Report to the People
Closing the Lawyer’s Loopholes
If you ever took Modern Studies or a similar subject (in my day it was Empire Studies) at school, you will have at some point tried to answer a question like "What is the function of Parliament?" You would probably have answered that, alongside representing the people and holding the government to account, one of a Parliament’s primary functions is to pass laws.
This, however, is something which can too easily be lost in the daily hurly-burly of working for individual constituents or a section of the local community.
Not, though, last Wednesday.
A legal loophole, created as a result of an Appeal Court ruling last month, threatened to allow some 5000 accused to escape justice. This led, as you will have read in the Telegraph, to the collapse of at least one case in Greenock.
Without getting bogged down in the legal niceties, the problem was with "intermediate diets" – hearings set by a court to decide whether a case is likely to proceed to trial on a specified date. If the accused refuses to turn up, a warrant is simply issued for his arrest. According to the Appeal Court, however, if the judge does not explicitly cancel the date originally set for the trial, and the case is not called on this date, it falls.
This understandably led to public outrage (not to mention the odd hopeful call to solicitors from guests of Her Majesty). There was genuine anger that, as a result, criminals were walking free and the innocent were denied the chance to clear their name.
Thankfully, though, the way the Scottish Parliament works allowed us to act swiftly. We cleared the decks on Wednesday afternoon and passed the necessary emergency legislation to close this lawyers’ loophole.
Throughout the debate, MSPs – some of them formerly employed in the legal profession – questioned the actions of both the solicitors who raised the appeal and the judges who allowed it.
Everyone, it was accepted, is of course entitled to effective legal representation. But this should not extend to, as this case has done, making a mockery of the criminal justice system and reducing our faith in its ability to do justice. Justice, as my colleague Johann Lamont pointed out, is not a game.
Parliaments exist to make good law, improve old law, and amend or repeal bad law. And it is reassuring to see that the Scottish Parliament was up to the job.
I just hope we don’t need to prove it too often.
Back to Current Reports to the People
[ HOME ] [ News ] [ Articles ] [ Calendar ] [ Contacts ] [ Links ] [ E-Mail ]
[ Copyright ] [ UK Online ] [ Scottish Parliament ]