Interesting Links for 08-06-2018

[andrewducker]

Belfast woman to challenge NI abortion law

(tags: NorthernIreland abortion )

Breakthrough pregnancy blood test can predict delivery date and help tackle risky premature births

(tags: babies pregnancy blood genetics )

Sucking carbon dioxide from air is cheaper than scientists thought

(tags: co2 Technology )

Edinburgh city-centre roads to close for Clean Air Day

(tags: edinburgh environment pollution scotland )

Comments

[skington]

Is the Sewell Convention actually codified anywhere, or is it just a tacit understanding?

One that a great degree of people at Westminster haven't properly internalised, i.e. that it makes (or should make, anyway) the UK a de facto weakly-federal system?

[danieldwilliam]

It's codified in the Scotland Act 2016 which amended Section 28 of the Scotland Act 1998

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1998/46/section/28

Depends a bit on your defintion of "normal" I suppose but the rules on statutory interpretion which make ministerial statements admissible as evidence for interpretation support my view that the judiciary has erred.

[danieldwilliam]

I think you are right that many Westminister politicians haven't internalised the apparant change in status to a de facto weakly federal state. I think Ruth Davidson has, which is why she keeps going on about independence referendums - she knows that the main thing keeping something a weakly federal structure true s de facto but not strongly true de jure is the threat the the threat of Scottish independence, so she wants to reduce the threat that Scotland will keep chuntering on about independence as an alternative.