The Scottish Independence Referendum Bill was referred to the Supreme Court by Scotland’s Lord Advocate on the question of whether an advisory referendum on independence would relate to reserved matters.

A date for the hearing has been provisionally set for 11–12 October 2022.

The panel for the case will be announced in the Michaelmas Term listings, which will be published on the Supreme Court website at the end of September.

The text of the order refusing an application by the Advocate General for Scotland to limit the question before the Supreme Court was published yesterday.

President of the Supreme Court, Lord Reed, stated in the order: “Since the issues of (a) whether the Court should accept the reference and (b) how the Court should answer the question referred will both require consideration of the circumstances giving rise to the reference and the substance of the question referred, it is in the interests of justice and the efficient disposal of the proceedings that the Court should hear argument on both issues at a single hearing.”