We may not know where devolution will take us but at least we can enjoy the ride

The Scottish Parliament seems to mean a lot of different things to different people, depending on who you ask.

In some ways it is a curious institution. Everyone agrees that they want one, but no one seems to agree on exactly why.

For Donald Dewar, long considered the ‘father of the parliament’, devolution was a journey. As Secretary of State for Scotland, Dewar managed the devolution process. As the first-ever First Minister of Scotland, he brought the parliament to life.

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.”

Everyone agreed the parliament would help shape Scotland. The question was how.

Some, like Tony Blair, saw Scottish devolution as a stepping stone towards a more decentralised UK. Others, like Ruth Davidson, saw it as a process which should be restricted more carefully, even if her party’s role in the last round of devolution seemed somewhat at odds with her previous insistence on limiting the movement of further powers from Westminster to Holyrood.

In 2011, Davidson was still the young, relatively unknown outsider, yet to fight any of the flurry of elections and referendums the following years would bring. As she put it, speaking in a time of relative stability: “The Scotland Bill currently going through Westminster is the line in the sand.

“The time for arguing about the powers the people want is over. It’s time now to use the powers that we have.”

Clearly that changed. In fact, with each year that passed since Dewar’s speech in the old chamber, the parliament’s importance seemed to grow and grow.

In 1997, 74.29 per cent of voters agreed there should be a Scottish Parliament, compared to 25.71 per cent who were opposed to it.

Twenty years later, a Panelbase poll, conducted for the Sunday Times, presented a snapshot of how feelings had changed, with 38 per cent of voters backing 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.

The poll found that 35 per cent of Scots think 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.

by Paul Grice

Sir Paul Grice on the story of the Scottish Parliament so far

But more striking was the finding that 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.

For George Robertson, now Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, devolution had offered a chance to put a stop to nationalist sentiment north of the border. As he predicted, devolution would “kill the SNP stone dead”.

Meanwhile, unsurprisingly, the SNP took a different view. Speaking after the vote to establish the parliament, Alex Salmond said: “We will shortly begin work on our manifesto but I can say right now that its centrepiece will be the pursuit of an independent Scotland. I have no doubt we will achieve that aim within my own lifetime.”

Clearly the reality lies somewhere between the two predictions, with the SNP very much not stone dead – the party formed its first government in Scotland ten years after Robertson’s forecasts – but with Scotland also having rejected the opportunity, offered by Salmond as FM, to help achieve his aim of independence.

As ever, understanding the nuances of Scotland’s relationship with the Scottish Parliament means unpicking a knot of contradictions, with the events following the 2014 referendum standing as a warning to anyone hoping to make hard predictions in the world of Scottish politics.

The SNP, after all, was the biggest partner in the losing Yes campaign, and ten per cent seemed a pretty clear margin for No. But winning a referendum and winning a general election are quite different propositions, and with a good chunk of the 45 per cent who backed independence using their vote in the general election to back the SNP, the party won its best-ever result.

In the 1997 general election, the SNP won six seats. In 2001, it was five. In 2005, it was back to six, with the party then returning the same number in 2010.

But by 2015, following the referendum, ‘the Vow’ and the Smith Commission, the political landscape had changed beyond recognition and there was only one clear winner. The party won a result few could have imagined even a few years previously, taking 56 out of 59 seats, and leaving political opponents from across the spectrum trailing in its wake.

But the high point wasn’t to last and the snap election of 2017 saw support drop to 35 seats, with the party then forced to delay its plans for a second independence referendum due to concerns that the pursuit of independence was alienating voters.

Reflecting on the outcome, Nicola Sturgeon said: “Undoubtedly the issue of an independence referendum was a factor in this election result, but I think there were other factors in this election result as well.”

Pointing to the uncertainty surrounding Brexit, alongside growing support for Labour under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, the SNP leader cautioned supporters and commentators against “rushing to overly-simplistic judgements”.

But more striking than the link between devolution and support for any one political party is the clear enthusiasm for devolved institutions themselves.

In fact, according to the 2015 Scottish Social Attitudes (SSA) Survey, public trust in the Scottish Government is more than three times higher than in its UK counterpart.

The survey found that 73 per cent of people in Scotland trust the Scottish Government, the highest level since the Scottish Parliament was established, compared with 23 per cent who trust the UK Government.

The Scottish Government was also more trusted than the UK Government to make fair decisions, with 49 per cent backing it, compared with 18 per cent for Whitehall.

The SSA found 59 per cent of respondents thought the Scottish Government was good at listening to people’s views before it makes decisions, compared with 44 per cent for local councils and just 17 per cent for the UK Government.

