Scottish parliament to get early notice of bills Queen has right to veto

Scottish ministers have been told to open up the opaque mechanism in which the Queen gives her approval to draft bills that affect her personal property and public powers.

- Severin Carrell, Rob Evans, David Pegg

Parliamentary authorities at Holyrood have instituted changes after a Guardian investigation revealed that proposed laws have almost certainly been secretly altered to secure the monarch's approval.

The changes relate to a procedure known in Scotland as crown consent, in which the monarch is given early sight of proposed laws that could impact her public powers or privately held assets such as the Balmoral estate so that she can consent.

Under the new transparency rules being introduced by Alison Johnston, Holyrood's presiding officer, ministers have been told that from September, they must notify the Holyrood parliament immediately if a new bill needs the Queen's consent, to give MSPs "the maximum opportunity" to question them.

At present, ministers can wait until draft legislation has gone through months of scrutiny in parliament before notifying MSPs at the last stage of the legislative process that the Queen has vetted the bill.

Critics across the UK have argued it is anti-democratic to allow a monarch to have early sight of draft bills and then to influence their contents to protect her interests, especially when elected politicians are kept in the dark about the nature and extent of her interventions.