‘Holyrood needs a good shake-up’: Politicians reflect on 25 years of devolution

Members of the public watch proceedings on the first day of the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh.

The first meeting of the new Scottish Parliament took place on May 12, 1999

It can be easy to dismiss as naive. But for those who were there, 25 years ago today, the sense of hope and optimism was palpable. It was, in the famous words of Winnie Ewing, a chance to begin “a new Scottish song”.

The first meeting of the Scottish Parliament in the General Assembly Hall of the Church of Scotland – its temporary home before the construction of the current Holyrood building – on May 12, 1999, marked the dawn of a new era. There was talk of a different style of politics, based on consensus and respect.

Of course, the reality was messier and more complicated. Jack McConnell, who was elected to the new parliament as a Labour MSP and later served as First Minister between 2001 and 2007, remembers a “genuine desire to do the right thing for the public good”.

Donald Dewar after he was made first First Minister

"It doesn't take much analysis to see that scale of change – well thought through, progressive, well-delivered change – has not been happening now for a decade or more,” he told Scotland on Sunday. “I think that's a real tragedy. It's wasting the potential of the Scottish Parliament to change lives and change Scotland."

Politics, he said, is "definitely more divided and more relentlessly partisan than back then”. He added: “There's less depth to it, I think that's the way I would put it."

Henry McLeish, who was Lord McConnell’s predecessor as First Minister, said tribalism is now “worse in Scotland than it is at Westminster”.

The former Scottish Labour leader said: "In my day in politics, you would regard people as your political opponent. But we've reached a point where you have to have political enemies, and that is just not the basis for a sound society to move forward."

The Scottish Parliament building at Holyrood. Picture: PA

He said Scotland is "more divided, politically, now than it was 25 years ago".

Mary Scanlon, a Conservative MSP from 1999 to 2006, and then again from 2007 until 2016, expressed similar sentiments. Politics is now “totally tribal”, she said.

"Conservatives didn't campaign for a Scottish Parliament,” she said. “But we were told in no uncertain terms by our leader, David McLetchie, it had been a democratic vote, we accepted that vote and we would go into that parliament and work positively to make the parliament a success."

Jamie Stone was a Liberal Democrat MSP from 1999 to 2011, and now sits as an MP. He fondly remembers the cross-party friendships formed in those early days, including through an informal dining club made up of two people from each political party.

Winnie Ewing at the first sitting of the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh.

"Once a session, once a term, we would meet up and have a meal together, Chatham House rules, and talk completely freely about what we thought and so on,” he said. "It was a very genial occasion. We would meet up and have a drink in, say, Deacon Brodies [a pub on Edinburgh's Lawnmarket] to start with, and then go to a hostelry where we could have a nice meal in private and chat away and so on."

He was also part of a group of MSPs, including Jamie McGrigor from the Tories, who put on a show at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. This offered “a light-hearted look at Scottish politics”. Mr McGrigor apparently sang a song, while Mr Stone was the compère – a role that required dyeing his hair white.

He recalls entering a shop in Cockburn Street to buy the dye before he had to rush for a train. The staff helpfully pointed out there was a quicker way to the station via the shop’s other entrance. "I said thank you very much, and as I went through the shop the items for sale changed to what was now whips and leather,” he said.

“The other door was clearly S&M. And I came out of the door onto the steps, slightly startled, to bump straight into [former Scottish Tory leader] Annabel Goldie, who said 'Good morning Jamie,' and then looked at the shop. I said, 'Eh, I've been buying hair dye'. She said to me, 'Yes, you may choose to say that.'"

Mr Stone told Scotland on Sunday: "I fear, when I watch Holyrood on the telly now, it certainly appears to me as an outsider to be a much colder, much more hostile environment. I hope I'm wrong."

Ms Scanlon had a famous cross-party friendship with Christine Grahame, the long-serving SNP MSP, and the late Margo MacDonald, who was an SNP politician but later sat as an independent.

"Margo called us the White Heather Club,” said Ms Scanlon. “We met in the bar for years, years and years. We sat down, we talked about everything – anything and everything – but we never sat and discussed and disagreed on our party politics. We knew what we each stood for, and that didn't matter. As individuals, we laughed, we had a lovely friendship.”

Ms Grahame recalls: "We were all ladies d'un certain âge, as the French would say. We had more in common – one thing we never did, at least three of us together, was talk politics." She added: "We just had fun together."

