Name: Scottish Affairs Committee
Uploaded: 2026-11-11T14:21:15+00:00
Duration: 8202 s

00:03 - 00:24

Oratore 1

Good afternoon, and welcome to this meeting of the Scottish Affairs Committee, our second meeting of the day. And this afternoon, we're resuming our inquiry into the dual role of the Lord Advocate, and we're very pleased to have our first witness here today at this afternoon. So, would you like to introduce yourself and what you do?

00:24 - 02:53

Oratore 2

Yes, thank you very much, Chair. My name is James Wolffe. I was the Lord Advocate between 2016 and 2021. I currently have a variety of professional and charitable and other things that I do. I needn't tell you that the Lord Advocate is responsible for a number of functions which are fundamental to the maintenance of the rule of law in Scotland.

Those functions could be distributed and organised in other ways. Various models are available, and no institution should be immune from critical review. As Dr Cormack explained to you last week, all approaches to the organisation of the functions, which in Scotland are held by the Lord Advocate, involve trade-offs. There are some significant strengths in the current system, and if reform is to be proposed, we should be clear-eyed about those strengths and about the complexities and trade-offs that would be involved in moving to an alternative model. And we should do it with absolute confidence that the current system for the investigation and prosecution of crime in Scotland is, has been and remains robustly independent of political interference.

I accordingly welcome the opportunity which your inquiry offers to reflect on these issues, and I welcome the commission which the Scottish Government has given to Lord Boyd of Duncansby to review the office. I think, as you know, Chair, I'm giving evidence in an entirely personal capacity, and there are some limitations on what I can say. The first is that my I can only speak directly to my own time in office, and that's increasingly becoming historic. Like all professional lawyers, I am subject to obligations of confidentiality, and I currently sit in a judicial capacity both in the UK and in the Channel Islands, and you wouldn't expect me to take a position on issues of live political controversy. But I have thought about the nature of this office.

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