Justice 1 Committee, 25 Feb 2004

Meeting date: Wednesday, February 25, 2004

Official Report 223KB pdf

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Regulation of the Legal Profession

Item 6 is the committee's inquiry into regulation of the legal profession. I refer members to the paper that has been prepared by the clerk and adviser, which sets out the background to the former Justice 1 Committee's inquiry into regulation of the legal profession, and options for following on from the former committee's inquiry.

I also refer members to correspondence from Stewart Mackenzie, Stewart Usher and Duncan Shields. The correspondence was received yesterday but members will not have seen it until this morning. There is also a helpful summary of the list of recommendations from the former Justice 1 Committee's inquiry.

The list of recommendations in the report is excellent—there are several very good suggestions. We could do quite a bit of important work in progressing some of those recommendations. It is not for this committee to open up the inquiry of a former committee but, because we agreed to take on the subject, the committee could do some useful work through exchanges with the Executive and other agencies in pursuing some of the good recommendations. The recommendations in relation to strengthening the role of the Scottish legal services ombudsman are very important.

As convener, I have also been dealing with some issues that people have written to me about. As members are aware, the committee does not deal with specific cases, but we try to identify any broad issues. The issue of solicitors' fees has arisen and I have already written to the Scottish legal services ombudsman to seek her view on whether the table of fees is transparent enough for members of the general public, which is one of the issues that members of the public complain about. When they challenge legal bills, they find it difficult to find out from the table of fees whether the bill is correct. I will circulate the correspondence so that members can read what the ombudsman has said. We can, as a committee, do some useful work without its impacting too much on our timetable.

I am rather disappointed that progress on the recommendations in our predecessor committee's report has been so limited. I support the convener's suggestion that we continue to pursue those recommendations.

If I recall correctly, the Executive was broadly supportive of the committee's recommendations, but indicated that primary legislation would be necessary to implement some of them. There was a view that the fact that the report was published fairly near the end of the previous parliamentary session meant that the Executive just did not have an opportunity to say whether it would progress the work at that point. Given that the situation has moved on, we should revisit the issue with the Executive to find out whether it intends to act on the recommendations that would require primary legislation. If it intends to do so, we should ask it what timescales it envisages and, if it does not, we should ask it why not.

I do not support the idea that we should reopen the inquiry. The inquiry that was carried out was very detailed and made a number of what I consider to be extremely valuable recommendations. It is a matter of our pursuing those recommendations, rather than revisiting the inquiry.

I agree with Michael Matheson. I note that we have had updates from the Law Society of Scotland and the legal services ombudsman, but not from the Faculty of Advocates, so I think that, in addition to our writing to the Executive, we should write to that body for an update. That would give us a complete picture of the various bodies' opinions on the recommendations, which would help us to pursue the recommendations. I agree that some excellent recommendations were made and that there is no reason why we should not pursue them, rather than reopen the whole business. The work has been done, so let us try to get some of the recommendations implemented.

I am new to the matter but, as has been said, we do not have time to undertake any other inquiries; we are fully committed. I say that as someone who has consistently expressed reservations about the Law Society's ability to police and promote itself.

That said, I am encouraged by what has been recommended, which I regard as a worthwhile step forward. I agree that the suggestions in question should be considered and pursued in an effort to make more progress, but reopening the inquiry is simply a non-starter.

I feel exactly the same way—there is nothing to be gained from reopening the inquiry because the existing recommendations are correct and substantive. We should pursue them vigorously.

I probably agree with all the recommendations; I do not think that there are any with which I disagree. However, there are many of them, so at some stage I may have to ask members to suggest particular recommendations to which they want to attach priority, if there are areas in which they think that we should try to make progress sooner rather than later.

It strikes me that one of the areas that is quite important is the relationship between the Law Society and the ombudsman. My experience of making a complaint is that the process is not easy. I have many comments to make on the trouble-shooting scheme, one of which is about the availability of the scheme; some of my constituents were not made aware of the existence of the scheme.

