Meeting of the Parliament 10 December 2015
No, I am going to proceed, because I have heard enough. We had eight years of that approach.
I very much welcome the legislation and commend the work of Justice Committee members, which has increased the relevance and potency of the bill. I congratulate Patricia Ferguson, because much that she did in pursuing her own bill persuaded the Government to change its legislation. Indeed, Paul Wheelhouse is a minister who listens and who collaborates, where possible, with other members who do not always agree.
Deaths of service personnel have been mentioned. We had the bizarre situation in which there could be a discretionary FAI for Scottish service personnel who died outwith the UK, but no discretionary FAI if they died in service in Scotland. In fact, there could be an inquiry in England, but nothing in Scotland. To the best of my knowledge, the only FAI that has taken place involving Scottish service personnel was the Mull of Kintyre Chinook helicopter crash, and that was simply because civilians were on the helicopter.
It is wonderful that we are to move away from that approach. I congratulate Westminster—it is not often that members will hear me say that—because it is going to move a section 104 order under the Scotland Act 1998. That relates to schedule 2 of the bill. That will be welcomed not only by families, but by the wider Scottish community. However, will the minister confirm that the change will apply to historical cases of the deaths of Scottish service personnel in Scotland? Will we be able to have FAIs into incidents that have already taken place?
My colleague Christian Allard referred to FAIs into deaths of Scottish residents abroad. Again, it seemed bizarre that a body had to be brought home for a discretionary FAI to be held. Obviously, there are circumstances in which there is no body to retrieve, for example if someone is lost at sea. If it is possible to pursue a discretionary FAI without a body, why not do that? I am glad that the Government has moved on that issue.
I turn to Patricia Ferguson’s bill. As I said, much that she did persuaded the Government to move in its legislation. The family liaison charter is very important. The idea of making the sheriff’s recommendations binding was initially attractive, but once we went into the detail, we began to realise that there would have been huge unintended consequences—and not only in terms of the parties that might have to be called to an FAI, widening its scope enormously.
For example, let us say that a widget was found to be faulty. The FAI could ask who manufactures these widgets and who operates them. It could involve people all over the world. Suddenly, there is a raft of ramifications, with all those people coming into it. That makes the proposal difficult. Now recommendations and the responses to them will be published, but the reality is that many faults that take place will be remedied before the issue even gets to an FAI, because it would be a very foolish employer that did not, as soon as an incident happened, look to his practices.
Time limits were another issue. There would be huge problems in having mandatory time limits for FAIs. For example, there are many questions about whether the bin lorry FAI went ahead too quickly. There can be good reasons why an inquiry might not be done straight away. A health and safety inquiry or an aviation inquiry, for example, may be necessary before an FAI and for the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service to decide whether to go any further with a prosecution.
I support the bill. The original legislation is so old. That does not necessarily mean that all statute is past its sell-by date, but that piece of legislation is.
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