Category Archives: Events

16 September 2012 · 10:02 am

Enhancing devolution: presentation at PSA Territorial Politics conference in Brussels

On Friday 14 September, I gave a presentation at the conference of the Territorial Politics working group of the Political Studies Association.  This is a biennial event, and this time it was held in Brussels.

I presented a version of the work I’ve been doing on how a more decentralised approach to devolution finance might work, and also discussed how that relates to wider ideas about ‘enhanced devolution’ particularly but not only for Scotland.  I gave it the snappy and glamorous title ‘Devo more, devo plus and so on: extending devolution in the UK, and financing it.’  At least it’s accurate.

Fiscal devolution is the starting point here, but the problem is that it’s hard to design a funding system when you don’t know the nature and costs of the functions devolved.  This means that outlining models for ‘fiscal devolution’ at the start of working on schemes of enhanced devolution rather than the end of them is like putting the cart before the horse.  The deeply-established fiscal centralisation of the United Kingdom – which goes back at least to the Middle Ages, and which in both Tudor times and the late seventeenth century was key to the power of the English state – is a major factor here.  Under the existing model of devolution, health, education and local government services are the most costly functions in devolved hands.  For this, I think it’s possible to create something workable through devolving (all) personal income tax, assigning a large proportion of VAT to devolved governments, and devolving the various land taxes and alcohol and tobacco duties (though that will require quite a major restructuring of how those work).  That needs to be accompanied by an equalisation grant, and there are some big questions about how that works.

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Filed under Devolution finance, Events, Policy issues, Publications and projects

11 June 2012 · 9:45 pm

A Welsh legal jurisdiction, and its effects on legislation

I haven’t properly posted about the Welsh Government’s consultation on the idea of establishing a separate Welsh legal jurisdiction.  They launched this in late March and it’s reputedly a concern close to Carwyn Jones’s heart.  Details are here, the consultation paper itself is available here, and the closing date for responses is 19 June.  The consultation paper is open-ended (or open-minded) in the extreme.  In essence, the paper is a set of exam questions about whether there should be a separate legal jurisdiction for Wales and what form it should take.  Examinees, sorry respondents, are required to ‘give reasons’ for all their answers.

One important point about legal jurisdictions is that, in the common-law world, they invariably coincide with the existence of a legislature.  Thus, in Canada, even a tiny province like Prince Edward Island has its own legal jurisdiction – as well as a provincial legislature.  In federal systems, there will also be a legal jurisdiction attached to the federal order/level; so PEI is both a jurisdiction of its own, in relation to exclusively provincial matters, and part of the jurisdiction of Canada in relation to federal ones.  The civil-law world works differently, and can more easily accommodate multiple legislatures passing laws for particular territories within a single legal jurisdiction.  Thus, there is a single German or Swiss jurisdiction, despite the existence of federal and Land or cantonal parliaments that can both pass laws.

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Filed under Courts and legal issues, Events, Wales, Westminster, Whitehall

9 May 2012 · 11:57 am

London conference on ‘Scottish politics explained’, 3 July

I’m taking part in a conference organised by Holyrood Magazine conferences, taking place in central London on 3 July 2012.  It’s got an impressive line-up of speakers, including Henry McLeish, Jeremy Purvis and Jim Mather, MPs including Stewart Hosie, Margaret Curran and Danny Alexander, as well as a clutch of academics.  The aim of the event is to survey the current shifting ground of Scottish politics, as the independence referendum comes seriously onto the agenda.  I’m taking part in a panel discussion about economic and financial issues, along with Brian Ashcroft of Strathclyde University, Drew Scott of Edinburgh University, and Jeremy Purvis, the former MSP now involved in Reform Scotland’s Devolution Plus initiative.

Details of the event, including booking arrangements, are here.  It should be a good event, though it’s also rather expensive.

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Filed under Devolution finance, Events, Implications of Scottish independence, Scotland, Scottish independence, Westminster

26 February 2012 · 8:31 pm

Constitution Unit seminar on a Scottish independence referendum, 12 March

I shall be taking part in a seminar at the Constitution Unit at UCL on a Scottish independence referendum at 1 pm on Monday 12 March, talking about the politics of an independence referendum, along with Professor Robert Hazell.  Details of the event can be found on the Unit’s website here.  Please visit the website to book a (free) place if you’d like to come.

