Power – and who should have it

Published on Monday 10 November 2008 21:15

SIX months ago many were quick to dismiss the cross-party Calman Commission as a device by which the Westminster Labour government could kick the issue of extra powers for the Holyrood parliament into the long grass. But the commission has struggled doggedly on, and is now becoming the focus of debate on some of the most contentious issues thrown up by the devolution settlement.

One of these is, predictably, finance, and whether the Holyrood parliament should be given more fiscal powers, or as Labour in Westminster would prefer, "assigned revenues" which would limit the discretion of the Scottish parliament.

As thorny are the issues of defence and nuclear power. The Westminster government has asked the Calman Commission to tackle the problem of Holyrood being able to use the devolved powers it enjoys over planning and transport to block Westminster's activities in the areas of energy and defence. The SNP administration, which is strongly anti-nuclear, has looked to ways of using its devolved powers to stymie the building of new nuclear power stations in Scotland. This anti-nuclear stance has extended to attacking plans to renew the Trident warheads on the Clyde, by suggesting the imposition of tolls on roads leading to the Faslane submarine base.

Labour in Westminster firmly maintains that defence and energy are areas reserved to the UK parliament and that powers devolved to the Scottish parliament should not be used vexatiously to frustrate the execution of policy by an elected UK government.

This is a fraught area into which the Calman Commission has been brought. It raises many complex issues over a clash of jurisdictions that may be non-problematic under some administrations while tested to their limits under others. Indeed, the legitimacy of the whole Calman exercise risks being questioned.

The current SNP administration says that Labour in Westminster is not genuinely interested in expanding the powers of the Scottish parliament and indeed would prefer to circumscribe some of the powers it already has. It views the Calman exercise as a means to draw attention away from its own "national conversation".

Whatever the rights and wrongs of these claims, the commission needs to have regard to the constitutional settlement as it stands and to consider areas where there is broad support for more powers for Holyrood. The last general election was fought on the basis of energy and defence being reserved matters, and voters expressed their preferences on the basis of the policies offered. It would be setting a dangerous precedent were arrangements agreed upon by voters to be set aside without a thorough examination of the constitutional implications. The danger of an approach which disregarded this would be increasingly bitter constitutional wrangling – an outcome Calman must seek to avoid.