Criminal Justice Committee

Meeting date: Wednesday, October 25, 2023

Official Report 607KB pdf

Access to Court Transcripts

Our next agenda item is consideration of correspondence from the Scottish Government on access to court transcripts. I refer members to paper 3. Members will recall that we have been writing to the Lord President and the Cabinet Secretary for Justice and Home Affairs with a view to the process for survivors of rape and sexual offences to access court records being reviewed and any charges being eliminated. As part of that, the cabinet secretary agreed to set up a pilot, and the latest update from Angela Constance is set out in this week’s papers.

Before I open up the discussion to members, I want to highlight a couple of points. First, we might wish to check whether the pilot will be retrospective and open to the survivors who first raised the issue with the committee. The clerks could be asked to check that with Scottish Government officials. Secondly, members are asked to note that copies of the cabinet secretary’s letter have been sent to Rape Crisis Scotland, Scottish Women’s Aid and Victim Support Scotland.

I invite members to consider whether any further action is needed at this stage, beyond keeping the Scottish Government’s plans under review and taking the action that I have mentioned already.

There are two issues. The letter from Angela Constance talks about an application form being developed. I wonder what that might look like. It should not be a barrier or a hurdle. It should be user friendly. It should also be—to use the buzzword—trauma informed. How can we ensure that the application form will not present a difficulty for those who seek access to court transcripts?

In addition, the letter talks about establishing why people want to access court transcripts. I do not see why that is an issue. Surely, in the interests of open justice and transparency, people should be entitled to do it for whatever reason they see fit. However, that is more of an observation.

We have the pilot, which is welcome. Russell Findlay is quite right to say that we need to make sure, if we proceed with the pilot and assess it, that the process is easy and accessible.

There was coverage of the issue this morning on BBC Scotland, which quoted the figure of £100 an hour for obtaining a transcript of Scottish court proceedings. If the courts are transcribing court cases, which I presume they do for the purposes of recording and publishing proceedings and appeal processes, I do not understand why there is not a simpler process for making those transcripts available. There is a question about whether that is desirable, but that is a thought that struck me. Perhaps the committee might want to think about getting an answer to that during the assessment of the pilot.

Okay. Thank you very much.

As no one else has any comments to make, are members content that we write to the Scottish Government on whether the intention is for the pilot to be retrospective and for it to be open to the survivors who first raised the issue, and that, in doing so, we flag the other points that members have made, in particular around the application form and the need for the process to be trauma informed? I imagine that that will be at the centre of that piece of work. We will also note the comments that Pauline McNeill made on simplifying the process of transcript production. Do members agree to that proposal?

Members indicated agreement.