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WESTM NSTER HAUL
Page 7
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THE SCOTTISH lass who nips along to the supermarket to buy a bottle of the hard stuff to celebrate Hogmanay need have no fear that she is breaking the law if she takes a bus home.
If a zealous copper should pull her up for breaking a Scottish law now making its way through Parliament she can plead in her defence the words of no less a personage than the top lawyer in her country, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, the Lord Advocate.
His Lordship more or less gave her carte blanche when members of the Upper House voiced their worries about the potential law making it an offence to carry alcohol on buses.
Wee Maggie may get away with it, but there will be no such easy escape clause for gangs of football fans who travel on special buses with crates of ale or cases of Scotch to while away the travelling time, nor for the busmen who let them do so.
It was this legal hazard facing bus owners and crews which exercised the Peers when they discussed the Criminal Justice (Scotland) Bill — a massive measure described by one Government spokesman as bidding fair to be the most important Scottish Bill ever passed on the subject.
No one was put out about a match ban on drinks or drunks; but the bus provisions did cause some anxieties.
As Lord Campbell of Croy observed, many Scots were born with a certain conjuring ability which could be the envy of the Magic Circle.
"We can cause to materialise from nowhere a flask or a shaped half-bottle of spirit," he revealed. "We?" Surely you don't include yourself among those sleight-of-hand merchants, Your Lordship?
It doesn't quite accord with a former Secretary of State for Scotland, a member of the Privy Council and of Brooks's, a winner of the Military Cross and Bar, and the son of a major general.
Without wishing to be a snob, one could perhaps visualise that at one stage in his career Lord Teviot was not averse to the odd bottle. Without personal experience one cannot blame his Eton education, but the six years which — he reminded his listeners — he had spent as a bus driver or conductor might 'have given him a taste for an off-duty tipple. But that's pure speculation, and perhaps libellous — Lord Teviot might be the president of his local Band of Hope.