"Indy camp" campaigners appeal permission request thrown out

Campaigners for Scottish independence who set up an unofficial campsite in the grounds of the Scottish Parliament have failed in their final attempt to be allowed to appeal a court ruling ordering their eviction from the site.

The UK Supreme Court today announced that a panel of three Supreme Court Justices, having considered written submissions, had refused permission to appeal in the cases of McFarlane v Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body and MacLeod v Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body.

Both applicants, and others, had claimed that their rights to freedom of expression and freedom of assembly under articles 10 and 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights entitled them to occupy permanently or indefinitely the campus of the Scottish Parliament. They had set up camp without permission in November 2015, but in an action by the Parliament, Lord Turnbull, having dismissed the original defences as irrelevant, considered whether the applicants' human rights were engaged but held that an order for eviction was a proportionate limitation of the exercise of their rights, as it only restricted the manner and form of their protest. His order was upheld by the Inner House. (Click here for report.)

The Supreme Court declined to hear the appeal. Its order reads: "The court ordered that permission to appeal be refused because the application does not raise an arguable point of law.”

Eviction of the campers has already taken place.