UPDATE, 12 March: My slides from this seminar, and Robert Hazell’s, are now available on the Constitution Unit’s website here.  Mine are also available as a PDF file here.

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Filed under Events, Intergovernmental relations, Referendums, Scotland, Scottish independence

26 February 2012 · 7:13 pm

Scotsman conference on an independence referendum, 8 March

The Scottish independence referendum means there’s a lot of interest in a Scottish independence referendum.  Along with such luminaries as Michael Moore MP, UK Government Scottish Secretary, and Bruce Crawford MSP, Cabinet Secretary for Parliamentary Business and Government Strategy in the Scottish Government, I shall be taking part in a half-day conference organised by The Scotsman on Thursday 8 March, at their offices in Edinburgh.

Details of this event and booking arrangments can be found here.  This one needs to be paid for, I’m afraid.

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Filed under Events, Referendums, Scotland, Scottish independence

28 December 2011 · 9:20 am

IPPR event on public attitudes about Englishness and English devolution

I’ve mentioned previously that IPPR have been leading some very interesting survey work about public attitudes to devolution and self-government in England.  The report based on that work is going to be published toward the end of January, titled ‘The English dog that finally barked: Understanding the new politics of Englishness’.  To mark the launch, there will be an event at IPPR’s offices on Buckingham Street, London WC2, with speakers including Richard Wyn Jones from Cardiff University and Mike Kenny from QMUL.  It will be at 2 pm on Thursday 26 January.

Further details about the seminar are available here, and those interested in attending should contact Guy Lodge at g.lodge@ippr.org to book a place.

UPDATE: I understand that John Denham MP and David Davis MP have also been invited to speak.

FURTHER UPDATE, 23 January: Those looking for the IPPR report on attitudes in England can download it from here.

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Filed under English questions, Events, Public opinion

17 November 2011 · 3:29 pm

London event on the 2011 Scottish and Welsh elections

This year’s Scottish and Welsh elections, and the Welsh referendum on primary law-making powers, have made 2011 a watershed year in UK politics.  Fortunately, the ESRC has funded detailed studies of all three polls, and the research teams involved (based at Strathclyde, in the Scottish case, and Cardiff and Aberystwyth in the Welsh) are holding a seminar in London to present their work.  It will take place at the Institute for Government at 2 Carlton Gardens, London SW1Y 5AA, at 6.15 pm on Wednesday 14 December.  Speakers include James Mitchell from Strathclyde and Richard Wyn Jones from Cardiff.

There’s a flyer with more details of the event here.  Please email RumbulRA@cardiff.ac.uk by 9 December if you wish to attend.

UPDATE: Presentations from the 2011 Scottish Election Study can be found here, and from the Welsh Election Study here.

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Filed under Elections, Events, Referendums, Scotland, Wales

3 November 2011 · 11:23 am

The Scottish Lib Dems’ ‘home rule commission’

Sir Menzies Campbell has been announced as the chair of the Scottish Liberal Democrats’ home rule commission, first announced by Willie Rennie in September at the UK Lib Dem conference in Birmingham.  There still aren’t many details about the commission, particularly its terms of reference or composition (other than Sir Ming).  About all we know is that Rennie says it is to ‘set out our vision for a strong Scotland within the UK and for strong, powerful communities in every part of Scotland’.  That suggests it will be concerned not just with Scotland-UK issues, but also local government ones.

There’s coverage from BBC News here and the Scotsman here. The Scottish Lib Dems’ own news release is here.

This is hardly unexplored ground for the Lib Dems.  Indeed, that’s both part of the problem for this commission, and part of the reason for it.  Back in 2006, the Lib Dems were the only one of the unionist parties in Scotland willing to think about constitutional matters.  The Steel Commission  came up with a blueprint for extremely far-reaching devolution, so much so that it was used by the SNP as the basis for the ‘full devolution’ model sketched in the November 2009 white paper Your Scotland, Your Voice.  In effect, the Lib Dems wrote the SNP’s version of Devolution Max.  That in turn has made it very hard for the Lib Dems to challenge the SNP on constitutional matters, as every time they do they have their earlier position thrown back at them. That knot has been compounded by the insistence of Lib Dems in the UK Coalition as being effectively unchangeable.  I’ve heard quite senior Lib Dem figures confirm with equal vigour and in the space of five minutes that the party is committed to the Steel Commission, to the Calman recommendations/Scotland bill in its current form, and to a federal United Kingdom.  They showed no awareness of how contradictory these positions were.

