INDEPENDENCE campaigner Martin Keatings (right) has written to the First Minister and Presiding Officer expressing his “grave concerns” over publication of the route map to indy, a day after his Court of Session hearings about the People’s Action on Section 30.
He said he found it “more than convenient” that the plan by Constitution Secretary Michael Russell appeared in The National, which was in “direct opposition” to arguments against his action by agents acting for Lord Advocate James Wolffe QC – namely that his case was “academic, premature and hypothetical”.
In his letter to Nicola Sturgeon and Ken Macintosh, he said it was hard to believe that a member of the Scottish Cabinet released something “so substantial” regarding the constitutional question without some form of legal scrutiny and advice.
Keatings said one “reasonable” example could be that on one hand a “legal” referendum is advanced while simultaneously a potential legal challenge is declared.
“These are diametrically opposing viewpoints,” he wrote. “You cannot on one hand proclaim something to be beyond question, particularly in the case of enacting primary legislation, and then simultaneously assert that a question of vires could, in fact be raised in opposition to that position … These are incompatible statements and if this be the case, it would be a mistruth perpetrated on the general electorate.”
However, Keatings said if legal advice had been sought it was “highly unbelievable” that the minister would not seek advice from Wolffe, a member of the Cabinet, or the Scottish Government Legal Directorate (SGLD).
“Such advice does not happen overnight, so the question must turn to whether the SGLD, in representing the Lord Advocate in Keatings vs Advocate General and others, knew of this prior to the hearings on January 21 and 22,” he wrote.
“If they/he did, then why was the opposite position continued to be advanced before the court?”
Keatings has more than 10,000 backers of his action attempting to show the Scottish Government can hold indyref2 without “permission” from Westminster.
He said after the Scottish Government withdrew from the case, it allowed the Lord Advocate to advance “such obtuse statements of privilege as ‘it is not for the pursuer to stand in the shoes of parliamentarians’”.
Keatings added: “We continually stated that it was a conflict of interest for him to be purporting to act for the Scottish Parliament but also advancing arguments were previously advanced by the Scottish ministers.”
He said he was bound to ask if the Scottish Government, “in possible collusion” with Wolffe or his agents, “sought to withhold this route map from public view … to undermine the case that the Scottish Parliament already holds the power” to legislate for indyref2.
Keatings said he also wanted to know if Scottish ministers withdrew from the case, “because they had not given proper consideration to the gravity of the matters under discussion at the point of summons, instead fobbing it off to the Lord Advocate to represent both, and subsequently panicking when it realised that electorally damaging arguments had been advanced in the Scottish ministers’ name because the Lord Advocate had gone rogue”.
A Scottish Government spokesperson said: “The pursuer in this case chose to bring an action naming the Scottish Government, the Lord Advocate, and the Advocate General for Scotland as defenders. The Scottish Government is not defending the action.
“The procedure which the pursuer has used raises important legal and constitutional issues unconnected to the issue of independence. These could not be ignored and are the reason the Lord Advocate, as the Scottish Government’s senior law officer, maintained defences dealing with those issues alone.
“We have no further comment at this time while the matter is ongoing.”
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