25 years of the Scottish Parliament

The King and Queen are at Holyrood this weekend to take part in a celebration marking 25 years since the Scottish Parliament was “recalled”.

This is how their visit is described in the official press release. Reinstated was MSP Winnie Ewing’s word of choice when she opened devolved parliament for business in 1999.

As a nationalist politician, Mrs Ewing might have enjoyed a sense of historical continuity with the 18th-century parliament of what had been an independent Scotland.

Her choice of words raised a few eyebrows at the time, as the new parliament bears little resemblance to the old. Continuity is largely a myth.

First, Holyrood is a democratically elected house rather than an assembly of aristocrats and landed gentry.

Second, it represents an experiment in power-sharing within the United Kingdom, rather than a departure from the political union with England of 1707.

For Labour, the party that delivered devolution, one of the key aims of making more decisions about Scotland in Scotland was to quell nationalist demands for full independence.

Labour’s shadow Scottish secretary before the 1997 general election, George Robertson, predicted that devolution would “kill the rock of the SNP”.

In contrast, his fellow Labor MP Tam Dalyell, who opposed devolution, warned it would become a “dead end highway to a separate state”.

Either could still be justified, but so far both have been up for grabs.

Ten years ago this month, Scottish voters rejected the bid for independence in a referendum.

Of course, that referendum only materialized because, a few years earlier, the main independence party – the SNP – won an outright majority of seats in the Scottish Parliament.

The voting system was designed specifically to prevent this from happening. An element of proportional representation should have required minority parties to cooperate and share power.

That’s what happened in the first eight years when Labor and the Liberal Democrats led coalition governments.

Far from killing the SNP, Holyrood gave the party a platform to propel itself from protest to power.

Over the past 17 years, the SNP has become the dominant force in Scottish politics, with constitutional politics at the fore.

This frustrated their opponents, who would have preferred to focus much more on the provision and reform of devolved public services such as the NHS and schools.

The SNP’s unsuccessful pursuit of independence has led to Holyrood accumulating new responsibilities.

It became a more powerful parliament with almost full control over income tax and the beginnings of a distinctive welfare system.

Not that it was without considerable influence. Just think of the life and death decisions made daily by Holyrood ministers during the Covid pandemic.

Parliament passed 370 bills, including landmark legislation to ban smoking in enclosed public places, introduce minimum unit prices for alcohol and legalize same-sex marriage.

A hallmark of devolution is that successive governments have expanded the provision of free or subsidized entitlements.

These include free personal care for the elderly, free prescriptions and free college tuition.

As budgets come under increasing pressure, there is a feeling that these provisions cannot be extended much further and may need to become more targeted.

Holyrood was good at spending money. It is less obvious that when the economy grows, additional money is generated to pay for public services.

Most of its funding has always come from a block grant from the UK Treasury.

While some of its powers have expanded, the introduction of a UK Internal Market Act after Brexit allowed the last Westminster government to block the introduction of a Scottish bottle deposit system.

British ministers have also used reserved powers to stop gender recognition reforms in Scotland and have been backed by the courts.

In a separate dispute, their lawyers successfully argued in court that Holyrood could not hold another independence referendum without their approval.

As Scottish Secretary, Tory MP Alister Jack was quite happy to be seen as a muscular unionist, reining in SNP nationalism.

These clashes poisoned relations between the Scottish and British governments.

There appears to have been an attempted reset following the general election which saw the SNP lose many seats and Labor returned to power at Westminster.

These struggles probably say more about the parties in power at the Scottish and UK level at any given time than about the Scottish Parliament itself.

That is not to say that there is scope for overhauling the way Holyrood works to make it better equipped to hold the Scottish Government of the day to account.

All parties that were consistently represented at Holyrood had a shot at governing, except the Conservatives.

One Welsh Labor secretary, Ron Davies, liked to say that devolution was a process, not an event.

There has been a lot of evolution in the first 25 years and no doubt more to come.

There were times in the early years when the continued existence of the Scottish Parliament seemed far from certain.

It began shockingly with the sudden death of the founding Prime Minister, Donald Dewar; the resignation of his successor, Henry McLeish, in a property subletting row; and the scandalous delays and cost overruns for the Holyrood parliament building project.

It fell to Labor Prime Minister Jack McConnell to right the ship. His SNP successors, Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon, have expanded the boundaries of devolved power.

The spectacular fallout between Salmond and Sturgeon has gripped Holyrood journalists for months.

It was probably not something Donald Dewar had anticipated.

In his opening speech to parliament in 1999, he described the institution as “a new voice in the country”.

Twenty-five years later, there are few consequences in Scotland that are not discussed there. It’s where people come to petition and protest. A trip to London is no longer a necessity.

Holyrood has firmly established itself at the center of Scottish public life.

Few would doubt that it is here to stay – and that, perhaps, is a significant achievement in itself.