WIGS IN A TWIST : Quashed convictions row as court staff forced to apologise to judges over claims of ‘wrong data’ released to media

Bugled FOI release questions quashed convictions figures for Scottish judges. A ROW has broken out between the Judiciary of Scotland and the Scottish Court Service (SCS) over the release of information in response to a Freedom of Information request which sought data on appeals against conviction and sentence at High Court and Sheriff Court level.

The data, which revealed numbers of quashed convictions against senior judges and a former Lord Advocate who also sat as a judge, has already forced apologies from the Chief Executive of the SCS to members of the judiciary and a partial retraction of the information provided via FOI legislation. However the SCS has since been ordered to review what information it did release, and publish a ‘correct’ version as soon as possible.

The now much debated information provided by staff from the SCS claimed that in the past five years, former Lord Advocate & Court of Session Senator Lord Hardie, now retired and sitting as a peer in the House of Lords, allegedly had eight convictions and 20 sentences successfully appealed.

More worryingly, the current number two in the Scottish Justice system, the Lord Justice Clerk Lord Carloway who supports the removal of a long held safeguard of corroboration from the Scottish criminal justice system, was revealed in the now allegedly defective information provided by the SCS as having seven convictions overturned against his judgements since 2008 and eight sentences successfully challenged.

Another well known judge, Lord Brailsford, recently in the news relating to twitter threats made by a family member, was revealed in the SCS statistics to have had four convictions quashed and 15 sentences challenged in the last five years.

Overall, the figures provided by the SCS showed that between 2008 and 2012, there were 301 successful appeals in High Court cases, including 86 overturned convictions.

The figures for legal challenges in Scotland’s Sheriff Courts revealed there were 1,619 appeals granted with 130 convictions quashed, with Sheriff Lindsay Foulis, who sits at Perth Sheriff Court, having two convictions and 39 sentences successfully challenged while in another example, the now retired Sheriff John Herald, who presided at Rothesay Sheriff Court had four convictions overturned and 20 sentences appealed successfully.

However, already up to their necks in controversy over secret financial dealings and undeclared interests in court case after court case, members of Scotland’s judiciary apparently blew several fuses over headlines in the media relating to the numbers of quashed convictions, demanding apologies & retractions over the information released by the Scottish Court Service.

The apology was swift, but for the most part it’s detail appears to rely on the fact that some of the information provided by the SCS exceeded the “five year” term of the FOI request itself … which does not exactly lead to a convincing retraction of claims already published widely in the media.

And in a somewhat humiliating move, the Chief Executive of the SCS was forced to personally write in one newspaper earlier this week in an effort to have his two week old apologetic statement published (reprinted below) … perhaps the delay was caused by everyone wondering what the judges are really up to for their £200K plus a year, expenses and a blank slate for interests on the side …

The Judiciary of Scotland were asked for comment, although none has been provided at time of publication.

There is a solution of course – publish the statistical records of judges, their judgements, legal challenges and successful appeals on a live basis and the Scots public will be able to see for themselves exactly how our wealthy, well paid, & secretive judges are actually performing in our clogged up “Victorian” Scottish courts system.

The apology : Information on Appeals – Statement by Chief Executive, Eric McQueen

On 18 June Scottish Court Service (SCS), in response to a request for information made in terms of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act provided data on appeals against conviction and sentence at High Court and Sheriff Court level. The data provided was by appeal type and by judge in respect of cases ‘overturned on appeal in each of the last five years’.

Since the data was originally released a number of serious discrepancies have been identified. Additionally, the SCS did not provide important contextual information as to the date of the original court decision in many cases the court decision which was subject to appeal was made more than five years ago.

SCS apologises to those affected. Specifically, SCS apologises to those members of the judiciary whose position has been misrepresented as a result of the data provided. The data attributed to the Lord Justice Clerk includes cases originally decided more than five years ago and includes cases in error.  In the course of his judicial career, which commenced in 2000, Lord Carloway has had three cases in which the conviction was overturned and all of these predate 2008.

