Chamber and committees

(a) Figures are not held centrally on total indictments dealt with in the sheriff courts to include alldisposals and outcomes. Over the last three years 5,512 new indictments wereregistered in the sheriff court in 2004-05, 5,798 in 2005-06 and 6,304 in2006-07.

Figures published on theCrown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service website indicate that sheriff andjury disposals by way of plea of guilty and by trial totalled 3,611 for theyear 2004-05, 3,905 for 2005-06 and 4,224 for 2006-07.

This information may befound at:

www.crownoffice.gov.uk/About/corporate-info/Caseproclast5.

(b) The number of appealslodged in solemn criminal proceedings are as follows:

	2004-05	2005-06	2006-07
Conviction	103	81	74
Sentence	754	704	703
Conviction and sentence	89	73	83

 

These figures include bothHigh Court and sheriff and jury cases and the available data does not enablesheriff court appeals to be disaggregated.

Policy and legislation ondriving whilst under the influence of drugs is reserved.

Home Office officials haveadvised that plans to issue a specification for the technology in December havebeen delayed. They are hopeful that discussions underway will enable theguidance to be issued in the coming weeks.

I have asked Mike Ewart, Chief Executive of the Scottish Prison Service to respond. His response is as follows:

The number of tests and positiveresults for HM Prison Barlinnie for September to November 2007 were as follows:

Month	Number Tested	Positive
September	157	18
October	134	14
November	97	13

 

The ScottishAmbulance Service operates a national infection control policy, with clear processesfor the cleaning of vehicles. These processes allow for appropriate cleaning ofambulances after each response and a full “deep clean” on a regular basis.

As the cost of 500additional police officers is £54 million over the Spending Review period, thenit follows that 1,000 additional officers would cost in the region of £108 million.In order for the additional sum to be found, other spending announced in the SpendingReview allocations on 14 November would have to be reduced.

TransportScotland has been leading workto provide firm proposals for the most cost-effective ways to improvereliability, bring down journey times and provide capacity for the expectedcontinuing growth in rail passenger numbers between Edinburgh and Glasgow. Theresults of this will be reported to Parliament this afternoon.

The Scottish Legal Aid Board''s system which records receipt of property recovered or preserved, and expenses from opponents, does not record whether the opponent was the pursuer or defender in the case. SLAB summarises in its annual report, a copy of which has been placed in the Parliament''s Reference Centre (Bib number 41341), information on the amount of expenses and awards recovered from opponents, whether pursuer or defender. These amounts for the last five years are shown in the following table.

Gross Cost of Civil Legal Aid, Expenses and Awards Recovered from Opponents (£000), 2002-03 to 2006-07

	Gross Cost	Expenses	Amounts Awarded to Assisted Persons	Total Recovered  from Opponents
2002-03
Family/matrimonial	16,062	1,798	1,007	2,805
Debt	512	121	15	136
Reparation	7,789	4,741	254	4,995
Judicial review	266	71	0	71
Appeals	461	74	0	74
Recovery of heritable property	120	0	0	0
Other	1,862	299	24	323
Total	27,071	7,104	1,300	8,404
2003-04
Family/matrimonial	16,562	742	880	1,622
Debt	536	152	35	187
Reparation	9,145	7,208	204	7,412
Judicial review	238	86	0	86
Appeals	675	207	14	221
Recovery of heritable property	171	0	0	0
Other	2,667	342	29	371
Total	29,994	8,737	1,162	9,899
2004-05
Family/matrimonial	16,035	529	754	1,283
Debt	524	70	34	104
Reparation	10,392	8,791	142	8,933
Judicial review	485	103	0	103
Appeals	517	113	4	117
Recovery of heritable property	174	41	1	42
Other	2,694	166	52	218
Total	30,821	9,813	987	10,800
2005-06
Family/matrimonial	16,016	365	712	1,077
Debt	553	88	14	101
Reparation	9,085	7,493	126	7,619
Judicial review	678	102	0	102
Appeals	918	440	0	440
Recovery of heritable property	155	31	4	35
Other	2,223	223	35	257
Total	29,627	8,740	891	9,631
2006-07
Family/matrimonial	16,340	437	1,198	1,635
Debt	756	346	61	406
Reparation	10,343	7,263	219	7,482
Judicial review	745	389	0	389
Appeals	648	172	1	172
Recovery of heritable property	268	21	11	33
Other	2,328	168	36	204
Total	31,428	8,795	1,526	10,320

 

It will be noted from the table that in four of the last five years, over 70% of the sums recovered by the Board from opponents relate to reparation cases. The vast majority of legally aided parties in such cases are pursuers, meaning that the vast majority of these sums will have been paid by defenders. In judicial review, all of the expenses will have been paid by defenders (or, more accurately, respondents). For other types of case, including family cases, legal aid may be granted to either the pursuer or defender and so it is not possible to say how much of the amounts recovered in these cases comes from defenders.

