The COVID-19 pandemic has been the greatest threat to our freedoms that any of us have ever experienced, and hopefully ever will.
But, in Scotland, over the last decade, there has been a silent attack on our freedoms that many of us, including myself, failed to notice until a year ago. The withholding of information, the manipulation of figures and the persistent misattribution of credit, has left the Scottish public with less of a hold on reality than in any time since 1999.
Scotland used to have the world's most respected judicial system, but for several reasons this is no longer the case. We now have a government who turns a blind eye to indiscretion, who rewards prisoners with the right to vote, and who believes that wasting millions on several botched legal cases can be explained away by nothing more than an apology and a swift brush under the carpet. It cannot.
The role of the Lord Advocate is one that needs a serious process of reform. It is unfathomable that the chief legal adviser to the Scottish Government, should also be the same person who is Scotland’s chief public prosecutor. Of course, this means that in practice, all prosecutions are pursued in the name of a de-jure member of the Scottish cabinet. Now, of course, the Lord Advocate can be summoned to Parliament to answer questions from MSPs. But, as we have witnessed this past week, the Lord Advocate can avoid questions as much as the most experienced politician.
This is why the position of chief public prosecutor in Scotland MUST be separate from the chief legal advisor to the Scottish Government.
Integrity of the judiciary and a fundamental confidence in the system used to be a certainty in Scotland. This is no longer the case.
We must retake our institutions from the clutches of events and re-establish them as beacons of Scottish national life.
Reuben Earl
