Devolution in Scotland

John Lamont Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd October 2025 Commons Chamber

[Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered devolution in Scotland.

I am jolly glad I came to the Chamber when I did. [Laughter.]

I thank the Backbench Business Committee for making time available for this debate and for recognising that it is a debate that holds great significance for the whole House. I thank those Members who supported my application to the Committee for the debate. In particular, I thank the hon. Member for Glasgow West (Patricia Ferguson), who chairs the Scottish Affairs Committee and who has been a personal friend of mine since our time together in the Scottish Parliament.

I begin by making no secret of the fact that I lead this debate as someone who believes in the strength of our family of nations and that we can make people’s lives better through co-operation and partnership by pooling and sharing resources. I believe that my credentials as one of the first of my party’s Members of the Scottish Parliament and now as a Scottish Member of the UK Parliament make it clear that I am a devolutionist to my core, one who will always believe in the value of the Scottish Parliament and its potential to work best for the people of Scotland when it works constructively alongside Westminster. I will not have it said here today, or anywhere or ever, that I am against devolution—I am not. I truly believe in it and also know that the Scottish Parliament is comparatively young, hence why I am here today, initiating what I hope will be a civil and valuable discussion into the successes and failures so far of our system of what one might term “multi-level governance”.

I am proud to have been a founding member of the Scottish Constitutional Convention responsible for the establishment of the Scottish Parliament in 1999. I am proud to say in my own way that my name is on the historic claim of right for Scotland—I do not think that any other Member of this place can say that. Of course, I was then elected to the Scottish Parliament in the first elections in 1999, and I witnessed the way that it developed over the next 12 years. Crucially, during those first years, I became a member of the Holyrood progress group, which oversaw the building of the Parliament. People like me and others saw the Scottish Parliament as, to quote the late, great John Smith, the

“settled will of the Scottish people”.

I say that to reassure the House that my thoughts come from a place, I believe, of true experience.

Let us remember that the scheme for the devolved Parliament, as enshrined in the Scotland Act 1998, was about the concept of there being no need for a second Chamber in Edinburgh because the Committees of the Scottish Parliament were intended to fill the role of holding the Executive to account. That could have entailed, where necessary, amending or initiating legislation in a fashion similar to the House of Lords today. As an example, I highlight the role of the education Committee in the first Parliament, of which I was a member, in tweaking and amending the then Scottish Government’s first education Act. Was that a reflection of the consensual attitude that many MSPs displayed during the first term of the Scottish Parliament? Very possibly—perhaps the hon. Member could comment on that.

A few initial thoughts come to mind. Although the Committees did largely fulfil some of that function during the first 12 years of the Parliament, I am bound to add that the advent of the SNP Government in 2011, which controlled not only the Chamber but all the Committees, changed that dynamic. I would argue that, after that year, the failure of some Committees to show any real teeth meant that some bad legislation came to be. I need only quote one example, and that is the ill-fated deposit return scheme—I rest my case.

[John Lamont (Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk) (Con)]

The hon. Member is making a very good speech. As a fellow Member of the Scottish Parliament for 10 years, I concur completely with his comments regarding the Committee structure. There are many faults about the other place, but it is significantly better at scrutinising Government, holding Government to account and improving legislation than the Committees in the Scottish Parliament, so I agree with him.

[Jamie Stone]

I thank the hon. Member, who, like me, was an MSP all those years ago. Why, to take up his point, is the Scottish Parliament not working the way it is intended to? I think part of the answer lies in the fact that making someone the Chair of a Committee in the Scottish Parliament is in the gift of the party leaders. That can lead to Committee Chairs, particularly those in the Government party, feeling somewhat beholden to their party’s leadership and being, I would suggest, sometimes rather less than willing to say boo to a goose when it comes to challenging or amending legislation.

In Westminster, Committee Chairs are chosen via a secret ballot of the whole House. I would say that the independent-mindedness of Committees and those who lead them is very much a strength. In that respect, we have in Westminster a certain safeguard against the risk of passing completely unworkable legislation. My purpose in making this assessment is not in any way to enlarge on the proposals for a second Chamber in Scotland; the Scotland Act 1998 was very clear that the Scottish Parliament would be unicameral.

Similarly, we can see that there are grounds for Westminster to learn lessons from Edinburgh. I have had the honour, as I said, of being a Member of both the Scottish and UK Parliaments. When people ask me, as they often do, how the two compare, I often say that we MPs are deeply envious of the access to Ministers that MSPs enjoy. The direct and frequent communication between the Scottish Government and their opposition strikes me as a very positive facet of Scottish democracy.

Furthermore, the fact that there are only 129 Members of the Scottish Parliament means that the Members all know each other—or at least know each other an awful lot better than would be normal here. There is recognition of the strengths and weaknesses of those 129 individuals. How should I put this, Madam Deputy Speaker? That is not necessarily something that we can perceive in Westminster, where we have a great number of Members. In fact, I am afraid we can all think—no names, no pack-drill—of Members who somehow slip under the radar; let us just put it that way. I do not intend to be one of them.

