Devolution,social democratic visions and policy reality in Scotland

Abstract

The Scottish National Party’s election win in 2011 produced the first overall majority for any party since the Scottish Parliament’s inception in 1999, despite the proportional representation system that was supposed to prevent single party governments. This historic election has been followed by much discussion of how much further the powers of the Scottish Parliament could be extended and whether devolution would allow Scotland to have a superior welfare settlement. In this context policy divergence has been the major focus of the developing devolution debate but discussions about greater powers or even independence for the Parliament have increased significantly. They are often presented as a means to achieve a ‘better’ or more ‘fair’ society. This article argues that shortcomings in the steps towards fairness achieved under the current arrangements of devolution highlight the need for a far-reaching and innovative approach to social justice to be carried out alongside any further discussions of independence. Such an approach cannot be taken for granted.

Keywords

devolution independence Scotland Scottish National Party welfare

Introduction

The opportunities that devolution has provided (or not) for significant social policy innovation and differentiation have been a recurrent theme in discussions about the impact of devolution in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland since 1999 (Stewart, 2004; Mooney and Scott, 2005; Birrell, 2009; Greer, 2009; Mooney and Wright, 2009; Keating, 2010). For some, devolution offers the opportunity to enhance social democracy and expand welfare, for others there is a worry that devolution tends to lower levels of welfare state provision with a ‘race to the bottom’ (cf. Jeffery, 2006, 2008). However, as Greer (2010) shows, many studies have indicated that while decentralization is a recipe for less generous welfare states the UK decentralization experience has been different. It has been characterized by the maintenance of resources for welfare and some real innovation in the way that services are delivered and collective resources accessed. Whilst the level of welfare may be partly explained by the tight UK government central control on welfare cash payments that exists in the UK – controls that prevent the sort of reductions in welfare generosity seen in decentralized states of the USA – it is also the case that overall reductions in welfare are hardly likely in Scotland, Scottish policy in areas such as health, higher education and social care has consistently demonstrated a commitment by Scottish politicians to respond to what they identify as Scottish needs, maintain the idea of a socially democratic society and provide proof to Scottish voters that devolved administrations could make a difference (Haydecker, 2010). Some would argue that expanded powers of devolution could be an important route for resisting attacks on public services in the UK (Mooney and Poole, 2004; Adams and Schmeucker, 2005). There can be little doubt that the political map of Scotland is very different from that of the mid 2000s and may be a context in which such resistance could develop. The May 2007 Scottish Parliament elections saw the SNP emerge as the Scottish Government, albeit a minority government. By May 2011 the SNP had 69 seats to Labour’s 37, and an overall majority of 9 seats with the Tories and Liberal Democrats sitting well back in third and fourth places. So not only do we have a decade of devolution where policy differences and innovation in service delivery have emerged, reflecting perhaps what Birrell (2009) has identified as a more collective ideology informing Scottish policy making, we also have a growing demand for greater powers to determine the amount as well as direction of welfare spending. There is a real possibility here that the welfare settlement in Scotland could diverge more than at any other time since devolution. It is essential, though, that a realistic appraisal of policy divergence and potential progress towards social justice is undertaken.

Towards a ‘good society’?

In an interview with The Guardian in October 2011 Alex Salmond, First Minister for Scotland, stated that a key indicator of success for any government in Scotland would be the extent to which it had,

created a ‘good society’: a society which, in difficult times, keeps a hold of some things that are more important than economic circumstances, things that should be removed from budgetary pressure. (Salmond, 2011)

The Scottish National Party (SNP) is not the only party in Scotland to hold such a view. From the beginning of devolution, social justice has been a key theme of political debate for at least the two major parties of Labour and the SNP with Donald Dewar, the first First Minister and then Scottish Labour Leader, stating in 1999,

we can build on the commitment to social justice which lies at the heart of political and civic life in Scotland. (Scottish Executive, 1999: Foreword)

In both we see claims that social justice is an essential part of Scottish life, and a belief that this could be pursued far more effectively by a decentralized and devolved government, and for the SNP only truly pursued by an independent government. This is not such an unusual situation when demands for devolution and sub state nationalism are examined more generally. Beland and Lecours (2007, 2008, 2010) argue that sub state nationalism represents a powerful force for the decentralization of social policy (Beland and Lecours, 2007: 405), using the experience of nationalism and social policy decentralization in Canada and Belgium as examples. They provide two reasons for why this is the case. First, social programmes are more likely than other types of programmes to touch people in everyday life. As a consequence governments running these programmes can establish direct and tangible links with a population – a potent nation-building tool. Secondly, discussion around specific social policy alternatives can easily be conducted as a debate over core values, principles and identities. In this respect the language of social policy is similar to discourse of nationalism insofar as one group can argue to have more of a certain quality (for example, egalitarianism or entrepreneurialism) than the other. Their argument offers a potential explanation for the Scottish ‘policy and nation’ formula that appears in debate. Throughout the devolution process the interplay of social policy and social justice has been a major defining feature of devolved government in Scotland (Mooney and Scott, 2012).