Likewise the data attributed to Lord Hardie contains errors in that the data indicated that he had eight conviction appeals listed as being sustained when the correct figure is five.

It is also considered likely that the data in relation to Lord Brailsford and Lord Woolman may contain similar inaccuracies and this is currently being checked.

The position in relation to sheriffs is being considered separately.

SCS is now reviewing all the data and will publish a correct version as soon as possible.

 

‘McKenzie Friend’ proposal to Parliament seeks to end 39 years of lawyers monopoly over Scots access to justice

Law Society ‘monopolises’ Scots access to court. THIRTY NINE YEARS after laws allowing a ‘McKenzie Friend‘ in the English courts system were introduced to facilitate the public’s access to justice by allowing a not necessarily qualified legal individual to assist a person in court, a McKenzie Friend Petition (Petition 1247) has been put to the Scottish Parliament at Holyrood, asking for the implementation of the same privileges of a ‘McKenzie Friend’ to be granted in Scotland, to help many who find it difficult through the current system of legal representation, controlled by the Law Society of Scotland, to secure access to the Scottish Courts.

McKenzie Friend petition will end 39 years of prejudice against Scots ‘justice rights’ in Court. The petition, brought to the Scottish Parliament by Mr Stewart MacKenzie, calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to introduce a McKenzie Friend facility in Scottish courts as a matter of urgency. Mr MacKenzie’s case involving the legal profession became famous, when revelations of secret internal memos documenting a claims fixing policy at the Law Society of Scotland, resulted in a televised confrontation between Mr Swinney & former Law Society Chief Douglas Mill during the Justice 2 Committee’s investigation of the now passed into law Legal Profession & Legal Aid (Scotland) Act 2007. The memo-gate scandal eventually toppled Douglas Mill as Law Society Chief Executive in January 2008.

Mr MacKenzie speaking today to Diary of Injustice said : “I am hopeful the petition will get a good hearing at the Scottish Parliament, and begin the work of ending what is a glaringly prejudicial omission from the public’s legal rights & entitlements in Scotland, while people in the rest of the UK have enjoyed and heavily used the right of having a McKenzie Friend accompany them in court hearings for nearly four decades.”

Cabinet Secretary Swinney will be asked to speak to Holyrood committee on the merits of McKenzie Friends. It emerged today, the Scottish Parliament’s Petitions Committee has set a 5th of May hearing for the petition, but has not granted Mr MacKenzie the right to give oral evidence, to which the petitioner replied : “Since I am not being allowed to speak on the merits of my own petition, I have asked my MSP, Cabinet Secretary for Finance, John Swinney, to attend the Petition Committee hearing and speak on my behalf, as he has done so with considerable care and attentiveness on previous occasions.”

In England & Wales, the concept of a McKenzie Friend has existed for some 39 years, assisting people in court, who find it difficult to obtain legal representation either through cost or other reasons.

The guidance from the President of the Family Division of the courts in England & Wales states : “Where proceedings are held in open court, it is clear from the principles set out in Court of Appeal decisions that a litigant who is not legally represented has the right to have reasonable assistance from a layperson, sometimes called a McKenzie Friend (“MF”).”

A litigant in person wishing to have the help of a MF should be allowed to do so unless the judge is satisfied that fairness and the interests of justice do not so require. The presumption in favour of permitting a MF is a strong one.”

A McKenzie Friend May :
• Provide moral support for the litigant
• Take notes
• Help with case papers
• Quietly give advice on: points of law or procedure, issues that the litigant may wish to raise in court, questions the litigant may wish to ask witnesses.

Mr Stewart MacKenzie’s ‘McKenzie Friend’ Petition reads as follows : “39 years after a McKenzie Friend was introduced in the English Courts, we still do not have an equivalent in Scots law. For those who are unable, for whatever reasons, to be represented in court by a solicitor, be it cost or principle, it is unjust, immoral and a breach of their fundamental human right to have a fair hearing with reasonable “equality of arms” as required by Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights, to force them to appear in court as a party litigant without the facility of having someone to offer them support and guidance.

