Reality bites as courts get tough
AN INTERESTING day in the courts yesterday.
Good news for Jeremy Corbyn in the High Court in London and his continued attempts to have the Labour party limbo dance their way under the bar of those 29 per cent poll ratings.
Not so good for the Scottish Government, who have found themselves on the wrong side of the UK Supreme Court ruling over the controversial Named Person legislation.
Critics cheered as it emerged the plans to assign every child a named person such as a health worker or teacher as single point of contact have to be rethought.
The SNP, who introduced the legislation with good intentions, tried to spin the court defeat as really a victory and are determined to stick to the plan.
The court judgment isn’t actually such a shame for the SNP as a disgrace on the Scottish Parliament itself.
Every piece of legislation that comes through Holyrood should be compatible with the European Convention on Human Rights. Of course it should.
But because of the lack of scrutiny, and the skewed committee system in the last parliament, bad laws are being made by this nine to five, three days a week, legislature.
The Offensive Behaviour at Football Grounds Act is a case in point. The proposals to abolish corroboration thankfully fell apart as unworkable.
The new parliament, without an SNP majority on all committees, ought to see some kind of rebalance in the order of things. The child protection legislation will probably go ahead but the whole parliament, not just the government, have just had their papers marked “could do better”.