In this respect, then, social policy has a crucial role to play in nation building and while this is not unique to Scotland, it nonetheless appears to have a particular potency in the Scottish context (see Mooney and Williams, 2006; Williams and Mooney, 2008; Hassan, 2011). This potency has increasing resonance following the victory of the pro-independence SNP, the maturing of the institutions of a devolved government, changes in the UK government in 2010 and a growing consensus that the constitutional status quo in Scotland is not sustainable (Mooney and Scott, 2012).

Towards a Scottish welfare state?

With more than a decade of developing Scottish policy solutions to Scottish problems and a flow of votes that suggests assessments of party competence in delivering policy lie at the heart of the SNP changes in fortune since 2007 (Johns et al., 2009, 2011), it is time to ask whether Scotland is delivering a welfare state that is complete, distinct and capable of delivering better solutions to problems of injustice than those which are controlled by UK-wide welfare arrangements.

Certainly there has been significant policy innovation in Scotland since devolution in 1999 that suggests some differentiation from the model of welfare in the UK as a whole and divergent pathways between policy development in England and Scotland. This can be seen in highly visible initiatives such as the ban on smoking introduced some years before it was brought in in England, the introduction of free personal care for the elderly, free public transport for those over 60 and free university tuition. But in other sectors too the new politics of Scotland has produced policies that whilst not an obvious ‘race to the top’ are definitely not involved in a ‘race to the bottom’ (Keating, 2010). They represent, moreover, areas where the process of policy development and delivery increasingly involves different relationships between Scottish and UK government, where new layers of governance are combining with a growing confidence in the capacity of the Scottish Government to initiate real change in the nature of welfare in the country (Mooney and Scott, 2012).

Addressing poverty and social exclusion, for example, was a common theme in the first three administrations between 1999 and 2007. It has moved from a shared agenda with the Westminster government (albeit framed as social inclusion rather than exclusion) to a more clearly defined Scottish agenda, with more distinctive localized policies and a greater willingness to blame Westminster fiscal and social security for failures to address poverty in Scotland. In the first Labour-led Scottish Government (1999–2003) social inclusion was a flagship item in their policy portfolio. The Scottish Government’s first fully developed social inclusion strategy – Social Justice: A Scotland Where Everyone Matters (Scottish Executive, 1999) – was not widely different from the UK government’s Opportunity for All (DWP, 1999). Following the 2003 Scottish Parliamentary elections a number of the milestones adopted in the Social Justice Strategy were recognized by the Scottish Labour–Liberal Coalition as simply beyond the capacity of the Scottish Executive to deliver (Sinclair and McKendrick, 2012). The resulting change to social inclusion policy – Closing the Opportunity Gap – was more focused on what could be done in Scotland and there were some successful policy innovations introduced at the time, such as the Working for Families employment support programme (McQuaid et al., 2009). Nevertheless these were neither in themselves sufficient to deal with large-scale problems of poverty and social exclusion nor sufficient to distance what the Labour–Liberal Coalition was doing in Scotland from Labour-led Westminster-based policy of the time. Sinclair and McKendrick, however, argue that the election of the Scottish National Party into government in 2007 and 2011, removed several of the political constraints on policy divergence, and raised the possibility of a new direction for social policy in Scotland. In spite of this, it is unclear whether the removal of constraints has made a difference.

