A HOLYROOD committee is to call Scotland’s top judge to give evidence on whether members of the judiciary should disclose their outside financial interests.
MSPs want to hear from Lord Carloway, the Lord President, on why he believes it would be “inappropriate” for his colleagues to reveal details of shareholdings and other items.
The Public Petitions Committee has for four years considered a proposal by campaigner Peter Cherbi for legislation to require judges and sheriffs to publish their financial interests and any hospitality received.
Unlike politicians and board members of quangos, judges do not have to make these details known on a public register.
Lord Gill, the previous Lord President, opposed the plan and argued that the privacy of judicial office holders could be affected by "aggressive media or hostile individuals".
He wrote: “The establishment of such a register therefore may have the unintended consequence of eroding public confidence in the judiciary."
Gill created a standoff between the judiciary and the Parliament after he twice refused to give oral evidence in front of the Committee.
The legislation that set up the Scottish Parliament gives judges an exemption from giving evidence. He eventually agreed to attend in person, but only after he retired.
His successor, Lord Carloway, is also against the introduction of a register and explained his position in a letter to MSPs in February: “The proposal for a public register of the judiciary’s interests, gifts and hospitality is both unnecessary and undesirable.
“It is inappropriate for judges to make public comment beyond their judicial opinions in relation to individual cases. Therefore, unlike an elected representative or a member of the Government, a judge enjoys no right of reply.”
The Government is also opposed to the move and Ministers made their views known in a Holyrood debate in the last parliamentary term.
However, the petition is still live and SNP MSP Angus MacDonald, the committee deputy convener, said last week: “I would be interested to ask if he [Lord Carloway] would be keen to come in and give oral evidence to back up his earlier submission.”
Tory MSP Brian Whittle said: “I think the petition is not unreasonable. I would be quite keen.”
The Committee then agreed to ask Lord Carloway if he would be prepared to give oral evidence.
Cherbi said: “It cannot be right that such a highly-salaried group of all-powerful judges with significant assets, who can themselves alter the course of public life with their decisions, can exempt themselves from the same expectations of transparency which apply to the rest of us, including other public servants and even the Prime Minister.”
As a way of furthering transparency, the Judicial Office for Scotland (JOFS) introduced a register of recusals, which lists cases in which a judge or sheriff has absented himself due to a potential conflict of interest. Fourteen recusals have so far been declared this year.
A spokesperson for the JOFS said: “We are not in a position to comment as the Lord President has not received any such invitation.”
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