Stephen Bailey: Who cares about the ‘wee pretendy parliament?’

Answer: Anybody who wants to maintain the Union.

Legislative devolution is an ongoing process that could lead to the break up of the UK If we allow it to.

It’s often asserted by certain people, from anti-UK separatists (the SNP in Scotland, IRA/Sinn Fein in Ulster and Plaid Cymru in Wales), the pro-legislative devolutionary left all over the UK and even some of those that want to maintain the Union, who keep trying to mollify concerns about the devolved legislatures (Holyrood is Scotland especially, but also Stormont in Ulster and the Welsh Parliament) and their increasing role in enabling separatism to break up the UK, that such bodies are nothing but a powerless irrelevance-a ‘wee pretendy parliament.’

When arguments for abolition of these legislatures are presented they often assert in a dismissive tone: “Surely you’re not really worried about that ‘wee pretendy parliament’ that you [the English] allow us to have?”

A look at the current extent of the powers possessed by Holyrood, for example, shows it clearly isn’t just a powerless irrelevance.

At its inception, twenty-six years ago, the proponents of legislative devolution assured the UK public that it would be a one off event.

In Scotland, Westminster would reserve certain matters for its attention (the reserved remit) and everything else would be within the power of Holyrood to legislate on (the devolved remit). In Wales, laws were passed to establish the National Assembly for Wales based at Cardiff Bay and grant it secondary legislative powers over areas such as agriculture, education and housing. In 2011, full primary law-making powers for the assembly over specified areas of governance were granted after a referendum was held. In 2020, the assembly was renamed Senedd Cymru/Welsh Parliament (commonly known as the Senedd), to better reflect its expanded legislative powers.In Ulster (‘Northern Ireland’) a devolved legislature was set up at Stormont in Belfast which could legislate in a wide range of areas that were not explicitly reserved to Westminster and to appoint the Northern Ireland Executive.

In reality, there has been a ‘devolution process’ in which a raft of powers have been passed from Westminster to all the devolved legislatures, but especially Holyrood.

In the case of Scotland this transfer has been very substantial and since the 2016 Scotland Act, Holyrood is now the most powerful devolved legislature in the world, including the Quebec and Catalonian Parliaments in Canada and Spain respectively.

A ‘wee pretendy parliament’? No.

An exceptionally powerful tool for anti-UK separatists to use in the pursuit of their independence obsession, as clearly shown by the actions of the SNP since they eclipsed Labour as the dominant power at Holyrood in 2007.

An added element of concern emerges when it’s realised that this process could (and probably will) lead to a situation where the devolved legislatures have accrued so many powers and competencies that they achieve de facto independence as the devolved parts of the UK will have enough powers to govern themselves and separatism could use this situation to achieve the separation of their part of the UK from the rest of the country by unilaterally declaring independence. This shouldn’t be dismissed as unlikely. Nothing should be put past monomaniacal, pathological separatism, which has clearly shown that it will use every and any method to achieve its ends.

It’s a self-evident fact that, under the separatist SNP, Holyrood has been steered in the direction of becoming a sovereign national parliament, not just a junior tier of devolved administration as we were assured twenty-six years ago it would be by its advocates.

Nearly every day there is a stream of interference from Holyrood in policy areas on several matters that are outside its devolved remit, but most worryingly the Constitution. This interference is increasing, not declining and shows no signs of stopping.

It’s time for all those who want to maintain the Union to take their heads out of the sand and wake up.

Holyrood is not, and never will be, just a ‘wee pretendy parliament’ but a serious threat to the unitary integrity of the UK and should be abolished.

What’s more, this ongoing process of the accretion of powers and competencies by the devolved legislatures from Westminster is happening in Ulster and Wales as well.

Looking at the example of Scotland, the concern is that this trajectory will lead them to the same destination-a nominally limited power local executive that in reality is an extremely powerful instrument which could be utilized by modern aggressive separatism, as personified by the SNP especially but not exclusively, to break up the UK.

Legislative devolution is a failure of containment. The main objection to legislative devolution is that it doesn’t work. It’s had twenty-six long years to be fine tuned and is still just a mess. The SNP in Scotland are using it as a vehicle to pursue separation. Stormont has also been a complete mess with legislative devolution making Ulster politically unstable due to being ruled by shaky coalition administrations coming and going with alarming regularity (plus, during the last twenty plus years of devolved government, Stormont has broken down and Ulster has been ruled directly from London for five of those years). To cap it all, the Irish separatist IRA/Sinn Fein has now also captured the First Minister position and so can use the vastly enhanced power Stormont gives them to pursue their separatist agenda. In Wales, Plaid Cymru are increasingly becoming a bellicose and aggressively separatist party (which wasn’t the case in the past when it pushed a cultural nationalist agenda like spreading the speaking of Welsh and reinstating the Eisteddfod). None of this would have happened without the advent of legislative devolution.

Hardly inspires confidence in legislative devolution, does it?

The intent behind legislative devolution was to create a layer of regional government below that of the UK National Parliament, the House of Commons. It’s remit was to deal with regional, i.e. purely Scottish, Welsh and Ulster matters, not larger issues like the Constitution.

It was supposed to be ‘autonomy within the UK’ and was meant to counter anti-UK separatist sentiment. Indeed, it was supposed to ‘…kill Nationalism [read separatism] stone dead’ as one of its original proponents, Labour M.P. George Robertson, put it in 1995.

In reality, it’s had the exact opposite effect of enabling modern aggressive separatism to rise to power in the devolved executives in Scotland and Northern Ireland (but not Wales), displace Labour (in Scotland)’ as well as the Unionist parties in Ulster and pursue separation. This has undeniably been the case in Scotland with the SNP.

As often occurs in real life, theories don’t always work as they’re meant to in practice. The reality has been that legislative devolution has ENABLED the anti-UK separatist parties to use their devolved legislatures as vehicles for pursuing their separatist agenda and the idea that the devolved bodies are just local executives is well and truly debunked.

In Scotland, the SNP openly admit that they will just keep holding one referendum after another until they get the result they want (one senior SNP MSP has publicly admitted as much.)

The separatists in the other devolved parts of the UK, encouraged by the success of the SNP’s tactics of ignoring their devolved remit and using Holyrood as a tool to pursue separation, have adopted an increasingly aggressively separatist approach, ignoring the point of devolution and pushing for the separation of Ulster and Wales from the rest of the UK.

To those who desire the maintenance of the UK who still believe that they can solve this problem by repealing all the devolution acts except the ones that set it up originally (i.e. keep the 1998 Scotland Act and the Northern Ireland and Government of Wales Acts, but repeal all other devolution acts) so as to leave the executives to deal with only local matters it should be pointed out that the last twenty years have proved that devolution is a continual process of powers being transferred from the Commons to the devolved legislatures that could easily end in the break up of the UK and that the separatist parties have proved time and time again that they won’t stay within their devolved remit.

It’s impossible to contain legislative devolution as purely just local executives dealing with purely Scottish, Welsh and Ulster matters and that leave the larger issues to the national Parliament at Westminster.

Modern aggressive separatism is a mad rampaging monster that can’t be contained and it’s time to admit this is the reality.

It’s also time to admit to this failure of the legislative devolutionary model to work as originally intended and stop pretending all is well, or capable of repair and realise that the devolved executives present a clear and present danger to the existence of the Union. The only viable solution to the current constitutional crisis that legislative devolution has created is to completely repeal legislative devolution in all parts of the UK and replace it with a better system that keeps power localised to the regions but guarantees the Union such as administrative devolution.

(Does not represent the view of Scotland Matters)