Professor Kenneth Armstrong comments on the Scottish National Party’s roadmap for a second independence referendum.

The Scottish National Party’s (SNP) manifesto for May’s Holyrood elections are centred around the roadmap for Scottish independence. A majority win in May would provide an electoral mandate for this roadmap, with the SNP then needing to consider how the party will approach this with Westminster.

One option would be to repeat the 2014 referendum on Scottish independence that saw the UK government grant a section 30 order under the Scotland Act, 1998, granting Holyrood the competence to legislate for it. The act states that Holyrood cannot normally legislate on reserved matters, such as the union. However, recent UK prime ministers have repeatedly refused this request.

The SNP have recently proposed to introduce a referendum bill to the Scottish parliament without a section 30 order. This action would likely result in a legal challenge to settle whether holding a referendum on the union counts as a reserved matter and is therefore beyond Holyrood’s competence. Such a challenge would likely end up in the supreme court.

Professor Kenneth Armstrong, Fellow at Sidney and Professor of European Law, explained that the job of the supreme court is to test the scope of the reservation in the Scotland Act. Armstrong commented, “Is the Scottish parliament competent to legislate for a referendum on independence even while the union remains reserved? The structure of devolution is such that everything is devolved unless it is reserved so it follows that the court ought to interpret reservations narrowly.”

An article in the Guardian, A rocky route to a Scottish independence referendum, looks at the SNP’s options in more detail.


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