Lesley Riddoch: Jacking up an argument for change

Published on Friday 25 February 2011 14:42

Jack McConnell must be wishing he'd stuck the boot into Scottish Labour's crowning glory years ago. The former first minister has put forward a ten-point plan for overhauling the Scottish Parliament and suggests a cross-party group should consider it over the summer.

Lord McConnell of Glenscorrodale, as we must try to call him, says the Holyrood timetable is too casual and Scottish ministers receive little meaningful scrutiny during dull question times - a criticism apparently borne out by the Finance Committee's verdict on John Swinney who effectively axed the tartan tax without being forced to explain himself to MSPs.

The presiding officer Alex Ferguson says Jack's timing is wrong, but many MSPs will share his concerns.

So far few serious objections have been raised against McConnell's valedictory critique of a parliament he helped to create. Perhaps that's not surprising. With an election weeks away, it's easier to let Jack's trenchant criticisms gather in the long grass. Or call him two-faced. After all, the longest-serving inhabitant of Bute House had plenty of time to introduce closer ministerial scrutiny when he held all the cards as first minister. Now, as an SNP spokeswoman put it: "Jack McConnell's prolonged absences from parliament and his coffee-drinking habits (mean] he's had (little] opportunity to consider how the parliamentary chamber runs."

Ouch.

But it will be a long wait if we need a person without guilt to cast the first stone.

Jack McConnell may have kept ministers in and MSPs out of the loop when in charge. But he also pushed through PR for local council elections against the dinosaur tendency in his own party and ended local fiefdoms in council chambers.

His views are worth considering - however many lattes he currently consumes. Anyway, times have changed.

When Billy Connolly dared to call Holyrood a "pretendy" parliament his banishment to the south of England was made complete.

Now Jack McConnell can compare Holyrood unfavourably to the House of Lords and remain politically intact.

That's extraordinary.

In the 1990s the Lords was viewed as a mechanism so irretrievably privileged, undemocratic and doddery that plans for a second Chamber in Scotland were swiftly kicked into touch - even though a civic society-led Senate would have held ministers to account better than party-whipped backbenchers at Holyrood.How can the unelected old Lords possibly be performing better than the New Kid on the Parliamentary Block? Is it really because the Upper Chamber has better procedures or because their unelected Lordships have escaped the deadening hand of party political control?

Lord McConnell clearly thinks technical improvements can offer a quick fix.

He thinks Scottish ministers are not properly scrutinised - especially when the Scottish Government loses a vote and policy direction is forced to change.

With Labour's sizeable majorities, that hardly ever occurred. But minority governments may now be the order of the day. Parliament and the public need to know how a government intends to respond to policy failure. The current set-up simply encourages unaccountable four-year huffs.

More time for MSP contributions during debates and longer days at Holyrood intuitively seem like good ideas. There will be a worry that such change might create the "open all hours" working culture of Westminster, long criticised for being family-unfriendly.

But has female-friendly Holyrood worked? There are fewer women standing this May and more veteran female MSPs standing down than ever before.

Holyrood opted for powerful, legislation-initiating committees unlike Commons committees whose painstaking efforts were frequently binned by powerful prime ministers.

Has Holyrood's "robust" committee system worked?

I fought to have MSPs from each Holyrood Committee on my Radio Scotland programme every week throughout the Noughties. The quality of contribution was generally so poor that even the Presiding Officer George Reid had to agree licencefee payers would be better served with three punters taken from the streets.

Sometimes MSPs were well informed but reluctant to publicly commit to a point of view lest it become a hostage to fortune later. Sometimes, however, MSPs on vital committees plainly didn't have a Scooby about the issues, options and practical problems being debated daily by their own constituents.

Are MSPs able to match the high level of practical knowledge and technical know-how possessed by the civic groups who must jump the barriers and operate the systems they create?

A small country like Scotland should offer an ideal opportunity for MSPs to be savvy and on the ball. A specialism could be chosen by each elected representative. Why shouldn't Holyrood have a tidal energy MSP, a kinship care MSP, a timber industry MSP, a food labelling MSP - an expectation that each MSP should become minutely familiar with an aspect of Scottish life in addition to representing constituents and belonging to a government or opposition party?

The first-past-the-post section creates constituency MSPs and the top-up list inevitably creates MSPs viewed as "drifters" by comparison.

Rightly or wrongly, in the eyes of the voting public, we currently have two classes of MSP. What specific tasks must a list MSP perform? How does a constituent know which MSP to approach?

The biggest problem facing Holyrood isn't the length of question time sessions - it's the lack of policy innovation and the dead-hand of political party rivalry.

Election hustings often reveal more disagreement between the whole audience and the entire political panel than between individual politicians.

Consensus exists on so many major issues and yet parties believe they must put clear blue water between one another to win elections. Ironically, the more parties privately agree, the more infantile and ludicrous the arguments they use to justify opposition.

The public simply despairs. Those with drive, energy or expertise are reluctant to enter the policy quagmire of the Scottish Parliament - and without party membership the route is effectively blocked.

Holyrood is opinion-heavy in a country desperately needing practical solutions and difference-heavy in a country that tends towards consensus. The bickering Scottish Parliament is currently the worst possible role model. Will a summer pondering Jack McConnell's proposals remedy that?