Much of the fascination around the Salmond inquiry has been through the personalities of those involved. There are some obvious reasons for this. One is that the “story” of a protégé falling out with her one-time mentor in such spectacular fashion makes for a compelling narrative, especially when compared to the granular, often tedious intricacies of the actual case at hand.
A less obvious reason, however, is that to focus on personalities is a way for those being questioned to deflect criticism away from the very mechanisms of devolution itself. Salmond began his appearance in front of the Committee on the Scottish Government Handling of Harassment Complaints by directly rebuking suggestions that Scotland’s institutional framework was at fault for the botched proceedings against him, saying: “Scotland’s civil service hasn’t failed, its leadership has failed. Scotland hasn’t failed, its leadership has failed.”
During the rigmarole of the inquiry itself, however, the weaknesses at the heart of the devolution settlement have not been difficult to spot. A conscious decision was made at the Scottish parliament’s founding to forgo an upper chamber, opting instead for a “robust” committee system to scrutinise the work of government. The problem with this system is that it remains largely as toothless as its Westminster counterpart: it lacks real powers to issue, say, subpoenas or contempt of parliament offences, and most of the time it has been left to the government to choose what it would like others to scrutinise. As happened a few weeks ago, it should not take the prospect of losing his job in a vote of no confidence to compel the deputy first minister to release legal advice requested by the committee in the first instance. It is difficult to see how even the most bipartisan committee could draw any satisfactory conclusion if they are unable to choose what evidence they are allowed to consider.
The fact that the verdicts of most committees—and before that, even their lines of questioning—normally fall down partisan lines makes things all the worse. Members of committees should not, for instance, be tweeting their hot takes during the course of hearing evidence. Asking one witness to apologise for the behaviour of another, as Tory MSP Murdo Fraser did to Nicola Sturgeon, seems to serve no purpose whatsoever other than soapbox politicking.
Many of these issues are not new, nor should the way they manifest take us by surprise. In 2017, an independent commission was established by the presiding officer to examine the workings of Holyrood (referred at the time, somewhat affectionately, as an “MOT” of parliament). Overseen by Scotland’s former electoral commissioner, John McCormick, one of the commission’s conclusions was that “while the committees have on occasion been robust in their scrutiny of government and others, overall they have not been as effective… as anticipated.” They said one of the reasons for this was because “party discipline used to co-ordinate votes on legislation has been enforced during inquiries on non-legislative issues.”
Among other measures, the commission recommended that the convenerships of committees be elected by parliament rather than distributed among political parties, and that parliament should “consider” extending the rule that conveners should not be from the ruling political party to all committees—not just the Public Audit and Post-Legislative Scrutiny Committee, as outlined by current Standing Orders. In the event, none of these recommendations for committee reform were implemented.
Since then, the scope for meaningful reform within Holyrood has only dwindled—but this time most of it has stemmed from outwith the chamber itself. Banana republic, failed state, a one-party dictatorship—these increasingly common terms among some quarters of the press are primarily intended to criticise the SNP leadership but, deliberately or not, they sow doubt over the very plausibility of autonomous Scottish governance.
Much of this rhetoric has sprung up within the context of a new, more dismissive culture at Westminster, in which devolution is perceived less as the expression of Whitehall’s remote branch offices than a form of bitter competition that must be contested at all times. Plans in London to fund projects within Scotland over the heads of MSPs is but one example of an approach that will make expenditure a binary between “this parliament” and “that parliament.” The consequence is that governments ignore their own innate dysfunctions, for fear that to accept outside criticism is tantamount to risking their survival. A bunker mentality is all but inevitable when proponents genuinely feel like they are “at war” with one another.
Through the ensuing mudslinging it should not be forgotten however that, fundamentally, it is still not up to the people of Scotland whether or not they have their own parliament. In a more open-minded political time, the dismissal of the 2014 Smith Commission’s recommendation that the Scottish parliament be recognised in law as a “permanent institution” seemed a dispute over technical labelling rather than anything of substance. Today, when juxtaposed with calls made earlier this month by the Welsh first minister Mark Drakeford for a sovereign, “entrenched home rule,” that omission appears all the more glaring.
It is not hard to get a sense of the acute existential threat that currently hangs over each one of the UK’s devolved legislatures. Elsewhere in his appearance before the Welsh Affairs Committee, Drakeford criticised Johnson for “outright hostility” towards devolution, saying that the UK as it currently stands is “over” without real change to how it is run. More pertinently, he suggested that the required change is simply impossible while the prime minister remains in office.
Drakeford seems acutely aware—perhaps unusually so, for a Labour politician—that Johnson’s strain of muscular unionism takes a degree of “devoscepticism” as a given. So far we have seen plenty of commentary on that strain of thinking. How its adherents will choose to act in the coming months, especially after May’s Holyrood elections, is not yet clear—but it seems unlikely to take the UK in a direction that will satisfy anyone.
