Digital courts will require 'legislative rethink'

Legislation will need to be reviewed if Scottish courts are to fully embrace digital in dealing with criminal cases, the head of the service has told Holyrood.

Eric McQueen, chief executive of the Scottish Court Service (SCS), said that legislative changes – while “not necessarily major” – would have to be made in certain areas. 

It came as Lord President Lord Gill, Scotland’s most senior judge, announced plans to allow certain court proceedings to be broadcast live on television.

Case records, for instance, are currently sent electronically from Police Scotland to the Crown Office to the court service. “But paper copies are still deemed to be, in legislation, the principal copy,” said McQueen. 

“So there is work we’ll need to think through with justice organisations about actually, how do we reframe and change legislation to allow us to move away from paper being the principal document in criminal business to allow in electronics.”

SCS now sends 55,000 bail orders digitally to Police Scotland, while a pilot later this year will see arrest warrants sent electronically to the single force. 

“We’re trying to make big improvements in the areas where we’ve got the flexibility and we’ve got the legislative cover to do that, while at the same time trying to look at the slightly medium term about what legislative change would still be required to allow the use of digital to replace paper in those particular areas,” says McQueen. 

“We can carry on making progress in some of those areas in the next couple of years – it may well take two or three years before we get to the stage we might want to be in criminal business.”

Meanwhile, McQueen confirmed the court service is set to undertake a major expansion of video-conferencing links with prisons throughout Scotland after a successful pilot in Glasgow.

SCS is currently working on plans to expand links for full committal hearings to Dumfries, Stranraer, Edinburgh, Kirkwall, Lerwick, Aberdeen, Inverness and Peterhead sheriff courts over the coming months.