As people in Scotland are having their lives ripped apart by having their homes repossessed without the opportunity, as they do in England, to at least have their day in court, it is barbaric and inhuman that this obstinate refusal to ensure that the people of Scotland are not treated in an inferior manner compared with the rest of the United Kingdom when it comes to access to Justice. This is not an attempt to get the Parliament to consider any individual case.”

Justice Secretary MacAskill criticised over his own failure to reform access to justice. While many of the failures to implement the 1990 access to justice legislation can obviously be pinned on previous Scottish administrations who stood by while the Law Society in effect dictated policies on restricting the individual’s right of access to legal representation and the courts, the current Justice Secretary, Kenny MacAskill, and the Scottish Government have done very little, if anything to improve the lot of members of the public who simply cannot get into court because the legal profession feel it is not in their best interests to allow such cases to go forward.

Justice Secretary’s leaked letter promised cabinet colleague John Swinney that access to justice was happening two years ago. The road to reforming access to justice in Scotland has been a rocky one so far, as almost all attempts to-date of implementing changes allowing the Scots public increased access to justice and the Scottish Courts, have either been thwarted by the legal establishment, or held in political limbo by an exceedingly uncooperative Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill, who despite promises to Cabinet colleague John Swinney, two years ago in 2007 that change ‘was on the way’, has in reality made things very difficult for anyone other than solicitors to enter the Scots legal services market to this date and no doubt beyond.

High Court Judge Lord Hardie while serving as Lord Advocate, wanted to repeal Scots access to justice legislation. However, while the prickly thorn of reforming access to justice falls to the current Scottish Government to act upon, the legal establishment’s attitude to counter any reforms to increased access to the Scottish Courts go back years, as I revealed in an earlier report where in 1997, the serving Lord Advocate at the time, Lord Hardie, himself advocated repealing the laws which allowed increased competition in the Scots legal services market, which had actually been kept from the public by an intense campaign ran by the Law Society of Scotland for over seventeen years, seeing Sections 25-29 of the Law Reform (Miscellaneous Provisions) (Scotland) Act 1990 only implemented in March 2007 after public queries and the release of documents through Freedom of Information laws which revealed the secret campaign by senior law figures and civil servants within the Scottish Executive to withhold or repeal the access to justice legislation.

A member of the public whose legal case could have significantly benefited from the use of a McKenzie’s friend said today : ““It is a matter of record that Lord Hardie has consistently denied the Scottish Public any meaningful or proper access to the law by his stubborn obstruction of articles 25-29 [of the Law Reform & Miscellaneous Provisions (Scotland) Act 1990], allowing members of the public to be represented by a third party of their choice.“

He went on : “The deafening silence by every major political party which has accompanied this wicked betrayal of trust indicates their tacit approval of it. Disturbingly, the Scottish Courts have also consistently refused to allow recordings of hearings to be made – a proposal also rejected by the Scottish Parliament.”

Given the lack of willingness on the part of the current Scottish Government to speedily reform the Scots legal services market, leaving many clients out in the cold in terms of legal representation, many Scots caught up in legal difficulties feel with some justification, their rights are being impugned by both the legal profession and the Government simply to protect solicitors long held monopoly over access to justice.

Clearly the Scots public could benefit from the McKenzie Friend facility being applied to Scots Law, and as with other legal reforms long overdue, the Scottish Government should act without delay and reverse the 39 year prejudice against ordinary Scots obtaining access to courts, while our English counterparts have enjoyed the use and privilege of a McKenzie Friend at their side.

I therefore look forward to reporting on and watching how the McKenzie Friend petition progresses through the Scottish Parliament .. as surely the public interest of access to justice comes first over protecting solicitors business markets & profits.

