Devolutions real challenges yet to come

29 Jan 04
Devolution's greatest test will be when public spending comes under increased pressure, an influential think-tank warned this week.

30 January 2004

Devolution's greatest test will be when public spending comes under increased pressure, an influential think-tank warned this week.

According to a study carried out by the Constitution Unit at the School of Public Policy, University College London, Scottish devolution has so far operated in the benign context of real-term rises in public spending and compatible regimes in London and Edinburgh.

James Mitchell, professor of politics at Strathclyde University and one of the authors of The state of the nations, a book published by the unit, says that when pressures on public spending increase, demands will rise for welfare services and the gap between high expectation and delivery is likely to increase.

Added to this is the consequent increased prospect of incompatible goals and approaches on the part of governments in London and Edinburgh, Mitchell states.

The study concluded that, in Scotland, devolution has been dominated by a gap between what people expected the Parliament to do and what it can actually do, leading to a sense of disappointment. More generally, it found that devolution is only half completed.

The editor of the study, Alan Trench, says devolution has rapidly been accepted as part of the furniture of the British constitution by the elected politicians and political parties, the public and civil servants.

On the other hand, it still awaits its biggest challenges – large-scale divergence in policy, nationalist parties offering real alternatives to Labour and institutional change that is really disruptive to existing political or administrative arrangements, Trench says.

He adds: 'There is also the prospect, lying behind those factors, of a real political challenge, which will occur only when different parties are in office in UK government and one or more of the devolved capitals.'

One of the conclusions of the study is that the UK state generally has responded to devolution with minimal and incremental change, whether in Westminster's procedures, how Whitehall is organised or in the ways the four governments deal with each other.

PFjan2004

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