News / Carmichael legal hearing to be broadcast live
NEXT week’s court hearing challenging the election of Alistair Carmichael as Orkney and Shetland MP is to be broadcast live and in full by STV.
The channel will have cameras inside Court 1 at the Court of Session in Edinburgh – the first time a UK broadcaster has televised Scottish court hearing – on Monday.
In June a crowdfunding appeal to challenge the MP’s victory in May’s general election raise over £60,000, while a second appeal was launched late last month.
Monday’s hearing will be the first time an Election Court has been convened in Scotland since 1965. Beginning at 10.30am, it will be heard by judges Lady Paton and Lord Matthews.
STV said it would broadcast live on STV Glasgow and STV Edinburgh, and stream the proceedings on its website. The internet stream will allow constituents in Shetland and Orkney to follow proceedings.
The petitioners – Timothy Morrison, Phemie Matheson, Fiona Grahame and Carolyn Welling – are using the 1983 Representation of the People’s Act to argue that Carmichael is not fit to hold office.
It stems from the fallout after Carmichael leaked a confidential government memo to the Daily Telegraph a month before the election and then lied about it during a Channel 4 News interview.
The memo claimed Scotland’s first minister Nicola Sturgeon had privately told the French ambassador that she would prefer David Cameron to be elected prime minister over Ed Miliband – which both Sturgeon and the ambassador categorically denied.
A Cabinet Office inquiry announced two weeks after the election that Carmichael had been behind the leak. He apologized to Sturgeon and the ambassador and gave up the severance pay he would have been due as Scotland’s secretary of state.
But the MP faced down calls for him to resign and trigger a by-election, with some constituents taking to the streets of Lerwick and Kirkwall in protest.
STV head of news Gordon Macmillan said: “STV News is delighted to have the opportunity to provide this groundbreaking broadcast. We were the firsts broadcasters to film sentencing in a criminal trial in 2012.
“This is a significant advance in the televising of the Scottish courts and it will provide an important live insight – most especially for Mr Carmichael’s constituents – into the legal process in this case.”
A spokesperson for the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service said it had held “constructive discussions with all parties involved” and it was pleased STV would be screening the hearing.
“Guidelines have been put in place to allow proceedings to be streamed live in this exceptional case, which will enable constituents in Orkney and Shetland and across the whole of the UK to view the trial.”
The broadcaster will also provide television pictures from the Election Court to other broadcasters and media organisations, while journalists will be allowed to use Twitter to tweet live updates from the hearing.
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