§ 34. Mr. Bill Walkerasked the Solicitor-General for Scotland when he next expects to meet the procurator fiscal of Perth to discuss prosecution procedures.
§ The Solicitor-General for ScotlandI have no immediate plans to meet the procurator fiscal of Perth.
§ Mr. WalkerWhen my hon. and learned Friend meets the procurator fiscal of Perth and other procurators fiscal, will he discuss with them the problem of those who plead guilty on second diet and see what he can do to ensure that the procurators fiscal persuade them to plead guilty on first diet, before public funds must bear the cost of bringing police officers and witnesses to court, when the individual has decided to plead guilty without going to trial?
§ The Solicitor-General for ScotlandI know that my hon. Friend is worried that there are too many cases where a plea of guilty is tendered on the day of the trial. However, I emphasise that my noble and learned Friend the Lord Advocate has given instructions to the procurators fiscal that it is part of their duties to meet defence solicitors to discuss the evidence available to the Crown, to arrange minutes of admissions of evidence and to give defence solicitors copies of statements of witnesses whose evidence is regarded as formal or technical. I hope that defence solicitors will take up the initiative, which should result in many members of the public, both witnesses and jurors, being allowed to stay at home and not be required to attend court.
§ Mr. DewarIs it not a little surprising that the Solicitor-General and his colleagues should be so worried 299 about this problem, when they legislated for it in the Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act 1980 with intermediate diets and judicial examination procedures? Is the reason for the anxiety the fact that those provisions have been only a limited success, or even a failure?
§ The Solicitor-General for ScotlandNo, it is not. The hon. Gentleman told me himself that there is surprising success in the use of judicial examinations.
§ Mr. Gregor MacKenzieOn a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I hesitate to raise such a point of order, and I believe that it is the first that I have raised in my 18 or 19 years in the House. You will recall, Mr. Speaker, that we have dealt with only 12 Scottish questions today. You may respond, properly, by saying that perhaps the questions, or the answers, were too long. However, my point is that there are more than 40 Labour Members, three Liberal Members, two Scottish Nationalist Members and three SDP Members on the Opposition Benches, and more than 300 20 Members of the Conservative party here. In calling hon. Members, as you do properly, on a geographical basis, it gives the Conservative party an advantage of 2:1 over thase of us who represent Labour interests in the House of Commons. Although I do not ask you to make a judgment now, perhaps at some stage you will consider this real problem for those of us who sit on the Opposition Benches.
§ Mr. SpeakerOne advantage of having been in the House for a long time is knowing that whatever happens now has happened before. When I had the great privilege of speaking on Welsh affairs in the House, one side of the House had 32 Members representing Welsh constituencies out of 36 and the other side had four such Members. None the less, the Speaker of the day felt obliged to hold the balance in the political sense and to cross the Floor both in the Welsh Grand Committee, of which I was chairman, and here. But of course, I shall consider what the right hon. Gentleman said.