Justice 2 Committee, 07 Feb 2001

Meeting date: Wednesday, February 7, 2001

Official Report 112KB pdf

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Glasgow Sheriff Court (Visit)

Item 3 concerns the visits that have been made by members of the committee to Glasgow sheriff court. Members will know that two visits have been made, the first organised by the Glasgow Bar Association and the second at the invitation of the sheriff principal. I was fortunate enough to attend both visits, and Margo MacDonald was able to attend the second. It might be useful for committee members to hear what Margo and I learned at the sheriff court, as there might be ideas for future work or future visits. I invite Margo to make some general comments.

I appreciated the opportunity to visit the sheriff court. We were treated extremely well. The facilities that were afforded us were not lavish, but we were treated well.

Were you given lunch?

Yes, the lunch was excellent.

The courts are new but obvious effort has been made to maintain the environment of the place. I have seen some other district courts in times past, and I know that that is important. Although it may seem a minor point, the environment helps to create an atmosphere.

The atmosphere was one of controlled business. It was very busy, but we were there on a Monday morning, when custody cases are dealt with. A large percentage of the people there were not unaccustomed to the ways of the justice system.

Not just the professionals.

No. There were obvious signs of co-operation and the fact that people understand how the system worked. However, there were also obvious signs that the system was under strain. The role of the procurator fiscal in the whole procedure seemed to be under strain and, when we asked, we were told that it was. As a lay person sitting in the court, I noticed that, on many occasions, the sheriff said that they should have received some report or other, which they did not have. I am not an expert, nor do I feel that people were not doing their job, but I felt that the progress of the cases would have been smoother were it not for a glitch in the procurator fiscal service. That seemed to account for some of the problems, anyway.

It was interesting to speak to one of the sheriffs who specialise in family cases. Pauline may want to say more on that.

Thanks, Margo. That is a fair reflection of what I saw on both occasions when I attended the court, and describes the pressure that the court is under.

There are 21 courts at Glasgow sheriff court, which is about the busiest court in Europe. Each court has its own programme and, as Margo has indicated, two unique initiatives are in operation. The first is a family court, which contains four sheriffs who are dedicated to family cases. It is claimed that the number of appeals has fallen due to the fact that sheriffs specialising in family law are in place and making the right decisions. The other initiative is a specialised commercial court, in which complex cases involve the sheriffs in considering the paperwork informally as it comes in, so that, when a case is ready to be heard, preparation has already been done.

We attended different courts, but what we witnessed was similar. On my first visit to the court, it was apparent that the intermediate diet—a procedure that was set up to bring in parties earlier, to determine the state of preparation in order to speed up the process—is failing in some ways because of the problems that Margo described. Papers, such as police and witness statements, are not available, which means that the defence is unable to decide whether there should be a plea, as they are not prepared. The intermediate diet is not, therefore, serving the purpose for which it was established.

Some of the courts were a bit quieter than they usually are, apparently, but we did get the general impression of utter chaos. When I was first there, I saw solicitors running from court to court and clerks running around looking for a court in which to have a case heard. Fiona Groves and I went to listen to a jury case and the judge was giving direction to the jury, which was something that I had never seen before.

I take the view that such visits can educate us about the practicalities of the court system. I know that some members have direct experience of that. It is the fourth visit that I have carried out—if one includes the prison visit—and they have all been invaluable. I would like to encourage the committee to carry out more visits in the future.

I imagine that those comments also pertain to Edinburgh sheriff court. It is not always the procurator fiscal who is to blame for delays—sometimes social inquiry reports from other agencies are simply not available. I would defend those agencies because they are also under pressure. When you saw someone running between courts, convener, it may be that they were looking for a sheriff to fill in an interim interdict as a matter of urgency. The courts are very lively and must be in a position to be reactive, even though there is a set timetable. That is true of civil matters as well, which can be urgent, although they are easier to keep to a timetable.

Specialist sheriffs are important, particularly in family matters, which was one of my specialist areas. The commercial specialism takes place in the Court of Session, where that approach was pioneered. As solicitors and perhaps even offenders are becoming specialised, so should the sheriffs. Your comments echo my experience, convener.

They reminded us that, in many respects, we were seeing the jewel in the crown—consider how many sheriffs there are in Glasgow sheriff court in comparison with Dingwall.

Edinburgh has a new sheriff court too.

It is not the newness, it is the size. Scott Barrie is about to mention Dunfermline, but I do not know about Dunfermline because we did not get round to it.

Scott will tell us about Dunfermline.

I am not going to tell you now.

Margo MacDonald has raised an important point. How typical or atypical was your experience in Glasgow, convener? Did you get a feel for the fact that it is by far the busiest court in Scotland? The strange thing about sheriff courts is that they do not necessarily reflect the population centres. There are a large number of sheriff courts, but many of them have only one sheriff and do not meet every day of the week.

