My Lords, I will not delay the Committee long. This is rightly an opportunity for the legal profession to look at the terms of the Bill in some detail. The reason for my interest stems from the fact that I know Rosepark home. I was born and brought up in Lanarkshire and I have friends and family who knew people who were lost in the Rosepark fire. The sense of anger that the Minister referred to is palpable in the community. These people have not been well served by Scottish justice because of a quirk in the law.
It is never easy reading the evidence or the result of a fatal accident inquiry, but in Rosepark home it was made clear that the failure to have adequate fire safety provision was the reason for the loss of life. There was one particular protocol that required the fire brigade should not be called until the source of the fire was identified. As a consequence, nine minutes elapsed before the fire brigade was notified and a further four minutes were lost because it was called to the wrong gate. The fatal accident inquiry therefore concluded that four of the 14 could have been saved had proper action been taken.
The Minister has already set out the three attempts that were made to bring the Balmer partnership to answer for these matters in court. On all three occasions the loopholes in the law allowed them, to put it bluntly, to get off the hook.
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