Roughly equal proportions said the UK and Scottish governments have the most influence over the way Scotland is run, with 42 per cent for the UK and 41 per cent for the Scottish Government, but 76 per cent thought that the Scottish Government should have the most influence, compared with 14 per cent who chose the UK Government.

However, while Scotland and the Scottish Parliament spent the years following the independence referendum debating how power should be distributed, Euroscepticism was on the rise across the UK, with demands to take back power from Brussels eventually culminating in a slim victory for the Leave campaign in the 2016 EU referendum.

And, despite cross-party support for devolution – at least at its present levels – the Brexit vote has brought serious complications for the distribution of power between different UK institutions. The vote was on Europe, but the decision to leave the EU has raised questions over the future of devolution too, amid growing concern that the UK Government’s Brexit legislation would take power away from Holyrood.

On the face of it, the UK Government’s EU (Withdrawal) Bill is relatively simple, with the bill transferring EU legislation into UK law so that the wheels of government will keep spinning after Brexit day.

But for Nicola Sturgeon, and her Welsh counterpart, Carwyn Jones, it was far more troubling. The statement from the FMs of Scotland and Wales said: “We have repeatedly tried to engage with the UK Government on these matters, and have put forward constructive proposals about how we can deliver an outcome which will protect the interests of all the nations in the UK, safeguard our economies and respect devolution.

“Regrettably, the bill does not do this. Instead, it is a naked power-grab, an attack on the founding principles of devolution and could destabilise our economies.

“Our two governments – and the UK Government – agree we need a functioning set of laws across the UK after withdrawal from the EU. We also recognise that common frameworks to replace EU laws across the UK may be needed in some areas. But the way to achieve these aims is through negotiation and agreement, not imposition. It must be done in a way which respects the hard-won devolution settlements.

“The European Union (Withdrawal) Bill does not return powers from the EU to the devolved administrations, as promised. It returns them solely to the UK Government and Parliament, and imposes new restrictions on the Scottish Parliament and National Assembly for Wales.

“On that basis, the Scottish and Welsh Governments cannot recommend that legislative consent is given to the bill as it currently stands.

“The bill lifts from the UK Government and Parliament the requirement to comply with EU law, but does the opposite for the devolved legislatures: it imposes a new set of strict restrictions. These new restrictions make no sense in the context of the UK leaving the EU.”

The two administrations eventually responded with legislation of their own in an attempt to prepare their respective countries for Brexit, so that the parts of EU law relating to devolved powers will be retained after the UK leaves the EU.

But even then it wasn’t straightforward, with the Scottish Parliament’s Presiding Officer, Ken Macintosh, ruling that the bill sat outside of Holyrood’s legislative competence and amid accusations from opposition parties that ministers had reacted to a Westminster “power grab” with one of their own.

Like the SNP, Scottish Labour, Scottish Greens and Scottish Lib Dems, the Scottish Tories had already expressed concern over the effect of the withdrawal bill on devolution, but that did not mean they agreed with the SNP government’s solution.

As Scottish Conservative MSP Adam Tomkins put it, in one of the mammoth sittings required to get the emergency legislation through parliament: “There is a power grab in the continuity bill, but it is not a power grab from Westminster to Holyrood or the other way round; it is a power grab from the Scottish Parliament to the Government.

“We must be equally alive to both the appropriate balance of power between the executive branch and the legislature, and the devolution settlement. If we are to respect the constitution, we need to be alive to the issue of the separation of powers as well as to devolution and its appropriate settlement.”

For his part, Brexit Minister Mike Russell said he was “absolutely aware of the importance of ensuring that anything that is done under the continuity bill involves maximum scrutiny”.

But then he added: “We have to ask why the bill will give special powers. It is because of the circumstances that have been created by the United Kingdom’s Brexit process. That is why the powers exist in the withdrawal bill: there is a major job of work to be done, and it cannot be done using the tools that are currently to hand.”

And with the Scottish, Welsh and UK governments still at loggerheads over how best to navigate devolution through yet more change, and with support for independence more or less unchanged since 2014, the implications of Brexit on the institution Dewar described as “a voice for the future” remain unclear.

But whatever happens, and however current disputes are resolved, the history of devolution so far stands as a reminder against making any firm predictions in any case. The devolution journey continues, though no one knows where it will take us.

As Dewar put it: “We are fallible. We will make mistakes. But we will never lose sight of what brought us here: the striving to do right by the people of Scotland, to respect their priorities, to better their lot and to contribute to the common weal.”