Ethical Standards in Public Life Etc. (Scotland) Act 2000

The Ethical Standards in Public Life etc. (Scotland) Act 2000 (asp 7) is an Act of the Scottish Parliament which established that the Scottish Ministers had to issue a code of conduct for councillors, and put in place mechanisms for dealing with councillors in contravention of the code. It was introduced by Scottish Executive minister Wendy Alexander.

The Act was most notable for its repeal of Section 28 of the Local Government Act 1988 in Scotland, which had prevented local authorities from "the teaching of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship." This repeal was highly controversial, and Stagecoach Group founder Brian Souter led a campaign against it. The bill did require that councils would, in their dealings with children, have to regard the value of a stable family relationship, and that any education about family life would be appropriate to the child's age and development.

It passed on 21 June 2000 with 99 votes for and 17 against, with 2 abstentions, and received Royal Assent on 4 July 2000. The Local Government Act 2003 repealed Section 28 in England and Wales three years later.

Read more about Ethical Standards In Public Life Etc. (Scotland) Act 2000:  Ethical Standards in Public Life Framework, Standards Commission For Scotland, Chief Investigating Officer, Restricted Applicability

Famous quotes containing the words ethical, standards, public, life and/or act:

    “The repudiation of the primacy of understanding means the repudiation of the norms of judgment as well, and hence the abandonment of all ethical standards.”
    —Johan Huizinga (1872–1945)

    “The standards of His Majesty’s taste made all those ladies who aspired to his favour, and who were near the Statutable size, strain and swell themselves, like the frogs in the fable, to rival and bulk and dignity of the ox. Some succeeded, and others burst.”
    —Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)

    “Lead bullets flattened by human teeth have been found on the camp site. Soldiers who had been caught stealing food from nearby farms customarily chewed on a bullet as the lash was laid on their bare backs.”
    —For the State of New Jersey, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)

    “It is, in both cases, that a spiritual life has been imparted to nature; that the solid seeming block of matter has been pervaded and dissolved by a thought; that this feeble human being has penetrated the vast masses of nature with an informing soul, and recognised itself in their harmony, that is, seized their law. In physics, when this is attained, the memory disburthens itself of its cumbrous catalogues of particulars, and carries centuries of observation in a single formula.”
    —Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    “Color is my day-long obsession, joy and torment. To such an extent indeed that one day, finding myself at the deathbed of a woman who had been and still was very dear to me, I caught myself in the act of focusing on her temples and automatically analyzing the succession of appropriately graded colors which death was imposing on her motionless face.”
    —Claude Monet (1840–1926)