Renaming the Scottish Government

The Scottish Government has just been renamed … to become the Scottish Government. It seems that its official name was still the “Scottish Executive”, and that the legislation has just caught up with the practice.

The term “Scottish Government” is currently used without distinction to refer to the Scottish Government, the group of ministers in Parliament, and the Scottish Government, the executive civil service. These are different bodies, with different personnel, locations, roles and mandates; when I tell people that I have been in contact with the “Scottish Government”, I usually have to add several words of explanation to clarify what I am talking about. (I have just used the term “Scottish Government” here seven times. It begins to remind me of the Monty Python sketch where all the members of the Faculty of Philosophy are called Bruce, to avoid confusion.) As we now have a free label available, the “Scottish Executive”, is there any prospect that we could use it instead when we refer to the executive civil service?

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