[1] In January 2009, the Scottish Parliament established a consultation into the interpretation of legislation.

[2] The consultation referred to the Renton Report, a 1975 report of which specifically called for an updated "Interpretation Act" to simplify legislative language and for a Statute Law Committee to be established.

[2][3] The Lord Advocate, James Wolffe, gave the 2020 Renton Lecture and described the amount of freedom of the Scottish Parliament to choose how it will legislate describing, while not directly referring to the Act, refers to many of the provisions of the Act.

[6] The Act regulates how Scottish Statutory Instruments can be interpreted, enacted, amended and revoked.

[6] The consultation for commencing the last provisions of the legislation included three draft statutory instruments including the: the Harbours Act 1964 Modification Order 2011, the Roads (Scotland) Act 1984 Modification Order 2011 and the Transport and Works (Scotland) Act 2007 Modification Order 2011, which were written to amend existing legislation to interface correctly with the Act.