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4th - 8th September 2006

Monday, September 11, 2006

In this first week following the summer recess, MSPs debated the Legal Profession and Legal Aid (Scotland) Bill, continued with the McKie inquiry and began work on reviewing the monitoring of sex offenders.

Committees

The Justice 2 Sub Committee met for the first time on Tuesday 5th. It was set up before the summer recess to ‘conduct a full review of the current system for dealing with and monitoring sex offenders’ following discussion of PE862. This Petition was submitted by a mother, Margaret Cummings, whose son was murdered by a convicted child sex offender in Glasgow in 2004. The Committee will consider issues ranging from the housing of sex offenders, to possible public notification of their whereabouts. A full list of items being considered can be found here.

Although the first meeting was largely taken up with administrative tasks (you can read the official report of the meeting here), the sub-Committee is likely to be the source of interesting debate in the Parliament and, possibly some controversy in the press in the weeks ahead. You can also read what the press said in the CjScotland posting here.

The Justice 1 Committee met on Wednesday 6th to continue its investigations into the Scottish Criminal Record Office inquiry. This inquiry was established following the collapse of the prosecution of Shirley McKie and the findings from the report from Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary into the SCRO Fingerprint Bureau, which found it was “unable to provide a fully efficient and effective service” at that time. The Justice 1 Committee was given the task of looking in detail at the efficient running of the SCRO and the implications of the McKie case in February this year. You can access all the documents related to this inquiry on the Scottish Criminal Record Office inquiry homepage.

The former Justice Minister Jim Wallace gave evidence to the Committee in which he said that it was a ‘matter of regret’ that the four officers responsible for the misidentification of Shirley McKie’s fingerprint had been living under considerable pressure since the case, however, he did not think it was appropriate for him to have intervened in any disciplinary proceedings against them. The Committee also took evidence from the Former HM Chief Inspector of Constabulary in Scotland, the Chief Executive of the Scottish Police Services Authority, and the Training Manager from the Scottish Fingerprint Service . You can read the full transcript of the meeting here, and you can also read the media coverage of the meeting in the main weblog posting here.

Chamber

The Chamber sat on Thursday 7th for the Stage 1 debate on the Legal Profession and Legal Aid (Scotland) Bill. The Bill aims, amongst other things, to widen access to legal aid and to establish the Scottish Legal Complaints Commission, a new body to regulate complaints against the legal profession. Controversially however, the Commission would have an element of control from the Executive who would have powers including the ability to appointment members. This has led organisations such as the Law Society to claim that such a move would erode the traditional independence of the judiciary from the executive arm of government. You can read further details of the Bill including accompanying documents and SPICe briefings here. The Justice 2 Committee’s Stage 1 report on the Bill is here.

The debate began with an acknowledgement from the Deputy Justice Minister of the concerns that had been expressed, and with the announcement that the Executive would introduce several amendments at Stage 2 of the Bill, which would, he argued, give the ministers a lesser role in the management of the Commission. All parties supported the general principle of the Bill, and there was broad based support for the proposed amendments, despite the recognition that it still required significant work on some areas in the following stages through Parliament. Full transcript of the debate can be found here. Go here for our posting on the debate.

Earlier on Thursday, the MSPs had the opportunity to ask questions of the Justice Minister and Law Officers. These included questions on bail supervision, Anti-Social Behaviour Orders, and the Scottish Fingerprint Service. You can read all of the Justice and Law Officer Questions here.

Posted by MM on Mon 11th Sep 2006 at 1:51 pm
Antisocial Behaviour Courts Bail/remand Police • Permalink • Tell-a-Friend