Tom Griffin (London, OK): Over at Unlock Democracy, Deputy Director Alexandra Runswick warns the Calman Commission against considering Scottish devolution in isolation from the wider UK constitutional settlement.
Sadly the First Report suggests this may well happen. For example, it warns against greater financial autonomy on the grounds that it would lead to less ’shared social citizenship.’ That may be true in Scotland but the experience suggests that, if anything, the lack of financial autonomy is causing resentment in England and goes to the heart of Tam Dalyell’s West Lothian Question. Fundamentally, we believe this to be a false dichotomy; a fairer and more transparent financial settlement will be good for Anglo-Scottish relations on both sides of the border.
The BBC's Brian Taylor suggests that Calman's concept of 'shared social citizenship' is at the heart of an intellectual defence of the union.
Calman starts from the standpoint of backing the economic union, the defence union, the monetary union and the diplomatic union.
Of greater interest are the views upon a socially integrated Union.
The report asks whether social provision - pensions, welfare, health, education - should be broadly identical from Cornwall to Caithness.
If yes, then that would constrain the potential for further devolution. Essentially, Calman is asking: at what point does social policy autonomy start to place strain upon the Union, thus defined? With free prescriptions in Scotland? With health charges in England? With welfare autonomy?
As both Runswick and Taylor recognise, the concept of 'shared social citizenship' is at odds with the divergence in social policy across the UK that has already happened as a result of devolution. The logic of devolution as 'a process not an event' would suggest that the resulting imbalances should be dealt with by giving Holyrood greater responsibility for financing its own policies. One might have thought that Calman's remit was about finding ways to achieve this.
The Commission's shared social citizenship approach suggests an alternative possibility, that would reign in the divergence of the last ten years. Brian Taylor sees the prospect of a needs assessement that would reduce the scope for Scotland to pursue its more generous social policies in the long term.
If this is the path the Commission goes down, it would be, in David Marquand's terminology, a triumph of democratic collectivism over the democratic republicanism that created the Scottish Parliament.
Hendre (not verified) said:
Thu, 2008-12-04 12:21In terms of shared social citizenship and devolution I think we all know one of the main sources of tension to date – policies with easily calculable financial benefits.
The Welsh Assembly Government has decided to bring all hospital cleaning in-house except where long-term commercial contracts need to be fulfilled. This has barely been reported upon outside Wales but when the Assembly Government extended the principle to hospital car parking this was immediately picked up by the London media and added to the CEP list of ‘discriminatory’ policies – people could calculate in pounds and pence what this divergent policy meant to them.
One of the earliest and most popular Assembly policies was the all-Wales bus pass entitling free travel throughout Wales for pensioners. I can recall a spokesman for the Department of Transport pronouncing rather sniffily in the Western Mail that the Welsh policy was ‘unsustainable’ but, lo and behold, a similar all-England bus pass has now been introduced. This policy didn’t become headline news probably because most councils in England had some sort of concessionary scheme in place and therefore the financial benefit was less obvious.
The Welsh decision to abolish SATS would have been noted in education circles in England but it took a god-almighty mess with the marking for there to be a greater public appreciation that only English school children were still sitting these exams.
The bans on hunting and smoking in Scotland were viewed with interest on the whole in England but the policy on student grants and fees with anger.
And what of free prescription charges? The Assembly Government has pointed out quite rightly that the list of exemptions hadn’t been reviewed in years and anomalies had arisen. The Assembly could have tinkered at the edges but decided on a bold policy of abolition. It has justified this by noting that Wales has higher levels of chronic sickness coupled with a low wage economy – removing the burden of prescription fees could help the chronic sick back into work. However most Welsh commentators would agree that the Assembly – or rather Welsh Labour – was having a bit of an ‘eye-catching initiative’ moment.
One question that needs to be explored is even if more equitable – in English eyes – funding arrangements were found would policies with calculable financial benefits still impinge on a shared social citizenship?
In Brian Taylor’s comments I think I detect a certain concern that the pendulum may swing too much against all forms of divergence – after all what is the point of devolution if we can’t do some things differently.