Hansard

We come to our final new petition this morning. PE2073, lodged by Robert Macdonald, calls on the Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to require the police and court services to check that address information is up to date when issuing a court summons and to allow those being summoned the chance to receive a summons if their address has changed rather than the current system of simply proceeding to issue an arrest warrant. The petition was prompted by the arrest of a paramedic who had missed a court date after the summons was sent to an old address. The petitioner insisted that, as the police were able to obtain the correct address for the individual, the court should have been able to issue the summons to the correct address. In essence, I think, the police were able to get the correct address to arrest the individual, but they were not able to get the correct address to issue the summons to. The SPICe briefing outlines provisions in the Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995, including provisions for granting a warrant to apprehend the accused if it is proved to the court that the accused received the citation or has knowledge of its contents. The Scottish Government has responded that the petition relates to an area in which it has no policy position or role, and that it is an operational matter for the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service and Police Scotland. We have also received a submission from the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service, which adds further detail to the SPICe briefing on the processes and circumstances for seeking warrants for summary court proceedings. It notes that prosecutors should only seek initiating warrants where it is in the public interest to do so, for example, because there is information the accused is avoiding citation. It also notes that, where information is provided that the accused is no longer at their address, and their whereabouts are unknown, there is a mechanism for the outstanding warrant to be reviewed by a prosecutor who will, taking into account the prospects of tracing the accused and the nature of the offence, consider whether there is a public interest in pursuing the prosecution. Do members have any suggestions for action? I am minded to keep the petition open at the moment. It struck me that there was a lack of basic shared communication that could have resolved the matter. Might we write to the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service and Police Scotland to seek their views on the issues that have been raised by the petition—in particular, in the case that the petitioner raises, to ask how Police Scotland was able to identify where the individual was in order to perform an arrest, but it was not possible for that information to be made available when it came to sending the summons? Does that seem reasonable? Members indicated agreement.