Full potential of devolution yet to be realised, says former FM McLeish

The full potential of Scottish devolution is “yet to be realised”, a former first minister has told an audience at the Edinburgh International Book Festival.

Speaking in an on-stage conversation on Monday, Henry McLeish said that when the Scottish Parliament was created, in 1999, the aspiration had been for it to to take a more “consensual” approach to decision-making than Westminster, but that this had not come to pass.

Mr McLeish, who served as first minister from 2000 to 2001, said the ensuing debates around constitutional matters had taken up “too much time” since the Parliament’s creation, resulting in issues and policy areas that affect Scots being ignored.

The former Labour politician was speaking following the publication of a new book about devolution called Unfinished Business, which he co-authored with academic Professor James Mitchell, who appeared on stage alongside him.

Reflecting on the creation of the Parliament, Mr McLeish said: “It was hoped that we’d be a different politics. But I’m sad to say that I think the Parliament’s achieved a great deal over the last 25 years, but there is a degree of Westminster tribalism which still exists.

“And to me, that’s the bar from having proper dialogue.”

Mr McLeish, who worked on the Scotland Act 1998 that paved the way for the new Parliament, said: “What we found was that when we established a group of politicians … we fell into the old ways pretty quickly, and that created the kind of hostility between individuals, between parties.”

He added: “People have got different views, different ideologies, but to me, one of the disappointments is that I wanted to be more European in our approach.”

He explained that the people the Parliament was set up to serve had lost out as a result.

“I think it’s it’s more than legitimate for each party to have a view of the future, which could be federal, it could be independence, it could be more powers.

“But the contention of the book is that we’ve spent too much time on that in the last 25 years, and not enough time dealing with the policy areas which matter to Scots.”

Professor James Mitchell also blamed “performative” politics for enabling ministers to avoid tackling what he said were the “wicked problems” affecting Scotland.

“When we’ve got difficult problems facing us and we don’t address them, then we engage in these kind of performative politics,” he explained.

“We make statements, we make promises, government ministers deliver speeches, but little else. Delivery is done by teachers, nurses and people at (the) front line.

“I think if you’re really serious about, for example, closing the attainment gap, you don’t just stand up and make a speech saying, we’re going to do it. You have to think it through.”

Asked for his assessment of whether devolution had been worthwhile Mr McLeish listed “free personal care, education, land reform” as some of the achievements of the Scottish Parliament.

He added that in the years he had been an MP, the UK Parliament had passed “one and a half” Scottish Bills per year, but that the Scottish Parliament had been able to pass 15-20.

This showed, he said, that “we have in Scotland some mechanism, something that we didn’t have before, and to me that’s a very positive thing.”

He went on: “There’s been tremendous success for devolution, but it just encourages me to say that there’s a lot more potential still to be realised, we need to get on with it.”