Meeting of the Parliament 24 September 2015
I am keen to hear what the minister will have to say on summing up. I understand the explanations that have been given by the minister and others about the difficulties in making such enforceability a requirement, but there must be a middle ground that might take us further in the direction that the member and I wish to go.
Those outcomes did not happen in the case of Alison Hume and her parents, Hugh and Margaret Cowan. The sheriff made serious criticisms of senior fire officers and their handling of Alison’s rescue. Sheriff Leslie commented that the evidence presented to him by two senior offers was
“bullish, if not arrogant, in their determination to justify the subservience of the need to carry out a rescue to the need to fulfil to the letter Strathclyde Fire and Rescue Service Brigade policy.”
No apology was ever offered until the former First Minister ordered a fire service inquiry. No disciplinary action was ever taken that we are aware of. The family has been left pretty much on their own in their pursuit of justice. Had it not been for the tireless and unfunded work carried out for them by HALO, a specialist trauma support service led by Diane Greenaway in Ayrshire, I shudder to think what the outcome would have been for this family.
There is much to commend in the work that has already been undertaken and the changes that will come in to help modernise this process. However, I ask my colleagues in the Scottish Government to consider any way of further strengthening the powers in relation to recommendations that are made by sheriffs and of requiring a response from any agency or individual who is the subject of criticism.
We need to place surviving families, who we should remember are also victims, at the heart of any new process that assists them on their journey to achieving justice rather than parting company with them at the end of the FAI process and leaving them to make that onward journey alone.
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