Scots are paying a high price for the SNP’s independence fixation

Nothing works anymore. If there is a mantra for modern Britain, including Scotland, this is it. If Westminster’s shame is the farce around HS2, Scotland’s is the two unlaunched ferries on the Clyde, spiralling inexorably in cost with a launch date disappearing into the future. They are emblems for so much else: after 16 years in power, the litter of the SNP’s unmet promises – from reform of education, to the closing of health inequalities, to the missed targets on net zero – continues to rise. Today, the sixth white paper on independence has been published. And its publication exposes the problem: the constitutional question has meant other serious policy-making has ground to a halt.

There is a name for this: in policy circles it’s called ‘the implementation gap’. It isn’t just a Scottish problem. But in a report by the think tank I help to run, Our Scottish Future, we decided to try and find out what common causes lie behind this failure to deliver, and which of these problems were specifically Scottish. After interviewing a bevy of former and present civil servants, politicians and academics, here’s what we found.

Firstly, there’s our politics. Bluntly, Scotland had too much of it these last few years: two epoch-changing referendums, three general elections, two Scottish elections in the last decade alone. Not only has it meant politicians, both in government and opposition, have been in campaign mode, focussing on short-term electoral horizons, the constitutional framing of those elections has meant that the whole question of delivery has been relegated in importance. If you win votes by the colour of your flag, who cares whether you’ve got a plan to get the trains to run on time?

To make matters worse, too many ministers in the Scottish government have been pursuing too many priorities, and governing by press release. There has been too much talk and consultation (astonishingly, since the 2014 referendum, we calculated that a plan or strategy has been published by the Scottish government at the rate of one every week). Right across Scotland, a bewildering array of councils, health boards, IJPs, quangos and development agencies all clutter up the public landscape, getting in each other’s way. In short, there has been too much chatter and too little action. No wonder nothing much happens north of the border.

Scotland also has a wider problem of cooperation: most of the country’s stickiest problems, such as its low economic growth or the challenge of net zero, require both the UK and Scottish governments to work in tandem. Instead, for the last 15 years, they’ve been at each others’ necks. When even a simple deposit return scheme ends up getting binned thanks to lacking collaboration between London and Edinburgh, it’s clear stuff isn’t going to get done.

Then finally, there’s what we described as Scotland’s cautious centralising culture. As one interviewee told us, too many public bodies charged with delivering services meekly fear ‘the angry phone call from Edinburgh’. The slow creep of centralisation since devolution has dampened initiative and weakened local empowerment. If people on the front line don’t feel they are entrusted to act, it’s not surprising if things don’t happen.

Is it all terrible? Maybe not. With extra public spending in Scotland and our relatively small scale, it should be easier to drive forward delivery than elsewhere in the UK. The tragedy of the last decade – during which the constitutional debate has dominated but not been resolved – is that much-needed policy reform has been often ignored in favour of a row over a referendum that’s taken us precisely nowhere.

Things need to change. We need a cap on the number of government ministers and salaried MSP committee heads to beef up their roles as champions of scrutiny. But the real cure to Scotland’s implementation gap goes deeper than any minor policy tweak. The constitutional divide absorbs much of government attention. While both independence and unionist supports have every right to state their case, the challenge, however, is to ensure that it doesn’t become a block to doing anything else. Political leadership is required from all sides of Scottish politics. After a decade where the country as consulted itself to sleep, it’s long overdue.