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The other witnesses might want to address my follow-up question.

I am trying to understand the proposed legislation before us and all the possibilities. It is possible to create a specialist court, as proposed in the bill. We can decide where that is in the hierarchy, but there could be different levels of representation and rights of audience, and sheriffs appointed by the Lord President would be able to sit as judges in that court. However, it seems to me that there is nothing to say that the pilot would not run in the specialist court as opposed to the High Court. Is that fair to say?

In other words, the specialist court with national jurisdiction, wherever it sits, is not the High Court. It would be possible under the bill to have a sheriff appointed by the Lord President, solicitors or any other representation—there is no ban on solicitors representing accused persons in the specialist court—and a single judge all at the same time. Is that right?

Sharon Dowey asked about victims having access to their advocate depute or legal representative. We spoke with one survivor who had a positive experience of proceedings, and it was loud and clear that that seemed to be because she had meetings with the lawyers before, during and after the trial.

Tony Lenehan, would the profession have any objection to reforms in that area? Some advocate deputes do it and some do not; some just go straight to court and do not talk to the victims, and others do talk to them. Is there a need to prescribe that more, in your view?

Do you have any comment on why the Government would want to include such a provision in legislation?

It is interesting that your first answer was that it would be the conviction rate. The Government has made it explicit that it is not going to look at the pilot in terms of whether it is more effective, because it says that that is not what it is designed to do, so that would not be a benchmark.

Is it fair to say that it is going to be difficult to benchmark effectiveness?

I wanted to ask about the jurors that you used in your studies. Had they sat on rape trials, or just trials in general?

That was really helpful.

I want to ask Professor Chalmers and Vanessa Munro about juryless trials and whether you have a view on how the Government can measure their effectiveness. That has given me some cause for concern. Whether you are for or against the idea, how would you ascertain how effective a single judge would be? What are you benchmarking it against, given that there are no other jurisdictions with single judges? Do you think that it is possible to measure that effectiveness, given that the Government has also said that the intention is not to increase or decrease convictions per se, but to give victims a different experience of the court system?

Vanessa Munro, since you are on screen, do you want to answer first?

I understand that, and it is a very important aspect of the proposal. However, on that point, you seem to be saying that, if we legislate for judge-only trials, it will be difficult to ascertain their effectiveness, because there is a question of what we would benchmark that against. Is that fair?

Forgive me if I have misunderstood, but in the case of the defence, presumably the accused would have access to their lawyer or solicitor and there would be engagement with the accused, so there would not be a requirement for any change.

However, it would apply in relation to the prosecution. The principle of the prosecutor prosecuting in the public interest and not acting on behalf of any victim is the reason why there is a question whether it is appropriate for a victim to discuss with the prosecutor the prosecution of the case and have an understanding of the case.

Tony Lenehan, do you have anything to add?