Meeting of the Parliament 21 May 2014
I thank the previous speakers for their comprehensive speeches. In fact, they were so comprehensive that they have left with me with very little to add, but I will do my best.
I have a personal interest in how the personal injury court will enable access to justice, particularly for Clydeside Action on Asbestos. Concerns have been raised with regard to access to counsel. In that respect, I welcome comments that were made by the minister Roseanna Cunningham, who has said:
“I want to say very clearly that in creating the new personal injury sheriff court, we are creating a venue where such cases will be able to be raised and dealt with more quickly and effectively by specialist sheriffs, using new personal injury procedures, and be heard at a more proportionate cost to the families concerned, due to lower lawyer fees. And where families are faced with more complex cases they will still be able to raise their cases in the Court of Session and get access to counsel where this is appropriate.”
I thank the minister for making that very important point, and I thank the cabinet secretary for reiterating it in his earlier remarks. It is important that we put those views on the record to ensure that people know what the personal injury court stands for.
My colleagues Christine Grahame and Christian Allard have already mentioned yesterday’s visit to the Court of Session and the High Court in Edinburgh, and I thank the committee clerks for organising the visit and the courts for facilitating it. We saw modern technology in action—the television video links were very impressive—and the excellent work that everyone from judges to clerks is carrying out. Everyone works together; I believe that that is what modernisation is about. When we visited the Judicial Institute for Scotland learning suite, Lord Gill said that it is a first and made it clear that the way we are modernising the court system is much envied throughout the world. In fact, we are so forward thinking that the system is being replicated in Islamabad. We should be very proud of the fact that the Scottish courts system is at the forefront of this work.
Aside from the fact that all the other issues that I wanted to raise have been covered, I am making so much of the visit not only because it was impressive but because it showed us how we can modernise the courts. That is what the bill is all about. It is not just about access to justice for people, but about modernising the courts, which, as previous speakers have pointed out, is badly needed. Indeed, as Lord Gill has said, the system is 50 years behind the times.
Having never visited the courts before, I was very impressed by the work that they and, in particular, the judges carry out. The way we are modernising the system leads the world; if the approach is being replicated in Islamabad as well as in other countries, it must work—and it can work for the whole of Scotland’s court system. I look forward to taking the proposals in the bill and the views of the committee to the rest of the Parliament, and I am sure that everyone will welcome the modernisation of the court system.
17:12