Report’s dismay at party squabbles in Holyrood

Group says ‘tribalism’ blunts parliamentary scrutiny

Tribalism in Scottish politics has “blunted” scrutiny at Holyrood, a new report has concluded.

Two decades after the establishment of the Scottish Parliament, members of the group which drew up the blueprint for it said while there has been a “great deal of success”, there are also disappointments in how Holyrood has developed.

The Consultative Steering Group (CSG) said one of the biggest disappointments is that “the Parliament’s committees have not emerged as a power in the land in the way that we had hoped”.

The group, which includes former first minister Henry McLeish, ex-deputy first minister Lord Wallace and former presiding officer Sir George Reid, also said that with “immense” pressure on MSPs, it may be necessary to increase their numbers.

But the group admitted “any call for more members is one that is unlikely to be popular with the public”.

Their report, commissioned by Holyrood’s current Presiding Officer Ken Macintosh, considered whether the Parliament has lived up to expectations.

Mr McLeish, chairman of the CSG, said: “While we could never have imagined in the late 1990s what Scotland and the world would look like in 2019, we are pleased that the foundations we recommended for the Parliament were solid.

“It has been a huge success in its first 20 years.”

While the group had hoped for “a new approach to politics” when Holyrood was established in 1999, with a more “deliberative and consensus-driven” style, their report said that in reality “parliamentary discourse in Scotland is driven much more by party political tribalism than we expected”.

Political parties have “dominated the debate”, they said, adding: “The tribalism we have seen has blunted the scrutiny function of the Parliament and has prevented, in most cases, a pluralistic approach to policy scrutiny.

“On broad areas such as wealth creation and climate change, there can be little that separates the parties, yet we see a reluctance among the parties to come together to present a community against the challenges of the world.”

The group originally hoped committees would bring forward their own legislation – but said in practice this had rarely happened, noting that in 20 years only seven committee Bills have been passed, with most of those being in relation to internal, technical matters for the Parliament