@Alicehar78 Good question. How to answer this. Just a mo. Gonna take a minute to type.
@Alicehar78 The referendum bill is to allow the Scottish Parliament to hold referendums on a plethora of subjects which the Scottish Government wants to the people. Like something to do with new government policy. A bit like the referendum they had in Ireland on equal marriage.
@Alicehar78 It doesn't really have specific provisions with respect to the constitutional question. That's important and to understand why you need to turn to the Scotland Act 1998. In that act there is Schedule 5, "Reserved matters". It's basically a list of what competences are reserved...
@Alicehar78 ...to Westminster. Anything not on that list can be legislated for by the Scottish Parliament. Referendums in general not being on that list makes the referendum bill competent. However, the moment they seek to hold a referendum on independence,
@Alicehar78 that comes under "constitution" in Schedule 5 and is classified as a "reserved matter". In order to hold a referendum, specifically on independence / constitution, the UK Government would argue that they need a section 30 for Scotparl to legislate for it.
@Alicehar78 Section 30 is section 30 of the Scotland act and makes provision for something which would normally be reserved to Westminster to be temporarily devolved using a mechanism called an "order in council" to the Scottish Parliament. Thats what happened in 2014.
@Alicehar78 Now. The referendums bill is just for referendums in General, so the FM (this is just an example) is to call for a referendum on independence, the UK refuses a section 30 (already happened), she puts her foot down and decides to legislate for a constitutional referendum.
@Alicehar78 The first thing that happens is that the UK Government contests it, that stops the bill introduced for that referendum franchise to be put on hold and stop it from gaining royal assent (becoming law), meanwhile, the tories use that time waiting on the courts.....
@Alicehar78 ....to modify legislation at Westminster meaning by the time the court rules, while it may very well have been competent before, it is no longer competent. This is exactly the trick that the UK Gov pulled with the continuity bill.
@Alicehar78 So our case is going to the court BEFORE scotparl considers legislation for a referendum on indy without Westminster consent and the court would hopefully (and there are good arguments for it) rule that it was within the competency of the Scottish Parliament.
@Alicehar78 Then Scotparl legislates to hold one, they don't have to naff around getting into a battle over whether it is competent because they know it is competent, the court already said it was.
@Alicehar78 Also, the press can't then argue (if the Scottish Gov were to start the process of legislating for a referendum) that the whole things is ambiguous and uncertain because it wouldn't be.
@Alicehar78 As for what happens with the resultant reaction of WM, I'm not going to go into that for obvious reasons. But the short answer is that our case is getting the opinion of the court now (if the UK Government don't agree to our assessment) that a constitutional question....
@Alicehar78 is fully competent to be asked by the Scottish Government without Westminsters consent.
@Alicehar78 It's a reaaaaally complicated thing for people to wrap their brain around but I suspect that is deliberate in terms of the way Westminster set things up when the Scotparl was established. Just like the AMS voting system being designed to stop a majority.
@Alicehar78 Ambiguity creates fear and confusion. Fear and confusion are the tools that Westminster have been using in domestic and foreign policy for nearly 500 years.
@Alicehar78 The other wee thing is that you have to remember that the FM has been touting "section 30 section 30 section 30" for years. If she u-turns, the unionist press will be all over her like a rabbit in heat saying "it's a u-turn based on ambiguous assertions".
@Alicehar78 However, she goes to the electorate and says "Boris said no to section 30, 1888 members of the electorate have gained an opinion of the court saying it is competent for me to ask this question legislated for in this parliament"....she not only has the empirical evidence....
@Alicehar78 but the propaganda surrounding that is obliterated before she steps in front of that camera. Well you saw it 3 weeks ago when we published the legal opinion we commissioned from aidan o'neill.
@Alicehar78 That formal 45 page opinion caused ears to pop up all over Whitehall and people in the yes movement (officials) who were cautious about saying anything about a referendum without consent suddenly started coming forward.
@Alicehar78 Hope that answers yer question.
