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In the interests of time, my questions will probably be quite rapid-fire ones. My first question is to Ms Medhurst. Can you give us an indication of what percentage or proportion of original mail has been photocopied and passed to prisoners as photocopied versus the percentage or proportion of mail that has been given to prisoners directly in its original form? As you have said, it is quite difficult to spot original mail that has been soaked in drugs.

Okay. Thank you.

I come to my second rapid-fire question. It is not just mail that contains drugs; I am aware from speaking to prison officers that clothes are often soaked in drugs. Obviously, that is very difficult to deal with. How on earth are you going to manage the incidence of that?

I appreciate it. Thank you.

There is very little with which to disagree in what I have heard in the previous two answers. It is a collective problem, but I am trying to get to the nub of what happens next. To me, that is still unclear.

I raise the issue because I listened with great interest to the language used by the cabinet secretary, who represents the Government and sits in the Parliament, about how we could make quite significant changes. I appreciate that those changes, whether they are trials or are more permanent, will require legislative change. However, is the legislative change simply a technical requirement to enable the changes to happen, or is it the legislative change that informs the changes?

When asked about juryless trials or other such changes, the cabinet secretary went to great lengths to say that those were matters for the Lord Advocate. Therefore, I am trying to understand whether you, Lord Advocate, are advising the Government as to what changes it should be introducing through legislation—which the individual members of Parliament will debate and vote on—or whether you are looking to the Parliament to come back with a set of proposals that you will then be forced to introduce as the Lord Advocate.

That is helpful. I might come back to you on that, but I believe that the Crown Agent would like to comment.

I think that he has dropped off the call. I appreciate your response. I have some other questions but I am happy to reserve them for later in the meeting.

Thank you. Convener, could I respond to what we have just heard?

Thank you, convener. I hope that everyone can hear me okay, despite my earlier technical difficulties.

Good morning, Lord Advocate and thank you for appearing before us today. Much of what I was going to ask about has been covered in the initial questions. I will pick up on another point, which is based on the evidence session that we had with the cabinet secretary last week, which I am sure that you saw or indeed read the transcript of.

I was quite struck by what the cabinet secretary said in many of his answers. He made it clear that any fundamental changes to the legal system, whether on corroboration, judge-only trials, the removal of the not proven verdict and jury sizes and majorities, were matters for the Lord Advocate, and not for him, as cabinet secretary, to comment on. I want to get to the bottom of that, because in your answers you seem to be implying that such decisions are political decisions and matters for parliamentarians, not for the Crown. The politicians, on the other hand, are saying that those are matters for the Crown.

Where do you think that the buck will stop with the decisions that we are talking about, some of which will be very difficult and controversial?

Thank you—that was very helpful.

Thank you, convener—I will try to keep my questions succinct.

In 2018, Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prosecution in Scotland produced its “Thematic Report on the Victims’ Right to Review”. Last year, there were nearly 34,000 cases in which the Crown Office either discontinued prosecution or decided not to prosecute a case in the first place. What percentage of complainers were notified of those decisions and how were they notified? Why are less than 1 per cent of victims applying for a review of a decision not to prosecute or continue a case?

That question is to the Lord Advocate.

Thank you, Crown Agent—I appreciate that. I wanted to flag up the point, because the review was clear in its recommendation that all victims should be “notified of such decisions” and offered whatever options of remedy are available to them, should they wish to apply for a review. The numbers speak for themselves. I look forward to getting more detail on that from the Crown.

My second question concerns the Moorov doctrine, which is highly relevant to many of the cases that we are discussing today. We heard compelling points from victims of such crimes in our private sessions. I will not go into great detail, but they felt that the practice was perhaps misunderstood. They felt that they misunderstood the implications of that type of prosecution, and that juries perhaps misunderstood the consequences of the decisions. That is well documented in the public paper that we have produced.

Will the Lord Advocate or the Crown Agent comment on what measures the Crown is taking to improve communication on Moorov as practice and on whether they feel that it is an appropriate and successful metric for prosecuting people in complex and multiple circumstances?