From the archives: Filching of local authority powers
Lord Provost Sir John Falconer, in his address at the opening of the Convention of Royal Burghs in Edinburgh yesterday, said it was essential that Local Authorities should have an opportunity of endeavouring to make prospective legislation fit into the scheme of local conditions. He emphasised the evil effects which certainly must follow lack of consultation, and that type of hasty legislation which delegated to the anonymous official the working out of statutory enactments. Our safety and security as citizens lay in our constitutional birthright – that in our country, neither King nor lord could prevail against anything to which the humblest citizen could convince the Court that he had a right. Our judges and our Courts were there to see that he got it. Where any matter was left to the discretion of the Minister, this right of the citizen disappeared.