{"id":15262,"date":"2023-05-14T12:40:04","date_gmt":"2023-05-14T12:40:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/?p=15262"},"modified":"2026-04-18T19:34:30","modified_gmt":"2026-04-18T19:34:30","slug":"scotlands-centres-of-power-need-reform-part-1-westminster","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/2023\/05\/scotlands-centres-of-power-need-reform-part-1-westminster\/","title":{"rendered":"Scotland\u2019s centres of power need reform: Part 1 (Westminster)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/nigel.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-15268\" src=\"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/nigel.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"750\" height=\"390\" srcset=\"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/nigel.jpg 750w, https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/nigel-300x156.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 750px) 100vw, 750px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><em>Professor James Mitchell gave a <a href=\"httpss:\/\/www.gla.ac.uk\/schools\/socialpolitical\/research\/politics\/stevensontrust\/newsandevents\/headline_952274_en.html\">Stevenson Trust for Citizenship<\/a> lecture, Reflections on the 1997 Referendum, in honour of the memory of <a href=\"httpss:\/\/gerryhassan.com\/blog\/an-example-of-the-good-public-life-for-all-of-us-nigel-smith\/\">Nigel Smith<\/a>, a pro-devolution business executive, at the University of Glasgow on May 9 2023. Reflecting on the last quarter century, drawing on Nigel Smith\u2019s thinking and contributions, the lecture addressed the role of the \u2018centre\u2019 in our politics.\u00a0 Nigel\u2019s contributions to public life cut across politics, the economy and society but at their core was a concern for pluralism and the dispersal of power and authority.\u00a0 What went right? What went wrong? And why and how do we right what has not gone, as perhaps Nigel would have seen things?<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>This is the first of edited extracts from Prof Mitchell\u2019s must-read lecture.<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>At the heart of our past and current discontents lies <em>the centre<\/em>.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">By the centre I refer to what the late Norwegian scholar <a href=\"httpss:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Stein_Rokkan\">Stein Rokkan<\/a>, arguably the leading European authority over the latter half of the 20C on these matters, described as \u2018<strong>privileged locations within a territory<\/strong>\u2019.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">As Nigel Smith remarked in his <a href=\"httpss:\/\/www.wecan.scot\/the-scottish-parliament-has-been-only-a-partial-success-certainly-less-successful-than-campaigners-hoped-for-at-the-onset-in-1997-it-can-do-better\/\">reflections on devolution<\/a> in \u2018The Scottish Parliament \u2013 partial success: could do better? \u2013 &#8220;Twenty years later there is still no reform at the centre of Britain&#8221; (p.11).<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">All states have a centre \u2013 indeed some would argue it is a defining feature of any state.\u00a0 Rokkan posed a series of questions to identify a centre:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Where do the key resource holders most frequently <em>meet<\/em> within the territory?<\/li>\n<li>Where have they established <em>arenas<\/em> for deliberations, negotiations, decision-making?<\/li>\n<li>Where do they convene for ceremonies for the affirmation of identity and where have they built <em>monuments<\/em> to symbolise this identity? (110)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Accepting that centres are necessary, we need to consider two further questions:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>How should the centre be constituted?<\/li>\n<li>And what should be decided at the centre (and what should be decided elsewhere)?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Of course, in no state is everything decided in one location but it is not difficult to identify the UK\u2019s centre in London \u2013 \u00a0the Whitehall\/Westminster centre of political power but also the site for great ceremonies such as the recent Coronation.<\/p>\n<h2>Scottish challenges to the centre<\/h2>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Challenges to the centre have come in two forms in Scotland over the last century and a half:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Demands for a voice at the centre;<\/li>\n<li>Demands for the devolution of power to Scotland.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In the 19th century and through much of the 20th, the concern was to ensure that there should be a strong Scottish voice at the centre, in the heart of government.\u00a0 Power lay in the executive branch and the demand in the latter half of the 19C was to place a Scottish Minister where it mattered.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/scottishoffice.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-15269 alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/scottishoffice.