Carmichael election petition hearing to be broadcast live

The challenge in the Election Court to the election of Alistair Carmichael MP is to be broadcast live following an agreement between the Scottish Courts & Tribunals Service and STV for the hearing to be streamed live on the internet. 

The petition has been brought by a number of constituents challenging the election of the Liberal Democrat MP for Orkney and Shetland, after he falsely denied his involvement in the leaking during the general election campaign of a civil service memorandum concerning a conversation said to have taken place between First Minister Nicola Sturgeon and a French diplomat.

STV News has agreed to facilitate the live continuous broadcast of the court proceedings, which begin next Monday, 7 September, 10.30am in court 1 at the Court of Session in Edinburgh, before Lady Paton and Lord Matthews. 

At a previous hearing it was decided that there were special circumstances which rendered it desirable that the petition should be heard in Edinburgh rather than on one of the two island groups. To enable constituents to view proceedings, permission was granted by the Lord Justice Clerk, Lord Carloway, for live broadcast arrangements to be put in place due to the exceptional circumstances which this case presented.

Earlier this year a judge-led group, appointed by the Lord President to review the current policy on the recording and broadcasting of proceedings from Scottish courts, recommended that filming of legal debates in civil first instance proceedings might be allowed for live transmission, subject to clear and comprehensive guidelines.

While this general guidance has yet to be drafted, specific guidance setting out a number of conditions to enable filming to take place in this exceptional case was drafted and agreed.  

Using remotely-controlled cameras, STV has undertaken to share the live feed to all other media organisations wishing to broadcast on their respective platforms. Any other broadcaster which seeks to use the footage will be subject to the same conditions outlined in the agreed guidance.

STV will broadcast full coverage of the trial on the STV Glasgow and STV Edinburgh channels, which can be found at Freeview channel 23, Sky channel 117 and Virgin channel 159 in both broadcast areas. The live coverage will be available to watch online at stv.tv and will also be available on YouTube.

The court has also agreed that journalists will be allowed use Twitter to tweet live from the courtroom during the hearing.