THE Queen has had advanced access to at least 67 Holyrood parliamentary bills, according to a Guardian investigation.
The practice, known as crown consent, is a custom inherited from Westminster and deals with legislation considered to affect the monarch's public powers, private property or personal interests.
The move, which has been condemned as anti-democratic, has been used repeatedly by the Queen in recent decades to secretly lobby for changes to proposed UK legislation before it is passed by parliament.
The extent of the procedure in Scotland has until now been unknown to the public.
Research has found 67 examples of Scottish laws being vetted by the Queen. They include bills dealing with property taxation, protections from tenants, planning lawsand a 2018 bill that prevents forestry inspectors from entering crown land, including Balmoral, without the Queen’s consent.
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Willie Rennie, the outgoing Scottish LibDem leader said the Scottish Governement must share details of the Queen's involvement. He said: “The SNP government must come forward and share the full extent to which this process has influenced the laws we live under.”
Royal courtiers and the Scottish Government refused to say how many of the bills were amended as a result of the Queen's intervention.
But The Guardian also found that lawyers for the monarch lobbied the Scottish Government to exempt her private land from legislation aimed at cutting carbon emissions.
The monarch now does not need to follow the rules set out in the Heat Networks Bill, which requires people to facilitate the construction of pipelines for heating using renewable energy, rather than fossil fuels.
Writing to the Queen’s senior aide on January 12, the First Minister’s principal private secretary John Somers said that under the legislation, companies and public authorities could force landowners to sell their land in order for green pipelines to be installed. The Queen is one of Scotland's major landowners.
The Queen with Nicola Sturgeon last month
Then on February 3, the energy minister Paul Wheelhouse's officials noted that the Queen’s lawyers had problems with the bill. Two weeks later, the Scottish Government was informed that the Queen had provided consent for the bill to be passed.
But during a Holyrood debate five days after that, the energy minister set out an amendment applying solely to land owned by the Queen in Scotland. It meant that firms and public authorities could not make a compulsory purchase of her land for the purpose of building a renewable energy pipeline.
READ MORE: Queen lobbied Scottish Government for exemption to climate law
At the time, former independent MSP Andy Wightman warned it was wrong to single out the Queen. Wheelhouse did not say the Queen’s lawyers had been lobbying, and told MSPs the amendment was “required to ensure the smooth passage of the bill”.
Following the Guardian investigation, Wheelhouse said exemptions for the Queen’s interests “are sometimes required as a necessary step”.
A spokesperson for the Scottish Government commented: “Scottish Government policy is that the Crown should be subject to regulatory requirements on the same basis as everyone else, unless there is a legitimate reason for an exemption or variation. However, Crown consent is required by law if a bill impacts the private property or interests of the sovereign – and that is what happened in this case.”
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