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"512\" height=\"384\" srcset=\"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/scottishoffice.jpg 512w, https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/scottishoffice-300x225.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 512px) 100vw, 512px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A Scottish Office was established in 1885.\u00a0 It was, in the typically cynical words of Prime Minister Lord Salisbury when inviting the Duke of Richmond and Gordon to accept the new office of Scottish Secretary, one in which:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">&#8230; the dignity (measured by salary) is the same as your present office \u2013 but measured by the <strong>expectations of the people of Scotland it is approaching to Arch-angelic<\/strong> . . . It is really a matter where the effulgence of two Dukedoms and the best salmon river in Scotland will go a long way\u2019.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In a further letter to Richmond and Gordon, Salisbury remarked that the \u2018whole object of the move is to <strong>redress the wounded dignities of the Scotch people<\/strong> \u2013 or a section of them \u2013 who think that enough is not made of Scotland\u2019.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Over time, the office&#8217;s responsibilities grew along with the growth in state intervention.\u00a0 But \u2018administrative devolution\u2019, as it came to be known from the 1930s, went beyond \u00a0matters within the Scottish Secretary\u2019s administrative domain.\u00a0 Being Scotland\u2019s voice in the core executive was its principal function \u2013 that part of central government responsible for making final decisions, coordinating and arbitrating.\u00a0 And successive Scottish Secretaries did this well as testified by records in the National Archives at Kew.\u00a0 Scotland\u2019s generous share of public spending was owed in no little part to the activities of Scottish Secretaries and officials over the course of more than a century arguing Scotland\u2019s corner.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But the Scottish Office was a 19C institution rooted in a pre-democratic age.\u00a0 Its existence acknowledged that the UK was diverse.\u00a0 While it was described as a form of \u2018Scottish control of Scottish affairs\u2019, the Scots in control were not accountable to the wider Scottish public but only, in the final analysis, to the Prime Minister of the day.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This weakness became the focus of attention in the twentieth century.\u00a0 A shift took place in the latter half of the century from ensuring Scotland had a voice at the centre to having Scottish control of Scottish affairs in Scotland directly accountable to the Scottish electorate.<\/p>\n<h2>The dawning of devolution<\/h2>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Devolution was framed in \u2013 and I use this term advisedly \u2013 <strong>separatist<\/strong> and <strong>binary<\/strong> terms.\u00a0 It was separatist in the sense that it was considered separate from how Scotland\u2019s voice should be articulated at the centre and binary in the sense that matters would be defined as either retained at Westminster or devolved.\u00a0 Relations between UK central and devolved governments were an afterthought as if there were no areas of joint responsibility.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This did not resolve the problem of Scotland\u2019s voice within central control of retained functions nor how shared problems and competences should be addressed.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There was some effort in the early days of devolution to address this deficiency.\u00a0 Nigel himself was appointed to a Bank of England\u2019s Scottish Consultative Panel from 1993-2004.\u00a0 But the problem of the centre persisted.\u00a0 My own research on <a href=\"httpss:\/\/www.research.ed.ac.uk\/en\/publications\/devolution-and-the-centre\"><em>Devolution and the Centre<\/em><\/a> in the early years of devolution, led to my view that Whitehall saw devolution as an <strong>event not a process<\/strong>, accommodated relatively easily (and more so, as many officials explained, than EEC membership or the creation of the Next Step Agencies).\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For many in Whitehall, devolution had been achieved and was not seen as an ongoing matter presenting daily problems and issues in the way that EU membership did.\u00a0 Again and again, Whitehall officials, who were interviewed in the early years of devolution, essentially saw the creation of the Parliament as something that could be ticked off as finished work.\u00a0 The Scottish Parliament had been created: job done.\u00a0 Devolution did not create or require a major upheaval in Whitehall.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Only occasionally, such as over Scottish tuition fees and care for the elderly, did devolution come to the fore in Whitehall.\u00a0 The centre failed to engage directly with the consequences of devolution for citizenship rights.\u00a0 It adopted a <em>laissez-faire<\/em> attitude to the relationship between citizenship, equality and territorial politics.