Reply to petition: Devolution Strategy and Scotland Team Constitution Group Cabinet Office 1 Horse Guards Road London SW1A 2HQ Our reference: TO2014/25 15 October 2014 Dear Sara, Thank you for your email of 24th September 2014 regarding your thoughts on the Scottish Referendum. I am responding as a member of the team that worked on the Scottish Referendum at the Cabinet Office. As you will no doubt be aware, on 18 September 2014 the Scottish Independence Referendum took place and Scotland decisively voted to stay part of the United Kingdom. Voters in Scotland were asked to answer Yes or No to the question “Should Scotland be an independent country?” 55.3% voted No and 44.7% voted Yes. 84.6% of the electorate participated in this historic vote to decide Scotland’s future. In line with the Edinburgh Agreement, the UK Government is committed to respecting the outcome of what has been a fair, legal and decisive process. The Scottish Independence Referendum Act 2013 set out the legal framework for the referendum, including restrictions on Scottish Government publicity. The Act provided a 28-day restricted period from 22 August 2014 to 18 September 2014. During this period, the Scottish Government and Scottish public authorities operated under statutory restrictions on the publication of information. Under the Edinburgh Agreement, the UK Government committed to act according to these same restrictions. The announcement of a proposed timetable for further devolution was made by the Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat parties, and not by the UK Government and as such there was no breach of the restrictions above. For its part, the UK Government focused on making a strong and positive case for the Union and you can find more information that helped inform the debate here: https://www.gov.uk/government/topical-events/scottish-independence-referendum. As the Prime Minister said on 19th September, now it is time for our United Kingdom to come together, to move forward and turn this into the moment when everyone – whichever way they voted – comes together to build that better, brighter future for our entire United Kingdom. The Government remains committed to working in the best interests of the people of Scotland and of the whole of the United Kingdom. Thank you for raising your concerns. Yours sincerely, Alice Adamson My response: Dear Alice, Thank you for your reply. I’m afraid, however, that it does not address the points made in the correspondence. Firstly, I did not send you “my thoughts” but a petition signed by more than 1500 people. All 1540 signatories of the petition are entitled to be included in the Cabinet’s team's response. Secondly, instructing this petitioner on the outcome of the vote is both irrelevant and disrespectful, implying that both the petition and the associated correspondence were by way of a reaction to the referendum outcome. Have you actually read the correspondence or the original petition? The petition was originally presented to the Electoral commission in response to Mr Osborne’s televised interview of September 7th. It made a plea for enforcement of the terms of the SIRA to protect the integrity of the referendum. When no action was taken, it became instead a plea for the investigation of willful and calculated breaches of the SIRA and the consequent impairment of the integrity of the referendum. As it originated well before the final vote on September 18th, it cannot possibly be construed as prompted by a refusal to accept the outcome of the referendum. Yet you appear to consider it, or perhaps you would prefer to consider it, in this way. Thirdly, an assertion of untruth does not close the matter to discussion. You state: The Scottish Independence Referendum Act 2013 set out the legal framework for the referendum, including restrictions on Scottish Government publicity. The Act provided a 28-day restricted period from 22 August 2014 to 18 September 2014. During this period, the Scottish Government and Scottish public authorities operated under statutory restrictions on the publication of information. Under the Edinburgh Agreement, the UK Government committed to act according to these same restrictions. The announcement of a proposed timetable for further devolution was made by the Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat parties, and not by the UK Government and as such there was no breach of the restrictions above. As you are no doubt aware, both Mr Cameron and Mr Osborne publicly, and quite rightly, distanced themselves from the referendum campaign, refusing to enter into a public debate with proponents of Scottish independence on the grounds that this was a matter for the people of Scotland to decide. Mr Osborne’s televised interview, therefore, in which he committed the government of the UK to new and far-reaching powers for the Scottish Parliament in the event of a ‘No’ vote is not capable of being interpreted as representative of a party or of a delegated campaigning body. He spoke as, and was understood to speak as, a member of Her Majesty’s government. Without the ‘green light’ from the government itself, given publicly by Mr Osborne, neither the representatives of the delegated campaign body ‘Better Together’ nor any individual party members could have published binding promises to the people of Scotland, (represented as a ‘vow’, which is a legally binding contract under Scottish common law). Had you read the body of the petition, you would be aware that many postal voters considered themselves disenfranchised by this announcement. They had already voted on a simple choice between Scottish independence and maintaining the status quo at the time when the remainder of the Scottish electorate were offered another choice. The new option amounted to the ‘devo max’ which Mr Cameron had originally excluded from the ballot and this was now backed by the televised guarantee given by Mr Osborne, speaking as a member of Her Majesty’s government, on September 7th. Voter disenfranchisement is a serious breach of democratic principle and electoral code. It was precisely this that the terms of the SIRA had been designed to preclude. Such a response to these grave matters as that which you have provided on behalf of the Westminster Devolution Strategy and Scotland Team of the Cabinet Office strikes me, as it will strike many thousands of Scots who will read it, as examples of the apparent contempt in which our government holds the democratic process and the presumption by which it assumes the authority of the law itself, redefining it at will to mean whatever that government wishes it should mean. I thank you for the clarification of what seems to be an essential difference between Scottish law and government and that pertaining in England. The power to redefine law or to hold oneself above the law is an exercise in exclusive prerogative and, therefore, absolutism. Under Scottish law, (by which the UK government agreed to be bound for the purposes of the Scottish referendum), I believe that no such right can exist for any person or body, public or private. Clearly a resolution of this matter cannot lie with those who have arrogated to themselves the embodied power of legal prerogative. And we who petitioned for the rule and spirit of the law to prevail must, therefore, hope that it can become a matter for the Scottish courts to decide.