[16] The appeal to the Supreme Court was from the Opinion of the Inner House of the Court of Session (delivered 3 September 2015) on a reclaiming motion ([2015] CSIH 64) between seven parties as petitioners and reclaimers, namely, The Christian Institute, Family Education Trust, The Young Me Sufferers ("TYMES"), Christian Action Research and Education ("CARE") (four registered charities with an interest in family matters), and three individual parents, against The Scottish Ministers as respondent.

Lord Pentland had refused a petition for judicial review (lodged 11 July 2014), holding that the named person service provisions in Part 4 of the 2014 Act were within the devolved competence of the Scottish Parliament and did not contravene fundamental common law rights, or the European Convention, or the EU law on data protection.

[17] The Opinion of the Inner House, which the Supreme Court's judgment overruled, was that the legislation was in accordance with the law, had a legitimate aim and was necessary in a democratic society in the interests of, amongst other things, public safety, the prevention of crime, the protection of health or morals or of the rights of others.

The proceedings and judgments were mainly concerned with provisions in Part 4 of the Children and Young People (Scotland) Act 2014, including ten sections that had not then been brought into force under section 102, namely, When allowing the appeal, the Supreme Court, following the precedent of its ruling in Salvesen v Riddell ([2013] UKSC 22),[18] invited the parties to produce, within the period of 42 days from 28 July (expiring in early September), written submissions on the terms of an order that the Court could make under 102(2)(b) of the Scotland Act 1998 to allow the Scottish Parliament and the Scottish Ministers an opportunity to correct the defects which the Court had identified, but the Court stated that in the meantime, since the defective provisions were not within the legislative competence of the Parliament, they could not be brought into force.

[19] The Scottish Government announced on 8 September a process involving the offices of the Children's Commissioner and the Information Commissioner in order to address the concerns raised by the Supreme Court, including development of a code of practice to set out how information should be shared under the legislation, with the intention of working towards a commencement date for the legislation of August 2017.