A description of the Human Rights Act 1998 and its implementation.
When the Scottish Parliament was established, the Scottish Ministers were given the ability to exercise powers within devolved competence. These powers were previously exercised by UK Government Ministers pre-devolution. The Scottish Ministers cannot exercise these powers in a way which would breach human rights. Section 57(2) of the Scotland Act provides that a member of the Scottish Government does not have the power to make subordinate legislation or to do any other act in so far as the legislation or act is incompatible with the Convention rights. This is similar to the position under the HRA, albeit slightly more stringent, given that under the HRA a court can only strike down secondary legislation made by a Government Minister, provided that the secondary legislation was not required to be drafted in that way because of a provision of primary legislation.