Devolution in Scotland

Euan Stainbank Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd October 2025 Commons Chamber

[Euan Stainbank (Falkirk) (Lab)]

I welcome the debate, brought forward by the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone). As my hon. Friend the Member for Cowdenbeath and Kirkcaldy (Melanie Ward) pointed out, I am a member of the devolution generation. As my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East and Musselburgh (Chris Murray) said, some of us in that generation are still in our 20s. To the best of my knowledge, I am the first of Scotland’s national elected representatives to be born after the founding of the Scottish Parliament. Reflections on the successes and failures of devolution over the last 25 years are critical to the devolution generation.

The constitutional settlement may still be under debate in some corners, but I hope that one thing that unites us across the House is support for a Scottish Parliament, democratically elected by the people of Scotland. The eternal words of the Scotland Act 1998—

“There shall be a Scottish Parliament”—

echo proudly; they are not just the long-won prize of campaigning by politicians from this place and across Scotland, but a definitive decision by the Scottish people that there will be an institution governing many of our priorities that is directly representative of the Scottish people.

The Scottish Parliament’s existence has a far greater mandate than any individual politician or Government ever has or will have. In 1997, 80% of voters in Falkirk backed devolution. The first Scottish Parliament returned Cathy Peattie and Dennis Canavan as the two constituency MSPs for the Falkirk area—both people who have made an immense contribution to our public life. Devolution brought with it an electoral system that permitted a far preferable, if not perfect, representative voting system.

However, I say as a proud devolutionist that we cannot get caught in the trap of nostalgia, or defence of the status quo. Scotland’s Parliaments and two Governments must always do better in the interests of the Scottish people. That is not only their core purpose, but an essential antidote to the enemies of democracy, especially now.

The perception of my generation, who have only ever known devolution, and have not known a world before the Scottish Parliament, is at a critical juncture. One of the most remarkable conversations I had recently was with a group of young carers in my constituency. They were buzzing with remarkable suggestions and clear, pragmatic ideas about how their community could be improved. Those included ideas for, yes, support for carers, but also for more accessible high streets, for safety for women and girls, and for public transport—all core competencies of their local council or the Scottish Parliament.

We should strongly welcome the fact that there is a burgeoning generation of young representatives and leaders in Falkirk and across Scotland, and many of them have direct life experience of the systems that the devolved legislature has governed for the last 25 years. The question for us and our colleagues in the Scottish Parliament is: how, in this next phase of devolution, will we empower that generation to lead, and to make better decisions than those who came before them?

What sticks out to me when I have these refreshing conversations with bright, young Falkirk bairns is how much young people tend to agree on the priorities; on how politicians should collaborate to deliver them; and on how Governments should do things. I see how reasonable young people are when holding politicians to account, and how much of what they want to do and see is relevant to their area. One of the greatest assets that we have in the devolution generation is a generation who are engaged in their area, and who have the political language and skills to fight their community’s corner. That is progress. Votes at 16, secured in 2016 for Scottish parliamentary elections, are now to be delivered here, under this Labour Government.

However, an element of trust in our politics is being eroded, uniquely in Scotland. The issue is structural and long-term. I have no qualms about stating that Tory austerity was a predominant factor in the decline that we have seen on various fronts in Scotland and across the UK, but my constituents see that the devolved settlement has not manoeuvred strategically or effectively to maintain an achievable rate of progress under those circumstances. The challenge faced under devolution is common to this place, too: it is a lack of delivery that my constituents can see and feel.

Over 10 years ago, the former First Minister said that she wanted to prioritise, and be judged on, closing the attainment gap, but she barely made a dent in it. That gap between rhetoric and delivery undermines the public’s faith in Parliament as an institution, as does the lack of accountability afterwards, or the willingness to be held directly accountable for that failure.

[Llinos Medi (Ynys Môn) (PC)]

After a quarter of a century of Labour rule, child poverty in Wales is the worse than in all other nations of the UK. Is that the reason for the collapse in support for Labour in Caerphilly, and why, tomorrow, people will turn to Plaid Cymru?