 

Scottish Government’s protection for lawyers business monopoly wins, as ‘bullied’ Holyrood delays access to justice reforms until 2014

Kenny MacAskill vowed to protect lawyers. Greedy lawyers celebrated last night as the Scottish Parliament effectively barred the public until at least 2014 from the freedom to choose their legal representatives, as the latest petition to bring the free market to Scotland’s monopolistic legal services market, failed after intervention from Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill and elements of the Scots legal establishment, worried their profits would tumble as people wised up to cheaper, better quality and independently regulated legal services.

Petition 1197, brought to Holyrood by Bill Alexander, who has fought a long battle to open Scotland’s monopolistic legal services market, currently controlled by the Law Society of Scotland, was closed by the Holyrood Petitions Committee after a meek hearing, with only two members of the Petitions Committee even bothering to voice their views.

Petitions Committee thwarts efforts to bring wider public access to justice in Scotland.

One of those speaking, firstly to apologise to the Committee and everyone involved in the petition, was Nigel Don MSP, parliamentary assistant to Kenny MacAskill who recently came to fame for creating a series of property transactions to allow him to claim £688 a month from the public purse to pay his mortgage.

You can read more about Mr Don’s mortgage claims here : Influencing Justice reforms in Scotland worth ‘price of a mortgage allowance’ as MacAskill’s ministerial aide gets £688 a month to fund capital flat

Nigel Don ‘got the wrong end of the stick’. Mr Don, who was ‘pulled up’ for his comments by Justice Secretary MacAskill in his letter to the Petitions Committee demanding the petition be closed, firstly had to apologise for his lack of understanding of the issues involved, which generated his earlier, somewhat lengthy talk on the virtues of using a Law Society solicitor during the first hearing of the Petition late last year.

However, Mr Don in this week’s Petitions Committee hearing, simply could not resist overtly supporting the legal profession’s demands to protect their business monopoly, and after making his initial apology, claimed that solicitors were right to defend their business monopoly, and that people who want to get into court should “get themselves qualified to do so”.

Nigel Don said this week : “My reading of the large number of words we’ve got in front of us is that basically what the professionals are doing is defending their patch which is what you would expect them to do but having said that I think they might very well be right and that really if you want to represent people in court the message is get yourself qualified to do so”.

Comparing Holyrood’s two hearings of the access to justice petition, one can see a general lack of will to bring access to justice to the Scots public …

Holyrood’s earlier hearing of access to justice Petition during November 2008

You can read about and watch the earlier hearing of Petition 1197 which took place last November, here : Scottish Parliament calls for ‘access to justice’ moves as solicitors struggle to maintain monopoly on legal business

As the current system stands, by way of rights of audience applications, which Mr Don knows full well along with the rest of us, it takes approval from the Justice Secretary, the Lord President, and seemingly a ‘back door’ approval from the Law Society of Scotland to get an application for rights of audience considered, let alone passed, for individuals or organisations to offer the public legal services in Scotland.

MacAskill’s letter to Swinney on access to justice – Ministerial misinformation ? Difficulties in pursuing access to justice applications have been well documented in previous articles I have written on the subject, even on one such occasion, leading the Justice Secretary to mislead & misinform John Swinney, the Cabinet Secretary for Finance, over the ease of how access to justice applications were being considered by his office.

You can read more about that leaked letter from the Justice Secretary here : Leaked letter from MacAskill to Swinney on legal services ‘misleads’ Cabinet Secretary Swinney & Parliament on legal services admissions

Lord Hamilton took the blame for delays. In one incident, involving the actual application of Petition 1197’s author, Bill Alexander who was seeking rights of audience & representation in the Scottish courts, the Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill took over a year to consider matters, then famously blamed the Lord President, Lord Hamilton, for holding up approval of the application, which ended up being granted swiftly after an earlier article I wrote on the matter here, along with the video of Mr MacAskill’s pitiful blame game with the Lord President :

Kenny MacAskill plays the blame game with Lord Hamilton over access to justice applications :

