The Advocate General for Scotland is a Minister of the Crown and is one of the three UK Law Officers, along with the Attorney General and the Solicitor General for England and Wales. The Advocate General is ministerially responsible to the UK Parliament for the Office of Solicitor to the Advocate General and the Legal Secretariat to the Advocate General, as well as the Private Office. As a UK Law Officer, the Advocate General is the UK Government's principal legal adviser on Scots law and, in conjunction with the other UK Law Officers, provides legal advice and opinions to Government Departments on a wide range of legal issues including human rights, European and constitutional law.
The office of Advocate General was created as a consequence of the constitutional changes set out in the Scotland Act 1998. This Act created a devolved Scottish Parliament. The Lord Advocate and the Solicitor General for Scotland were transferred to the devolved administration. The Advocate General took over their previous role as the UK Law Officer advising on Scots Law. In addition, the Advocate General was given new statutory functions under the Scotland Act.
These statutory functions include the power to refer Bills of the Scottish Parliament to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council for decisions on their legislative competence. For this purpose the Advocate General considers such Bills as they progress, in consultation with interested UK Departments. The Scotland Act also requires that the Advocate General be provided with notice of all devolution issues as defined in Schedule 6 to that Act raised in the courts and separately confers the power to raise proceedings on such issues. There have been over 5000 devolution issues intimated to the Advocate General since the commencement of devolution in 1999, usually on human rights matters. As a Minister, the Advocate General also sits on a number of Cabinet Committees, in particular the Committee on the Legislative Programme, the Committee on Constitutional Affairs and the Sub-Committee on Legal Affairs of the Committee on Domestic Affairs.
The annual reports of the Scotland Office can be found here and contain information about the administration of the offices of the Advocate General. Future reports will be on the website for the Department for Constitutional Affairs.