Lamara Bell and John Yuill were travelling in a vehicle on the M9 near Stirling and later crashed. Unfortunately, despite a call being made to Police Scotland hours after the crash, the vehicle lay undiscovered at the bottom of an embankment for three days. The FAI found that Lamara Bell would probably have survived had it not been for the "organisational failure" in the call-handling system which allowed a human error to go undetected. Since the incident, Police Scotland has changed procedure regarding call handling and, as such, Sheriff James Williamson did not find it necessary to make any recommendations in terms of future actions.
Nine years passed between the deaths of Lamara Bell and John Yuill and the completion of the FAI. For that reason, Mr Rennie described the FAI system as "broken" in his letter to the Justice Secretary. Mr Rennie pointed out that the longer an FAI takes to begin, the more likely it is that the quality of the findings are undermined, especially when the delay prevents the Sheriff from being able to make recommendations. Mr Rennie called for FAIs to be removed from the remit of the Crown Office and instead be placed in the care of a newly created body, which will be required to begin inquiries within a year of the incident and to present results in a timely fashion.
The Justice Secretary responded in her letter to Mr Rennie that the Scottish Government has “every confidence in the system that is in place for FAIs” and therefore no review will be carried out into the system currently in place. Therefore, it seems unlikely we will see the Scottish Government carry out a review into the FAI system in the near future.
Should the FAI system ever be reviewed by the Scottish Government, legislators will need to consider whether they should introduce stringent rules as to how results are delivered, and set out reasonable timeframes that allow the system to function properly and diligently but without causing the delays which have been experienced in FAIs. This will be a difficult task given the range of incidents which require an FAI to be carried out, and the need to hear from many witnesses and expert witness.
Should you require any assistance in respect of a fatal accident inquiry, our commercial and insurance litigation teams in Scotland are able to provide support and guidance, please contact Andrew Lothian, Kris Kane, Ursula Currie, and Kirsty Waughman for more information.
