Devolution in Scotland

Torcuil Crichton Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd October 2025 Commons Chamber

[Chris Murray (Edinburgh East and Musselburgh) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone) on securing this important debate on the 25th anniversary of devolution.

My constituency of Edinburgh East and Musselburgh is home to many of Scotland’s jewels. It is a privilege to represent Edinburgh castle, Holyrood palace and the Edinburgh festivals and fringe, although I think the performers are safe given some of the jokes we have heard from Opposition Members. However, the most important building in my seat—indeed, in the whole of Scotland—is at the foot of the Royal Mile. Not only is it architecturally a huge addition to Edinburgh’s scenery, but it is where the Scottish political heart beats. Calling the Scottish Parliament the centre of Scottish political life may sound like a bland truism, but it is not. It is a huge achievement, and not to think so would be to underestimate the achievement of devolution. Before 1999, critics of devolution said that it would amount to an overgrown town council, cause a brain drain, or be of interest only to the political class, not ordinary Scots.

I am of the devolution generation: for as long as I can remember, devolution has simply existed. That devolution generation is now reluctantly facing middle age, but for us it has become a fact of life that the Scottish Parliament is the primary Parliament in which decisions that affect our lives are taken. The community groups and local businesses that I speak to orient themselves towards Holyrood. When they say “the Parliament,” they mean that place, not this one. That is testament to the Scottish Parliament’s success in establishing itself as the fulcrum of Scottish political life.

However, we should consider a counterfactual. Imagine if devolution had been thwarted. Our health service, education and justice systems and housing policy would all receive only scraps of parliamentary time, with little scrutiny and even less reform. That would be a democratic affront even now, when the Government have 37 Scottish MPs, but it would have been an outrage over the 14 years under the last Conservative Administration, with little Scottish representation. The Scottish Parliament has its flaws, but it has undeniably remedied that democratic deficit, and in so doing, has removed one of the greatest threats to constitutional stability in Scotland.

[Torcuil Crichton (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (Lab)]

I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone) for organising this debate—he is as much an institution as the Scottish Parliament itself. My hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East and Musselburgh (Chris Murray) speaks about the Scottish Parliament being the heartbeat of Scottish politics. Is it not time, in the next 25 years, to devolve power from Edinburgh to regions like mine and the highlands, to super-charge the Highlands and Islands Enterprise into a highland development agency, cutting out—shut your ears—those dynamos of economic activity, Inverness and the Moray firth, and to focus devolved power on transport, housing, depopulation and economic and cultural growth in rural areas of Scotland? Powers have been pulled back from them into a centralised Edinburgh.

[Chris Murray]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. The concentration of power in the Scottish Parliament does not work for cities, rural areas, the central belt or the highlands and islands, because it treats Scotland as one monolithic whole and does not address the differences in its communities.

That brings me to my next point. Although devolution has been successful in establishing the Scottish Parliament, we have to be honest about where it has fallen short. Many hon. Members have laid out a litany of failures: poorer health outcomes, falling schools standards that were once the envy of Europe, a housing emergency and stubbornly high poverty, and the drugs crisis, which shames us all. We once led the world in setting climate targets, but we now lead the world in ditching them. We must understand why that happened.

If we think of devolution only as the establishment of the Scottish Parliament, we get it wrong. In 1999, another institution was created—the Scottish Government, then the Scottish Executive.