The National Performance Framework, introduced after the SNP’s election to a minority government in 2007 and the Economic Strategy (Scottish Government, 2011a) tabled after their election to a majority government in 2011 both include statements of commitment to reducing inequalities in Scottish society and ‘decreasing the proportion of individuals living in poverty’ – suggesting a political will does exist. However, the success of the framework has largely been presented as only possible if the welfare reforms being introduced by the UK government are made to recognize the nature of poverty in Scotland and if economic growth within an independent Scotland is pursued. Inequality and redistribution has seldom been part of the equation (Mooney et al., 2009). Moreover, the economic growth model proposed is dependent on much the same neo-liberal model that is trapping most European countries in a downward spiral. There has, as yet, been little debate in the SNP government about co-operation across the UK to address the economic crisis, or the development of credible alternative and sustainable strategies of economic growth in Scotland that could address the causes of poverty and offer a distinctive Scottish approach to the problem of poverty and income distribution that others could adopt. Sinclair and McKendrick (2012) conclude that this is because of a lack of political will and the fact that the range of powers that the Scottish Parliament has had up to now do not support the policy areas that could have the greatest impact on poverty. Nevertheless they conclude that ‘tough economic conditions and the divergence between the political landscapes of Westminster and Holyrood have removed some of the constraints on divergence. It is more likely that the next 10 years of devolution will see the emergence of a distinctive Scottish approach to the problem of poverty’ (Sinclair and McKendrick, 2012: 75). Theirs is a positive hope for a new welfare settlement alongside greater devolution or even independence. Others (MacLean et al., 2008) are not quite so convinced – arguing that greater fiscal autonomy will lead to an actual reduction in funds as the Barnett formula for allocating public spending is dropped and the opportunity to offer the benefits necessary for poverty reduction subsequently reduced. Whatever the case there are still big questions over the sort of welfare a small state like Scotland would want to or could achieve and what level of separation from UK budgets would actually be achievable.

Looking to an area where there has been greater policy divergence – health – gives us a chance to examine the potential for change in the future – be it with powers of ‘devolution max’ or independence. Health policy is entirely devolved. The Scottish and English departments do share issues and developments and the medical profession operates across the UK as a whole, but the Cabinet Secretary for Health, Well Being and Cities Strategy in Scotland is responsible for the overall running of health and community care services and health policy in the country so that the potential for differentiation from England exists. Politicians have made much of the emergent differences between the National Health Service north and south of the border. Indeed according to Keating (2009) Scottish policy makers have continually and robustly reasserted the principle of co-operation and collaboration with professional groups and public sector workers – with the result that the extent of marketization, managerialism and consumerism of the NHS in England has not been as evident in Scotland. Addressing health is an important area for policy development in Scotland’s future well-being. Figures from the Office for National Statistics for 2006–8, for example, show significant variations in life expectancy across the UK with Scotland having the lowest (75 years) and Scottish mortality rates are high in comparison to those of other European nations (ONS, 2009). Men in the most deprived areas of Scotland can expect to spend 10 years of their 69 years in ill health, compared with men in the most affluent places who can expect to spend under 6 years in their 80 years (Scottish Public Health Observatory, 2010). The continuation of support for a non-privatized health service to address such issues, and one which differs from the English solutions, has consistently been reaffirmed, particularly since the election of the SNP minority and majority governments in 2007 and 2011 and the election of a Conservative/Liberal Coalition UK government in 2010. The Cabinet Secretary for Health, Nicola Sturgeon, for example, emphasized the Scottish Government’s commitment to reducing the role of private sector involvement in the Scottish NHS, arguing that there was a ‘real battle of ideas between different parts of the UK about the future directions of health care. It is a battle between the values of the market, internal competition and contestability on the one hand and the values of public ownership, cooperation and collaboration on the other’ (Sturgeon, 2008: 1, quoted in Poole, 2012: 121). Collaboration across services is not the only issue – preventative measures have also risen up the Scottish policy agenda. In 2011 the Christie Commission on the Future Delivery of Public Services called for a ‘radical, new collaborative culture’ (Public Services Commission, 2011: viii) as a mechanism for preventing many of the social problems, including poor health status and health inequalities. Nicola Sturgeon’s response was positive and emphasized the benefits of a rapid pooling of health and social care budgets as a means to increasing the efficiency of preventative and early intervention services (Poole, 2012).

In reviewing these two policy areas of anti-poverty policy and health policy we see distinct Scottish approaches emerging more strongly as devolution has developed. There are, however, important questions that remain to be asked at a point when constitutional issues are regularly used to suggest a better way forward for social policy and its outcomes. Independence and ‘devolution max’ are both being presented (Hepburn, 2009; Scottish Government, 2009; Curtice, 2012) as ways of developing greater room for more socially democratic welfare solutions – yet at the same time we have to recognize that so far there has been relatively little of the radically distinctive and responsive policy innovation in Scotland that was supposed to be the sine qua non of devolution (Mooney and Scott, 2005; Greer, 2009; Keating, 2010; Hassan, 2011). We really do still need to ask what sort of further divergence in policy could be expected in Scotland if a more social democratic model were to be adopted, and secondly we need to ask how far is a greater devolution of the UK social security and welfare budget really likely?

