Hansard

I rise to make this short speech with reluctance and a heavy heart, not because I think that the subject matter is unimportant—quite the contrary—but because it should not be me making the speech. I am the deputy convener of the Finance and Constitution Committee only because my friend and mentor Alex Johnstone is no longer with us. There will be time in due course for much fuller reflection on his unique contribution to Scottish politics, but I could not make this speech today without first paying tribute to him.

I turn now to business, as AJ surely would have wanted.

Intergovernmental machinery is a phrase that is designed to put even the most dedicated politics student to sleep. However, even if our short debate this evening somehow escapes the attention of tomorrow’s front pages, that is more a reflection of the peculiar priorities of the press than it is of the merits of the matter. The truth is that intergovernmental machinery is now core to the success of devolution itself. Hitherto in the devolved era, we have acted as if a power is either reserved to Westminster or devolved to us—it is one or the other. However, even if we did not quite realise it at the time, in those heady days of the Smith commission two years ago—to which Patrick Harvie just referred—we created something new: devolution 2.0. There are still reserved powers and devolved powers, but there are also shared powers—areas of government that are the joint responsibility in Scotland of both the UK Government and the Scottish Government. Welfare and some elements of taxation are only the two best-known examples.

In a parliamentary democracy such as the UK or Scotland, Parliaments have two jobs to do. They make laws—yes, from time to time they are supposed to make laws—and they hold the Government of the day to account by scrutinising its policies, decisions and actions. In a parliamentary democracy, we do not elect the Government directly—we elect a Parliament out of which a Government emerges and to which the Government is accountable. That is the essential constitutional framework within which the written agreement must be understood. It is an agreement—a written component of our famously unwritten constitution—that sets out the framework under which this Parliament can hold the Scottish ministers accountable for the policies, decisions and actions that they develop jointly with UK ministers in Britain’s intergovernmental machinery. Sometimes that machinery is bilateral, as in the joint ministerial working group on welfare, and sometimes it is quadrilateral as in the joint ministerial committee.

Regardless, it is essential that this Parliament is able effectively and robustly to hold the Scottish ministers to account for what they get up to, and indeed what they propose to get up to, in those meetings. There can be no hiding behind the veil of executive secrecy—that is the very opposite of the openness and accountability that we rightly demand.

The Smith commission generally and our chairman Lord Smith in particular were acutely conscious that all the UK’s legislatures needed to do better in this regard. I commend the Devolution (Further Powers) Committee for taking that forward, and I commend the Scottish Government for agreeing to the committee’s proposals as to how to ensure that we in this Parliament are able to do our job properly and hold ministers to account. It is enlightened of the Scottish ministers to have understood that the written agreement is not only in the Parliament’s best interests but also in their own interests. Ministers who are open with the Parliament and its committees are likely to find it easier to explain themselves than ministers who are not. As Murdo Fraser mentioned, the row that we had a few weeks ago about shared competence in the welfare field could have been avoided had ministers been more up front in complying with the requirements of the written agreement.

The written agreement is an excellent piece of work. It is fitting that Alex Johnstone was a member of the committee that developed it in the previous session, and it is fitting that the convener of that committee is in this session the convener of the Finance and Constitution Committee. It is a privilege to serve with him, and a particular pleasure to support him, and indeed the entire committee, in formally commending the written agreement to the Parliament.