I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to make provision about the role and functions of the Lord Advocate; and for connected purposes.
Chaos and decay are priced into the lives of people in Scotland as they suffer under the yoke of the Scottish National party Administration at Holyrood. However, the latest crisis there strikes at the integrity of Scots law, and so demands action this day—and not mere indifference.
The Lord Advocate is the most senior law officer in Scotland, in ultimate charge of all criminal proceedings, sitting at the pinnacle of the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service. That same Lord Advocate also sits in Cabinet as a pivotal adviser to the Scottish Executive, who style themselves the Scottish Government. Just saying it out loud is alarming: the head of criminal prosecutions sits cheek-by-jowl with the politicians who are supposed to run Scotland—she sits at the Cabinet table with the very people who appointed her. Although it is a situation created by the advent of devolution, this cannot be right, for there ought not to be even the merest suggestion of a conflict of interests. It is not the stuff of a 21st-century democracy, let alone the country of the enlightenment.
“Ah,” say apologists, “the Lord Advocate simply recuses herself in certain cases and is merely the titular head of some prosecutions.” This is meant to be high-minded—an elegant solution concocted by the legal hierarchy in the salons of Edinburgh—but it is cloyingly cosy and has for years been the subject of disquiet. Now this comfortable nostrum has been shattered by recent revelations made possible only by a vigorous free press. Newspapers broke the news that the present Lord Advocate, Dorothy Bain KC, provided briefings to First Minister John Swinney about a court case involving Peter Murrell, former chief executive of the SNP and, further, the estranged husband of ex-First Minister Nicola Sturgeon. It was reported that the details and timelines for the case, none of which was public knowledge, were presented to Mr Swinney. The court case will reportedly not now come to trial before next year, conveniently after Holyrood’s elections this May.
Of course, given that proceedings are active, I must be extremely circumspect about that case. Regardless, we in this place must concern ourselves with the dual role of the Lord Advocate: the twin hats of prosecutor and Government adviser on one learned head. The dual role is enshrined in the Scotland Act 1998, and so this Bill is designed to allow for the separation of roles such that the head of Scotland’s prosecution service is, in future, entirely separate from that of Government adviser. That situation is best practice in modern democracies and pertains here in England where the head of the Crown Prosecution Service sits entirely apart from the Cabinet and Government.