Devolution in Scotland

Harriet Cross Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd October 2025 Commons Chamber

[Patricia Ferguson (Glasgow West) (Lab)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I nearly lapsed into old habits and called you Deputy Presiding Officer, but that is a title for another place some 500 miles up the road. I thank the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone) for procuring this debate, and for arriving when he did; some of us were becoming rather anxious. I do not think I have ever been more pleased to see him enter any room.

On a more serious note, 25 years ago this month, Donald Dewar—MP, MSP and the first First Minister of Scotland—died prematurely. Donald had worked hard, both in our party and beyond, to promote the idea of a Scottish Parliament. It was a huge loss when he passed away only 17 months into the life of that new Parliament, but his legacy—the Parliament he played such an important part in establishing—lives on.

Despite the disappointment of the 1979 referendum, devolution remained firmly on the agenda of the Labour party through the long years of Conservative rule. The idea was kept alive by Donald, his great friend John Smith, Labour party and trade union members across the country, and colleagues in the Liberal Democrats and some other parties. “A Claim of Right for Scotland” in 1988 and the Scottish constitutional convention were significant markers on the long road to the successful 1997 referendum. I am pleased to recount that when Labour was returned to power in 1997, one of its first acts was to pass the Scotland Act, which paved the way for the Scottish Parliament just two years later. It is quite remarkable that a party was returned to power in May 1997, held a referendum just two or three months later on the Scottish Parliament and whether we should have devolution, and delivered that Parliament within two years.

I was proud to campaign, along with many others, for a Scottish Parliament over many years. I believe that such subsidiarity is sensible and is a democratic imperative, and as one of the first MSPs elected in 1999—alongside my colleague, the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross—I was privileged to see at first hand the challenges and successes of the Labour-Liberal Executive, which steered our country through the first years of devolution. We did not call ourselves a Government then; “Executive” was good enough for us. As my colleague said, it is my conviction that co-operation between the coalition partners, and sometimes across all parties, was key to the progress of devolution, as was joint working between the Scottish and UK Governments.

Many positive initiatives were implemented during that early period, some of which the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross mentioned. I apologise to the House if I repeat one or two, but I would like to list some of the ones that come most easily to mind. They included free personal care for the elderly; free university tuition; the banning of smoking in enclosed public places, which has led to verifiable health benefits—Scotland led the way for the rest of the UK on this issue, and we celebrate the 20th anniversary of the ban this year—the repeal of the discriminatory clause 2A; bringing the Golden Jubilee hospital into the NHS; the Fresh Talent initiative; the creation of an international development fund; the creation of the National Theatre of Scotland; and submitting a successful bid for the 2014 Commonwealth games, to name but a very few.

The Scottish Parliament’s approach was modern, with family-friendly hours and a willingness to use technology to the advantage of Members and the public. Our electronic voting system and the public petitions process were seen—I think rightly—as efficient, businesslike and inclusive. I sincerely hope that the Modernisation Committee will consider those examples during its investigation—especially electronic voting, please.

[Harriet Cross (Gordon and Buchan) (Con)]

I sometimes find myself watching Holyrood TV, and most of what happens after the electronic voting is endless people checking whether they have voted—wanting to clarify whether the machine has worked. Given that there are 120-odd Members in Holyrood and 650-odd Members in this place, I am not entirely sure that that is the best plan for Westminster voting.

[Patricia Ferguson]

My recollection of the system is that it worked very well indeed. I do not know whether standards have slipped since the days when I and other hon. Members present were Members of the Scottish Parliament. What the hon. Lady describes did happen—I admit that—but very rarely. I was for some time in the Chair, announcing those decisions, and I genuinely do not remember that happening very often at all.

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[Harriet Cross (Gordon and Buchan) (Con)]

Devolution sounds like, and should be, a fantastic opportunity. It should bring decisions closer to home with policies that fit the uniqueness of local areas and communities such as mine, where accountability and impact are more closely linked. That is the theory but in practice, certainly in Scotland’s case, the reality is very different. Devolution has become a fight for power—for the power, but not for the responsibility—and it has become about pushing party and personal ideology rather than what is actually best for the public and the businesses which we are meant to serve.

