Johann Lamont: Don’t let Alex Salmond’s sideshow detract from the powers we have already

ALEX Salmond seems to have learned the wrong lesson from Tony Blair. The lesson from Blair is not that cosying up to Rupert Murdoch is the key to success.

Rather, it’s when you have won a landslide call your referendum quick.

After the landslide of 1997, Tony Blair called the referendum on devolution within four months. He built on his momentum. The fact that even at the height of his popularity Alex Salmond didn’t want to call his referendum suggests he believed he would lose. Indeed, he said as much to one of Rupert Murdoch’s papers last week.

We will be ready when – perhaps, if – the referendum comes and will not be complacent. But I cannot hide my disappointment that we have not got this issue out of the way sooner rather than later. Clearly I don’t believe it is in Scotland’s interests for us to leave the UK, but if by now we had voted one way or the other, at least we could be getting on with the real business of improving Scotland.

Instead, we will have a two-and-a-half year debate on something I believe most of us have made up our minds on – whether we stay in the UK. The old, familiar arguments are crowding out the real debate we need to have about how we stimulate our economy, how we have decent public services in a time of scarce resources – what sort of Scotland we want to build.

This is a self-indulgence we can ill afford. While the rest of Europe debates how we get back from the brink of the possible collapse of the euro, Scotland, by Alex Salmond’s dictat, stares at our own navel.

If our debate has to be on the constitution, we cannot even have a meaningful one about how we develop devolution. In this Orwellian moment, where the mantra “more powers good, anything else bad” seems to hold sway, the debate on developing the Scottish Parliament struggles to be rational. The shadow of the referendum condemns us to cartoon politics.

Devolution works. But I do not want to see ideas on how we refresh devolution to be seen as a response to the SNP’s separatist agenda. I don’t want a debate on devolution to be clouded by those who want you to believe that devolution is just a short measure of independence.

I want to develop devolution so that the Scottish Parliament delivers better for the people of Scotland, not because I want to buy off the nationalists. Indeed, we live in a time when the Scottish Parliament’s integrity and purpose are under threat because of the way the First Minister and his team disrespect it.

This week we saw the SNP’s majority on the welfare reform committee erase every word of criticism of the Scottish Government, from the witnesses they had taken evidence from, out of their report. It’s a familiar abuse of a committee system which we used to be so proud of.

Criticism of the government from SNP backbenchers is like the dodo – it doesn’t exist. Perhaps it’s out to lunch. That means we have an executive without proper scrutiny from a legislature. That is not, I believe, because there are not SNP backbenchers who want to be parliamentarians – I just don’t think they are allowed to be.

Despite that, we will call the government to account and we will work on plans to develop devolution. We will be able to detail our plans well before the referendum but we will not offer them up as a second question for a variety of reasons. One, Scotland’s settled will is to have a tax-raising parliament, so we do not need one. Two, devolution and independence are two separate concepts that cannot be debated within the same breath. And three, Scotland’s future is too important to be regarded as a mechanism to give Alex Salmond a face-saving second prize to rescue his political career.

My Scottish Labour Party is arguably the only party in Scotland which truly believes in the devolution of power, while the SNP continues an increasingly centralist agenda. We start from this point and ask this question: power lies with the people of Scotland, but where should it be best exercised in the interests of the people of Scotland?

In that we will ask not what powers are best clawed back from some mythical dungeon in Whitehall, but which powers should a modern sovereign nation share?

Properly debating those ideas will be a struggle in the face of a SNP government which seems to regard the referendum as one giant by-election rather than a national debate. Not a historic moment but a moment in time – one where the First Minister seems to be asking the Scottish people to believe that all the perils of the modern world can be avoided if only he ruled it.

We will have the constitutional debate, but what divides my politics from Alex Salmond’s is not just about the powers of the Scottish Parliament. I have always refused to accept that our country should be ruled by the sorts of rich elites which the First Minister seems so keen to embrace. I recognise, for example. Sir Brian Souter’s commercial achievements, but they do not qualify him to have a greater say in social policy than anyone else.

How we are governed is not just a matter of our constitution. It is also a matter of how government conducts itself. I can live with the fact that Alex Salmond and I disagree on the constitution. What I cannot live with is the way that government is conducted – a government that shows no ambition to use the powers we have to improve lives.

Too many of us fought too long for this to see it ignored not by Westminster but by our own executive ministers. Parliament should be the forum where the hard questions facing people in their everyday lives are faced up to. It shouldn’t be, mustn’t be, just a campaign platform.

While the debate on independence goes on, I will fight this equally important battle. One about the integrity of Scottish government and how we make it better. One about delivering for the people of Scotland. A fight for honesty.

• Johann Lamont MSP is leader of Scottish Labour