Corroboration law could still go: Lord Advocate

The requirement for corroborating evidence in a Scottish criminal prosecution could still be abolished, according to Lord Advocate James Wolffe QC in a newspaper interview reported today.

Mr Wolffe told the Scotsman that ministers were considering a package of measures that would "improve the criminal justice system".

Recommended by Lord Carloway's criminal procedure review in 2011, abolition was supported during the last session of the Scottish Parliament by the then law officers, the Crown and women's organisations, but vigorously opposed by the legal profession and by opposition parties. After a series of further reviews, the proposal was eventually dropped from the Criminal Justice Bill passed in 2016.

Groups such as Rape Crisis Scotland maintain that the rule prevents many cases of rape and other sexual offences being brought to court because of the difficulty of finding independent evidence to support the complainer's account. Lawyers argue that the rule is an important safeguard against miscarriages of justice, although Scotland is the only jurisdiction to retain it.

In the most recent review, published in 2015, retired judge Lord Bonomy recommended a number of safeguards that should be enacted in place of the rule, including audiovisual recording of police station interviews with suspects, ending the practice of dock identification, qualified majority jury verdicts and publication by the Crown of codes of practice (click here for report).

Now the Lord Advocate has confirmed that ministers are working on new and "much more ambitious" proposals than before. Without committing the Government to a particular position, he commented: "The issue has not gone away. I think the question we will return to is, in light of all the work Lord Bonomy has done, there's a package of measures that would improve the criminal justice system."

Mr Wolffe was Dean of Faculty for part of the time that the advocates' professional body was campaigning in support of the rule.