Ross Lydall: Here's one for Scottish Questions: why must we suffer this farce?

Published on Tuesday 10 February 2009 20:45

SPEAKING up for Michael Martin, the Commons Speaker, is the political equivalent of admitting to being a Partick Thistle supporter. Yet the much maligned MPs' referee, to continue the football analogy, was more than justified in handing out parliamentary yellow cards to both Labour and the SNP during Scottish Questions last week.

Barely five minutes of the debate had passed before Speaker Martin was forced to raise himself from the best seat in the Commons and deliver a stern rebuke to the warring sides before him.

"May I remind the House that the criticism of the Scottish Government refers to a devolved parliament?" he advised. "The Scottish Parliament is a creation of this House – we devolved the power – and prolonged criticism of the Scottish Parliament will give the impression that this is all we have to talk about."

Well said, Mr Martin. Scottish Questions was a farce, and not for the first time. It comes around roughly every five weeks when parliament is sitting, and offers MPs 30 minutes in which they can supposedly interrogate the Scottish Secretary, currently Jim Murphy, about the activities of his department.

Instead, it is used as an excuse to score points over what is happening 400 miles away at Holyrood. Mr Murphy, despite being a member of the government, becomes the leader of the opposition, his Labour back-benchers moan and groan about perceived injustices and SNP failures, while the SNP's six MPs (Alex Salmond never appears at Scottish Questions) seek to pin any Scottish Government troubles at Downing Street's door.

Scottish Questions is the bastard child of the unequal relationship between a disinterested Mother of Parliaments and a fledgling, attention-seeking, fur-coat-and-nae-knickers Holyrood hybrid.

The first problem with it is that it takes place immediately prior to Prime Minister's Questions. As such, the last ten to 15 minutes are lost amid a growing hubbub as back-benchers, ministers and their shadows rush to the Commons to secure a pew for the gladiatorial set-piece of their week.

The second is that the Speaker, as with all parliamentary debates, calls MPs from alternate sides to ask questions. As such, for every probing query from the Tories, Lib Dems or SNP will generally come a patsy space-filler from the loyal ranks carefully marshalled behind Mr Murphy by the Labour whips. Again, this is not unique to Scottish Questions – this plague of placed questions infects every debate.

The third, and perhaps biggest, problem is the Scotland Office itself. In Whitehall terms, it doesn't exist (its 60 staff are officially employees of Jack Straw's Ministry of Justice). It costs about 8 million a year to run.

Yet, apart from providing Mr Murphy with a seat at the Cabinet, an official blog and the chance to meet the Queen (when he was admitted to the Privy Council), it doesn't collect nor spend taxes, build things or pilot much legislation through parliament. Insiders say much of its work is done behind the scenes. Arguments are avoided; potential disputes are prevented from becoming sufficiently toxic to merit referral by any participants to the press. It exists to tweak fledgling legislation, to remind London politicians that the legal, education and criminal justice systems operate differently in Scotland.

A recent example of that would be the amendment to the coroner's bill that will allow war dead to be repatriated to Scotland as well as England by allowing fatal accident inquiries to be held north of the Border, just as inquests are opened in the south.

Similarly, the highly-sensitive negotiations involving the Lockerbie bomber, Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, and those who stood trial in London in connection with the Glasgow Airport attack, would have involved oversight by Scotland Office officials.

According to its supporters, it is – again in footballing terms – the unsung midfielder who rarely scores but without whom the team is less effective: a Gilberto Silva or Claude Makelele for the devolved settlement.

If only that were true. The Scotland Office is hardly a vital cog in a great team. Neither does Scottish Questions serve a useful purpose. Last week, Mr Murphy could not even tell parliament when the Prime Minister had last met Alex Salmond to discuss the recession.

"I do not keep the Prime Minister's diary," retorted Mr Murphy, inspiring his Tory shadow, David Mundell, to utter the only decent (and humorous) line of the proceedings: "Is it that the Prime Minister has been so busy saving the world that he has not had time to save Scotland?"

It's not as if the politicians who took part in the debate were amateurs, either. Stewart Hosie, Ian Davidson, Danny Alexander, Michael Connarty, Angus Robertson, Alistair Carmichael and Sir Ming Campbell all had their turn. Mr Murphy even belies his carefully crafted media image of Mr Calm and reverts to Mr Jackboot Nat-basher.

But it really is a show that does Scotland no credit, either at Westminster or among the watching public. And if Scottish Questions is not up to scratch, then who is scrutinising the government's activities in Scotland?

Parliamentary written questions asked of the Scotland Office are also something of a joke. Reasonable requests for updates on the Barnett formula, on welfare reform and on a high-speed rail link to Scotland were all met last week with the evasive put-down that "regular discussions take place on a range of issues". Pathetic.

As it stands, Scottish Questions, and much of the Scotland Office, succeeds only in making the argument for fuller devolution, if not outright independence, that bit more compelling. Scotland, and the United Kingdom, deserve better than this.