Fatal Accident Inquiries

Speech delivered on Thu 27th Mar 2008

Scotland is widely perceived to be a reasonably safe place to live and it is relied on as such. Whatever activity someone takes part in, be it white-water rafting, bungee jumping or simply a day at work, it has been fully risk assessed for any reasonable eventuality. If an accident occurs, we have committed emergency and health care professionals at hand to deal with problems. That comprehensive approach to safety means that when something goes tragically wrong it is often all the more inexplicable, so it is right to have in place a rigorous, reliable and efficient system to assess why the multitude of fallbacks and regulations failed.

Whether the current system meets the standard I have described is at best questionable. Michael McMahon gave us a good example of when families want an FAI and feel that they have been let down because no judicial inquiry has been undertaken. As several members have said, the Fatal Accidents and Sudden Deaths Inquiry (Scotland) Act was passed in 1976. Everybody agrees that, 30 years later, it looks old, tired and inefficient. I think that Michael Matheson made the

good point that any future legislation should be flexible.

Angus Robertson MP perhaps summed up the situation best when, on the seventh of this month, he described the system as "beleaguered and backlogged". That statement formed part of his second claim of SNP action on the issue, further to his remarks of June last year, when he said that the new SNP Government had acted to ensure that the Scottish legal system played its part in investigating overseas military deaths.

I am pleased that Frank Mulholland has said that Lord Cullen's new review will report in a year and I agree entirely with Margaret Smith that the issue is extremely complex and that time needs to be taken to get it right, but will the cabinet secretary give us an idea of how soon after the inquiry concludes the Government will take action?

Several pertinent questions need to be asked before we move forward. For example, should the number of mandatory inquiries be greater? Could the system cope with more? Do we supply sufficient information to victims' families? Bill Aitken was right to say that families need more assistance with how to ask for an FAI-with what the system is, where to go and who to ask. Many families seem unaware that if they do not call for an FAI from the outset, they will not have a second chance to do so. For those reasons, I fully support the upcoming review.

I agree with the comments of Frank Mulholland, Margaret Smith and others about Lord Cullen. I am delighted that one of my constituents-a man who is well known in the legal profession, who has significant experience in public inquiries and who is a former Lord Justice General-has agreed to take on the review. I suggest that, for him, retirement has not lasted long. However, it is also important to examine what can be done now to speed up the process, particularly for inquiries into the deaths of service personnel.

Margaret Smith and others have comprehensively covered fatal accident inquiries in the military, so I will not go into the detail, but I offer my support to all those who spoke. Keith Brown made a telling speech that used his personal experience and he brought a personal perspective to the issue.

I regret to introduce slight discord into the debate, but I must ask whether the Scottish Labour Party supports the remarks of Des Browne, the UK Government's Secretary of State for Defence, who has called for strongly worded criticism of the Ministry of Defence to be outlawed from inquests into soldiers' deaths. Surely if an inquiry system is to function in any practical sense, it cannot be censored by any Government, any Government official or any Government minister. The fact that a senior UK Cabinet minister would suggest anything to the contrary is deeply troubling.

I strongly welcome the inquiry into FAIs and I am delighted that Lord Cullen will lead it. I will support Margaret Smith's amendment at decision time and I suspect that most members will do likewise.

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