Register of interests will drive away legal talent, says top judge

● Lord Carloway issues warning after call for more transparency

Scotland’s most senior judge has warned that the prospect of introducing a “register of interests” for the profession would drive the country’s top legal minds away from joining the bench.

Lord Carloway told MSPS yesterday that the move would be “detrimental” to justice in Scotland, with the top courts already facing problems in recruiting judges to serve.

Lord Carloway is Scotland’s Lord President, the head of the judiciary, which means he presides over the court system, as well as ruling in some of the country’s most important High Court cases.

He set out his opposition to the prospect of a register which would see judges declaring their financial and

0 Lord Carloway said the judiciary is already finding it difficult to recruit people to become judges

“Therefore we have particular difficulties with recruitment at the moment.

“If I were to say to senior members of the profession, which they are before they are recruited into the judiciary, ‘By the way if you wish to become a judge you will have to declare all your pecuniary interests and open them to public scrutiny’, I have no doubt whatsoever that would act as a powerful disincentive from lawyers of experience and skill becoming members of judiciary.

“I can assure the committee that we need them more than they need us.”

Scotland does not have a “career judiciary”, with prospective judges instead gener- ally being identified from the cream of the country’s lawyers and invited to join the bench from private practice.

The register has been proposed in a petition by Scots law blogger and legal rights campaigner Peter Cherbi.

SNP MSP Alex Neil yesterday questioned whether it should be left to a judge only to decide whether they would “recuse” themselves from a case if there was a potential conflict of interest.

But Lord Carloway insisted there is no need for a register of interests until it is “demonstrated that there is corruption” in the Scottish judiciary.