Current Petitions

Improbably, I confess that I have considerable sympathy for the petitioner’s point of view. His last letter suggests that the petition is born of unsatisfactory personal experience. The question is, how do we address the rare occasions when people act in a way in which they should not? All the replies that I have read have glossed over that issue and assumed that a court reporter will automatically act in the best interests of everyone concerned and could not be maliciously motivated. I do not believe that court reporters are often so motivated, but that may happen occasionally, because we are all human. Clearly, the petitioner thinks that it has happened, but no one seems to want to address that issue.As is often the case, I am not quite sure what else we can do, other than invite the people to whom we have already written to consider the issue that the petitioner raises. If someone is not doing their job properly and the presumed professionalism is not there, what mechanisms exist or, more particularly, should exist to pick that up?

When we visited Govanhill—

In that case, I have nothing to say.15:30

I agree with Bill Butler and Nigel Don that we need to continue the petition. Importantly, the petitioner has raised the issue of how court reports can be amended to reflect accurately the views that have been expressed. We should seek to establish what procedure is available to anyone who thinks that they have been misrepresented and that the report does not accurately reflect the issues that have been discussed or the case as presented. We should also seek to resolve the issue that Bill Butler raised in relation to the Gill report. I ask the committee to support my view that we need to clarify how an inaccurate report can be amended.