Overview

• The procedural hearing at Capital House in Edinburgh examines applications by the Scottish Police Federation and Scotland’s Solicitor General to remove Lord Bracadale over five private meetings with Bayoh’s relatives.
• Critics say those meetings granted the family unfair advantage by sharing testimony and documents ahead of other core participants.
• Lord Bracadale requested the hearing himself and defended such meetings as standard practice in public inquiries, pledging to rule after hearing all submissions.
• The inquiry has already cost around £50 million and logged 221 days of testimony in its examination of alleged racism and excessive force in Bayoh’s 2015 death in custody.
• Bayoh’s family dismisses bias claims as a tactic to derail accountability and estimates the two-day recusal hearing has added £1–2 million to public costs.