Lord Hardie wanted Scotland’s 1990 ‘access to justice’ laws repealed. Also let us not forget that revelations from a bitterly contested Freedom of Information request, made by the same petitioner, Bill Alexander seeking information on why Sections 25-29 of the Law Reform (Miscellaneous Provisions) (Scotland) Act 1990 had been delayed for 17 years, exposed papers which implicated a former Lord Advocate, now High Court Judge, Lord Hardie, who had sought the repeal of Scotland’s very own ‘monopoly busting’ legal services legislation which if enacted two decades ago would have given all Scots more freedom of choice in legal services, rather than the continued protection of ‘use a solicitor and pay the earth if you want something legal done in Scotland’ for all these years.

First Minister claimed arc of prosperity for Scotland, but no arc of justice for Scots ? While some in the Scottish Government continue to rant on about the ‘arc of prosperity’ of Scandinavian countries, which they promote that Scotland could have followed as a model of independence (although the credit crunch & global downturn has put paid to that), it seems the fabled ‘arc of prosperity’ which Scotland could have mirrored, does not include bringing any Scandinavian ‘arc of justice’ for the Scots public, given that those same Scandinavian countries have a much more open legal services market, which does not restrict public choice of legal representation.

The current Scottish Government consultation into legal services reform, dubbed “nothing more than a delaying tactic” by Scottish Government insiders, will not bring the envisaged opening up of legal services in Scotland, and delaying matters even further to the 8th program of ‘Law Reform” to be held by the ponderously slow Scottish Law Commission from 2010 to 2014 means there is, in reality, little prospect of ordinary consumers benefiting from an opened legal services market in Scotland for many years to come.

Why must Scots suffer the lack of freedom to choose their own legal representatives and competitively priced legal services when many other countries allow such a freedom of choice ?

It seems to be simply all down to the ‘greed is good’ mentality of some in Government & politics, who are no doubt financially & politically benefiting from the protection of undeservingly long held business monopolies by the likes of the Law Society of Scotland who control the closed markets of access to justice and the regulation of legal services.

 

Non-lawyer rights of audience approved ‘with restrictions’ as Scottish Government continues to waver on access to justice reforms

Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill will announce in the next week or so that Bill Alexander, Chairman of the Association of Commercial Attorneys, has finally been given rights of audience & representation in Scotland’s courts, the first time ever in Scotland, a non-lawyer (someone who is not a member of the Law Society of Scotland) has been able to break into solicitors monopoly over legal services.

This change in heart comes after the Justice Secretary sensationally blamed the Lord President for delays in processing rights of audience applications, a story which I previously reported here, along with video footage : Justice Secretary MacAskill blames Lord President for delays in ‘access to justice’ applications row

However, the expectations of a significant improvement of diversity in the public’s ability to choose their legal representatives have been tempered by apparent protests and intervention from the legal establishment who are concerned about losing their long held monopoly over Scotland’s multi billion pound legal services market.

Mr Alexander, who has fought a long campaign over some twelve years to gain rights of audience and widen the public’s choice of legal representation will face severe restrictions on what areas of law he will be able to practice, and today, an unnamed source at the Scottish Government claimed that Mr Alexander’s practicing certificate such as it is currently being worded, will only allow him to practice Construction Law – a very limiting field of representation which wont do much to widen access to justice in Scotland.

I have previously reported on Mr Alexander’s campaign to gain rights of audience & representation, which includes a Petition to the Scottish Parliament on the matter : Parliament to consider competition in legal services market as Scottish Government fails on access to justice reforms

Secretary Kenny MacAskill said today : “Sections 25-29 of the Law Reform (Miscellaneous Provisions) (Scotland) Act 1990 came into force in March 2007. Since then there have been two applications, one by the Association of Commercial Attorneys and one by the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland.”

