The challengers to the Named Person legislation didn't fare much better on appeal from Pentland (Court of Session (3)) to the Inner House of the Court of Session, comprising of Lord Justice Clerk Carloway, Lord Bracadale and Lord Malcolm. The most generous interpretation of the Inner House decision is that at least they had the good grace to restore the charity petitioners as competent petitioners in the proceedings.
However, 'the mere creation of a named person', mused the judgement at paragraph 68, 'has no effect whatsoever on the relationship within the family and the assertion to the contrary, without any supporting basis, has the appearance of hyperbole'. Quite, your lordships, and missing completely the whole point of the argument!!! Hyperbole indeed!!!
The petitioners took the fight to The Supreme Court in London. There, the five justices had no difficulty whatsoever in finding that 'the information-sharing provisions of the Children and Young People (Scotland) Act 2014 are incompatible with the rights of children, young persons and parents under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights'.
The Supreme Court turned the decisions of Pentland, Carloway, Bracadale and Malcolm on their head and ruled that the Scottish Parliament had, indeed, acted beyond its legislative competence in passing the Act. To say that this is a serious rebuke to both the nationalist government and the Court of Session is to grossly misunderstand and misapprehend the ruling.
We, ourselves, who know next to nothing about either politics or the law, have had serious concern about the Scottish Parliament more or less from Day One and increasing concern for some years now about the Court of Session. Quite simply, in our view, neither government nor court is up to the job and their persistence and perseverance in defending the indefensible is ample testimony to that.
The Supreme Court turned the decisions of Pentland, Carloway, Bracadale and Malcolm on their head and ruled that the Scottish Parliament had, indeed, acted beyond its legislative competence in passing the Act. To say that this is a serious rebuke to both the nationalist government and the Court of Session is to grossly misunderstand and misapprehend the ruling.
We, ourselves, who know next to nothing about either politics or the law, have had serious concern about the Scottish Parliament more or less from Day One and increasing concern for some years now about the Court of Session. Quite simply, in our view, neither government nor court is up to the job and their persistence and perseverance in defending the indefensible is ample testimony to that.
The unanswered questions are how could, firstly, a government and parliament and, secondly, a supposedly equitable and mature court, get a fundamental Human Right so completely wrong?
The answer must lie in the calibre of individual running those institutions. We have known since the inception of the Scottish Parliament that the calibre of its politicians is dire but we should expect more, much more, from what are alleged to be Scotland's top lawmen. It is simply bizarre to describe judicially a wholly legitimate Human Rights legal action as 'speculative, hypothetical and hyperbole'.
The logical deduction from the whole scenario is that these guys wouldn't know a Human Right if it crashed through their heads from the heavens above. They should all go back to Law School.
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