\u00a0 Little thought was given as to how Scotland \u2013 and indeed other parts of the UK \u2013 should be represented at the centre post-devolution.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>The experience of the last few years ought to have taught us that the focus needs to be on how Scotland\u2019s voice is heard at the centre as well as how devolution operates in Scotland.\u00a0 It was the sense that this voice was not heard or, as some saw it, ignored or worst of all treated contemptuously by elements at the centre that created the demand for a Parliament in the first place.\u00a0 But that sense continues to exist and will not disappear without further reform.<\/strong><\/p>\n<h2>Wicked problems need multi-level governance<\/h2>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Binary thinking is a large part of the problem too.\u00a0 The notion of separate levels of government, each operating within their own jurisdictions might appear sensible from a legal perspective and was how the Scotland Act was framed.\u00a0 But from a public policy perspective, it makes no sense.\u00a0 It might work for the \u2018tame problems\u2019 \u2013 problems that can be tackled, even solved, within definable boundaries \u2013 but none of our \u2018wicked problems\u2019 \u2013 the complex, deep-rooted, multi-dimensional problems that don\u2019t lend themselves to a simple \u2018solutions\u2019 \u2013 require cooperation across and between different government organisations, and civic institutions.\u00a0 Call it whatever is fashionable \u2013 Multi-Level Governance, Network Governance \u2013 the key need is for coordination, cooperation and consensus building.\u00a0 Attempts to treat these \u2018wicked problems\u2019 as \u2018tame\u2019 through a single institutional framework are almost bound to fail.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Paul t\u2019Hart, a leading scholar on public leadership, offered a list of wicked problems faced today:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">urban stress, cyber crime, climate change, refugee flows, obesity epidemics, religious fanaticism, alcohol and drug abuse, problem gambling, child trafficking, genetic engineering, resource depletion, poverty\u2026\u00a0 These are complex problems because they involve a large number and diverse range of stakeholders, values and interests.\u00a0 They entail irreducible uncertainties or conflicts about the nature and scope of the problem as well as the likely impacts of alternative ways of tackling it.\u00a0 They cannot be solved by known, affordable and easily managed response modes <em>(Paul t\u2019Hart (2014), Understanding Public Leadership, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, p.88, 89).<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And then there are what we now refer to as the \u2018super wicked problems\u2019 with four key characteristics:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>time is running out<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>those who cause the problem also need to be part of the solution<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>the central authority needed to address them is weak or non-existent<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>and irrational discounting occurs that pushes responses into the future.<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Think of the environmental crises.\u00a0 These cannot be addressed by any single government nor by governments alone.\u00a0 Consensus building is essential across all sphere of government playing a part alongside communities, civic society and business.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">One response is that everything should be devolved and concentrate everything in Edinburgh.\u00a0 But top-down, command-and-control approaches don\u2019t work whether emanating from Brussels, London or Edinburgh.<\/p>\n<h2>In bed with an elephant<\/h2>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What is more, constitutional power is not the same as economic power.\u00a0 Independence would still leave huge economic power in London.\u00a0 Regardless of Scotland\u2019s constitutional status, decisions made in London \u2013 whether in Westminster\/Whitehall or in the City of London \u2013 will have major consequences for Scotland.\u00a0 We cannot change our geography.\u00a0 We will always be \u2018in bed with an elephant\u2019 to borrow Pierre Trudeau\u2019s comment on Canada\u2019s relationship with the United States.\u00a0 This is a challenge for all, regardless of constitutional preference.\u00a0 Constitutional change alone cannot on its own address the economic imbalances so obvious in the UK.\u00a0<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_15270\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-15270\" style=\"width: 640px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/ukgov.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-15270\" src=\"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/ukgov.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"476\" srcset=\"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/ukgov.png 640w, https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/ukgov-300x223.