Michael Kelly: A gift can say so much about the one doing the giving

WHAT to give the couple who will have everything? Never mind coping with slashed budgets or cuts in services, that's the question that will be exercising the leaders of Scotland's councils over the next three months. Because although few, if any, of our provosts will be invited to St Paul's to witness the coming together of Wills and Kate on that happy day in April with its sweet showers, each will be exercised over the problem of the wedding gift.

It is a highly political decision. In a country with a vocal anti-monarchist minority, such issues are a wonderful opportunity to raise the republican debate.

Add to that the current climate of austerity imposed by the two UK parties that Scotland contemptuously rejected and you have a situation that can produce a torrent of abuse and embarrassment.

The trick is to find a present that is dignified enough for a royal couple yet does not appear to impose a financial burden on already overstretched public sector budgets.

I have direct experience of having to work through to a solution to this problem and offer my services to any council unable readily to unravel this Gordian Knot. Charles and Diana chose to get married right in the middle of Thatcher's attempts to destroy Scotland's manufacturing base. Few areas felt the effects of this savagery worse than Glasgow, where I was lord provost. Yet, as lord lieutenants and the Queen's representatives, it would have been gratuitously offensive for any of the lord provosts of Scotland's four great cities to snub the heir to the throne.

My answer was to offer the planned New Glasgow Hospice as the gift. The protocol for doing this was first to approach the Prince of Wales's office to determine whether or not he would accept it and allow his name to be used in the hospice's name. Fortunately he did and not even the most left-wing of councillors could object. Years later, when the couple divorced, the plan seemed less cunning - though those running the Prince and Princess of Wales Hospice today assure me that the royal connection still helps with its profile and fundraising.

The other cities gave gifts very much in character. Aberdeen sanded down an old desk and sent it off as an antique. Dundee, under the influence of its eminence gris, George Galloway, decided that due to the financial situation "it was not proposed to make any gift on this occasion". Edinburgh can't remember what it gave, but knowing Lord Provost Tom Morgan and that Tory council, something reflecting the dignity of the capital would have been forwarded to St James's Palace.

How different today. While the other cities have yet to come to a decision, Edinburgh has already agreed to send only a telegram of good wishes.Unfortunately in 2003 the GPO stopped its telegram service and BT no longer provides a personal greetings telegram service. So a Tweet may have to suffice. That's so like a Lib Dem lord provost controlled by the SNP. And pretty mean, too, when another royal wedding for the city has just been announced. I call on Edinburgh to review its stance. Not everyone who comes to the place has had their tea.

At least that decision gives the other cities a floor which they will surely not drop below. But the city to follow is still Glasgow. It even solved the challenge of a gift for Charles for his not-so-popular second wedding to Camilla Parker Bowles in 2005. The lord provost commissioned a piece of bagpipe music by the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama. No doubt the incumbent in George Square will make it a hat-trick of surprises.

But fascinating as that will be, it cannot distract from the dilemma facing Holyrood and the Scottish Government. The Queen gave the parliament a beautiful and expensive mace. Surely something of similar value must be sent to London.

As for Alex Salmond, he's got a real problem. On the one hand - surely the dominant one - he would like to behave like a sovereign state and give a decent gift.

The SNP is, after all, committed publicly to keeping the monarch as head of its little state even though we all know that declaration of a republic would be the first item on its conference's agenda in the autumn of that fateful year of independence.

And, as with all aspects of separation, it's an expensive act to follow. In 1981, Canada's wedding gift was a roomful of antique Canadian furniture of the 18th and early 19th centuries plus a watercolour of loons - birds for those who don't know - and a large brooch of gold, diamonds and platinum. In the same grand style, Australia gave 20 hand-crafted silver platters.

Would the loons of the SNP's extreme wing tolerate such extravagance? I doubt it. Yet in this election year they have to balance this decision even more carefully than our cities. The SNP cannot fall out with the Tories, who have thus far sustained them in power. Yet it is left-leaning voters that will decide their candidates' fates in May.

I therefore offer a few suggestions to end Alex's agonising. An honorary degree for each of the couple would be cheap. But St Andrews will probably think of that. Dedicating a Scottish sporting victory like a successful Fifa World Cup qualifying campaign or Six Nations triumph might prove attractive, but they might have to wait for their Silver Wedding before we deliver that.

So, commission James MacMillan to compose an Act of Settlement concerto. Change the names of the pandas to Wills and Kate. Dedicate this year's Edinburgh Festival to the couple. You might even get them to open it.Offer them the freedom of Bute House to use as a pied-a-terre to give them respite from at least one set of in-laws on their visits to the capital.

All cheap and acceptable. But if only the couple would leave a wedding list at Fraser's where there is a 70 per cent off sale that might get everyone off the hook.