It’s 15 years today since MSPs and AMs took their seats in their new devolved Parliaments. Today’s leaders of the Scottish and Welsh parties have marked the occasion in very different ways. Willie Rennie is upbeat about the impact of the Parliament and the measures it’s passed since devolution. He said that every person in Scotland could be proud of what it has achieved:
Fifteen years ago I was thrilled to head up the first Scottish Liberal Democrat Scottish Parliament office and assist our party to form the first Scottish Government. The opening of the Scottish Parliament in the General Assembly Hall will always be remembered for the celebrations which took place not only on the Mound but across Scotland.
Every person in Scotland can be proud of devolution. We have the best of both worlds with a strong Scottish Parliament where we shape our domestic agenda on issues like health and education, whilst working together across the UK to share the progress which comes from being part of something bigger. From free personal care for older people to land reform legislation to pioneering the smoking ban, devolution has changed lives of people in Scotland and across the UK.
Willie’s fingerprints are on many of the landmark measures which the first Labour/Liberal Democrat coalition passed, from free personal care to making sure that Scottish students were not charged tuition fees. He was the party’s first Chief of Staff during the first two years of the Parliament.
Have a look at some of those achievements here.
Writing at Freedom Central, Welsh Liberal Democrat leader Kirsty Williams strikes a much more sombre mood, looking at the failings of 15 years of Labour government and its impact on Wales. While she’s proud of the fact that Wales has its own Assembly, she worries that Labour’s failings are undermining people’s faith in devolution itself:
I am proud that our great nation has its own National Assembly. Liberals campaigned for decades for Wales to have its own parliament and our enthusiasm has not wavered. I still believe in bringing decision making closer to the people. Yet I fear Labour’s routine failings are undermining many people’s faith in devolution.
She goes on to detail some of the biggest failings of the Labour governments:
There is no denying that a generation of young people have suffered from Labour’s mismanagement of our education system. Our schools, once envied, now fall behind the rest of the UK in all of the key indicators.
Sadly, the lack of a decent education has allowed many people to struggle to find work. Our economy remains weak. Despite billions of pounds of European aid, Wales has managed to get comparatively poorer. The ambition just hasn’t been there.
Our health system grabs all the wrong headlines on a weekly basis. Targets are routinely missed, which is damaging NHS staff morale. Welsh patients deserve so much better than this.
The fact is that Welsh Labour has not just let the people of Wales down, it has let down our National Assembly too. Wales needs a radical change – a change that will help build a stronger economy and a fairer society. The Welsh Liberal Democrats, in government, can deliver this change. It is only the Welsh Liberal Democrats that have the ideas and ambition to put Labour’s mistakes right.
* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings. You can find her on Bluesky at caronmlindsay.bsky.social
Follow @libdemvoice.org on Bluesky
Like us on Facebook
Subscribe to our feed
Sign-up for our daily email digest
Leadership plotting, in real life and in fiction
A journey along the Welsh Border in 1963
Recipe for a real change of direction
Day 9304: So Farewell Then, Kier Starmer
Peter Martin
John Armah
John Kelly
Nonconformistradical
John Reed
One Comment
I sincerely hope that, when the Scots decide “No” (as, overall, I still think they will do) and ‘devolution max.’ comes in for Scotland (as it inevitably will if the vote is to stay in the Union), then the issue of ENGLISH Regional Assemblies can be looked at again. New Labour, and John Prescott in particular, wrecked any such initiatives, of course, when the people of the North East sounded rejected any such proposal for their region in a referendum (which was intended to be the first of a series). I suspect the primary reason was that, coming from Labour, people (rightly) feared more top-down, cumbersome, expensive and bureaucratic ineptitude which would just add to the layers already in existence (and probably lead to the same kinds of outcomes as Kirsty Williams talks about in Wales). (WHAT a tragedy, by the way, for Welsh education! When I was doing my PGCE in the 1970s, Wales was always held up as THE shining example of state-funded education across the whole of the UK!) The Liberal Democrats should be at the forefront of continuing the ideas of Joseph Chamberlain etc and turning the UK as a whole into a much more federal structure (with accountable and effective regional bodies) and a continued Federal Parliament at Westminster (plus (at last!) a totally reformed Upper House representing the Regions (rather than its being a form of outdoor relief for political has-beens and cronies (with all due respect to HoL Members who are anything but, of course (Shirley Williams etc!). All of this is needed not least to counter the Colossus effect of London and the South East (which, in my view makes calls for “an English Parliament” by such characters as “the English Democrats” absolutely pointless (unless the agenda of these “super-patriots” is to demolish the Union as a whole and revert to the position prior to the Tudors?))