Enough campaigning. Is the next Scottish government prepared to govern?

Fixing Broken Government, a latest report by Professor Jim Gallagher of Our Scottish Future will no doubt be dismissed by some as a partisan attack on the SNP Government.  That would be a grave mistake.  If the SNP hopes to govern Scotland after next May then this report will be essential reading.  There are some senior SNP figures who will recognise the accuracy of the critique and concerns expressed, as they have done privately. 

And anyone who has taken a close interest in Scottish governance and public policy cannot fail to be aware of the reported growing exasperation and deep worries in this rigorously researched, robustly argued document.The key messages are clear.  Scotland is ‘sleepwalking into a crisis’. 

Scottish devolution faces a fiscal crisis with a troubling dependency ratio.  Demands on public services are growing while the proportion of tax payers declines.  As other reputable independent sources – the Scottish Fiscal Commission and Audit Scotland – have repeatedly warned in ‘increasingly shrill reports’, as Our Scottish Future notes, long-term consequences of short-term pronouncements and commitments are simply not sustainable without major changes.  We cannot carry on pretending that all is well.

“Everyone we spoke to, indeed just about everyone in Scottish public life, knows we have a big problem. Government struggles to deliver for the people of Scotland..” Professor Jim Gallagher

The report provides evidence of problems and weaknesses in areas that regularly feature in the top concerns of the Scottish public – health, the economy including jobs and cost-of-living, and education. 

Driven by short term tactics and risk aversion

The diagnoses are familiar: the Scottish Government is ‘driven by short term tactics and presentation; its indifference to implementation and lack of success in delivery; a ruthless centralisation and poor record in ‘joining up’ government; officials who are inward and upward looking. 

The Scottish Government too often lacks implementation plans, has an obsession with strategy documents and ‘wordcraft’, local authorities are treated as ‘delivery agents’ rather than policy innovators, there are too many Ministers and SPADs, a weak finance function within Scottish Government inhibits good government and we have a ‘struggling civil service’.

Those familiar with the work of Scottish civil servants past and present will recognise the contrast captured in the report.  One official from recent times is quoted saying, ‘I remember [the Permanent Secretary] once saying to me ‘our job is to delight ministers’. And I said no, it’s not.’  Contrast with verifiable evidence from archives of officials speaking truth to power, a point illustrated by the author when he notes,

‘When the predecessors of today’s Scottish officials told Conservative Ministers that they would live to regret the poll tax, they were not trying to delight them but to help them avoid a major error.’

These failings have policy consequences.  The tendency to avoid difficult decisions is succinctly expressed, ‘to govern is to choose, and unwillingness to choose is unwillingness to govern’.  The backdrop explains much.  The belief that a second independence referendum was just round the next corner encouraged campaigning over governing, short-termism and risk aversion rule.  We end up with policies that create the coming fiscal crisis.

There are no painless solutions.  The question is who should bear the pain.  The longer this is postponed the more painful it will be.  Existing generous policies will prove difficult to reverse – interest groups may create policies but policies also create entrenched interests.  And Scotland has an addiction to emotive sub-optimal policies.

The report summarises its recommendations later elaborated in the report:

Perhaps one of the most damning and challenging comments, at least for anyone seeking election to Holyrood next year, comes towards the end of the report.  ‘The institution which is absent in this analysis is the Scottish Parliament. With good reason: it is largely irrelevant.

Parliament is not in any meaningful way a location where the performance of the Scottish Government is challenged and improved. It has excellent resources in Audit Scotland (one of the success stories of devolution) providing the information which would enable an effective parliamentary system to hold the government’s feet to the fire. But they are barely warm.’  That makes for very uncomfortable reading for those of us who spent years arguing for a Scottish Parliament, expecting devolution would deliver better policies and improved outcomes.

Feature image: Scotland’s seventh First Minister John Swinney taking the Oath of Office in Edinburgh, May 2024 CC. 2.0