A lawyer acting for the bereaved families in the Clutha bar helicopter disaster has condemned the Scottish Government and the country’s top legal official, the Lord Advocate, for failing to stand up to big business and reform the investigation of fatal accidents.

Patrick McGuire, a partner in Thompsons Solicitors, which acts for several of the Clutha families and also for trade unions, told the Sunday Herald that “real, progressive change [in fatal accident inquiry procedure] was not a priority for the Government”. He added that it wanted to be “all things to all people” and “didn’t do much to oppose big business and the big insurance companies”.

“It clearly doesn’t have the appetite for the fight,” McGuire said.

His criticism came in the wake of the shock resignation of the prosecutor in charge of the Clutha inquiry, Tim Niven-Smith, which had been pencilled in for an as-yet-unknown date in the autumn, almost five years after the Eurocopter helicopter plunged into the Glasgow bar killing nine people in November 2013.

Fatal accidents are investigated by police, reports are submitted to the relevant procurator fiscal’s department and a recommendation for a fatal accident inquiry (FAI), or not, is sent to the Crown Office for a decision.

This newspaper asked the Crown Office how many inquiries were outstanding and how this compared with five years ago, and was told that the information was available under FoI.

However, we can reveal the shocking toll of uninvestigated prison deaths. There have been nine so far this year, three of these at Barlinnie in Glasgow. Four of these involved untried remand prisoners.

There are 54 deaths from the previous four years for which no FAI has taken place. The earliest death, that of 46-year-old Allan Smith, dates back to April 2014.

Fifteen of those who died were on remand. The figures do not include suicides or death by natural causes. The youngest to die was 17-year-old Raygen Merchant in Polmont Young Offenders Institution in October 2014.

Lawyers we contacted pointed to cuts to the fiscal service – the number of full-time fiscals is down six per cent since a high of 558 in 2009 – and the union representing them, the FDA, claimed in December last year that cuts to the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (COPFS) might mean budgets being slashed by more than one-fifth in real terms between 2009-10 and 2018-19. This is denied by the Government, which claimed that the budget for the present year of more than £114 million represented a real-terms increase in spending.

McGuire said: “My view is that this is more fundamental than that. I suggest this is only a small part of a much larger problem.”

This was, he claimed, a culture “starting at the very top” where there was an “unwillingness to stand up to big business” and that permeated the whole system, from government to the Lord Advocate, James Wolffe QC, and below. “If they want change then the Lord Advocate can effect that, but the stark evidence is that he hasn’t,” McGuire said.

In June 2015, the then Glasgow Labour MSP Patricia Ferguson introduced a Private Member’s Bill to reform the FAI system, supported by McGuire and Thompsons.

Under that legislation, there would have been a time limit on holding an inquiry, a sheriff would have been involved from the beginning of the process and any subsequent recommendations would have been legally enforceable, which they are not now, and failure to carry them out could have meant a conviction for contempt of court. Ferguson withdrew her bill under pressure from the SNP Government, McGuire claims, when it was made clear to her that it would not pass.

“Change will only occur when recommendations have teeth,” McGuire said. “Razor-sharp teeth.”

When Ferguson withdrew her bill the Government introduced, in 2016, the Fatal Accidents and Sudden Deaths etc (Scotland) Act, which allowed families of the bereaved greater access to the process.

“They had to be dragged kicking and screaming to pass it,” McGuire said. But the Act did not impose time limits or sanctions for non-compliance of recommendations, the crucial elements of the Ferguson bill.

The Law Society of Scotland was unwilling to comment.

A spokesman for the Crown Office said: “COPFS appreciates the impact lengthy investigations can have on those involved and we are committed to resolving them as soon as we can and keeping the families informed of significant developments. Our priority must be to carry out a full and thorough investigation and, in complex cases, this takes time.

“In relation to the Clutha helicopter crash, the investigation by the police, with officers working closely with our helicopter team, has been necessarily wide-ranging.

“It has involved the collection and consideration of a significant volume of documentation, including highly technical manuals and guidance, as well as the taking of detailed statements from witnesses, including professionals in the aviation industry.

“Some of that material and information has been ingathered from organisations based abroad. In an investigation such as this, the police and the Crown require to rely on the co-operation of companies and organisations in relation to, for example, provision of material and availability of witnesses for interview.”

McGuire said: “What may be surprising, but it’s significant, is that the Clutha families don’t want blood, they don’t want cash, what they are displaying is altruism, they just want to make sure it can never happen again.”