Meeting of the Parliament 10 December 2015
On whether the legislation in relation to military FAIs will be retrospective, the answer is no. A discretionary FAI will have been considered at the time of the incident. However, I hope that the armed forces community and families will take comfort from the fact that in the event of the death of service personnel in Scotland in future, a fatal accident inquiry will be mandatory.
Alison McInnes referred to the child death review system. The Scottish Government child death review working group has submitted its report to the Scottish ministers, which is currently being considered by the Scottish Government. I hope that it will not be long before the outcome is made available.
The bill will ensure that FAIs remain fact-finding, inquisitorial judicial hearings, which are held in the public interest to establish the circumstances of sudden, suspicious or unexplained deaths, and deaths the circumstances of which cause public concern. FAIs are not meant to hold people to account, as the media occasionally mistakenly suggest, nor are they held specifically to provide answers for bereaved families, although they will normally do so. Questions of blame or guilt are for civil or criminal proceedings. FAIs are held in the public interest to establish the cause of death and to permit the sheriff to make recommendations as to how deaths in similar circumstances might be avoided in future.
The bill will also ensure that the system is in keeping with other justice reforms, including the use of specialist and summary sheriffs, preliminary hearings and early agreement of uncontroversial facts, along with greater scope for location and accommodation of FAIs. When taken together with the section 104 order and the new FAI rules that the Scottish Civil Justice Council will bring forward next year, the bill represents significant modernisation and reform of the law on fatal accident inquiries. I commend the bill to the Parliament.