Ms Grahame, who has served in the Scottish Parliament since the dawn of devolution, said its early days were “a totally different world” in terms of security. The quality of debate was also higher, she suggested, referencing figures such as Alex Salmond, Donald Dewar and Dennis Canavan.

"Sometimes I feel the quality of debate here is, how can we put it, shallow,” she added.

However, she said Holyrood is not "stuffy", adding: "I'm told that at Westminster it's very sort of hierarchical, pompous, and you have your place in the hierarchy. I don't see that here. We're all Jock Tamson's bairns, and there's a bit of that in here."

Johann Lamont, the former Scottish Labour leader and an MSP from 1999 until 2021, remembers "huge excitement" mixed with trepidation at that first meeting of the Scottish Parliament all those years ago. There was also, she said, a sense of opportunity.

"I think the parliament was more mature in the early days than it is now,” she said. “I think there's an immaturity about the politics around it that's very frustrating. Maybe we should just see it as its rather late adolescence. 25 and you're still living with your parents and being badly behaved – no, just be serious."

Ms Lamont said the “capacity to make Scotland a better place is there, and there are things that were done and continue to be done that make a difference to people's lives”, but she added: “I just don't think it has achieved anywhere near its potential."

She said: "Has the Scottish Parliament brought power closer to people? Sadly, no. And does it exercise power in a more serious way? No."

Alison Johnstone, Holyrood’s Presiding Officer, started out as a staffer for Robin Harper, who became the UK’s first elected Green parliamentarian in 1999. "I can still remember sitting in that office that day and thinking, 'Wow',” she said. “You know, this is such an opportunity to work hard on behalf of the people of Scotland – not something I've lost."

Ms Johnstone has since seen the parliament change and evolve. “The news cycle is so much faster,” she said. “When I was working with Robin, we were wholly reliant on broadsheets and paper, so the cycle was so much slower.”

Mr McLeish argued Scotland is a better place "in so many ways" as a result of devolution. He pointed to free personal care, free tuition fees, the smoking ban and minimum unit pricing for alcohol, as well as land reform. "I would go as far as to say that legislatively, Scotland has led the United Kingdom, led Westminster,” he said.

Lord McConnell also pointed to successes such as land reform and the smoking ban in indoor public places. "The ban on smoking was the day the parliament came of age," he said.

But he also said there is a "real need" for the new First Minister, John Swinney, and the opposition parties "to come up with forward-looking, ambitious solutions for Scotland". He added: "Scotland doesn't have to be like this, as it is today. We've shown before that it can be better, and we can do that again."

He criticised "a lack of independent thought and creative debate" across Holyrood. "I think the parliament itself needs a good shake-up,” he said. “The people who created the structures for the parliament were well-intentioned, and I was part of that.

"But I think, in the light of experience, there's a need to change. The committee system doesn't work. Committees and their conveners are weak in comparison, for example, to what happens nowadays at Westminster.

"So there needs to be fundamental change. Less power for the party whips; more power for the MSPs. And then I think more accountability for the MSPs themselves for the public so that we get better MSPs."

Mr McLeish said Scotland has "stalled", with the country "slipping back" in areas such as education. "Scotland, just now, is on the edge,” he said. “We're going nowhere as a country. And so therefore, a bigger priority has to be that and not the kind of evangelising over independence or some other -ism."

He said independence "is going nowhere and should be parked in Scotland's interests".

"Devolution doesn't rule out any longer term option,” Mr McLeish said. “We don't have a crystal ball; we don't know what's going to happen. But what we've got to do is realise that we're on the foothills of building a new Scotland and a new parliament.

"We've been around for 25 years; Westminster has been around for 300 years in its current, post-union form."

He added: "Put it this way: if you take the idea of the Union of the Crowns in 1603, if you take the Union of the Parliaments in 1707 – we do not yet have a Union of the Nations.

"And so the key issue is that each nation has got to feel it's an important part of the whole, but at Westminster, they have got to realise that the four nations matter – rich in culture, ambition, history, economics.

"And of course, Scotland led the Enlightenment of Europe, and so Scots believe intrinsically that they have something to be proud of. But the current battle between Scotland and Westminster is doing nobody any good."

Mr McLeish continued: "25 years ago, we wanted a new politics. Maybe it's even more pressing now to have that new politics than it was then."