The Lord Advocate:

I will answer the second question first. In the prosecution service, procurators fiscal investigate crime and prosecute in the sheriff and district court. With solemn cases, an important distinction exists. To ensure that decisions that are taken in our most serious cases are reinforced and that a collegiate approach is taken, Crown counsel take the decisions separately from procurators fiscal. It would have been inappropriate for the procurator fiscal who prepared the case and who was therefore close to the investigation to prosecute it.

Further, in light of the duties of the Solicitor General and the Lord Advocate, it would have been well-nigh impossible for the Solicitor General to prosecute the case. I would like to be in court every day of the week—it is what I joined the prosecution service to do some 24 years ago. I am a prosecutor, not a politician, and my career came through my love of advocacy, as did the Solicitor General's. Although we try to be in court for major and significant appeals as well as for short trials—the Solicitor General was in court this week—the volume of work of a law officer and the need to advise and supervise cases from throughout Scotland simply do not allow us to disappear from the Crown Office to prosecute cases for four, five or six weeks, which is the time that many such cases can take.