DEVOLUTION IN SCOTLAND AND WALES = PR PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION

...Under the Scotland Act of 1998, neither of these precedents has been followed.  The Scottish parliament and Executive will have their OWN direct relationship with the CROWN, as occurred in NORTHERN IRELAND.

The Secretary of State for Scotland will not be an intermediary, as he would have been under the provisions of the SCOTLAND ACT of 1978.  Under the 1998 Act, the relationships between the Scottish parliament and Executive and the Crown will be mediated by the Presiding Officer of the Scottish Parliament, an elected person, rather than a Governor.  It will be the Presiding Officer of the Scottish Parliament who carries out the SOVEREIGN'S function in SCOTLAND.  It will be he who, under section 46 (4), will recommend to the QUEEN the appointment of a particular FIRST MINISTER after the Scottish Parliament has nominated one of its members to undertake that position; and it will be he, not the FIRST MINISTER, who will, under the provisions of section 3, seek a DISSOLUTION, when the appropriate  circumstances obtain.

This is an entirely novel arrangement in BRITAIN and the role of the Presiding Officer in SCOTLAND may well come to resemble the SPEAKER in SWEDEN, who has taken over the SOVEREIGN'S CONSTITUTIONAL PREROGATIVES there since the time of the new SWEDISH CONSTITUTION, the INSTRUMENT of GOVERNMENT, in 1974.

On the Continent indeed, the Speaker tends to be an active party member with direct involvement in the organisation of parliamentary business, while the BRITISH and COMMONWEALTH conceptions of the SPEAKER imply a strictly impartial presiding officer.  It is this Continental conception which is being introduced in Scotland, and it is possible that if it is successful there, it will be used by some  as an ARGUMENT for a WESTMINSTER SPEAKER being given a similar role to that of the PRESIDING OFFICER in the exercise of the SOVEREIGN'S PREROGATIVES.  However, the new functions proposed for the PRESIDING OFFICER in SCOTLAND make it rather than less necessary that he or she should be STRICTLY IMPARTIAL.

Relationships between the Scottish Parliament and the Scottish Executive will be quite different from those between Westminster and the United Kingdom government.  For the processes of government-formation and the dissolution of parliament are bound to be more complex in a fixed term parliament which is elected by

PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION

than in a parliament such a Westminster elected under

THE FIRST PAST THE POST SYSTEM

where a prime Minister can normally obtain a dissolution at the moment of his own choosing.

[Which is responsible for much of the trouble we have at present with Gordon Brown]

It is difficult therefore to understand the rationale for the GOVERNMENT'S contention in par. 2.6 of the WHITE PAPER, Scotland's Parliament, Cm. 3658, that 'the relationship between the Scottish Executive and the Scottish Parliament will be similar to the relationship between the UK GOVERNMENT and the UK PARLIAMENT.

[To be continued]

Legislation for Devolution

by

Vernon Bogdanor

(1999-2001)

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MAY-2009