Since 1999, we have seen so much power, indeed more power than any other devolved nation in the world, devolved to Scotland, or more specifically, as others have mentioned, to Holyrood, because that is where in Scotland devolution ends. What we see in Scotland is a level of bureaucracy, red tape and top-down decision making that stifles any opportunity for devolution to properly trickle down to benefit all regions and communities across Scotland.

We can look at the evidence. In Scotland, 53% of planning decisions appealed to the Scottish Government are overturned by Ministers; in England, by contrast, local decisions are upheld 70% of the time. On policing, the SNP merged eight regional police forces into one nationalised central body. In doing so, it scrapped local police boards run by local councils and replaced them with a single national authority appointed by, and accountable to, Scottish Ministers. The result is that since its creation over 140 stations have closed, creating what the Scottish Police Federation has itself called policing deserts and an “almost invisible policing presence” across great parts of the country.

There are also of course endless examples of devolution putting our businesses at a disadvantage compared with others across the UK, including on business rates. Business rates are devolved and when the last Conservative Government introduced 75% rate relief for hospitality south of the border, that was not replicated in Scotland. Businesses in Scotland had to wait years for a similar relief, which, when it was finally introduced, was less generous than elsewhere.

In education we have seen years of decline in Scottish standards. In 2006, Scotland proudly had students who were the best in the UK at maths. But now, after years of the SNP curriculum for apparent excellence, our PISA score has plummeted by 35 points and we are trailing well behind England. That is a generation of young Scots being failed by the SNP. Why in Scotland, after almost 20 years in office, has the SNP seemingly been so content to let education standards slip and slip while over the past decade, when Conservatives were in government at Westminster, we saw standards and international rankings rise south of the border? Why, other than for the need to just do things differently, would we not look at the rising standards elsewhere in the UK and think for just one minute that maybe for the sake of the next generation of Scots we could learn from what is happening elsewhere in the UK?

There is also a huge amount of incoherence between different policies in devolved areas. Pensioners in Scotland with an income of £35,000 are considered to have a low enough income to be eligible for the winter fuel payment, which of course is welcome after Labour decided to balance their books on the back of our poorest pensioners, but how does this square with the SNP Government considering workers on a salary as modest as £30,000 to be wealthy enough to be taxed more than those in the rest of the UK? Was devolution really set up as a vehicle to see teachers and doctors and police officers based and working in Scotland taxed more and taking home less pay than those doing the same job in the rest of the UK?

For devolution to be considered a success, we should be able to see it and feel it, but even objectively these benefits are very hard to find. I know there have always been those saying and pointing out that we get things for free, like free prescriptions or certain bus travel or university education, but these are not free; they are taxpayer-funded—funded at the expense of something else and funded at the cost of higher taxes for people and businesses across Scotland.

The Scottish Government are receiving from the UK Government over £2,500 more per person to spend than is the case in England. Why then are our outcomes not streaks ahead of those south of the border? Why is our education system failing children? Why are universities almost at the point of collapse? Why is life expectancy lower in Scotland and our drug deaths the highest in Europe? Why are NHS capital projects being paused, including the Ellon health centre in my constituency? There is chronic underfunding and under-investment in our roads, including the A96 and the A90 in Gordon and Buchan. Scotland’s employment rates are lower than those in the rest of the UK. Why are local authorities on their knees due to a lack of funding? If devolution had been made to work for Scotland, it would surely be at least equal to the rest of the UK in all those regards. If successive Scottish Governments had focused on their job and on actual devolved competences, maybe—just maybe—Scotland would have outperformed the rest of the UK, but it has not. Why? Because since devolution, successive Scottish Governments have not wanted to take the responsibility as well as the power. They have preferred to point fingers to cover their own incompetence, rather than hold themselves accountable. If what I describe had happened, or even begun to happen, over the last 25 years, maybe devolution could be seen as a success for Scotland. Until that does happen, I struggle to accept that it has been.

