PRELIMINARY UN report findings suggest Scotland’s legal system is breaching international law by making environmental and human rights cases prohibitively expensive.

The draft decision from the UNECE Aarhus convention compliance committee confirms a lack of progress in meeting the convention’s requirements, which guarantees everyone the right to go to court to defend the environment.

Scotland’s legal system has repeatedly been found in breach because of the high cost of taking legal action, with judicial reviews often running into the hundreds of thousands of pounds.