Leader: Clock is ticking for devolution blueprint

"There are only days left before Lord Smith has to make some decisions and provide answers." Picture: Neil Hanna

The clock, however, is ticking. Lord Smith and his commission now have less than a month before the deadline for reaching a consensus agreement amongst the five political parties represented at Holyrood on what new powers should be devolved to Scotland.

To guide the home-rule process, the group has set out three principles. Holyrood and Westminster should both raise the money they are responsible for spending; the two parliaments should have mutual respect for each other, and a presumption in favour of devolving power to Holyrood should exist unless Westminster could make the case for retaining responsibility.

These sound admirable in principle but are short in practical detail. And when scrutinised, there is a risk of them turning into mere assertions rather than reasoned arguments.

For example, it is certainly a sound principle that any elected legislature that is responsible for spending taxpayers’ money should also be responsible for setting the bill that taxpayers must meet. But there is no devolved legislature anywhere in the world of the status of Holyrood which is responsible for raising all of what it spends. In all federal or quasi-federal systems, there are transfers of money from central to regional or provincial governments.

So there is a question to be answered here. If Holyrood’s ability to be responsible for raising 22 per cent of what it spends – the level that will pertain once the Scotland Act is fully implemented – is inadequate, what is an adequate level?

Then, once a percentage has been arrived at, is it just a question of selecting devolvable taxes on a pick-and-mix basis until the numbers add up? Or would it be better to have control of taxes that might not yield the desired sum, but which would enable more effective stimulation of the economy?

These are quite complex questions, but there are only days left before Lord Smith has to make some decisions and provide answers. Once he has done so, there are less than two months before the UK government has to produce its white paper setting out plans that can be turned into law, although that cannot happen until after May’s general election.

So if there is a debate to be had outside the closed room where Lord Smith is shepherding the parties towards agreement, and there surely must be, it has to be had now. While there are no formal mechanisms for feeding the discussion into the room, he and the participants are surely sophisticated enough to permit it to temper their discussions. However, the important point remains: there can be no slippage.

An utterly senseless tragedy

Chilling and horrific seem barely adequate words to describe the dreadful murder of 61-year-old teacher Ann Maguire in her classroom by a 16-year-old pupil in a Leeds secondary school. What was said yesterday in court as her killer, Will Cornick, was sentenced to life imprisonment gave nothing to yield any understanding of why it happened, beyond that it was utterly senseless.

Those who have investigated were at a loss to recount much more than the gruesome facts, that he got up from his desk, went up to her and stabbed her with a kitchen knife, chasing after her until his way was barred by a teacher colleague closing a door on him, and then went and sat back down again at his desk. He was reported to have said “good times”.

Inevitably there are questions about whether it might have been prevented or whether there are precautions that could be taken which might prevent a similar tragedy in the future.

But the prosecutor was clear that no-one could have warned this might happen or known the teenager had psychopathic tendencies. He was apparently thought a little odd by his fellow pupils, and he did write messages wishing that Mrs Maguire was dead, but countless others are similarly thought odd and may have written of similar desires which come to nothing.

There was nothing untoward about his family background; indeed, his parents, thoroughly decent people by the prosecutor’s account, must be as stricken with shock and grief as the family of Mrs Maguire have been devastated. Nothing can heal that; all that can be done is for everyone to do their utmost to keep violence out of classrooms.