[Euan Stainbank]

I imagine the people of Wales choose to vote in the same ways as the Scottish people do for the Scots. My hon. Friend the Member for Alloa and Grangemouth (Brian Leishman) put it very well: simply picking a different nation in the UK to tackle our policy issues is getting exhausting, especially on the nationalist Benches.

Not all but part of the problem with the failure to close the attainment gap, as many Members have mentioned, and a broader loss of trust in our politics, were due to disproportionate budget cuts that have landed at the door of local authorities. Having been a councillor for two and a half years, I know that they are at the coalface delivering the services in which our constituents have most acutely seen the evidence of decline. Even though council tax had been frozen for 11 out of the last 17 years of budget settlements, I was completely surprised at the stunt at the 2023 SNP conference which left councils with both arms tied behind their backs. The challenges we see in social care and infrastructure are tied in with local authorities. This is where politics is most tangibly felt by our constituents and it is currently failing them. Even with a £5.2 billion increase secured by us on these Benches for Scotland, Falkirk Council was allocated only an additional £5 million in revenue funding this year from the Scottish Government. Where has the rest of the money gone, John?

Colleges in Scotland, as again my hon. Friend the Member for Alloa and Grangemouth touched upon, are at crisis point. With years of systematic underfunding from the Scottish Government seeing a 20% real-terms cut in funding over the past five years, many colleges have now shrunk their staff numbers and offered fewer courses for working-class students at a time when the skills they provide are at their most valuable. Forth Valley college has been put in the position of being an essential provider of training and skills, while Grangemouth undergoes an industrial crisis and requires major investment for transition. It is a hugely valuable local provider of jobs, opportunities and training, yet it is now consulting on the closure of its Alloa campus. Things are going in the wrong direction. Scotland’s civic infrastructure should have been enhanced and resilient and protected by devolution, but in too many places it has not been protected.

On the situation at Alexander Dennis, when it announced its consultation on 400 jobs and closing its only site in Scotland, there was, to their credit, engagement eventually from the Scottish Government, but that was 10 months after the company initially suggested it was going to depart Scotland if something was not done about the scandalous ScotZEB 2 scheme— Scottish zero emission bus challenge fund—sending less than 20% of orders to Scotland’s sole manufacturer. However, there have been improvements in how we in this place, under this Labour Government, work with the Administration in Edinburgh. As the Deputy First Minister accurately pointed out recently, the swift engagement from my right hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South (Ian Murray) in his time as Scottish Secretary was invaluable in ensuring that the conversation progressed quickly.

The truth is that when that sort of crisis arrives in one of our industrial assets—something we should all intrinsically value: a bus manufacturer that has existed long before the inception of the Scottish Parliament and long before any of us were around—action should have been taken much earlier, at strategic level, designing procurement through the powers the Scottish Parliament have to retain a pipeline of orders funded by taxpayer money for buses built in Scotland, not built in China.

[Chris Murray]

My hon. Friend is eloquently setting out a whole host of policy challenges that we face in Scotland, whether they are in industrial strategy, opportunities for the young or the provision of further education. Does he agree that when the Government of Scotland say that the answer to every single one of those challenges is independence, that shuts down any thinking on what we actually need to do to tackle the challenges and denudes Scotland of the ability to think through how we deal with the real issues that we face in our communities?

[Euan Stainbank]

I agree. It also undermines the message in section 1 of the Scotland Act 1998 that there shall be a Scottish Parliament with the powers to fix policy challenges. It is the reason we are proud devolutionists in this place: we want a Scottish Parliament that can address the issues under its competency. I agree that that reaction does shut down debate; it shuts down the idea that there is something better that we can achieve in all of our constituents’ interests.

As I said on Alexander Dennis, we should never have been in a position where a company warned about the loss of a critical and necessary industry in Scotland, especially as we seek to achieve our net zero goals, and it took over a year for decisive action to be taken to prevent it, albeit I welcome that. A devolved Government with a serious interest in standing up for Scotland beyond its being a slogan would not and should not have let it get to that point. Across this place, in the Scottish Government and in our councils that have been hard-pressed for far too many years under a Government who I hope get replaced next year, we must do better. Scotland demands better and Falkirk demands better.