The Commission's relationship with The Scottish Parliament

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Today we’re going to be talking about the way that Human Rights are enshrined in the way Scotland is governed.  Well, ten years ago this year, the new Scottish Parliament opened its doors and devolution brought the chance for Human Rights to be placed at the heart of how laws are made in Scotland. 

Those taking part:

• Jenifer Johnston and I’m the Communications Manager at the Scottish Human Rights Commission. 

• Bruce Adamson, Legal Officer for the Commission.

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BA:     Well, the devolution settlement, the process that lead up to the Scottish Parliament, gave Scotland its own Parliament for the first time in 300 years and Section One of the Scotland Act of 1998, the legislation that created the Scottish Parliament sets it up fairly succinctly in Section One, saying, there shall be a Scottish Parliament.  That created something new that wasn’t there before.  It transferred responsibilities for devolved issues, directly to the people of Scotland which means that we that live in Scotland have much more direct control over significant aspects of running our country.  It also means that the rate in which legislation is passed in Scotland, that deals specifically with Scottish issues has increased exponentially and this creates a great deal of pressure on the limited resources that we have to ensure that the rights of everyone in Scotland are safeguarded and protected.  As a check and balance to their legislative competence, the Scottish Parliament was restricted to those things that are compatible with convention rights.  Those rights that are set out in the European Convention on Human Rights and covered in the Human Rights Act.  So the very basis of the Scottish parliament, the whole power is linked to Human Rights, which is really exciting and it’s quite revolutionary by world standards.  With the Scottish Parliament, a minister or an MSP, anyone who’s bringing forward a proposal for legislation, for a change in the law, they actually have to make a statement at the start of that process that they believe what they are suggesting is within the competence of the Scottish Parliament, that it complies with the Human Rights obligations that we have in Scotland.  Before that bill becomes law, before that proposal actually has any force, the presiding officer of the Parliament has to make a statement of legislative competence.  He or she has to say that this piece of law will respect peoples’ Human Rights.  So they’ve got this kind of check on the exercise of power which they don’t have in many other countries in the world.

JJ:       So this system is quite different to the way laws are formed in Westminster Parliament, says Bruce.

BA:     The Parliaments at the UK level and at Scottish level, they are very different, they work in very different ways, but I think one of the most basic ways of putting it is that the UK Parliament Westminster can still pass law that’s incompatible with Convention rights.  They can still take that stand and breach people’s Human Rights and the remedy for that is for the courts to declare that it’s incompatible, but they can still do it.  The Scottish Parliament can’t.  Its legislative competence is restricted, so if the Scottish Parliament tried to make a law that breached people’s Human Rights, a court could declare that not to be law.

JJ:       Human Rights are not just an integral part of the way laws are made, but they play an important role throughout the business of the whole Parliament. 

BA:     The Scottish Parliament places a great deal of weight on its committees.  They’re much more active and they’re much more involved in the processes of the Parliament than in other countries in the world.  So any time a new proposal comes forward, there’ll be a lead committee that is assigned to look at that legislation or to look at that area and those committees are made up of a cross-party group of members from different parties within the Parliament, they’ll actually look and scrutinise a proposal and they’ll apply Human Rights principles to doing that.  So it’s an open process.  It’s something that is very engaged and it means that members of the public, through their MSPs or engaging by giving evidence to those committees can actually bring Human Rights concerns out into the open very easily.  The Scottish Parliament also has kind of less formal ways of raising Human Rights issues.  There’s a cross-party group on Human Rights, where again, members from all the parties meet informally with interested members of the public.  The group meets every couple of months and that’s a forum whereby members of the public or members of the Parliament can bring forward issues of concern, whether they relate to policy proposals or what’s happening in practice around Scotland, but it’s important because it’s a parliamentary forum and the MSPs that attend can then raise those things through the formal parliamentary processes.  Other Parliaments do have kind of cross-party groups or all party groups, but the difference is in Scotland, that I think it’s much closer to the people and those members then sit on the committees that can scrutinise the bills and so something that’s raised in the cross-party group can quickly become something that is raised on the floor of the Chamber or in one of the committees.