Labour MSP Patricia Ferguson has launched a consultation exercise over a proposed member’s bill to reform Scotland’s Fatal Accident Inquiry (FAI) System.

The proposed Inquiries into Deaths (Scotland) Bill is intended to re-enact with amendments the Fatal Accidents and Sudden Deaths Inquiry (Scotland) Act 1976 in the follow ways:

“(a) to extend the scope of inquiries to cover work-related deaths not resulting from accidents, such as deaths from industrial diseases and deaths resulting from exposure at work to certain substances

(b) to make the process of investigating deaths quicker and more transparent, to refer appropriate cases to specialist sheriff courts, and to give the families of the deceased person a more central role in the process”

According to Patricia Ferguson, the Bill aims to put families who had suffered the loss of a loved one at the heart of the FAI system.

Speaking at the launch of the Bill, she said:

“As my consultation highlights, there are many families who have had to fight the system – sometimes for many years – just to be granted the right for an FAI to be heard. They have felt excluded, exasperated and angered by a system which is simply not fit for purpose. I hope that through this consultation, we will create the foundations for a new system which will address these serious issues and provide a mechanism which allows families to understand what happened, why it happened and feel reassured that provisions are being made to prevent it happening again to someone else.”

The consultation will run until 22nd November 2013.

Contains Scottish Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Scottish Parliament Licence v1.0.

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