How SNP's obsession with centralising power is damaging Scotland

Audrey Cumberford, principal of Edinburgh College, has called for more autonomy for Scotland's regions | Edinburgh College

In September, the Scottish Government published a joint statement with Scotland’s councils about its apparent desire to devolve greater control over decisions affecting local communities.

In that statement, Shona Morrison, president of the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (Cosla), said “devolving powers to communities and individuals that are most affected by the decisions made with those powers is an ambition central to Cosla’s work” and described the government as “our partners”.

However, the talk of working together could not hide the open tension that exists between councils and the SNP government over the latter’s longstanding tendency to instead centralise power and, essentially, make sure they control if not everything, then not far off.

Council budgets have been pared to the bone, while council tax freezes have restricted councillors’ ability to make different choices. The ring-fencing of funds given to councils – prioritising SNP policies over local opinion – has also caused much angst and many problems.

Now a new voice has joined the calls for greater devolution from Edinburgh to Scotland’s regions – and it is a heavyweight one. Audrey Cumberford is the principal of Edinburgh College and a former member of the Scottish Government’s National Strategy for Economic Transformation delivery board.

In an interview we publish today, she suggests using Scotland’s eight existing economic partnerships to deliver a more efficient and effective regional planning and delivery system so that local people can decide what should happen.

Cumberford said the Scottish Government had talked a lot about “reform”, but what was actually happening looked instead like “managed decline”. She used her own college as an example of what she meant. Despite being based in Scotland’s “economic powerhouse” and facing demands from businesses to train staff, the college was “just becoming a smaller version” of itself, she warned.

Even with the best intentions, from any central government’s viewpoint, a shrinking college may seem a small matter even as, to those concerned with the local economy, it feels like a crisis.

These different perspectives illustrate why power should be devolved to the level, local or national, that’s best-placed to make the decisions, and also the dangers of the SNP’s centralising ambition.