General
To be effective, an ASP may require consequential provision to be made to the law relating to reserved matters or the law elsewhere in the UK, such as, for example, to make cross-border provisions for prisoners. It may also be necessary to provide for the enforcement of provisions of an ASP in the rest of the UK where this may be necessary or desirable to maintain a coherent scheme of enforcement throughout the UK. An example might be legislation making the conditions of Scottish fishing licences enforceable as a matter of English law.
However, the legislative competence of the Parliament to make such consequential provision is extremely limited. It may be able to make certain consequential amendments of the law on reserved matters by virtue of paragraph 3 of Schedule 4 but this power is very limited and, in any event, it does not enable the Parliament to legislate otherwise than as a matter of Scots law. Many consequential provisions require to take effect in the law of England.
Similar problems also apply to subordinate legislation made under an ASP and certain other classes of subordinate legislation made under a Westminster Act, such as a statutory instrument made by Scottish Ministers under powers transferred under section 53 and which is subject to supervision by the Scottish Parliament.
Accordingly, this section enables the UK Government to make subordinate legislation to deal with the consequences of provision made by or under an Act of the Scottish Parliament or by such subordinate legislation.
