Sheriffs attack judiciary reform proposals

Association takes rare step of publishing response to Executive consultation

News, 16 June 2006

The Sheriffs' Association has accused the Scottish Executive of attempting to undermine the independence of the judiciary.

The views of the association and its members are not normally made public, but the Executive's recent proposals to reform the judiciary have alarmed many members.

The Executive is proposing a unified administration of the sheriff and supreme courts, bringing the training, conduct and operation of all courts under the responsibility of the Lord President.

The sheriffs feel that the Lord President already has a heavy workload and that these proposals would result in the need to employ an army of civil servants to help deal with this. In addition, a number of sheriffs have sent in individual submissions claiming that the proposals display ignorance of the meaning of judicial independence.

The former Lord President, Lord Cullen, has also criticised the consultation paper, describing parts of the document as absurd and confused. Of the statement in the paper, "judges need to be managed", he said that this revealed a lack of understanding of the significance of judicial independence.

It is believed the introduction of the proposals, initially planned for the current parliamentary session, could be delayed until after the Holyrood elections next year because of the amount of criticism they have received and because the Justice 1 Committee has too many other commitments.