Scotland's Referendum In Retrospect

Contemporary Review, Oct, 2000 by R.D. Kernohan

One test will come if pressure builds up, and is resisted in Whitehall, for the Government to accept care costs for the infirm elderly as nursing and therefore health expenditure. But another was passed over university fees, where the Scottish executive was trapped by a blend of public expectations and Liberal coalition partners' commitments. Political necessity proved the mother of considerable invention and a modified fee repayment system has emerged, disguised as 'graduate endowments', involving palpable unfairness to English students at Scottish universities but ameliorated for Scottish opinion by the return of maintenance grants for students from poor families and mature students. But a third test will be more difficult, for where local government is concerned the interests of Labour's many local baronies are at odds with the Liberal enthusiasm for an extension of proportional representation.

The debit side of new Parliament's account has included some uneasy settling in of a system combining constituency members with those elected on party lists and also the major public relations disaster over the high-profile repeal of Clause 28 (otherwise Section 2A) prohibiting local authorities, none of whom had much inclination in that direction, from promoting homosexuality. The new guideline formula on sex education, marriage, and family life -- for what it is worth -- could have been agreed when the matter was unearthed from Labour's manifesto and few Scots would have been stirred. Instead a good many were shaken, including the Roman Catholic leader Cardinal Winning, as ultra-conservative as he previously seemed anti-Conservative.

On the other hand the inevitable and persistent attempt of members of the Scottish Parliament, especially SNP ones, to sound off on a range of matters beyond the Parliament's remit has proved a minor irritant rather than a serious problem. For the moment at least, Scottish opinion generally seems content that MSPs (even when it wonders if they're aren't too many of them) should concentrate on making their new institution viable and workable and on handling the matters clearly devolved to them.

That mood has probably been encouraged by the Executive's other disaster, the failure of the Scottish Qualifications Authority to cope with a more complicated school certificate system. Its reputation has suffered, despite attempts to shift all blame on the 'agency's' management, but public and professional anger has brought new interest in the devolved politics of education.

What's to come is still unsure. There is no turning back, as even Conservative leaders recognised, perhaps too publicly and prematurely.

But it is probably a good thing that the Parliament will have settled down before the real tests of the system come with changes of mood and balance at Westminster, the departure of the skilful and trusted Donald Dewar, possible divergences of policy more serious than those over university finance, and risks of frustration (which Professor Denver and his colleagues touch on) among MSP's who think Blair's Britain too inegalitarian and Gordon Brown's finances too prudent, even after his latest spending review.