 

The following is a original answer (published on 18 September 2007); see below.

 

The Scottish Legal Aid Board''s (SLAB) system which records receipt of property recovered or preserved, and expenses from opponents, does not record whether the opponent was the pursuer or defender in the case. SLAB summarises in its annual report, a copy of which has been placed in the Scottish Parliament Information Centre (Bib. number 41341), information on the amount of expenses and awards recovered from opponents, whether pursuer or defender. These amounts for the last five years are shown in the following table.

Gross Cost of Civil Legal Aid, Expenses and Awards Recovered from Opponents (£000), 2002-03 to 2006-07

	Gross cost	Expenses	Amounts Awarded to  Assisted Persons	Total Recovered from Opponents
2002-03
Family/matrimonial	16,062	1,798	1,007	2,805
Debt	512	121	15	136
Reparation	7,789	4,741	254	4,995
Judicial review	266	71	0	71
Appeals	461	74	0	74
Recovery of heritable property	120	0	0	0
Other	1,862	299	24	323
Total	27,071	7,104	1,300	8,404
2003-04
Family/matrimonial	16,562	742	880	1,622
Debt	536	152	35	187
Reparation	9,145	7,208	204	7,412
Judicial review	238	86	0	86
Appeals	675	207	14	221
Recovery of heritable property	171	0	0	0
Other	2,667	342	29	371
Total	29,994	8,737	1,162	9,899
2004-05
Family/matrimonial	16,035	529	754	1,283
Debt	524	70	34	104
Reparation	10,392	8,791	142	8,933
Judicial review	485	103	0	103
Appeals	517	113	4	117
Recovery of heritable property	174	41	1	42
Other	2,694	166	52	218
Total	30,821	9,813	987	10,800
2005-06
Family/matrimonial	16,016	365	712	1,077
Debt	553	88	14	101
Reparation	9,085	7,493	126	7,619
Judicial review	678	102		102
Appeals	918	440		440
Recovery of heritable property	155	31	4	35
Other	2,223	223	35	257
Total	29,627	8,740	891	9,631
2006-07
Family/matrimonial	534	437	1,198	1,635
Debt	9,788	346	61	406
Reparation	7,997	7,263	219	7,482
Judicial review	0	389	0	389
Appeals	0	172	1	172
Recovery of heritable property	0	21	11	33
Other	0	168	36	204
Total	18,319	8,795	1,526	10,320

 

It will be noted from the table that in four of the last five years, over 70% of the sums recovered by the board from opponents relate to reparation cases. The vast majority of legally aided parties in such cases are pursuers, meaning that the vast majority of these sums will have been paid by defenders. In judicial review, all of the expenses will have been paid by defenders (or, more accurately, respondents). For other types of case, including family cases, legal aid may be granted to either the pursuer or defender and so it is not possible to say how much of the amounts recovered in these cases comes from defenders.

 

This information isnot collected. Minutes of Agreement may be registered in the Books of Council andSession by Registers of Scotland. The Books of Council and Session are held by theNational Archives of Scotland. Registered Minutes of Agreement can be searched byname but there is no provision for searching by content topic.

The ScottishCrime Survey and Scottish Crime and Victimisation Survey (SCVS) provides anestimate of personal and household crime in Scotland. Analysis of personal and household crime has involved capping repeat victimisation at five repeat instances per victim, similar to the BritishCrime Survey. We are not aware of similar work (as conducted by CIVITAS) usingthe Scottish Crime Survey or Scottish Crime and Victimisation Survey data. Alldata collected in the survey, on the number of incidents in a victimisationseries, is included in the publicly available dataset. The next dataset fromthe most recent SCVS 2006, which covers fieldwork from 2006, is due to bepublished this autumn on the Economic and Social Data Service website at:http://www.esds.ac.uk/government.

The Scottish Crime Survey (SCS)and Scottish Crime & Victimisation Survey (SCVS) provides an estimate ofpersonal and household crime in Scotland. In this calculation repeat victimisation has beencapped at 5 repeat instances per victim,similar to the British Crime Survey, as is standard practice in these surveys.The reasons for this are explained in the survey technical information, the nexttechnical report for the SCVS, which covers fieldwork from 2006, is due to bepublished this autumn on the Economic and Social Data Service (ESCS) website at: http://www.esds.ac.uk/government.