Mr MacAskill refused to comment immediately on questions put to him as to why it had taken several successive Scottish administrations a total of some seventeen years to implement the groundbreaking Sections 25-29 and particularly why a serving Lord Advocate, Lord Hardie in June 1997 intervened in the issue and apparently urged the repeal of the access to justice legislation which had originally formed part of the Law Reform (Miscellaneous Provisions) (Scotland) Act 1990.

You can read my earlier report on Lord Hardie’s intervention in the access to justice issue, and read a copy of his own letter on the matter urging the repeal of Sections 25-29 here : Former Lord Advocate Andrew Hardie revealed as major obstacle in removing lawyer-advocate monopoly on legal representation

Hardly a confidence building exercise on the part of the beleaguered Justice Secretary, who would do well to start taking the initiative in Scotland’s ailing legal system, rather than the back seat driving method he seems to prefer, aloof from responsibility on all sorts of dire stories, from leaks of juror names, to unjustly withheld FAIs to even playing no part and having no thoughts on the Lockerbie bomber’s appeal …

Mr MacAskill admitted there were severe restrictions being placed on the Commercial Attorney’s application in a take it or leave it deal : “The Lord President and the Scottish Ministers considered that the draft scheme submitted by the Association of Commercial Attorneys met the requirements of the Act and the guidance subject to a few conditions. The Association has accepted those conditions and discussions are taking place to finalise the draft scheme.”

John Swinney may have been misled by Mr MacAskill over terms of rights of audience applications. This ‘take it or leave it’ approach by Mr MacAskill and the Lord President to access to justice applications under Sections 25-29 is a marked contrast to Mr MacAskill’s discussions during the summer of 2008 with his Cabinet colleague, the Cabinet Secretary John Swinney, where Mr MacAskill failed to disclose any such limits & conditions on areas of law to be set upon individuals or organisations applying to enter the Scottish Legal Services market :

Kenny MacAskill to John Swinney : “You will be interested to know that the commencement of Sections 25-29 of the Law Reform (Miscellaneous Provisions) (Scotland) Act 1990 came in to effect on 19 March 2007. The Sections provide for rights of audience and rights to conduct litigation in the Supreme Courts to be granted to members of professional or other bodies, subject to approval in each case of a draft scheme embodying certain safeguards such as training programmes, and indemnity insurance. The legislation does not provide for applications from individuals. Guidance has been prepared that covers in some detail the provisions to be contained in draft schemes and the consideration of applications. I hope this reassures you that action has now been taken to increase consumer choice in the supply of legal service providers.”

I have previously reported on that leaked letter from the Justice Secretary to the Cabinet Secretary in an article which you can also read the entire Parliamentary debate on the matter here : Leaked letter shows conflicting view of Justice Secretary over legal services market reform

Final questions were put to the Justice Secretary on whether the Scottish Government will now make up to individuals for the lost opportunities of access to justice, which have in the words of some severely affected the lives of those who have tried to find legal representation outside membership of the Law Society of Scotland during the time that Sections 25-29 were held off the legislative books, however an eerie silence descended on the normally frank Justice Secretary as I suppose Mr MacAskill does not wish to admit culpability where culpability does seem to exist, given it was the Government which clearly held the legislation from public use.

Taking the honest route and admitting responsibility, and making the attempt to put things right for a lot of people, would surely be the ‘right thing to do’ in this case, Mr MacAskill ? I have suggested something along these lines before such as this : The polluter pays – Why cleaning up lawyers sins of the past would be good for the public & legal profession alike

In relation to the second application, coming from the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland, a Scottish Government spokesman would only say : “The application by the Institute of Chartered Accountants is still under consideration.” – however, if you wish to read what accountants can do to clients affairs, particularly a deceased client’s estate, read this.

I for one, would warn against approving the ICAS application under Sections 26-29 as ICAS’ style of self regulation against crooked accountants is generally as bad as, or possibly worse than the Law Society of Scotland.

