THERE has been much fawning over the Scottish Parliament this year due to its 25th anniversary.
Celebrations peaked with the King’s visit last weekend, during which the self-congratulation and unquestioning reverence of Holyrood was off the scale.
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Devolution is undoubtedly a good thing. But some of the veneration has gone beyond unjustified to cringeworthy.
On the day of the King’s trip, John Swinney declared the Scottish Parliament to be “a vessel of enlightenment, invention and creativity”.
People who have trotted out such drivel, including the First Minister, need to give themselves a good shake.
This silly obsequiousness distracts from the parliament’s obvious shortcomings — chiefly, the lack of meaningful activity.
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Anyone who has sat through even half an hour of the scripted debates, planted ministerial questions and incessant mediocrity at Holyrood would find Mr Swinney’s description laughable.
This is a parliament which costs £140million a year to run, with a chamber which sits three afternoons a week — and not once in July and August.
It’s about to clock off for a fortnight’s break, six weeks after returning.
It’s a parliament ripe for being gamed by the governing party — enabled by rigid debating rules — to stifle open discussion and the proper holding to account of ministers.
In his speech at the Scottish Parliament’s opening in 1999, Donald Dewar said it must be “a means to greater ends” for the Scottish people, to “better their lot”.
Decisions are best made closer to home. But it is a matter of fact that Scotland’s big problems have not merely remained unresolved since devolution, but have got worse. Look at education and declining school standards.
Look at the NHS — getting worse before Covid, and still is despite the strategies emerging from this supposed vessel of ingenuity.
Where are the big discussions on solutions about health and education? That must be all they talk about in the chamber given they are key devolved policies? Right? Wrong.
On one day last month, just half an hour was set aside during a chamber session on NHS winter preparedness.
Grievance-stoking
The same afternoon, SNP ministers allocated more than two hours for a debate on the Westminster Budget, which MSPs have no say on.
It was designed as a damage limitation and grievance-stoking exercise, and to soak up parliamentary time.
Last week, a statement on Holyrood’s self-declared housing crisis was a carefully choreographed exercise involving ministers effectively putting their fingers in their ears while shouting that it’s Westminster’s fault.
This is the opposite of “enlightenment”.
On many days it’s a genuine struggle to connect the words and actions of MSPs to ordinary people’s everyday lives.
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To understand how infuriating a place Holyrood can be, it’s worth understanding the environment.
The building is like a concrete maze with swathes of it like the Mary Celeste.
It’s easy to get trapped in stairwells — where exit points are security doors — if your pass is on the blink or you leave it on your desk.
There’s little or no mobile reception in the building, fuelling a sense of claustrophobia.
And it is eerily silent. Feeling nervous and like an imposter in my early days there, that silence fuelled a kind of paranoia — maybe nobody speaks, as they’re all in the know, unlike me?
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It is sterile, uninspiring. The chamber is like an exam hall, apparently designed with social distancing in mind, decades before Covid.
Recent years have seen oppressive additions like the sexual harassment signs plastered around the building, placed at points where people may linger — in lifts, or at tea and coffee points.
I‘m no fan of sex pests but I do wonder if those who cannot control their urges would self-moderate due to a sign saying ‘Sexual harassment has no place at the Parliament’.
The parliamentary authorities are obsessed with control — the kind of folk who make journalists stand in pens, making it easier for politicians to simply walk past.
Expect an officious email if you stray into the wrong corridor or try to ask a politician a question in the “wrong” area of the maze.
Someone among the legions of staff quietly going about their business, avoiding eye contact, is doubtless responsible for signs and rules. To be frank, I haven’t a clue what many of these people do, but I do know it hasn’t fixed the NHS or schools.
More than 12 years after I first walked in as a politics reporter, I think I’ve worked out what is going on in Holyrood most of the time: Not very much. Perhaps that’s why it’s so quiet.
There’s a great many people busying themselves with daily drudgery in a building which cost £414million to build, and costs an arm and a leg to run.
But “a vessel of enlightenment, invention and creativity”? Come on.
Devolution maybe 25 years old, but you’re lucky there’s 25 minutes well spent each week on issues affecting people’s daily lives.
Accountability was one of the founding principles of the parliament.
But the sad reality is that due to failings of its incumbents, Holyrood has become an institution whose main role is to blame another institution — Westminster — for its own shortcomings.
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For the next 25 years, a whole new outlook is required — one of seeking solutions, not finding problems.
Otherwise, 2024’s year of backslapping is going to look a bit daft when the history books are written.
