In mid-2019, I acted as Advisor to the Scottish parliament’s Finance and Constitution Committee in its Stage 1 scrutiny of the Referendums (Scotland) Bill. The Bill proposed framework legislation for conducting referendums which were within the competence of the Scottish parliament.

The bill was widely interpreted, by the media and critics, as legislating for a second Scottish independence referendum. Indeed, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon had, prior to the bill’s introduction, set out an ambition of holding such a referendum by the end of 2020. However, the Scottish government argued that it provided a broad framework for referendums, and therefore had wider application than just a second independence referendum. It was a large and complex piece of legislation, covering calling a referendum, the electoral laws by which any referendum would be conducted, and regulation of campaign financing and conduct.

My new article, ‘More than IndyRef2? The Referendums (Scotland) Act 2020’, just published open access in Political Quarterly discusses this important piece of electoral legislation. It traces the evolution of the bill, through the various stages of scrutiny to being passed as the Scottish parliament’s final decision in 2019. It discusses its final provisions and argues that there are several innovations in the final Referendums (Scotland) Act 2020 worthy of broader note in electoral law more generally.

The article can be downloaded and read open access at this link: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1467-923X.12861

Alistair Clark, 9th June 2020