Lord Advocate

Earl of Kinnoull Excerpts

Wednesday 8th July 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Curran (Lab)]

I recognise the depth of the argument that the noble Lord has put forward and understand the issues at stake, which are live in Scotland. We also have to acknowledge that this has implications for the Scottish Government, because they are responsible for the justice system and for prosecutions in Scotland. I am sorry to repeat the point, but the best way forward, I believe, is for joint co-operation between the UK Government and the Scottish Government. But, believe me, this is a live issue for the UK Government; it is one that is on our agenda and which we will pay attention to.

[The Earl of Kinnoull (CB)]

I also welcome the Minister to her seat. The conflicts that have been described are particularly bad for political party and election law. The Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000, which applies to the whole of the United Kingdom, has an enormous raft of criminal offences. If you look down that list of criminal offences and compare them with the facts in the Murrell mess, you will see that there are quite a lot of things that may well come up and would present a terrible conflict straight away to the Lord Advocate. Given that the political party concerned there is one that operates nationally and is represented in our Houses, it is a UK Government thing and therefore I very much support what the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, has just said. One way to do something about it now would be to say that at the next interministerial group this will be the number1 item on the agenda and the group will not move on to the second item on the agenda until there is a satisfactory conclusion to something which is potentially so damaging to our democracy.

[Baroness Curran (Lab)]

What an interesting suggestion. I thank the noble Earl for putting that forward. I will take that back to the department. I draw his attention to the Scottish Government-commissioned McMillan report which looked into these roles. It was a very limited report and was not required to make any recommendations, but even so it highlighted some of the conflicts of the job and some of the political tensions that are there. So I can commit to making sure that I have that discussion with the Secretary of State.