So we are left with an impression yet again, the Scottish Government is taking one step forward and four steps backwards in the policy area of promising to widening the public’s access to justice, by on one hand, allowing rights of audience applications to be made by individuals or organisations, then heavily restricting which areas of law can actually be practised in a ‘gun to the head’ style response, thus largely maintaining the present solicitors monopoly over legal services & access to justice in Scotland.

It seems quite apparent that once again, the legal establishment, who are solely interested in maintaining their long held monopoly over legal services in Scotland, are the driving force on what will happen next, rather what should be the case of the public interest, wider access to justice, and unrivalled consumer protection being placed above those usual interests of the legal profession’s annual profits.

It is also worth noting the two individuals who must pass any access to justice applications under Sections 25-29 of the Law Reform (Miscellaneous Provisions) (Scotland) Act 1990, are themselves, members of the Law Society of Scotland … surely an issue which itself should give rise to a new independent method of considering and approving such applications to enter Scotland’s legal services market …

 

Former Lord Advocate Andrew Hardie revealed as major obstacle in removing lawyer-advocate monopoly on legal representation

Scotland’s former Lord Advocate, Andrew Hardie QC, has been revealed as one of the chief obstacles in opening up the long standing solicitor & advocate monopoly on the public’s wider access to legal representation and the courts.

You can download the Scottish Executive’s FOI Law Reform Disclosure on their failure to open up the public’s access to legal representation HERE (pdf format)

In an amazing hardline veto of reforms which would have opened up choice of legal representation to the public, the Lord Advocate stamped his outright hostility to implementing sections 25-29 of the Law Reform Misc Provisions Act 1990, which have come to light in an email from his Private Secretary reprinted here :

LAW REFORM (MISCELLANEOUS PROVISIONS)(SCOTLAND) ACT 1990: IMPLEMENTATION OF REMAINING PROVISIONS OF PART II

The Lord Advocate has seen your Minute of 13 June, and said that he does not think that work should commence on implicating Sections 25-29 for the following reasons:

( 1) Other reforms have not had time to bed down (para 16).The Lord Advocate understands that the effect of the introduction of Solicitor-Advocates is being evaluated.

(2) There is little interest in Scotland having these provisions available (para 17). The ONLY interest has been from the Institute of Commercial Litigators, which body was rejected by the Lord Chancellors Advisory Committee.

(3) There is no obvious benefit from implementing Sections 25-29 (para 18).

(4) The provisions will involve considerable preparatory work by the Secretary of State and the Lord President – both of whom have more important concerns.

(5) There is no pressure for implementation

The Lord Advocate advises delaying all work and if no relevant interest appears within the next year, consideration should be given to repealing these provisions.

RAHAT NAWAZ Private Secretary CROWN OFFICE 24 June 1997

The Lord Advocate must have really had it in for people who couldn’t get access to the courts or even secure the services of a lawyer, because the Executive – and particularly the Lord Advocate’s Crown Office knew full well – for years, the problems reported to them by the public, elected politicians and civil servants, not to mention consumer organisations such as the Scottish Consumer Council, that there was a severe problem in the Civil Courts system in Scotland where swathes of people simply couldn’t get access to the courts, or even obtain the services of a solicitor to handle necessary and important cases – unsurprisingly, including such cases as … suing lawyers for negligence and handling other legal issues directly involving or against the legal profession itself….

So, the question is, was Andrew Hardie standing up for his colleagues in the legal profession, ensuring their valuable commercial monopoly over access to the Courts would continue ?

You can make a conclusion for yourselves based on the content of the above email alone .. but I say – Yes, the Lord Advocate, and indeed, the Scottish Executive were standing up for protectionism and commercial monopoly, with probably a helping hand from the legal profession to keep their profits & monopoly over legal representation.

Why do I say that ?

