Sections 29 and 30: Words in legislation to which Part 4 applies
114.The principal purpose of sections 29 and 30 is to ensure that sections 24 to 26 do not apply to legislation originating from the UK Parliament.(3)
115.One effect of this is to exclude (for example) any words in an Act of the Scottish Parliament which relate to reserved matters (or which are otherwise outside the legislative competence of the Scottish Parliament in terms of section 29(2) of the Scotland Act 1998). In order to be law, such words must have been inserted into the Act of the Scottish Parliament by legislation made by, or by virtue of power conferred by, the UK Parliament (meaning that section 29 would not apply to the words).(4) But UK legislation relating to devolved matters (whether enacted before or after the establishment of the Scottish Parliament in 1999) is also excluded from the application of sections 24 to 26, due to originating from the UK Parliament.
116.For the purposes of sections 29 and 30, words inserted, by legislation made by, or by virtue of power conferred by, the Scottish Parliament, into legislation originating from the UK Parliament are not considered to be “in” the Act of the Scottish Parliament or (as the case may be) Scottish statutory instrument which inserted them into the UK legislation. This is because the words are only ever operative as part of the UK legislation into which they are inserted. Such words are therefore considered to form part of the UK legislation into which they are inserted. This means that sections 24 to 26 do not apply in relation to (for example) a new section inserted by an Act of the Scottish Parliament into (for example) the Education (Scotland) Act 1980, since the new section is considered to form part of the 1980 Act (which is excluded from the application of sections 24 to 26, due to having originated from the UK Parliament).
117.Following the same principle, words inserted, by legislation made by, or by virtue of power conferred by, the UK Parliament, into (for example) an Act of the Scottish Parliament do form part of that Act of the Scottish Parliament. But sections 29 and 30 ensure that sections 24 to 26 do not apply in relation to such words, as explained below.
This is in response to the Supreme Court judgment in the Reference by the Attorney General and the Advocate General for Scotland – United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (Incorporation) (Scotland) Bill [2021] UKSC 42), which found that sections 24 to 26, in the form in which they originally appeared in the “
This is because, under section 29(1) of the Scotland Act, an Act of the Scottish Parliament which purported to contain provision, enacted by the Scottish Parliament, relating to a reserved matter would not, to the extent it exceeded the Scottish Parliament’s legislative competence, be law.
