How devolution changed Scotland

Looking back on the formal opening of the Scottish Parliament in the summer of 1999, Sir Paul Grice, the chief executive of the Scottish Parliament, has said he is doubtful the “sheer excitement and expectation” of that July day can ever be matched again.

Running through his memories in a piece for Holyrood at the start of the latest session, he described the crowds smiling on the Royal Mile, the sunshine, and the sense of hope pervading through the day all coming together.

As he put it: “All the pomp was more than matched by the substance, not least, Donald Dewar’s much admired and much quoted speech. He said it was a proud day for all of us and indeed it was. He said we were fallible and would make mistakes and indeed we are and we have – but hopefully, not too many!

“So we began on a high, built on years of campaigning for many but for myself and the embryonic parliamentary service, it was built specifically on a year’s intensive effort to prepare for the first meeting of the new Scottish Parliament. Our aim was straightforward; to be a credible operation from day one. And, going by the reaction of members, I think we were pretty successful.”

As an institution, the parliament does seem to have been pretty successful, with a 2016 Social Attitudes Survey finding that 71 per cent of people agreed that having a Scottish Parliament was giving Scotland a stronger voice in the UK. That was the highest level of backing recorded since the question was first included in 2000.

In contrast, just three per cent of people said having a Scottish Parliament was giving Scotland a weaker voice, with 24 per cent saying it was making no difference.

The study found that, although it varied over time, the proportion of people saying that having a Scottish Parliament was giving Scotland a stronger voice in the UK has been increasing in recent years. Meanwhile, the proportion saying the parliament made no difference has been broadly declining.

So Scots seem to quite like the Scottish Parliament. Yet one of the curiosities lying within the way we discuss devolution is that, although there is a general consensus that having a parliament is a good thing, no one ever seems to agree on exactly why that is.

To some, devolution was about bringing decision making closer to the people, while to others, it represented a rational response to demands for independence, even if Labour’s then Shadow Scottish Secretary George Robertson predicting that devolution would “kill the SNP stone dead” may have been wrong.

Maybe Scots don’t need to agree on the why of the parliament. But while it clearly enjoys widespread support, exactly what it has meant for Scotland is still unclear.

This year will mark the parliament’s 20th birthday, and in an attempt to examine the changes the country has experienced over that time, Holyrood will take a tour around Scotland, with a series of pieces providing in-depth analysis of what 20 years of devolution has meant in practice for Scots.

From the economy through education to health and specific population make-up, Holyrood will examine the challenges and opportunities faced by Scots living in different areas of the country. The series will look at political promises made and how they turned out in reality, with a specific focus on how decisions in the Scottish Parliament impacted on communities.

The series will focus on eight areas – Central, Highland, Islands, Edinburgh & Lothian, Mid-Scotland & Fife, North East Scotland (including Dundee), South Scotland and West Scotland (including Glasgow) – to learn more about the twists and turns in the devolution journey, and what they have meant for Scotland.

After all, for good or bad, this is a country transformed. In health, education, finance, environment, justice and local government – Scotland has changed in just about every indicator you could care to mention.

For example, on average, Scots are living longer than they did when the parliament was formed. In fact, between 1999/2000 and 2007/08, healthy life expectancy in Scotland increased by three years for males and by an average 2.3 years for females.

But this is a trend which was running for decades – over the past 35 years, life expectancy in Scotland has increased by 7.9 years for males and 5.8 years for females – while recent figures from the National Records of Scotland suggest that between 2014-2016 and 2015-2017, life expectancy decreased by around 0.1 years (for both males and females) – representing the first drop for both sexes in the past 35 years. Stats from the years since then suggest progress may have stalled.

And so, as ever, the picture is a complex one. Policy will impact different areas and different groups in a variety of ways, and with the parliament’s anniversary upon us, they all have their own stories to tell.

The smoking ban represents just one major change brought by devolution. The ban, introduced by Scottish Labour as the Smoking, Health and Social Care (Scotland) Act 2005, made it an offence to smoke in public places in Scotland, though there was a small number of exceptions.

A year on from its introduction, Jack McConnell, on the verge of leading his party into the 2007 election as First Minister of Scotland, hailed the ban as a major success, saying it would create tangible long-term benefits.

He said: “It has been a remarkable change and not just in licensed premises. I think it might take a generation to see the difference this makes.

“Even after one year, Scotland is a healthier place and people, both in work and at leisure, are able to avoid the atmosphere which in the past caused them health problems.”

History does seem to have been kind in its judgement of the ban – in fact, the idea of smoking in a pub seems outlandish to many of today’s young people, who grew up free from the smell of ash and smoke indoors. And evidence suggests that McConnell may have been right in his self-congratulation – even if it may have been part of a wider trend – with data from ASH Scotland suggesting a consistent reduction in smoking over the last twenty years.

At present, somewhere between 16 and 18 per cent of adult Scots smoke – around 811,324 people – and down significantly from just over 30 per cent in 1999. That reduction has been even steeper among young people, with the proportion of 15-year-olds who smoke regularly falling from a peak of 29 per cent in 1996 to just nine per cent by 2013 – the lowest level since the Scottish Schools Adolescent Lifestyle and Substance Use Survey began.

