The Scottish government announced the introduction of the Victims, Witnesses and Justice Reform (Scotland) Bill to Holyrood yesterday.

Defence lawyer Matthew McGovern, of McGovern Reid, said the firm would “not be accepting instructions in any case forming part of the pilot”.

He added: “No client of McGovern Reid will be ever exploited as part of a social experiment to satisfy the demands of the special interest groups. This pilot is not in the interests of justice.”

He told STV News the pilot scheme is “unjust and unfair”. He said: “I’m not against changes to the criminal justice system, but everybody making an accusation and the accused has to have confidence in the fairness of the process.

“They have to have a mechanism to give their evidence and their story in a manner compatible with well informed practice. That’s the danger of the bill.

“It’s too important to experiment in the manner the Scottish government seems to be proposing. The fairest possible system is trial by jury.

“A jury comes together with collective life experience, issues of unconscious bias are mitigated against a cross-section of society, ethnicities and gender, socio-economic background. That system is infinitely better than relying on a single judge to make that decision.

“If there’s a system tilted towards a particular outcome, it ceases to be a fair system, it’s rigged.

“People in Scotland want a fairer system, if they or a friend or relative were in the dock they would want the system to be fair. Juries are the best way to protect that.”

Dean of Faculty, Roddy Dunlop KC, said: “Matthew speaks, as always, with sense and passion. But, more prosaically, which accused would ever be happy to be part of a pilot scheme, much of the point of which is to increase conviction rates?”

Solicitor Advocate Ross Yuill said: “The concern is raising serious questions around fairness in the criminal justice system.

“We’re concerned by the suggestion that juries are in some way unable to be considered competent to deal with sexual offences but could be trusted to deal with offences such as murder.

“In short, either the jury system works for all offences or it doesn’t. There should be no distinction based on the types of cases being prosecuted.

“Proposals to make such a fundamental change to the courts system – where the stated aim is increasing conviction rates – is extremely concerning. We are of the view it should be opposed.”