To ask the Scottish Executive whether it is the policy of the Crown Office to make a full disclosure to the defence of information obtained by, or available to, it; if not, when the position changed, and, if the position has not changed, on how many occasions full disclosure has not been made and what the reasons were for this The Crown’s policy and practicein relation to disclosure rests on its legal duty as understood in McLeod vHer Majesty’s Advocate in 1997 i.e. it has a subsisting duty to provide to thedefence information disclosed during the course of the investigation which is likelyto be of material assistance to the proper preparation or presentation of the accused’sdefence.Following Lord Bonomy’s reviewof the practice and procedure of the High Court, the Crown Office and ProcuratorFiscal Service (COPFS) issued a Crown Practice Statement on Disclosure in High Courtcases which introduced a formal system of disclosure in all High Court cases wherethe first appearance of the accused was after 1 January 2005.In order to support the High Court reform programme, the scheme exceeded thecrown’s legal obligations, as set out in McLeod, by disclosing all witnesses statementsin its possession, subject to limited exceptions.The decisions of the JudicialCommittee of the Privy Council in the cases of Holland v Her Majesty’sAdvocate and Sinclair v Her Majesty’s Advocate in May...