Holyrood is not working
IT has been apparent for some time that the parliamentary system at Holyrood is not working at all well. The recent exchanges about the ferries fiasco have demonstrated this clearly (“Swinney denies he gave the ‘final nod’ to Calmac contract”, The Herald, May 13). Nicola Sturgeon leads a Government that will not take responsibility for any misadventure or mistake made on its watch. It has most recently used a former minister as scapegoat for decisions that everyone knows were taken at a higher level than his then position as Transport Secretary.
As the Auditor General has commented, the Government’s lack of transparency is a problem. The executive has virtually authoritarian power because there are no checks or balances of the kind that there are at Westminster. Importantly, the role of strong select committees there has not been replicated in the Holyrood apparatus, where the executive dominates committees.
All of this is a matter of extreme concern in an atmosphere where the ruling regime is campaigning for Scotland to be entirely separate from the UK, with untrammelled power in the hands of people who are clearly unfit to exercise it. Holyrood is not fit for purpose. It is an experiment that has failed. Jill Stephenson, Edinburgh.