Chamber and committees

This information is not held centrally. However, we are addressing the timeliness of reporting with the police and other reporting agencies.

The reduction in business in the district court is a consequence of the reduction in the overall number of cases reported to the procurator fiscal, the availability of fiscal fines and other alternatives to prosecution and the shift in the balance of business towards more serious crime.

The adjournment of a trial on the date of the trial usually involves the payment of expenses to witnesses who have been inconvenienced. The adjournment of a trial at any time means that staff time in preparing for the trial (including administrative staff time in citing witnesses, arranging for productions to be in court and paper handling) has been wasted. The extent of that wasted expense depends on how long before the trial date it is known that there is to be an adjournment.

We are addressing the timeliness of reporting with the police and other reporting agencies.

We are addressing the timeliness of reporting with the police and other reporting agencies.

This information is not available.

This information is not held centrally. However, we are addressing the timeliness of reporting with the police and other reporting agencies.

Police officers inform the procurator fiscal, in the report which they submit, of any dates on which they will not be available. Procurators Fiscal take that information into account in accepting suggested trial diets. Lothian and Borders Police are, with the co-operation of the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service and the Scottish Court Service piloting arrangements for police rostering, leave and availability to be checked immediately before trials are fixed. Early indications are that significant reductions in adjournments are being achieved as a result. Grampian Police are also, with the co-operation of the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service and the Scottish Court Service, piloting a similar process but one based on direct computer access in court. Such measures are designed to ensure that, so far as possible, trial dates are fixed when police officers will be available.

We are implementing the recommendations of the recent management review. Additional prosecutors have been recruited and structural changes are being made to improve the management support given to prosecutors.

It is, by statute, one of the duties of a police officer to attend any court of law for the purpose of giving evidence. Procurators Fiscal have been instructed in the following terms: "Procurators Fiscal should take steps to ensure that no more witnesses are cited than are necessary to prove a particular case. Procurators Fiscal are therefore urged to examine carefully the question of who should be cited to attend in a particular case, with the aim of ensuring that unnecessary witnesses are not cited. Police witnesses speaking only to a non-reply to caution and charge or to forms raised by the police in terms of the detention provisions of section 14 of the Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995 are unlikely to be necessary witnesses. In summary cases Procurators Fiscal should therefore rely where appropriate on the presumption offered by section 280(A) of the Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995 and should take steps to ensure that such witnesses are not normally cited (or, where they have been cited, countermand them once the position becomes clear). Where there is ample other evidence consideration should also be given to the need to cite both police witnesses speaking to an incriminating reply by an accused. For the avoidance of doubt two police witnesses will of course be required to speak to 'special knowledge' replies".