Interview: Cameron Ritchie, the new president of the Law Society of Scotland

Published on Thursday 2 June 2011 19:43

WHEN you lift your head above the parapet, you get shot at. Cameron Ritchie was a public servant long enough to realise that - and has been involved in the Law Society long enough to know that as its new president, he is now the one in the crosshairs.

Ritchie often looked on in disgust in his year as No. 2 to Jamie Millar as the incumbent president took all manner of brown stuff from certain members of the profession.

"It all became very distressing and distasteful, especially for Jamie," says the former fiscal. "Debate and disagreement are healthy and we cannot expect 10,500 members to agree on everything - but we cannot tolerate it when it becomes abusive and personalised."

Ritchie identifies the key flashpoints - the debate over alternative business structures (ABS) spilled over into the Millar presidency, before discussions ("that arise every so often", he reminds me) over the society's twin regulatory and representative role kicked in. "Some of the critics became much more robustly political," Ritchie says. "There were claims of dishonesty and lack of integrity, and it got very messy. It all came to a head with cuts to legal aid and accusations that the society had betrayed some of its members."

And then came the plans to change the society's constitution. "I thought that would be more gentlemanly," smiles Ritchie, "but it didn't quite turn out that way."

So why did critics, notably Walter Semple, go after Millar like a metaphorical ferret down a rabbit hole over his insistence that the society needed a new constitution to create a regulatory committee to comply with the new Legal Services Act? Semple accused Millar of deliberately misleading the profession, called for his resignation and lodged a claim of professional misconduct, which is being considered by the Scottish Legal complaints Commission and might come back to the society for determination.

"I have no idea why it was done - it is a novel way of dealing with a disagreement," says Ritchie.

Does he have the broad shoulders - metaphorically and physically - to deal with the inevitable criticism during his presidential term? He laughs: "Nobody likes being shot at; it's not a very pleasant experience. But I was public servant for 35 years (he retired as area procurator fiscal for Fife last year] and when you are in a public position, you get criticised - even if you are 100 per cent right. If you are going to lead, you have to be seen and some people will disagree with you."

Ten days ago, a compromise was reached at a Law Society special general meeting as basic amendments to the constitution were accepted, allowing the issue to move on. Does it signal peace in Ritchie's time? "There seems to be a spirit of co-operation appearing," he says hopefully."It's calming down - it's the first SGM for a while where we haven't had proxy votes."

Those proxy votes were a big deal in derailing a new constitution for the society at a watershed meeting on 25 March. Craig Bennet cast more than 520 proxies on behalf of the Scottish Law Agents Society (who insisted at the time they were "not wreckers" and went on to prove it by reaching agreement] at the SGM - and Austin Lafferty, now promoted to the top team as Ritchie's deputy, denounced them as "a weapon of war".

Does Ritchie agree? "I have never thought it right where effectively block anonymous voting can be carried out - because vast numbers are voting without hearing the debate. When we had the ABS vote, almost 4,000 votes were cast but there were only about 100 people there."

This is big issue for Ritchie as he looks ahead. "We have to get more members engaged," he says. "The critics are a small group of people and we have to be relevant to all members of the society." Later, he says new VP Lafferty can play a big part in improving communication and engagement with members.

As well as internal engagement, Ritchie is keen to develop a good relationship with the new government - and recognises it will be different to the days of minority government: "The SNP are now, in effect, the only show in town. We will not have the horse-trading with all the parties that we have had in the past, so it should be less complex.

"However, I think the lack of a revising chamber makes it very difficult when you have a majority government. In England, even when Labour had a huge majority, the House of Lords put checks on what they did.

"It is important that a check is put on pure, naked ambition of whatever political colour. This in a way happened during the four years of minority government because they always needed someone on side.

"Now we could get unrefined legislation in areas where we do not need it. We could also suffer from overlegislation. There is a danger, but we will have to wait and see how the government approaches it. I hope they will listen to others."

What does Ritchie think of the Scottish government's take on the Supreme Court?

"The Supreme Court serves a purpose and will continue to serve that purpose," he says. "I do not think we had any choice once we chose to adopt external sources of law such as the European Convention on Human Rights. I very much doubt we will ever pull back from that.

"The thing I find strange is the proposition that we will be better served going to a court on the other side of France, which has at most one UK judge, rather than a court in London with two of the finest Scottish legal minds.

"The Supreme Court is there, it's the law, let's use it - if others want to make political statements, it's up to them.I'm content to have it carrying out its job - it's doing it very sensibly and well."

Ritchie is also critical of the Scottish Government's reaction to the Supreme Court's Cadder ruling and feels it went way over the top: "We seem to have gone into a vast review of criminal law and evidence, none of which seems to relate to what the Supreme Court decided on Cadder, which was focused on a narrow and limited point." (The right to use evidence gathered during the initial six-hour period in which a suspect did not have the automatic right to a legal representative].

"Cadder had the potential to be far-reaching but does not seem to have had that effect," says Ritchie. "What impact did the case actually have on the criminal justice system? I'd like to have seen more evidence of the impact before this far-reaching review (by Lord Carloway].

"All the Supreme Court did was put something in place that should have been in place for years. (The decision] wasn't a justification for changing other parts of the system.

"Why redress unfairness by making something else unfairer? There was too much haste in response to the Cadder decision. They should have taken more time and perhaps asked the Scottish Law Commission to look at it."

Ritchie hopes that Carloway does not tinker with the law on corroboration. "I don't think it should be messed with at all. It is a right that every suspect has not to be convicted on the word of one other person. As a prosecutor, it always gave you confidence in taking a case to court that it was a strong case. It's a very sound approach and it's not clear to me what the thinking is about why we should do away with it."