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[Stephen Gethins]

I have barely started. Let me make a bit of progress, and maybe I can take the hon. Gentleman’s point shortly.

There is so much that we can learn, and there is always a way to learn. I know from my experiences here that there may be something that this place could learn from Holyrood. I remember taking part in seizing control of the Order Paper, simply so that Members could have a say. That is something we never have to do in Holyrood. I can remember a minority Government—only just a minority—in 2017 nearly keeling over because they were just short of a majority and yet refused to speak to the other parties, the Democratic Unionist party notwithstanding. They spoke to the DUP, but that was pretty much it. We have seen the catastrophe caused by the culture in this place, and the damage that did. Labour and the Liberal Democrats have acknowledged that.

[Harriet Cross]

I want to pick up on the point about working with other parties to get a majority. The first thing that comes to mind is the SNP’s venture with the Scottish Greens after the last election in Scotland. Would the hon. Member reflect on how damaging that was, particularly for north-east Scotland, whether we are talking about upgrades to our roads, or the impact on our oil and gas sector?

[Stephen Gethins]

I thank the hon. Member for her intervention.

What I find more surprising is that we have had only one majority Government during the period of devolution, yet every Government, regardless of their colour, and every party that has been a part of government—except the Conservatives, who struggle electorally in Scotland, which speaks to the wisdom of the Scottish electorate—have served their full term. In my time as an MP, we have one minority Government, led by the Conservatives. It collapsed in a heap and cost the taxpayer £40 billion a year—there was more waste emanating from this place than the Scottish Government’s entire budget, and the Conservatives bear huge responsibility for that.

On accountability, we sit in a Parliament where we have to pass an Act of Parliament just to get rid of a Member of the House of Lords. I have heard Members complain about those who sit in the House of Lords, be it Peter Mandelson or Michelle Mone. Are they accountable? Are they accountable to the electorate in the way that every single Member of the Scottish Parliament is? [Interruption.] I will happily give way on the point about Peter Mandelson if the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire South (Johanna Baxter) wants to come in. No? Okay.

Every single Member of the Scottish Parliament is elected, and we could learn from that enormously in this place. It is a disgrace that it needs an Act of Parliament to remove a Member of the legislature, who has got a job for life, and I would love it if Labour would at long last deliver its 115-year-old manifesto commitment, but I fear we will be waiting at least another 115 years.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross on his speech, but I beg to differ with him on one area, and today I have to agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Moray West, Nairn and Strathspey (Graham Leadbitter): I do not think we should present the idea that the parent of the Scottish Parliament and the Scottish Government should be minding its disappointing children. I am sure that the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross would agree, on reflection, that the parent of the Scottish Parliament was in fact the Scottish people in the referendum; that has been acknowledged by all sides. I am sure that he will reflect on that.

To be fair, Westminster has not been much of a parent these past few years. We saw austerity during the Labour and Conservative years; we saw Brexit; and we see that our neighbours have much more powerful legislatures at sub-state level. The Faroe Islands, the Åland Islands and Greenland are sub-state, non-independent actors that can determine their relationship with the European Union, and can even determine whether they want an independence referendum.

The Scottish Parliament is a relatively weak legislature compared with others in Europe, but despite that, child poverty is reducing, and social security is dealt with respectfully. When the Labour Government made the woeful mistake in their opening days in government of getting rid of the winter fuel payment, the Scottish Government, with their limited resources, stepped up. The Labour Government have criticised the fact that Scottish Water is in public hands; that astonishes me, but it remains in public hands because of devolution, and the move towards 100% renewables came about because of devolution.

There are some areas where we can learn from Westminster. I have served on Committees in this place, and they work well. The hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross will be aware that, because of the structure that was put in place, Committees are part of the legislative process. There are always things to learn, and we need to acknowledge that.