Policy promises and new contexts

Such questions have been identified by politicians in Scotland. In the May 2011 Scottish elections, policy direction and constitutional change were both on the agenda. The two major parties in Scotland, Labour and the SNP, offered a centre-left, social democratic vision of how they wanted policy to develop. They also, perhaps more interestingly for readers from the rest of the UK, appeared to offer a distinctly different route away from New Labour and post-Thatcherite Conservatism that voters in England had chosen in the May 2010 UK elections. A political language and policy options were presented that highlighted less fear about discussing the value of a social wage, the way in which people earn their living or even what a fair allocation of wealth should be within society. At the time of the election, for example, both major parties were committed to a council tax freeze, a greener future, free university tuition fees for students in higher education, free bus travel for the over 60s, free social care for the sick elderly, and free prescriptions. The nature of social welfare in the future was understood to be important by all – a specific social policy-making agenda, around social integration, inclusion and policy rhetoric around fairness and solidarity. Options, however, were always framed within the notion of Scotland needing greater powers to make this possible. For the SNP this meant independence, for Labour in Scotland it meant more powers of devolution. Initially such debates focused on the ideas discussed by the Commission on Scottish Devolution (also known as the Calman Commission) (Calman, 2009). The Commission provided the basis of the now stalled Scotland Bill in 2010. Since then the debate has moved to considering far more radical powers for the Scottish Parliament that include independence, and ‘devo max’, where the powers of the Scottish Parliament are greatly strengthened and include fiscal independence. These are things for debate as an independence referendum approaches but even before referendum dates were aired the Scottish Parliament had voted to block the introduction of UK Coalition welfare reform measures (Scotsman, 2011).

Such promises suggest that Scotland has a distinct approach to welfare which would be more likely to be delivered if greater powers were given to the Scottish Parliament. However, the extent of potential divergence is challenged by financial constraints, strong power interests and hidden incompatibility of underlying principles and aims of policy areas (e.g. social security, see below). In practical terms, the flow of revenue from Westminster and the booming economy of the early years of devolution are not going to be available even if greater powers are achieved; an Audit report in 2011 concluded that ‘Overall, the Scottish public sector is facing significant budget cuts and these are in line with previous worst case scenarios forecast by independent commentators’ (Audit Scotland, 2011: 7).

The future for Scotland’s public sector and the possibility of a ‘policy led’ move towards nationalism begin to look highly vulnerable, despite the wholehearted desire to be distinctly ‘Scottish’. In addition, there has, as yet, not even been a full discussion of all that might be involved if further devolution of reserved areas of social policy were to occur. It is interesting to note, for example, how little debate there has been about how to address the domination of the centralized social security and attendant welfare reform taking place in the UK. This is despite the fact that, as David Bell (2010) points out in his analysis of the 2010 Scottish Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR), if the reductions in UK welfare spending proposed by the Coalition government were to be achieved this would mean a reduction of public spending in Scotland larger than the reductions in Scottish government spending outlined in CSR 2010.

Until late 2011, the Scottish Government offered little concerted resistance (Scottish Government, 2011c) to the UK government’s far-reaching welfare reforms, signalling a degree of tacit SNP acquiescence with the character of the new conditional citizenship that ‘work first’ behavioural instrumentalism represents (cf. Lindsay et al., 2007; Dwyer, 2010; Wright, 2012). The significance of ongoing changes in eligibility for social security (including the introduction of Universal Credit in 2013, with the harshest ever sanctions for non-compliance – up to three years of disallowance (DWP, 2010)) and the incentive-based delivery of employment services (through the Work Programme) should not be underestimated. Analysis shows that claimant rates for the main target groups are currently slightly higher in Scotland than the British average and that the 2008 recession had a greater impact north of the border, in terms of greater fluctuations in both falling employment and rising unemployment rates (Scottish Government, 2011b). However, it is important to note that pre-recession employment rates in Scotland were exceptionally high in both international and historical comparison. Citizens Advice Scotland (Dryburgh and Lancashire, 2011) estimate that the UK government’s Welfare Reform Bill 2011 will impact significantly in Scotland: it will take £2 billion from the Scottish economy; 75,000 disabled Scots face losing their entitlement to disability benefits (under changes to Disability Living Allowance); changes in Housing Benefit will reduce payments by around £38 million annually in Scotland. The purpose of these deep-cutting welfare reforms is explicitly to reduce costs, rather than to meet needs or ensure social justice (Wright, 2011a). The underlying ideologically-based rationale to ‘end welfare dependency’ (Freud, 2007) is based on a particular discourse, rather than evidence (Newman, 2011), which popularizes the moralistic stigmatization of benefit recipients. Within this context, welfare reform can also be seen to have a qualitative impact on the erosion of social citizenship status and rights, which has implications for the nature of the relationships between citizens and the state (Wright, 2011b). These are changes that go right to the heart of what a welfare state means, yet there has been little real engagement from the Scottish Government to propose an alternative model of social citizenship for the independence scenario.