I am glad to hear about the developments in Glasgow but, in terms of good practice, how relevant are those to other parts of Scotland? We might end up with a two-tier justice system in which a person who lives within the Glasgow jurisdiction will get one type of justice and a person in a more rural area will get a different one, in terms of sheriff specialisms, for example. I am not sure how we tie that up. I am not saying that we do not want to make innovations in one area, because that should happen wherever possible. Did members get some sense of how typical Glasgow sheriff court was?

That is a good point. I have nothing to compare it with, and if we are to do a report we should have some context. I got the impression that that was a typical day in the life of Glasgow sheriff court in terms of the chaos and how busy it was. Having visited Glasgow sheriff court a second time, I am able to make comparison and I found it to be fairly consistent, particularly on the administration side. Perhaps we want to come back to that.

We went into the sheriff's chambers and asked practical questions. We asked what happened in smaller courts. What Scott Barrie says about first and second-class justice sounds a bit too stark at present, but if a specialist sheriffs service is developed, one has to ask whether the service will be itinerant. It cannot just be settled in Glasgow, Edinburgh and Dundee, which might be big enough to support a family law specialist, for example. That was a concern. However, the people whom we met in Glasgow felt that they were the prototype and that they were testing things out. It is up to the committee to decide whether we think that it is a good idea and to consider how it could be developed or amended.

Scott Barrie made an important point about smaller courts. I have appeared at Haddington sheriff court, which is a moderately sized court. I have also appeared at Selkirk, which is a tiny, cosier place. I borrowed someone's gown there—it was the only gown hanging there and one cannot appear without a robe. A raging person came in asking "Where's my gown?" while I was sitting wearing it, red-faced, trying to pretend that it was not me who had taken it.

The point is that at Haddington sheriff court, criminal matters were heard first and were followed on the same day by civil cases. One is like a fish out of water when one goes from a large court to a smaller court. The very small courts sometimes do not sit every day. I do not see how specialisms could work there. We could not parachute in a sheriff for a half-hour hearing on a family law matter in the middle of general business.

There will be differences between large and small courts. There are some advantages to the smaller rural courts. The sheriffs know the agents and the agents know them, so matters can be arranged—that may sound sinister, but cases can be dealt with in a different way. The sheriffs may even know the people who are in front of them. That may be regarded as a bad thing—"You're back again, Jimmy,"—but it can be helpful. I could detect advantages in the small courts, as opposed to the anonymity of the sheriff court in Edinburgh, for people appearing there for the first time. It is quite right to say that specialisms cannot apply in some rural courts.

I wonder whether figures are available from the Scottish Court Service for the number of cases that have to be adjourned for whatever reason, and whether the number is greater in the very busy courts such as Glasgow and Edinburgh than in smaller courts in rural areas or courts in which there are two permanent sheriffs in one court, such as Dunfermline. Christine Grahame will note that I have now mentioned Dunfermline.

It is a very nice court.

Would you like the committee to pursue that point, Scott?

Members have said that the visit to Glasgow was very useful and that it gave them a real feel for what was happening there. As a way of broadening and developing that experience out, we should consider whether there is mileage in asking about the type of statistics that are collected by the Scottish Court Service. Those figures might put flesh on people's experiences.

We could also ask about the time scale for civil cases.

We should find out what statistics are available on court delays and adjournments.

Could we ask whether the figures are divided according to sheriffdoms?

We will ask for whatever is available.

I am interested in your observations about intermediate diets, as they were an idea that trickled down to my old stamping ground. They were supposed to be the be-all and end-all of efforts to prevent court time being wasted. You said that they were failing. Do you have any more detail on that? Were any suggestions made for improvement?

I am reporting back on the basis of two visits. The problem that has been identified to me is that not all the information is available when the intermediate diet is called, in particular to the defence. In particular, police statements are not always available. The point of the intermediate diet is sometimes to get a plea, but that is happening less often because the defence is unable to say whether it would make a plea. That is relevant only to the sheriff court as there are no intermediate diets in the High Court.

While we are looking for figures on delay—this point falls under that banner—we could ask for statistics, perhaps by sheriffdom, on intermediate diets that are continued without pleas.

I confess that I was given a set of figures, but I cannot find it. I will write to the sheriff principal to ask for another set.

I would be surprised if those figures were not available in Glasgow.

We should ask for figures over three years. There is no point in having them for just one year. We want to see whether there is a trend. We could ask for figures for as long as there have been intermediate diets—that is a long time.

When we gather that information, we will present it to the committee and decide whether it raises any big issues.

It is all related to delays in the system.

Meeting continued in private until 12:03.