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Archive for category Holyrood

Labour holds Inverclyde, world keeps turning

Jul 1

Posted by Jeff in Holyrood | 41 Comments

The results are in and the Inverclyde by-election will go down in the history books as a rather pedestrian victory for Labour. No political earthquakes and similarly no shooting of the Nationalist fox.  The SNP may have reduced the late David Cairns’ majority from 14,416 to 5,538 but the reality is that they weren’t really that close to winning here.

And, in politics, a win is a win regardless of the margin of victory. I’m sure Bill Kidd and his single digit majority would agree there, so the back and forth between Labour and the SNP over how good or bad this victory may or may not have been, while inevitable, is pretty redundant.

That said, it did seem more than a little bit cheeky of Labour MPs to use the ~500 Holyrood majority as a way to suggest that this was a great night for them. For me, that only served to highlight the difference in Labour’s prospects between Holyrood and Westminster and undermined any message they were trying to send to the Westminster Parliament. Are they glad they won because there is a burning desire to change reserved policy on behalf of Scotland or are they just chuffed to have a rare chance to poke Salmond in the eye? It’s really not all that clear.

There is little to read into the results for the Conservatives, Lib Dems and UKIP. The latter two parties lost their deposits which is never ideal, but in a two-horse race by-election that risk will have been factored in early.

So it is back to business as usual with this by-election now out of the way but, with the current debate at Westminster being issues that are largely devolved, what Iain Mackenzie MP and his 58 Scottish colleagues will be working on is as clear as the mud on the banks of Inverclyde.

 

Education, Education, bugger we’re independent where’s the money gone?

Jun 30

Posted by Guest Blog in Education, Holyrood | 77 Comments

Another quick guest post from our pal Aidan Skinner. Commenters, like post authors, are encouraged to play the ball.

Mike Russell yesterday announced that students from England, Wales and Northern Ireland would have to pay fees of up to £9000 per year from 2013-2014 (there seems to be some muddle about what the position is on 2012-2013, no cap at all?). While clearly part of the SNP plan to plug the funding gap between Scottish universities this may not bring the level of income that he hopes – there was a 15% drop in the number of university students coming from England last year, presumably this move will cause those numbers to go off a cliff. But, for the sake of argument let’s assume that this does work as planned and our universities get a non-trivial amount of funding from it.

As soon as Scotland becomes independent it all disappears. Under EU rules we can’t charge EU students more than we charge Scottish students. There’s an exemption for students from within the member state that allows us to charge non-Scottish UK students but, after independence, they won’t be part of the same EU member state anymore. We can’t apply a quota to EU students, they have to be given access to Scottish institutions on the same terms as Scots. While the numbers are currently relatively low, approximately 16,000 at the moment, that still costs the Scottish government £75m each year. So we’ll either have to a) charge Scottish and EU students for university or b) offer free education for everyone through general taxation.

Now, much as I dislike the idea of tuition fees, I really don’t see how option b is feasible. We’d have a massive influx of students from rUK bringing no money with them.

So the logical conclusion is presumably that, post independence, the SNP would bring in tuition fees for all Scottish students. “Tuition Free with the SNP” becomes “Tuition Free with the SNP (until we achieve our primary goal, at which point you get Tuition Fees)!”.

Or is there a secret alternative plan?

HT to loveandgarbage for this idea.

Celebrating motorway closures.

Jun 28

Posted by James in Holyrood, Transport | 14 Comments

M74 monsterToday the roads lobby, the construction industry, and their cheerleaders at Holyrood celebrate the opening of the M74 Northern Extension. They got what they and their forebears have argued for since the 1940s – another barren strip of tarmac cut right through Glasgow. They even got the chap who’s 20th in line to the throne along to show how important it is to The Firm: Prince Richard, Duke of Gloucester. Disappointingly, not this one.

