The Scottish legal system differs greatly from the English system and has always done so. Prisoners that are arrested under Scottish law remain under Scottish, not British, jurisdiction. A recent example of this was when al-Megrahi, the Lockerbie bomber, was offered in a deal with the Libyans to return home from the British Government. This deal was promptly blocked by the Scottish Government and al-Megrahi remains a Scottish prisoner. This shows how Holyrood has the power to overrule Westminster over certain issues.
An issue that, on the other hand, shows how little control Scotland had over certain issues is the reserved power of negotiations with the EU. This issue, particularly over fishing, is very important to Scotland but less so to England – however, a UK Minister makes the decisions on fishing quotas in which an MSP doing so would be far more appropriate. This highlights show a lot of the most vital decisions are still made at Westminster.
The Scottish Government has full control over education in Scotland, with an entirely different authority (the SQA) in place than England. The SQA has improved drastically in previous years and is now internationally recognised as an excellent learning system. For example, Holyrood recently reorganised a shakeup of the secondary education system to benefit the students through the SQA, in order to further improve its academic qualities. Clearly, through different organisations, Holyrood still makes some very important decisions for the Scottish people.
The UK Parliament still has a number of very important decisions to make – energy is another issue that is Westminster’s responsibility. The British Government recently chose to introduce a number of new nuclear power stations into the British countryside without consulting the Scottish Parliament. This shows how major issues are still made in Westminster.
However, on the other hand, the Scottish Parliament also has the power to refuse Westminster’s wishes to site new power stations in Scotland. This is since Scotland has control over planning rights, and can refuse these permissions from the Westminster over and over again. This highlights that Holyrood still has the power to control every part of Scottish soil, allowing it to utilise every square inch as it sees fit and allowing it to refuse to surrender it to others.
On the whole, the evidence to suggest that Holyrood does have some significant powers, but Westminster still controls the majority of the powers that are vital to Scottish people. In the future, Holyrood will require fiscal autonomy from Westminster as well as a variety of other powers, in order to claim it governs all of Scotland’s interests.