Tavish Scott: If you’re looking for reform at Holyrood, don’t hold your breath

ONE holiday morning, I listened somewhat groggily to a radio review of the year. It considered how the House of Commons had reasserted itself as a national forum over the past year. Perhaps this reflects a 2011 when news stories from around Europe and further afield surpassed the melancholic economic prognosis at home.

This year may be little different. A US presidential election has commentators salivating. More important for the UK will be the presidential election in France and the domestic political pressure Angela Merkel is under in Germany. The fate of Nicolas Sarkozy and Ms Merkel will be intertwined with the eurozone and the inevitable unravelling of that currency structure and the impact on Scottish and UK jobs.

So how relevant are parliaments to such developments? Westminster is seen by many to have had, in the past 18 months, somewhat of a renaissance. Internal reforms have given backbenchers of all parties more power. UK-wide petitions that gather 100,000 signatures can now lead to a full parliamentary debate. The Prime Minister was mugged by 80 and more Tory MPs who defied his leadership over Europe because of such a petition. Select committees are punching their weight as they pour scorn over government policy or over ineffective or downright incompetent public sector management. Rupert Murdoch being grilled was the hottest ticket in the West End. Suddenly the press are writing about what is happening in the UK parliament.

Sadly, nothing could be further from that picture in Scotland. Our First Minister is a House of Commons man. Alex Salmond was first elected as an MP in 1987 when Mrs Thatcher was in her pomp. His Westminster parliamentary career then spanned John Major and Tony Blair’s time in No 10. So the Nationalists now run a majority government at Holyrood with a clever leader who watched, learned and filed away all the government tricks for dominating a parliament and neutralising any opposition. The parliament I am in today is a shadow of what it was in 1999. Then, parliamentary committees jumped all over ministers and government policy. MSPs from one’s own side were in the vanguard. Discipline and control did not feature as they do now under Mr Salmond. The chamber at times seethed with debate over major and radical reforms.

We see little of that now. Today, the Nationalists have a majority on every parliamentary committee and the chairmanship of most. That power is used to stifle debate and stuff dissent.

Now the Nationalists’ presiding officer is backing parliamentary reform. But unless they want a parliament that genuinely holds government to account rather than parliamentary question time as a cheerleading session for the boss, nothing will come of reform. In opposition, politicians say they want accountable government. Mr Salmond is now the government. Enough said.

• Tavish Scott is Liberal Democrat MSP for Shetland.