Devolution in Scotland

Debate between Scott Arthur and Chris Murray

Wednesday 22nd October 2025 Commons Chamber

[Chris Murray]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. The concentration of power in the Scottish Parliament does not work for cities, rural areas, the central belt or the highlands and islands, because it treats Scotland as one monolithic whole and does not address the differences in its communities.

That brings me to my next point. Although devolution has been successful in establishing the Scottish Parliament, we have to be honest about where it has fallen short. Many hon. Members have laid out a litany of failures: poorer health outcomes, falling schools standards that were once the envy of Europe, a housing emergency and stubbornly high poverty, and the drugs crisis, which shames us all. We once led the world in setting climate targets, but we now lead the world in ditching them. We must understand why that happened.

If we think of devolution only as the establishment of the Scottish Parliament, we get it wrong. In 1999, another institution was created—the Scottish Government, then the Scottish Executive.

[Dr Arthur]

I envy the jewels in my hon. Friend’s constituency. The Scottish Government—and the Greens, who were complicit—really got climate targets wrong. The targets were set in law and endorsed via an election, but they dumped them overnight. Is that not one of the most shameful things to have happened in Holyrood?

[Chris Murray]

My hon. Friend gets exactly to the nub of the issue. We have seen good debate, gestures and discussion in Scotland, but we have not seen the concomitant focus on policy, delivery and outcomes. The Scottish Parliament has been a success; the Scottish Government have not. It is important to draw that distinction.

A highly centralised structure has concentrated decision-making in St Andrew’s House, to the detriment of local communities. As we have heard, councils have had their funding and influence hollowed out. There has been a proliferation of quangos and agencies; there are now more quangos in Scotland than there are Members of the Scottish Parliament. That breeds a clientelism and elitism that shut ordinary people out of decision-making processes.

Global Plastics Treaty

Debate between Scott Arthur and Chris Murray

Thursday 17th July 2025 Commons Chamber

[Dr Scott Arthur (Edinburgh South West) (Lab)]

I make my comments in the context of my declaration in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I thank the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) for securing the debate. It is on an issue that resonates strongly with many residents in Edinburgh South West—it is not an overstatement to say that I was inundated with emails on it.

Plastics are everywhere. As we have already heard, they are in construction, healthcare, clothing and furniture. It is estimated that about 14 million tonnes of microplastics are lying on the ocean floor right now, and the fashion industry is among the biggest sources.

My former colleague at Heriot-Watt University in my constituency, Dr Mark Hartl, was part of a team who found microplastics in green mussels sold in traditional seafood markets in Jakarta. They estimated that the human intake of microplastics from mussel ingestion ranged from 9,000 to 12,000 microplastic items per person per year. Mark was also part of a team that identified microplastics in seagrass in the Deerness Sound area of the constituency of the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland. It was found adhering to the blades of the seagrass in some cases.

Elsewhere in Heriot-Watt University, a small team headed by Dr Lisa Macintyre, an associate professor of textiles at the university’s school of textiles and design in Galashiels in the constituency of the hon. Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (John Lamont), who is also in his place, has overseen painstaking research to co-develop the world’s first visual fibre fragmentation scale. That is really important work, because fashion designers—I am not sure how many of them we have in the Chamber—can use it when selecting fabrics for their designs, to understand how likely it is that those small fibres will fall off.

We know that clothing is not the only problem. Global plastic production is set to triple over the next three decades, as we have heard, but our waste management structures are ill prepared to deal with that looming threat. It is therefore right that we take the plastics treaty seriously.

[Chris Murray (Edinburgh East and Musselburgh) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend share my horror that global plastic production will double by 2050? He said that his constituents in Edinburgh South West feel strongly about this; I can assure him that people across Edinburgh do. Will he join me in calling for a global plastics treaty that the Government should take forward as a priority?