Crime and Courts Bill [HL]

Lord Mackay of Clashfern Excerpts

Monday 10th December 2012 Lords Chamber

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, we need to be a little careful about adhering to the rules of Report.

[Lord Mackay of Clashfern]

My Lords, the noble Baroness has referred to something that happened about 20 years ago in relation to experiments in Scotland. As she said, judges there were able to make arrangements for televising trials without any change in the statute law because there was no statute restricting that possibility. A considerable number of cases were televised under that arrangement. The television authorities put together a programme because, interested though they were in Scotland, it was nothing in comparison with the interest they had in proceedings in England, for reasons which perhaps an 18th-century Scottish judge might have speculated about. Anyway, that was the fact.