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-15270\" class=\"wp-caption-text\"><em>Queen Elizabeth House Edinburgh<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Devolution needs to be more than formal institutional competences but requires a different mindset.\u00a0 Nigel recognised this in comments he made 19 months after the Scottish Parliament first assembled in comments on the BBC:<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Government could have legitimately instructed the BBC under the terms of the Royal Charter to take full account of devolution in its home services\u2026<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">By dealing with the BBC, the archetypal British organisation, in this way the Government has sent a very public signal to several hundred British bodies, largely representing the powers retained in London, which are considering what form their unlegislated response to the Scotland Act should take. They are as diverse as the Bank of England, the Equal Opportunities Commission, Royal Mail, Government departments to obscure but important British scientific committees. (Herald,\u00a0December 18, 1998)<\/p>\n<h2>Reforming London Central<\/h2>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The message is simple. In the face of radical constitutional reform, a conservative and minimal response from them is quite acceptable to the Government.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Many have seen a solution in more regular meetings of Intergovernmental institutions.\u00a0\u00a0 There was logic in this as argued in the early years of devolution by a number of scholars \u2013 notably Alan Trench in UCL\u2019s Constitution Unit.\u00a0\u00a0 Alan powerfully articulated the case for more formalised and more frequent meetings of Ministers from devolved and UK central governments.\u00a0 These arguments have been copied repeatedly in books, academic journal articles, newspaper articles and numerous reports of Parliamentary Committees from devolved bodies and Westminster.\u00a0 But Intergovernmental Relations only work if the governments involved want them to work.\u00a0 In recent years such meetings have all too often become fora for grandstanding and politicking.\u00a0 No progress can be made so long as the governments \u2013 the centres \u2013 remained unreformed.\u00a0 No amount of new machinery of Intergovernmental Relations will work \u2013 indeed it could make matters worse \u2013 if centres are looking for a fight.\u00a0 Providing a gladiatorial arena for constitutional one-upmanship is counter-productive.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This suggests a series of reforms at the centre of UK:<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 We need to consider how to ensure that the core executive is in London representative of the state as a whole \u2013 that raises questions about how the Commons is elected \u2013an electoral system that translates minority support into a majority in the Chamber giving the executive power to ignore the majority in the country requires change;<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 Greater cognisance of the diversity of the UK is needed across all public institutions \u2013 the BBC, the Bank of England and regulatory bodies for example as much as inside the heart of central government;<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 Mechanisms to prevent devolution being rolled back \u2013 like Nigel my view is that claims of a power grab have some validity but are often exaggerated. Proposals to reform the second chamber involving its reconstitution as a chamber of nations and regions and giving it power to block any roll back make sense.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Images vioa Wikimedia Commons: <a href=\"httpss:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File:Scotland_Office,_Dover_House,_Whitehall_01.jpg\">Dover House<\/a>, Whitehall, by Paul the archivist, CC BY-SA 4.0 International; <a href=\"httpss:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File:Queen_Elizabeth_House,_Edinburgh.png\">Queen Elizabeth House<\/a>, Edinburgh, by breadandcheese, CC BY-SA 4.0 International<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;No progress can be made so long as the governments \u2013 the centres \u2013 remained unreformed.\u00a0 No amount of new machinery of Intergovernmental Relations will work \u2013 indeed it could make matters worse \u2013 if centres are looking for a fight.\u00a0 Providing a gladiatorial arena for constitutional one-upmanship is counter-productive.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":101,"featured_media":1734,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[125],"tags":[40],"class_list":["post-15262","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-devolution"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15262","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/101"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15262"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15262\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18499,"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15262\/revisions\/18499"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1734"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}