with a frying pan. Sheriff Kathrine Mackie described him as “controlling, domineering, demeaning and belittling”. He will be sentenced on 20 September.

And yet today, the day after MSPs return from their summer break, Walker remains an MSP, one of the 129 individuals elected by the people of Scotland to represent them. He may have been expelled by the SNP last year, he may be under pressure from fellow MSPs to quit, but because he faces a maximum prison sentence of 12 months, he gets to keep his job. It is nothing short of sickening.

There is a legal issue here. As the Crown Office, having reviewed the case, changed Walker’s case to a summary trial, it was heard in a Sheriff Court without a jury, and the maximum term he faces is 12 months. The Crown Office changed it to a summary trial, despite the procurator-fiscal in Dunfermline, where Walker is an MSP, raising solemn proceedings against him, which would have allowed the sheriff to impose a sentence of more than one year – in which case Walker would have had to resign as an MSP. The Crown Office has declined to explain the decision, but given it is now clear that Walker was a serial offender, one has to wonder why.

A move to introduce a resolution into Holyrood legislation that states no member who is serving time behind bars be paid is being examined. If successful, it might prompt him to resign – and would at least curtail his wages. That’s if he is jailed, of course, which is by no means assured.

Then there are the 39 MSPs who have not signed the motion for Walker’s resignation. Some are back-benchers who say they won’t sign until he is sentenced, or because they sit on committees that may have to judge him. And 21 of them are government ministers, who are not signing it in line with parliamentary convention that only back-benchers sign motions. It’s a convention though, not a rule. And aren’t some conventions made to be broken? Wouldn’t it send a powerful signal to Walker that he needs to go, and a memo to Scotland’s domestic abuse victims that they have not been forgotten, if Alex Salmond, or his deputy, Nicola Sturgeon, were to sign it?

Because this is the nub of it. As long as Walker is an MSP, the message being sent to domestic abuse victims – and indeed to every woman in Scotland – is that their government doesn’t care. That if the parliament won’t get rid of an MSP, even though he has been convicted of 23 counts of domestic abuse, it does not take violence against women seriously. Most domestic abuse victims probably don’t have the time or the inclination to get into the legal minutiae of why Walker is still in his post; all they see is a wife beater who gets to keep his job.

I understand that, legally, the parliament’s hands may be tied, and that the Crown Office decision essentially put the kibosh on Walker automatically losing his seat before he even went to trial. I just don’t accept it.

If Walker had a scrap of decency, or respect for his victims and his constituents, he would resign immediately. If he won’t, the Scottish Parliament must find a way to get rid of him. If it does not, then it will be letting down every victim of domestic abuse.