The committee needs to agree whether it wishes to progress the recommendations of the former Justice 1 Committee's report. Also, I ask members to say which recommendations they wish to pursue first. Progress would be lost if we tried to deal with everything at once. Members can tell me that at some future date, unless they have views now about the areas that are of most importance.

It is extremely important that we increase the powers of the ombudsman. Although a number of key recommendations were made by the former Justice 1 Committee, I believe that our priority should be to increase the powers of the ombudsman. That would be one of the best ways for us to go about improving the present system.

That is helpful.

I do not disagree with what Michael Matheson said; in fact I agree whole-heartedly with him. We need to form a fully rounded picture. We would be helped in doing that if we were to get responses from the Executive and the Faculty of Advocates before we decide whether to pursue particular recommendations. I hope that we get the responses back fairly quickly so that the process does not drag on. Perhaps we could revisit the subject at a meeting in the near future at which we can make a decision on priorities.

The Executive did not agree with some of the recommendations and agreed with others. What we are not clear about, however, is how it will progress matters.

Does the committee agree that we should write to the Faculty of Advocates asking for a response, and to the Executive asking about progress on the recommendations with which it agreed? We should also consider Michael Matheson's suggestion about strengthening the powers of the ombudsman. Those are areas on which I think it is important that we make progress. Are we agreed?

Members indicated agreement.

I have a final question to put to the committee. In our follow-up work on the former Justice 1 Committee's inquiry, do members wish to review any of the evidence that that committee received?

What do you mean by that, convener?

The reason why I put the question to the committee is that a number of the people who submitted evidence have written to us asking that their evidence be reviewed. I feel that I should ask the committee to make a decision on whether to do that, because it is the committee and not the clerks who should determine the matter.

I do not want to cause confusion, convener, but in what sense are we to review the evidence? Given that the evidence was submitted to the former Justice 1 Committee's inquiry, and that we have agreed not to reopen the inquiry, would not reopening the evidence mean that we were, in effect, reopening the inquiry?

You may remember that I advised you at some point that some of the submissions had been edited because of legal issues. Some were wrongly edited and the evidence has had to be re-submitted. That is the basis on which I ask members to review the evidence.

I think that I am the only member of the current committee who was a member of the former Justice 1 Committee when it carried out its inquiry. I felt that I had all the necessary information before me when that committee was arriving at decisions for its report. Given that we are not reopening the inquiry, and have no grounds to do so, I do not think that there is a need for us to review the evidence.

Is that agreed?

Members indicated agreement. [Interruption.]

Under standing order 7.4.1, I suspend the meeting until further notice.

Meeting suspended.

On resuming—

I reconvene the meeting simply to advise members that the amendments for stage 2 of the Criminal Procedure (Amendment) (Scotland) Bill should be lodged as early as possible in advance of 2 pm on Monday 8 March, which is the closing date for day 1 of stage 2.

I would like clarification on the last issue that we were discussing, which I do not think we had finalised before you suspended the meeting for obvious reasons, convener—and quite rightly so.

People are suggesting that the editing of written submissions was in some way done incorrectly. My understanding is that the editing that took place did not prevent any members of the previous committee from seeing the submissions—committee members saw the submissions, which were taken into account during the inquiry. Therefore, there would be nothing to be gained by advancing or reopening the inquiry in relation to those pieces of written evidence. The editing was done before the submissions were posted on the Parliament website because of matters being sub judice and because of other issues. I wish to check that my understanding of the situation is correct.

That is quite correct. All members of the former Justice 1 Committee saw all the papers. The editing applied only to the papers as they were put on the website for the public to view. There is, of course, a different approach in such cases: if information that was contained in such submissions was defamatory, the Scottish Parliament would be open to legal action. It has been helpful to clarify that point.

Apart from reminding members that we are starting stage 2 consideration of the Criminal Procedure (Amendment) (Scotland) Bill on 10 March, there is no further business. I thank members for their attendance.

Meeting closed at 12:30.