In practice this means that the Scottish Government continues to only partially govern the welfare state – with control over services (the care side), but without influence over benefits and employment services (the cash side), which have developed according to principles and priorities that are incongruent with the stated aspirations for a ‘good society’. It does seem as though, whilst many other welfare states in Europe mix different governance levels, including regional and municipal services (van Berkel et al., 2011), it will take some time to contemplate a shift away from the long established and unswerving UK government control over social security in Britain – along with any move towards greater fiscal autonomy. In practice, greater devolution or independence of social security and employment policy might not be the answer. In other countries that have been used as exemplars of how things might progress, decentralization has created, rather than resolved tensions. Sweden’s high level of localism for administering social assistance and activation services, for example, has resulted in considerable concern about the quality of services, leading to a recentralization of employment services for young people (Bibbee and Padrini, 2006; Minas et al., 2012). The Scottish electorate might well be unwilling to risk such diversity of standards, even if policy makers in Westminster and Holyrood continued with the existing monopoly over social security priorities, policies and provision-conditions (largely contractualized).

Conclusion

Across more than a decade of devolution, Scotland’s leaders have expressed a strong nation-building vision for creating a just and ‘good’ society. Especially since May 2011, there have been strong political-led suggestions that greater devolution or independence would lead to more inclusive and egalitarian welfare provisions and social relations. In this article, we have assessed the extent and significance of existing social policy divergence and considered the likelihood of ‘devolution max’ or independence opening the doors to a more complete and socially democratic Scottish welfare state. We examined the implications of growing SNP support and power in relation to three policy fields: poverty, health and social security. In anti-poverty policy, devolution has witnessed bold commitments and evidence of innovation to tackle poverty and reduce wealth inequalities. There are signs that anti-poverty policy might continue to develop more distinctively and effectively than in other parts of the UK, where the Westminster Coalition government has greater influence. In health, we found even greater divergence, with a stronger commitment to public ownership, preventative measures and collaborative working challenging some of the excesses of marketization and managerialism found in the NHS in other parts of the UK. However, analysis of centralized social security and employment policy tells a different story. These reserved areas highlight unresolved compatibility issues, which present more than a fly in the ointment for a social democratic ideal. Harsh, increasingly coercive and punitive, welfare reforms will continue to have major consequences for living conditions. The welfare reform debate emanating from Westminster has also relied on stigmatizing rhetoric about people and places that might be expected to have a qualitative and negative impact on social cohesion in Scotland (despite more respectful discussion north of the border). The SNP-led Scottish Government have been either unable or unwilling to shield the Scottish electorate from this erosion of social rights, which is clearly at odds with the nationalist desire to expand social rights. Similarly, and despite more openness in Scotland towards a social wage, many aspects and conditions of the employment relationship (e.g. employment law including industrial tribunals, minimum wages, tax credits) are dictated by Westminster. A combination of the post-2008 recession austerity and Conservative–Liberal ideological commitments to weaken employment protection has led to levels of job cuts and growing precariousness in employment that create new tests for devolution. Overall, whilst high profile examples of divergence offer hope for a ‘better’ welfare deal, substantial challenges (including power struggles and financial constraints within both Scotland and the UK) still need to be overcome before ‘good society’ aspirations can be translated into tangible policy outcomes. Scotland still has the opportunity to be a policy laboratory – but achieving the changes that matter most in ensuring socially just citizenship requires confrontation with the thorniest issues. For the SNP, the challenge is to move beyond rhetoric before the electorate become disenchanted.

Footnotes

Author Biographies

Sharon Wright lectures in Social Policy at the University of Stirling. Her research focuses mainly on in-depth studies of welfare reform, the implementation of employment services, devolution, poverty and inequality. Recent publications include: Wright, S. (2012) ‘Welfare-to-work, agency and personal responsibility’, Journal of Social Policy 41(2): 309–328; and, with Tess Ridge, Understanding Inequality, Poverty and Wealth: Policies and Prospects (Policy Press, 2008).

Gill Scott is Emeritus Professor at Glasgow Caledonian University where she led the Scottish Poverty Information Unit 1997–2006. She was the Lead Expert for a European Union URBACT project that focused on urban regeneration and equalities from 2009 to 2012 and acted as an external expert on poverty and employability for the Scottish Government 2003–2007. Publications include (edited with G.C. Mooney) Social Justice and Social Policy in Scotland (Policy Press, 2012) and ‘Gender, poverty and wealth’ in T. Ridge and S. Wright (eds) Understanding Inequality, Poverty and Wealth (Policy Press, 2008).

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