The Scottish Parliament has become much more powerful than it was when I was there—just look at the tax and social security powers—but as an MP from the far north of Scotland, I am constantly reminded of just how centralised Scotland has become. Decisions are too often not taken close to the communities that they affect. There has been devolution from Westminster to Holyrood, but practically nothing from Holyrood down to councils or communities. In fact, when it comes to police and fire services, power has simply been grabbed by Edinburgh.

One of the most interesting academics to comment on the matter, and one of the first to scrutinise devolution, James G. Kellas, emphasised that merely establishing new institutions such as the Scottish Parliament cannot fundamentally alter the efficiency of decision-making norms. Instead, he said, we must respect the interplay between respective institutions and their political behaviours. That is what he prescribed to modernisers like me, who hoped that devolution would bring longer-term stability to British politics and give it a new lease of life. In recent years, however, we have seen just the opposite: a breakdown of constructive intergovernmental relations and a move towards polarisation that has pitted the Scottish Government against the UK Government as rivals, rather than partners. That has been clear on multiple occasions over the past decade. Scotland needs Governments in Edinburgh and London that are capable of working together, and of ironing out differences of opinion, where they exist, maturely, within proper frameworks, and without always resorting to legal action and court battles.

That leads me to the elephant in the Chamber, if I can get away with that expression. Most significantly, and perhaps least surprisingly, the chasm in our system of governance was most strongly pronounced during the Scottish independence referendum in 2014. The subsequent repeated calls for a second referendum have coloured the relationship between our two Parliaments ever since. I am a proud Scot—I always have been and I always will be—so for me these have, alas, been dark times, with too much grievance, too much aggression and too much resentment. On top of that, I humbly suggest that the people of Scotland are tired and frustrated—and they have a case. They see their household bills soaring. They have long waits to see their GP, they have the ferry fiasco, and they have a Scottish education that we all know simply is not what it used to be. Scotland deserves better, and the Scottish Parliament needs to show people that it can respond to the challenge at hand and change people’s lives for the better.

I think back to what my party, when it was in coalition, delivered in its first terms in government, including free personal care, eye tests, dental checks, bus passes, the smoking ban and fair votes for local government. Indeed, it was the signature of my then party leader Jim Wallace that broke the ground on freedom of information. We collectively cared about getting the basics right, and were determined to show that devolution could deliver the change that people wanted to see. I do not suggest that that was just the attitude of the governing parties in the coalition; there was co-operation with the Scottish National party and the Conservatives, from time to time.

I touched earlier on the works of James G. Kellas, and I return to his predictions in 2001. He warned that observers of devolution might develop an “expectations gap”, as Scots could develop resentment, feeling that the potential of the Scottish Parliament was unfulfilled, or limited by a system of multi-level governance. There could be truth in that, but we still have a chance to rectify it. With last year’s change of government in Westminster and the Holyrood elections next year, this is surely the perfect time to revise our approach to our system of multi-level governance in the UK in order to engage with those feelings of discontent and negotiate a better way forward—together, not apart.

No legislation is forever, including our beloved Scotland Act. All legislation is from time to time re-examined and amended; that is how we do things in the UK. That is surely one of the foundation stones of British democracy. To put it simply, we can come together to better understand how to make our Union more workable and acknowledge what needs to change. Governmental co-operation and multi-level governance can improve, and I strongly believe that the vision of the founding members of our devolved Governments can and does endure. There is still hope that our Parliaments can build a stronger relationship for the future, in the face of increasing uncertainty and threats from beyond the seas.

I conclude with one simple request. The UK Supreme Court ruled in 2022 that the Scottish Parliament cannot legislate for an independence referendum without Westminster consent. I touch on that issue in the hope that this debate will not be wasted, and co-opted into a debate revising and exhausting the legality of that decision. Instead, I invite all Members from every corner of the House to engage in a constructive debate about how we can improve what we do. That is essential, particularly in the face of increasing uncertainty and—let us be honest—threats from across the seas to the way in which we do things in our precious democracy.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.

[John Lamont]

I think the recollection that the hon. Lady and I will have of our time in the Scottish Parliament was of voting physically, albeit electronically, together in the Scottish Parliament Chamber. The difference now, of course, is that some Members of the Scottish Parliament are voting in the Chamber, while others are voting at home, sitting at their kitchen table, by pressing a button. That is where the connectivity issues mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Gordon and Buchan (Harriet Cross) arise, and that is why it is important that we maintain physical voting in this place.

[Patricia Ferguson]

I absolutely agree with the hon. Member. I am not in favour of voting remotely either, except perhaps in very rare and exceptional circumstances. However, please believe me that electronic voting is the way forward. Members would not have to spend some 20 minutes walking through the Lobby. Votes would be cast, and a result declared, within roughly one minute. That is definitely a better use of Members’ time, and a much more efficient way to do things.