The new commission has got to avoid making the mistake the Steel Commission did.  That was to come up with a scheme for very extensive devolution within the Union, without having any good rationale for why there should be a Union or what it should do.  The UK level, in the Steel Commission’s schema, was largely a residuum of things that either couldn’t be devolved without clearly breaking up the Union (such as defence or foreign affairs), or which it just considered were too cumbersome to handle.  To be convincing, any unionist argument has got to include a positive rationale for the continuation of the Union, not just convenience.

UPDATE: I shall be talking about this on The Politics Show Scotland on Sunday 6 November: 12 noon, BBC 1 Scotland (though I think the ‘Scottish’ bit starts at 12.45), 3 pm on the BBC Parliament channel, or via the iPlayer.

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Filed under Calman Commission/Scotland bill, Events, Lib Dems, Scotland, SNP, Westminster

2 November 2011 · 8:51 pm

More evidence to the Scotland Bill Committee at Holyrood

It’s been a busy week.  After giving evidence in Cardiff on Monday, I travelled to Edinburgh to give evidence to the reconstituted Scotland Bill Committee at Holyrood.  This of course was my second stab at this, following my appearance in January.  After May’s election and the SNP majority, this committee was reconstituted to look again at the Scotland bill and advise the Parliament about whether to give legislative consent to it or not.  As the UK Government has sought to indicate that the Parliament gave legislative consent before the May elections, this itself is something of a point of debate between the UK Government and the Parliament.  This came out in the evidence of the Advocate General, Lord Wallace of Tankerness QC, who appeared immediately before me, mainly to discuss the clauses regarding the powers of the UK Supreme Court in criminal cases raising human rights issues, but also straying a bit more widely, as he’s the UK minister responsible for the bill in the House of Lords.

My evidence was mainly concerned with financial matters – with the sorts of steps that would be necessary to put a devolved Scotland onto a similar financial footing to regional-level governments in other federal or decentralised systems.  I’m still developing my thoughts on this, but it’s increasingly clear to me that a solution will involve devolution of pretty much all personal income tax as presently charged.  I’m also increasingly inclined to think that assignment of VAT proceeds (considered and rejected by both the Calman and Holtham Commissions) is likely to play a part, largely because of problems with how the block grant works that are now becoming clear and which will have increasingly serious effects in the next few years.  At the same time, I’m sceptical about the merits of devolving corporation tax, and how that might be done, though that’s favoured by both the Scottish Government and other groups including Reform Scotland.  I’m also dubious about devolving excise duties on alcohol, because of how excise duties work, as they’re a tax levied at the point of production or importation, not the point of sale or consumption – and in a fiscally decentralised context, it’s the latter that’s appropriate.

I emphasised how significant the shift even to a modest degree of fiscal devolution would be for UK-level institutions, particularly HM Revenue & Customs.  I also explained my grave concern about the UK Government’s failure to explain how the reduction in the block grant to allow for the newly devolved tax powers would be calculated or adjusted in subsequent years.  In my view, this is a fundamental issue, and far from being ‘technical’.  Without much greater clarity about it, I do not see how the Scottish Parliament can properly give its legislative consent to the bill.

My memorandum of evidence to the committee is HERE, and the transcript of evidence from the day is here (mine begins at column 466).

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Filed under Calman Commission/Scotland bill, Devolution finance, Events, Intergovernmental relations, Legislation, Scotland

13 October 2011 · 5:20 pm

The Guardian’s ‘Disunited Kingdom’ series

I’m sure most readers have already noticed that this week the Guardian has been running a series of items about the UK’s territorial politics, under the banner  ‘Disunited Kingdom’.  Of particular interest to me have been pieces by John Curtice about public opinion (here), and an interview with Alex Salmond (here). The whole series can be found here.

What’s particularly encouraging about the series is that I’m told by those involved that it marks the start of much more thorough coverage of devolution- and territorial-related issues by the Guardian, and won’t just be a week’s flash in the pan.  I do hope that is true; the issues involved merit more extensive coverage than they have had up to now, particularly in England.

As part of this series, I took part in a discussion recorded on Thursday chaired by Hugh Muir with Joan McAlpine MSP and Michael White from the Guardian.  This was a pretty wide-ranging tour d’horizon of most of the big questions devolution raises, and will be a ‘Guardian Focus’ podcast.  It’s available here.

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Filed under English questions, Events, Media issues, Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Westminster