But the reductions also took place alongside other measures – restrictions on advertising and increasing the age of sale – while stats from the latest Scottish Health Survey suggest that despite a reduction across the population, 27 per cent of adults in SIMD 1 and 23 per cent of adults in SIMD 2 continue to smoke.

Given the latest population figures, that means that over 450,000 people in Scotland’s disadvantaged communities are living with a greatly increased risk of cancer, heart disease, stroke, diabetes and dementia because of smoking.

Education, too, was subject to headline changes, with the fight for ownership of free tuition still raging between Scottish Labour and the SNP to this day.

The policy has taken on a special significance in Scottish political debate. As it says on the commemorative stone, unveiled on Heriot-Watt University grounds by Alex Salmond on his last day as FM in 2014: “The rocks will melt with the sun before I allow tuition fees to be imposed on Scotland’s students.”

The other parties may be less dramatic about it, but they share the sentiment. Under the policy, students from Scotland and the EU receive free university tuition, but those from the rest of the UK do not, with the number of RUK students at Scottish universities dropping from just under 6,000 in 2009 to 4,600 in 2011, before then increasing slightly in 2012.

Meanwhile, the latest Higher Education Student Statistics for Scotland show the number of first-year students undertaking postgraduate taught courses in 2016/17 was at its highest point in ten years.

HESA stats show that 15.6 per cent of full-time first-degree entrants in 2017-2018 came from the 20 per cent most deprived areas, just short of the 16 per cent target for 2021, with the Commissioner for Fair Access, Sir Professor Peter Scott, describing the figures, which follow three years of little improvement, as encouraging.

But, describing challenges, he added: “The gap in school attainment is a particular concern. Entrants from more deprived areas are still over-concentrated in particular institutions – colleges and ‘post-1992’ universities. Not all disadvantaged people live in the most deprived areas, especially in more sparsely populated rural areas. Other forms of discrimination also have to be addressed. In particular, opportunities for older and part-time students need to be improved.”

Again, the role of the Scottish Parliament in driving changes in education remains uncertain. But then that applies everywhere. Whether it is the economy or the environment, unpicking the effect of devolution remains a puzzle.

From land reform – one of the first acts of the new Scottish Parliament – through to the Islands Bill, passed last year and giving greater protection and powers to Scotland’s island communities, the decisions made in parliament have shaped our relationship with the land itself.

The parliament has undergone a process of radical change, with new faces, new governments and new powers all arriving at the Holyrood building. And as the parliament stays in a state of flux, so too does Scotland, with each area of the country experiencing significant change of its own.

In 1997, 74.29 per cent of voters backed the creation of the Scottish Parliament, compared to 25.71 per cent who were opposed to it.

Twenty years later, polling conducted by a Panelbase poll for the Sunday Times, presented a snapshot of how feelings had changed, with 38 per cent of voters in support of independence for Scotland as their preferred constitutional model, 43 per cent in favour of retaining current devolved arrangements in the UK, and 19 per cent apparently in favour of abolishing the parliament altogether.

That same poll found 35 per cent of Scots believe Scottish schools have improved under devolution, with 33 per cent seeing little change, and 32 per cent taking the view that they had become worse.

Meanwhile, 44 per cent said they believed the health service had improved since the parliament was established, 35 per cent did not see much change and 20 per cent said it had deteriorated. The poll found that 37 per cent of respondents said Scotland’s economy had become stronger, 37 per cent thought devolution had made little difference and 26 per cent thought it had become weaker.

At the same time, 49 per cent felt devolution had given ordinary Scots more say in how the country is governed, with 38 per cent seeing little change and 13 per cent backing the opposite.

But what have the changes meant for Scots?

At the official opening in July 1999, Dewar pointed to the words inscribed on the mace, promising “there shall be a Scottish Parliament”. He said: “Through long years, those words were first a hope, then a belief, then a promise. Now they are a reality. This is a moment anchored in our history. Today, we reach back through the long haul to win this parliament, through the struggles of those who brought democracy to Scotland, to that other parliament dissolved in controversy nearly three centuries ago.

“Today, we look forward to the time when this moment will be seen as a turning point: the day when democracy was renewed in Scotland, when we revitalised our place in this our United Kingdom.

“This is about more than our politics and our laws. This is about who we are, how we carry ourselves. In the quiet moments today, we might hear some echoes from the past: the shout of the welder in the din of the great Clyde shipyards: the speak of the Mearns, with its soul in the land; the discourse of the Enlightenment, when Edinburgh and Glasgow were a light held to the intellectual life of Europe; the wild cry of the great pipes; and back to the distant cries of the battles of Bruce and Wallace.”

He added: “The past is part of us. But today there is a new voice in the land, the voice of a democratic parliament. A voice to shape Scotland, a voice for the future.”

Twenty years on from those words, Holyrood will now look back, from a future Donald Dewar could only imagine, to examine in detail how that story has unfolded.