Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

My Lords, I am pleased to move this amendment. It was suggested to me last year by the Law Society of Scotland and I tabled it last November—it seems like quite a long time ago. The amendment clarifies the basis on which a judicial review of the certification by the chief or regional counting officers of the ballot papers counted or votes cast in the referendum may be taken. As the Minister will know better than anyone present, now that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, has left the Chamber, judicial review is different in Scotland from other parts of the United Kingdom. In Scotland, a petitioner must have both title and interest to sue. In England, only interest is required. We submitted as inequitable in the context of a referendum on United Kingdom voting that the challenges to the count are based on separate legal rights north and south of the border. In order to have title to sue, a person, "““must be a party…to some legal relationship which gives him some right which the person against whom he raises the action either infringes or denies””." This is from the case of Nicol (D & J) v Trustees of the Harbour of Dundee 1915. In his Report of the Scottish Civil Courts Review, Lord Gill, the Lord Justice Clerk, has recommended in paragraph 25 that the current Scots law on standing is too restrictive and that the separate tests of title and interest should be replaced by a single test: whether the petitioner has demonstrated a sufficient interest in the subject matter of the proceedings. This would make the position the same in Scotland as it is in England for anyone who wanted to challenge the result of the referendum, as recommended by Lord Gill. The amendment seeks to give effect to that recommendation.