THE EXECUTIVE

Justice Minister Cathy Jamieson said: "I hope that everyone with a stake in delivering a high-quality fingerprint service will look constructively at the recommendations that relate to them. If we can all do that, then I share the committee's view that this will be an opportunity to collectively move forward.

"I accept the committee's view that much of the hard work in transforming the fingerprint service is still ahead of us. The committee have rightly identified key areas that require management direction and support - in culture, in consistency, and in communication. Government does not have a monopoly on good ideas and I welcome the committee's recommendations about what further steps may be needed.

"The convener and chief executive of the new Scottish Police Services Authority will be working with me in the coming weeks to ensure we have detailed actions and people in place to deliver the aims of the action plan.

"Clearly, a focal point of the committee's inquiry has been the Shirley McKie case. No one underestimates the difficult issues that this case has thrown up.

"The committee has been required to sift through a weight of conflicting evidence and views - often passionately argued."



THE MCKIES' CAMP

Iain McKie, Shirley McKie's father, said: "After all this, the report is fairly anodyne, but we expected that. It has added confusion to confusion, and they have not taken matters on. They have totally devalued the science of fingerprinting and unless we have a judicial inquiry we will never sort anything out."

Mike Russell, the former SNP MSP, added: "The committee have worked long and hard but they have not told us very much.

"Fingerprinting is science - either a fingerprint is or is not identified, or there are insufficient grounds to make an identification, but it is not just a question of people's views. We now know beyond peradventure that HMCIC's reports were never implemented.

"It was all a fiction, which means Cathy Jamieson misled parliament.

"The minister should not be in office because as custodian of a system rooted in science she said things that were shamefully not true.

"As for the suggestion that there should have been a gagging clause on the compensation offer, for a committee of a parliament that is meant to be founded on principles of openness and accountability to say that is something which people will find abhorrent."



THE SCRO CAMP

Fiona McBride, one of the four original SCRO experts, said: "I am pleased because it shows that there was no malice involved. The salient points were that we weren't malicious or vindictive.

"We have been vindicated and it is still the case that all the marks that were disputed, so-called, where we were supposed to be in error, were all found to be correct by SCRO. The only one that they haven't looked at is Y7."

Ms McBride is still working for the SCRO and intends to remain there, even although she can no longer give evidence in court. She said the new chief executive, David Mulhern, was under "political pressure" to do something. "He's going to find it very difficult to do something about us, as there's clearly nothing wrong with us."

She also said that she would welcome a judicial inquiry. "I noticed at the Justice 1 hearings Ms McKie didn't answer many questions and got quite hostile. On the other hand, we answered all the questions," she said.

Ken McIntosh, one of the MSPs who championed the cause of the SCRO staff, said: "The fundamental case was there was a malicious conspiracy, that the SCRO staff in some way fitted up Shirley McKie. That has been demolished in what I hope will be the last in a line of inquiries."