In March Tricia Marwick, Presiding Officer of the Scottish Parliament, used a speech to the David Hume Institute to propose some procedural reforms to strengthen the ability of MSPs to scrutinise Government proposals and revise draft legislation adequately.
The measures she suggested were modest and sensible: reducing the number of committees so that MSPs would only have to sit on one and therefore be able to devote more time to building up knowledge and expertise. Committees would be bigger, would probably have to shadow several ministers as well as scrutinising legislation, but would encompass a wider range of interests and views.
She also proposed directly electing conveners by secret ballots of the whole parliament, a practise successfully implemented in Westminster after the 2010 general election. This would give the chairs more authority to challenge government, but also provide a career path for those who were overlooked or unsuited to be ministers, or simply in the wrong party.
Ms Marwick, who has served as an MSP since the advent of the parliament in 1999, has signalled her intention to retire at the elections next Spring. It is likely that she will leave without seeing her reforms introduced.
Her proposals were taken up by the parliament’s Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee, which has given itself a huge agenda, not only looking at the presiding officer’s suggestions, but the impact new powers will have on the parliament, the resourcing of committees, post-legislative scrutiny (something the parliament has hardly done up until now) and other subjects.
It is intending to publish a report by the end of the year, but already seems to be looking to put some topics – directly elected conveners for example – in the “too difficult” tray. The current legislative programme is busy enough – with some controversial subjects like university governance and land reform – and the session will be cut short by the election campaign, so it is unlikely that the parliament will have much time for its own reform before May 2016.
All change
By then we may have a very different legislature than the one we have now. If the opinion polls are to be believed, the SNP will be returned with a(n increased) majority. Scottish ministers will already have had eight years experience behind them and will be well versed in operating the system. But they will face a parliament without many of its most knowledgeable long-serving members, who have also decided to retire. The new intake will face a steep learning curve.
There will be a new presiding officer and a new procedures committee, who may or may not share the enthusiasm for change. But in any case there will be fresh – possibly more pressing – concerns. Fiscal matters will loom much larger than they have done in the past, when the parliament and Scottish Government merely had to spend the money given to them under the Barnett Formula.
From next year the parliament will have increased tax powers resulting from the 2012 Scotland Act, with a requirement – rather than just the option – to set a Scottish Rate of Income Tax. It will therefore need to take a much closer interest in the state of the economy than might have been the case in the past. Calculating tax yields, not something politicians in Scotland have had to do previously, will become an essential skill.
MSPs and ministers will also have to cope with the enhanced austerity threatened by the UK Chancellor, George Osborne, in his spending review next month. The deep cuts to departmental budgets which have been forecast will pass down to Scotland through the Barnett calculations. They will mean some hard decisions, possibly the abandonment of the “no compulsory redundancies” policy ministers have tried to enforce in the public sector, the closure of old or inefficient hospitals and A&E departments and so on.
The background will be an economy which faces strong headwinds. Continuing low oil prices will not impact directly on Scottish Government revenues, but you have only to look at the housing market in Aberdeen to see the impact they are having on the onshore economy. Exports, too, face weak markets in the Eurozone and Asia.
All this at a time when the ability to analyse fiscal matters is, to say the least, uncertain. The Scottish Fiscal Commission, supposedly our answer to the Office of Budget Responsibility, has been a cipher until now, with a miniscule budget and two of its three members conflicted by also being members of the Scottish Government’s council of economic advisers. A bill to give it legislative standing and (perhaps) to increase its ability to give an impartial view of Scotland’s economic health is making its way through the parliament, but there are still serious questions over how well it will be resourced and how independent it will be of a government which also commands a majority in the parliament.
And Fiscal Affairs Scotland, a brave attempt to establish a Scottish equivalent of the excellent Institute of Fiscal Studies, is facing closure unless it can secure long term funding. In its short life it has produced good work, analysing aspects of the public finances which others have overlooked. Scotland needs detached expert opinion, but unfortunately it does not come free of charge.
This blog first appeared at the David Hume Institute site and is reproduced here with permission
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