The scheme remains an overwhelmingly bad idea, whatever the cost and timescale, matters I’ll come back to shortly. The other arguments against the project – it won’t help with congestion, journey times or jobs, and it’ll be fantastically polluting – were accepted by the independent reporter, who ruled against it in 2005. To quote just one paragraph from that report:

11.100 Inevitably this recommendation will be subject to considerable criticism by those who support the road. The opposite recommendation has been considered with equal care. It is concluded that a recommendation to approve the construction of the road and the compulsory purchase of the affected properties would depend on setting aside the very serious disadvantages of the proposal in terms of objectives for the improvement of public transport and traffic reduction, CO2 emissions, the very serious environmental impacts along the route, and disregarding the potentially devastating effects on the local and wider economy due to the dislocation of existing businesses and services; and placing an unreasonable degree of confidence in employment forecasts that have not been demonstrated to be robust, and which at best would bring a relatively small number of new jobs to Scotland, the vast majority of the prospective new employment being transferred from other areas of Scotland, including other parts of the Clyde valley area. Even if a more positive view of the economic benefits were to be accepted, it would still be doubtful if this aspirational and uncertain prospect would justify the acceptance of so many negative effects.

Now even some former cheerleaders for the project have changed their tune, notably in an outstanding front page in the Scotsman yesterday. As Boris would say, this elevated motorway has already been demonstrated to be nonsense on stilts, literally, and Tom Greatrex should know better.

So for those of us who dream of a better urban Scotland, one that’s built to meet people’s needs not one that builds ever greater dependence on the car, this is a sad day. Yes – fighting it in court and through direct action delayed the scheme, and my only regret is that we didn’t do more.

SeoulBut there is, as the phrase has it, a better way. From Seoul to San Francisco, the urban motorways are coming out (thanks to Jonny for that link).

The road to the left is the 1970s Cheonggyecheon Highway through the heart of Seoul, and the river to the right is what replaced it in 2005.

The city got a new park (the river was under the motorway, believe it or not), lower traffic levels across the city, improvements in biodiversity, and better public transport.

The post above has three more examples, and this one talks about more discussions about motorway removals in Syracuse, Buffalo, Seattle, Louisville, Cleveland, New Orleans and Dallas.

That’s right. Dallas is ahead of us. We’re still building these 1960s barbarities, but Dallas, the world’s fossil fuel capital, is already talking about taking them out. Can you hear the music in your head?

The New Orleans example is also interesting. To quote the Architect’s Paper:

Decades before the hurricane, the construction of I-10 in the 1950s precipitated Treme’s decline from one of the city’s wealthiest African-American neighborhoods to an area with high poverty and vacancy rates.

And in Glasgow, both the M74 and the M8 have certainly damaged communities like Anderston Cross (h/t @geopoetic for that pic). Sooner or later, given the future shape of oil supply if nothing else, these job-killing, time-wasting and polluting roads will have to be taken down and the city rebuilt in the gaps that remain. We should treat that as an opportunity, and, depressing as it is that Ministers have wasted hundreds of millions of pounds on them, I look forward to the day that the ribbon is cut and the JCBs go in to undo all their hard work.

More scrutiny needed?

Jun 24

Posted by Malc in Governance, Holyrood | 25 Comments

Commentators across the political spectrum have been lined up to criticise the way in which the anti-sectarianism bill was being rushed through Holyrood.  Even the SNP’s new chair of Holyrood’s Justice Committee, Christine Grahame, expressed her reservations about the speed and lack of scrutiny with which the bill was likely to progress through the Scottish Parliament.  But it perhaps took until Celtic and Rangers themselves urged a delay that the Scottish Government took on board their concerns and decided to slow down the legislation.

While this bill is – perhaps – an exceptional case, and the speed with which it was to move forward aimed to allow it to be in place prior to the start of the Scottish football season, there is a wider point to make regarding the scrutiny of bills in the Scottish Parliament.  And that point is – do they get the scrutiny they need?  Let’s put this in context.

At Westminster, the route for a bill to become a law is quite lengthy.  Starting with the House of Commons, it has a first (introduction) and second (debate) reading, followed by a committee stage (line by line consideration), a report stage (debate, amendments) and then a third reading (and vote on approval).  Then, the same process is repeated in the House of Lords.  Then, if there are amendments at that stage, the bill is returned to the House of Commons for approval before being sent for Royal Assent.

