Seize chance to make real change

IN 1997, Scots overwhelmingly voted for a devolved parliament.

Today’s landscape is probably not what anyone back then would have predicted.

Had you told any 90s student of politics that you could have a right-wing Tory Government reversing the UK out of Europe against the will of the SNP Government in Scotland, they would have gulped and predicted the end of the Union.

Instead, the whole thing is holding together and politics appears to have parked independence for the time being.

Having spent the past decade mired in constitutional issues, there is a growing consensus that the Parliament should move on to actually changing people’s lives.

Not that nothing has been achieved – notable legislation including free personal care, the abolition of tuition fees and marriage equality have been commendable.

But the biggest beneficiaries from the Parliament’s largesse have been Scotland’s middle-class earners who get the benefits of the free-ticket items and have only recently been asked to contribute a little more – about £400 a year in the 40 per cent tax bracket.

With new tax and welfare powers coming on stream, Nicola Sturgeon has raised the tantalising prospect of increasing taxes to pay for better services.

Scotland needs investment in the areas Parliament has direct responsibility for.

Education is slipping badly, the health service and the health of the nation are creaking and the economy is not the north star it could be. Much work is still to be done.

Brexit will shape our destiny and the constitutional debate will not go away. But Holyrood in the next few years, armed with new tax and welfare powers, could change our nation dramatically.

Setting up Holyrood was a radical step change in the British political system. But the Parliament has proved to be a cautious institution, defining itself by degrees of variation from Westminster, rather than by doing things a better way.

There is a better way if politicians at Holyrood dare to be different.