Seòmar agus comataidhean

Good morning, and welcome to the 25th meeting in 2023 of the Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee. We have no apologies this morning.

Our first agenda item is our fifth evidence session on the Regulation of Legal Services (Scotland) Bill. We have two panels of witnesses this morning. We are privileged to welcome senators of the College of Justice for our first panel. The Rt Hon Lady Dorrian is the Lord Justice Clerk, who is the second most senior judge in Scotland. She was appointed as a temporary judge in 2002, and she became a judge in the supreme courts in 2005. She was appointed Lord Justice Clerk in 2016. She sits in the inner house of the Court of Session, and she is the president of the second division of the inner house.

The honourable Lord Ericht was appointed as a judge of the supreme courts in 2016. He sits in the outer house of the Court of Session and also presides over trials in the High Court of Justiciary. He is also a chair of the United Kingdom Competition Appeal Tribunal.

We are grateful to both of you for giving up your time to speak to us today.

We are aware of the concerns that have been expressed by the senior judiciary with regard to the bill in response to our call for views and in correspondence with the Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee. We will seek to explore those concerns in depth this morning.

We have also noted the DPLR Committee’s report, which was published last Thursday, and we have written to the Minister for Victims and Community Safety to seek more detail from her on what impact any potential changes to the bill might have and whether they would alleviate and address the concerns that have been expressed.

We expect Oliver Mundell from the DPLR Committee to attend today’s meeting as soon as his committee has concluded its business.

I refer members to papers 1 and 2, and I invite Lady Dorrian to provide an opening statement on behalf of the senators of the College of Justice.

We are nearing the end of this evidence session. If any committee member wishes to clarify anything with Lady Dorrian while she is with us, this is the moment for them to do so.

That is on the record.

I welcome Esther Roberton, who, back in 2017, was commissioned to chair the independent review of legal services regulation in Scotland. Her report “Fit for the Future: Report of the Independent Review of Legal Services Regulation in Scotland” was published in October 2018. Its main recommendation was that an independent body with a non-legal chair and a non-legal majority should be set up to regulate legal professionals, with the professional body retaining only its role as a representative of the profession. The new system would be financed by a levy on practitioners.

Esther, we are very grateful that you accepted our belated invitation to appear before us. I invite you to make an opening statement before we move to questions.

We have time, so I am happy to bring in Oliver Mundell, from the DPLR Committee, for a question.

Absolutely.

That concludes the committee’s questions. Do you have any final points that you wish to make?

On behalf of the committee, I thank you for giving up your time this morning. We appreciate how busy you are. Your evidence has been valuable.

I suspend the meeting briefly to allow for a change of witnesses.

I bring in Paul O’Kane.

Yes, as is the usual experience.

That is interesting. Earlier this morning, the committee heard about the situation in which a citizen might want to sue the Government. However, what about the consumer—the person on the street—who might want to sue their lawyer because they have not received a good service? What I have heard, albeit anecdotally—but also through constituency work, because people know that the committee is dealing with this so they come to talk to me—is that some people have not had good experiences. They feel that they are up against a whole system and that that system looks after itself. Did you speak to individuals or look at such casework? Can you give us an example of that?

Are you ready to move on, Paul?