A BID to force Scotland’s judges to register their financial and other interests is nearing crunch time after being before the Scottish Parliament for four-and-a-half years.
Scots law blogger and legal rights campaigner Peter Cherbi lodged a petition in 2012 calling for the Scottish Government to create a “Register of Pecuniary Interests”, and the Petitions Committee has been hearing the case for the bill ever since.
The Committee will hear from Scotland’s most senior judge, Lord Carloway, the Lord President, this Thursday, June 29. He is expected to oppose the register, as his predecessor Lord Gill did.
The National has revealed that MSPs across the parties there is support for a register, and Lord Carloway’s evidence is being seen as the final occasion for consultation before the Committee decides whether to refer the issue to Parliament for action.
Evidence has emerged from the USA which Cherbi hopes will convince Committee members to back the Register. The United States Supreme Court has just published the financial interests of its nine justices, and an organisation called Fix the Courts says it has used the register to persuade two justices to sell their shares in companies.
Cherbi said: “As demonstrated by the US Supreme Court and the declarations of interest by the nine justices, judicial transparency is a good thing and is to be encouraged.
“The requirements of disclosure, and ease by which US justices do comply with requirements of such declarations, is a striking comparison with the bitter five-year policy of anti-transparency from Scotland’s judiciary who pulled out every stop to delay, and even demand an end to, the highly detailed investigation by the Public Petitions Committee on Petition PE1458 for the creation of a register of judicial interests in Scotland.
“This register is achievable. The time is now. This would be a good move for the Scottish Parliament to demonstrate its hand and view on transparency.
“If our elected 129 MSPs can live with a register of interests, then the unelected 700 members of Scotland’s judiciary should also be required to declare their interests.
“Lord Carloway should take note of these changing times, and greater expectation of transparency upon those who govern either by election or by law, by moving forward without further delay and creating requirements for all members of the judiciary to register their interests in a publicly available register at least matching the quality and detail as provided by justices in the US justice system, and in other jurisdictions around the world.
“Given the quality of these disclosures, and publicity afforded to them in the United States, I will be providing records of the US Justices disclosures to the Public Petitions Committee for their due consideration.”
Cherbi is also hoping to use American evidence to broaden the whole issue of transparency in Scotland’s justice system.
He said: “I believe we could learn a lot from how the issue of judicial transparency and declarations of interest are handled in the US, along with implementing a more open and accessible form of access to court documents and cases in our publicly funded courts.
“The US has the PACER system, which allows anyone to find out information about cases in court. And so it should be the same for Scotland, where the courts, judiciary and prosecutors are fed hundreds of millions of pounds of public cash every year, with very little accountability on how it is spent on a justice system that two successive Lord Presidents, Lord Gill, and now Lord Carloway, have both condemned as being stuck in the Victorian era.”
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