Your Right to Decide

The people of Scotland have the right to decide their future

If the UK is a voluntary Union, its nations should be able to decide whether to stay part of it, or not.

Membership of the Union has been characterised as much by change as by continuity. Before 1921, Ireland, along with England, Wales and Scotland, formed part of the United Kingdom. Of the current members of the UK, only Northern Ireland has a legal right to decide to stay part of it or not enshrined in its constitutional arrangements.^[25]

As the Welsh Government put it more recently, if the UK is a voluntary association of nations, then:

“… it must be open to any of its parts democratically to choose to withdraw from the Union. If this were not so, a nation could conceivably be bound into the UK against its will, a situation both undemocratic and inconsistent with the idea of a Union based on shared values and interests.” ^[26]

Welsh Government, 2021

That the people of Scotland have the right to decide Scotland’s constitutional future has been accepted across the political spectrum.

A UK Government paper published before the 2014 independence referendum set out that:

“Successive UK Governments have said that, should a majority of people in any part of the multi-national UK express a clear desire to leave it through a fair and democratic process, the UK Government would not seek to prevent that happening.”^[27]

UK Government, 2013

And UK Prime Ministers have consistently supported the principle of the people of Scotland’s right to decide:

“as a nation, [the people of Scotland] have an undoubted right to national self-determination; thus far they have exercised that right by joining and remaining in the Union. Should they determine on independence no English party or politician would stand in their way.”^[28]

Margaret Thatcher, former Prime Minister, 1993

“… no nation could be held irrevocably in a Union against its will …”^[29]

John Major, Prime Minister, 1993

“our Union rests on and is defined by the support of its people […] It will endure as long as people want it to—for as long as it enjoys the popular support of the people of Scotland and Wales, England and Northern Ireland.”^[30]

Theresa May, Prime Minister, 2019

There was also a cross-party consensus within Scotland about the right to decide. Before the independence referendum, the parties campaigning for Scotland to stay part of the UK made a joint statement:

“Power lies with the Scottish people and we believe it is for the Scottish people to decide how we are governed.” ^[31]

The leaders of the Scottish Conservatives, Scottish Labour Party, and Scottish Liberal Democrats, June 2014

And following the independence referendum, the cross-party Smith Commission, containing representatives of all parties in the Scottish Parliament, agreed that:

“… nothing in this report prevents Scotland becoming an independent country in the future should the people of Scotland so choose.”^[32]

The Smith Commission, 2014

The independence referendum in 2014 therefore took place against a background where it was understood by those leading the debate, and by those voting, that it was an exercise of a right that belonged to the people of Scotland, and that would continue to belong to them even after having exercised it once.

The right to decide has been recognised for a long time. The Claim of Right for Scotland was signed by a range of figures from across the political spectrum. It begins by acknowledging:

“… the sovereign right of the Scottish people to determine the form of Government best suited to their needs.”^[33]

A Claim of Right for Scotland, 1989

Resolutions supporting the Claim of Right have been debated and discussed at Holyrood and Westminster. In January 2012 the Scottish Parliament agreed the motion:

“That the Parliament acknowledges the sovereign right of the Scottish people to determine the form of government best suited to their needs and declares and pledges that in all its actions and deliberations their interests shall be paramount and asserts the right of the Scottish people to make a clear, unambiguous and decisive choice on the future of Scotland.”^[34]

Scottish Parliament motion, 2012

In July 2018, the House of Commons agreed the motion:

“That this House endorses the principles of the Claim of Right for Scotland, agreed by the Scottish Constitutional Convention in 1989 and by the Scottish Parliament in 2012, and therefore acknowledges the sovereign right of the Scottish people to determine the form of government best suited to their needs.”^[35]

House of Commons motion, 2018

In Wales, the Independent Commission on the Constitutional Future of Wales explored ways to strengthen Welsh democracy. While concluding that a range of options were possible, from the status quo to independence, the Commission agreed in January 2024 that it was for the people of Wales to make any decisions:

“We want to make clear at the outset that we consider all the constitutional options to be viable. Each has strengths, weaknesses, risks and opportunities. The choice between them depends on the value attached to these, and the trade-offs people wish to make between those outcomes. These choices are ultimately for the people of Wales and their political representatives to make.”^[36]

Independent Commission on the Constitutional Future of Wales, 2024

While its existence in principle is broadly accepted, the people of Scotland’s right to determine their constitutional future is not a theoretical one: it is a real one, that they have used before, and that they have used to change Scotland’s constitution.

In 1997, following the election of a Labour UK Government with a manifesto commitment to holding referendums on devolution, a referendum was held on the establishment of a Scottish Parliament. The people of Scotland chose devolution.^[37]

In 2014, following the election of a Scottish Government with a manifesto commitment to giving the people of Scotland the choice of independence, an independence referendum was held. Every vote in that referendum, whether for Scotland to become independent or not, was part of an act of self-determination by the people of Scotland. At that time, the people of Scotland chose to stay part of the United Kingdom.

Both of these votes were exercises of the people of Scotland’s right to decide their constitutional future.

In the Scottish Government’s view, Scotland’s place as one of the nations of the UK therefore rests on three things:

• the acceptance, by the UK and Scottish Governments and by the UK and Scottish Parliaments and by the people of Scotland, of the right to decide and the precedent of the 2011 Scottish Parliament election and 2014 referendum
• the decision, by the people of Scotland in the 2014 independence referendum, that Scotland should continue as part of the UK
• the ability of the people of Scotland to decide to exercise their right to decide again, at any point in the future

Without any of these three things, in the Scottish Government’s view, promises of the UK being a voluntary Union of nations would be hard to maintain. It could no longer be claimed that the consent of the people, across each part of the UK, was holding the Union together.