At Holyrood, the bill is introduced at Stage one and assigned to a committee which will take evidence from experts.  The Committee will then report before the Stage one debate for agreement on general principles of the bill.  Stage two sees the bill undergo line by line scrutiny in committee, where amendments may be added.  It is then returned to the full chamber for the stage three debate (again, with potential for amendments) and vote, after which point, if it is accepted, the bill will be sent for Royal Assent.

Spot the difference?

Westminster spends twice as long legislating as Holyrood does, since the process has to be repeated in the House of Lords (or the House of Commons for bills that originate in the upper house).  That’s to be expected.  But its easy to see why – they have the ability to do that.  Holyrood is a unicameral parliament with the committees primed to take on the role of scrutiny that a second chamber does elsewhere.  At least that was the intention in the Scotland Act.

The problem is – and it is underlined by the issues arising from the Anti-Sectarianism bill – that they don’t have the time to fully scrutinise legislation prior to its acceptance.  Indeed, this isn’t a new problem – legislation has been passed by previous Scottish Executives which could use some review because of things missed or particular interpretations which hadn’t been recognised at the time they were passed.

But time is just one consideration.  Experience is another.  While I’m very happy that some (many) of our MSPs have no background in law (it means that they aren’t all lawyers) they have such disparate backgrounds that many wouldn’t know the parliamentary procedure a bill goes through in order to become a law.  Perhaps that is overstating my case somewhat, but I think you get the point – we’ve elected parliamentarians from multiple different backgrounds with different experiences (and that’s a GOOD THING) but what we gain in the richness of representation we perhaps lose in legal knowledge.  And when it comes to legislation – and specifically, scrutiny of legislation – this may well be a problem.

So if that’s really a problem, that what is the solution?  It was put to me that any politician who puts their head above the parapet and calls for fifty more politicians in Scotland might not be a politician for much longer… but it is certainly something that we should give some thought to.  Perhaps not as an elected second chamber (you’d end up with issues of who represents whom, how it was elected etc etc) but as individuals appointed according to their position.  For example, maybe the Scottish Government’s Law Officers, some of Scotland’s Law Lords (I assume someone like Jim Wallace would fall into this category?), the leader of say the six largest Scottish Councils and perhaps some of our senior judges might be the types of people we’d look for to do a job of scrutiny on legislation.

Its only an idea – and, I imagine, most of the democrats on here will rage about the idea of appointed officials making laws.  Except that they wouldn’t be making the laws, simply scrutinising and suggesting room for improvements – the actual law-making would still be done by politicians.

By all means dispute my outcome – but consider the problem as well.  Do you think we need more scrutiny of legislation?  Or are you happy that the legislation we get from Holyrood is as good as it could be?

By the way, I’m not writing this because we have an SNP majority – as I mentioned above, this system was wrong before the SNP entered majority government.  I’m just trying to think of ways we can make better laws in Scotland – and that’s surely something the SNP, and their activists, want too.

A gap in Scottish blogging

Jun 20

Posted by James in Holyrood, Media | 64 Comments

David TorranceAs Scotland prepares for the SNP to pop the question, whatever it turns out to be, the country deserves the broadest and most vibrant discussion possible about all the issues. The debate will take place in the media, in pubs and living rooms, and in the blogs and on social media (and, I almost forgot, in Parliament), but there’s currently quite a substantial gap. Specifically, there isn’t much level-headed argumentation out there for any form of the Yoonyon.

With that in mind, please welcome Mugwump, the new blog from freelance journalist David Torrance. Knowing our readership (hello all! waves fondly!) many of you won’t agree with him. But personally I think we need a debate where the best case is made by both sides. And where all the awkward questions are asked. His opening post is certainly that – are the SNP really planning to offer independence-lite, just an “ever-looser Union”? He’s tracked down some straws in the wind that suggest that might be the plan.

And don’t listen to the cynics who suggest that the two next letters in the pic to the left are R and Y. For one thing, I expect plenty of critique of the Tories. And for another, I suspect he’s actually a federalist.