Independence Referendum

Part of the debate – in the Scottish Parliament at on 21 March 2017.

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Photo of Adam Tomkins Adam Tomkins Conservative

It is a real pleasure to follow my friend and colleague Bruce Crawford in the debate. If the whole of the debate could be conducted in the tone that Bruce Crawford just set, perhaps we would not be quite such a divided country.

States in the United States of America have no right to secede. The Spanish constitutional court takes the same approach to Catalonia. In Canada, Québec and the other provinces also have no unilateral right of secession. The Supreme Court of Canada ruled in 1998 that a

“clear expression of the desire to pursue secession” in a referendum would give rise to an

“obligation on all parties to Confederation to negotiate constitutional changes to respond to that desire.”

However, the obligation on Canada and on the other provinces would be to

“come to the negotiating table”:

they would not have a duty to deliver secession. The court expressly rejected what it called an “absolutist proposition”—the court’s words, not mine—that there would be a legal obligation on the other provinces and the federal Government to accede to the secession of a province, subject only to the negotiation of logistical details.

The contrast with the United Kingdom position is clear. The United Kingdom made it perfectly plain in 2012 to 2014 that if Scotland voted yes, Scotland would leave the United Kingdom and become a new independent state in international law. Canada never made that concession in the Québec secession referendums and, in 1998, the Supreme Court upheld Canada’s decision not to do so. So, the United Kingdom takes a remarkably generous approach to secession.