Simple. Andrew Hardie and everyone else, from 1990 onwards when the Law Reform Misc Provisions Act 1990 was introduced – and that includes the former Tory Government & Scottish Office prior to 1997, knew there was a huge public outcry for opening access to the courts because the cosy deal between the legal profession & the then Scottish Office, continued on to the Scottish Executive was effectively restricting the rights of the public to get into court in the first place – even having the effect of restricting the availability of legal representation – because lawyers and advocates could, and still do, select the cases they want to appear in court – and kill off the ones they don’t like – or those which would be a major thorn in the side of the legal profession or the law in general.

Actually, as you can see, the Lord Advocate went much further than recommending a delay in the implementation of Sections 25-29 … he actually sought the repeal of these sections of the Law Reform (Misc Provisions) Act on reasoning and motives mentioned in the email, one could question as perfidious.

Of course, not everyone thought like the Lord Advocate .. and there were actually recommendations from the Justice Division of the Scottish Executive to begin work on implementing Sections 25-29 of the Law Reform (Misc Provision) Act 1990, to allow a wider choice of legal representation … shown here in report from Mrs Brennan of the Scottish Executive.

However, it wasn’t just some officials in the Scottish Executive who agreed there should be a wider public choice of legal representation & access to the courts, as you can see from the following letter from the Director General of the Office of Fair Trading, John Vickers who took the exact opposite view of the then Lord Advocate Andrew Hardie – who would rather have had those parts of law repealed, which would have allowed wider available legal representation to the public.

Director General of the OFT, Mr John Vickers welcomes the implementation of Sections 25-29 of the Law Reform Misc Provisions Act 1990 – bringing a wider choice of access to legal representation and the courts, because as we can see – this is actually the case already in England – so, why keep Scotland in the dark ages again and maintain such monopolistic restrictions on the public’s right of access to legal representation when those in England & Wales can secure the services of those other than solicitors & advocates for their legal work ?

Simply for the benefit of the Scottish legal profession’s pocket perhaps ? Many feel this to be the case, and all that I have experienced to this date with regard to matters involving the legal profession in Scotland, tells me so. After all – it’s all about money, isn’t it ? and who gets it and who is allowed access to legal representation and what cases are actually allowed by the legal profession into court.

The remainder of the published disclosure reads as a rather indecisive position from the Scottish Executive, but one could ask – where are all the minutes of correspondence with the Law Society of Scotland and members of the legal profession who had an interest in leaving out implementation of Sections 25-29 ?

There are allegations such meetings did take place .. and such correspondence relating to & involving the views of the legal professions, did exist … but curiously, none of this material has surfaced in the published disclosure, leading one to believe as many expected, the worst offending information would be withheld from public view.

You may question my comment on that, but inevitably, when the Scottish Executive discuss legal issues or legislation, the opinion of the Law Society of Scotland, or indeed, Law Society officials who work for the Scottish Executive as consultants is usually sought … and in such a case as reforming access to legal representation and the courts, it is very difficult to believe the Executive, and Scottish Office before it, did not discuss, or meet with representatives of the legal profession to discuss these reforms .. which have of course been held back, many would say, on the orders of the legal profession itself.

Noticeably also in the published disclosure on this matter, is the lack of any documentation pre 1997 .. and I would have to take personal issue with that one myself, as a recent disclosure to me from the Executive included many documents which had accumulated many years before 1997, when the Scottish Office still existed.

Personally I would have to wonder why such documentation which would inevitably identify conservative politicians of the pre 1997 Government, and possibly members of the legal profession themselves, have been withheld, since Labour usually enjoy blaming the former Tory Government for just about everything under the sun …. suspicions abound then but my conclusion is this is not an honest disclosure, and I leave you all to make your own conclusions as to the honesty of what has been published.

Finally, there is an interesting remark contained in one of the documents which should give us all food for thought : “As there is an inherent awkwardness in decisions by government ministers not to commence legislative provisions enacted by parliament” .. a sobering thought for us all to keep in our minds …. with tales of awkward Ministers, and perhaps even awkward Lord Advocates … is it not time to remedy the sins of the past and give the public a decent, transparent, honest and independently regulated legal profession ?