Meeting of the Parliament 21 May 2014
Yes, Presiding Officer.
The bill that the Scottish Government has introduced is part of the process of reforming the Scottish judicial system. We agree with some but not all of its proposals, and we will support it at stage 1 in the hope of amendment. However, we are not content with the fact that it has been accompanied by a sloppy financial memorandum that contains information from third parties that does not even seem to have been checked by ministers and their civil servants.
We appreciate that these are straitened financial times, but the Scottish Government chose to introduce the bill and it should have carefully considered whether sufficient resources are available to ensure its success. If all that the bill does is place additional pressure on the already overloaded sheriff courts, it will fail its policy intention and the intention of Lord Gill’s review. It is not good enough to say vaguely that court fees can be used to cover additional costs. We believe that the Scottish Government should withdraw the financial memorandum, do its homework and come back with a revised memorandum that has been properly researched and costed.