The Crown – reserved or not

A comment on Joan McAlpine’s blog (1) about the Crown Estate asks a good question – are crown estate matters not reserved? This is the source of much confusion. The Crown Estate Commission is reserved as are most Crown revenues. But the property of the Crown is not – see Schedule 5 (3) (1) of Scotland Act. That means the seabed is property under the jurisdiction of the Scottish Parliament. It actually already belongs to us. Problem I have is that it is administered by the CEC in London. I advocate transferring title from Crown to Scottish Ministers and then on to local authorities as that is only way to competently remove CEC from equation under the existing devolution settlement.However, even in the absence of doing that, Scottish Ministers could, as a consequence of the devolved property rights be doing much more to lever influence but they’ve chosen not to. I think I know why but it will take a bit more digging.

(1) permanent pdf saved here.