By George Thorley

THE case for establishing a devolved parliament for Scotland was rooted in a belief that Westminster failed to properly reflect the interests, priorities and needs of the Scottish people and businesses.

A powerful law making and resource allocating devolved parliament located in Edinburgh would erase this democratic deficit.

There have been enormous positive constitutional changes to the governance of Scotland since the late 1990s, however a serious weakness of our present devolution is the long term democratic consequences of the imbalance between Scotland’s 32 democratically accountable councils and Scotland’s 109 non-elected national public bodies (quangos).

The scale of quango activities raises serious questions about the operation of Scotland’s democratic system. In developing a new polity in which anonymous, quasi-public bodies spend very significant amounts of public money, is the Scottish Government supplanting one democratic deficit with another?

Three Scotland Acts (1998, 2012 and 2016) have resulted in the Scottish Parliament having legislative control over a large part of the public realm. Its 2021/22 budget was over £55bn.

The original advocates for devolution would surely find this impressive.

What they might not understand is why the underlying principle of devolution – subsidiarity – where power and responsibility is allocated to the lowest appropriate level of accountability – has remained so undeveloped by successive Scottish Governments.

Despite loudly arguing for more and more powers, funds and responsibilities to be devolved from Westminster, the Scottish Government has with two exceptions, City Region Deals and Integrated Joint Boards, failed to devolve any of its responsibilities to the other level of democratically accountable government in Scotland – local authorities and their partnerships. In that sense, the devolution project remains unfinished.

The Scottish Government has chosen instead to maintain direct executive control of over 75% of its spending through its departments and its retinue of 43 executive non-departmental bodies, 7 advisory non-departmental bodies, 3 tribunals, 4 public corporations, 23 health bodies, 10 executive agencies, 8 non ministerial offices and 13 other significant national bodies.

That’s a whopping 111 national public bodies (quangos) for 5.4m people.

Over its 23-year life, rather than extending the principle of devolution within Scotland, the Scottish Government has in fact retained all the transfers from Westminster and in addition has taken away functions from local government.

With the creation in 2013 of Police Scotland, eight joint police boards, populated by local authority councillors were abolished and replaced by one non-elected board. The same applied to the fire and rescue service. This represented a substantial loss of local democratic accountability in two key public service areas. With the exception of the two our National Parks where directly elected Board members and Council nominees are in the majority, local democratic accountability is absent from all Scotland’s quangos.

Who is ultimately responsible for Scotland’s 111 quangos? On a day-to-day basis, it's cabinet ministers.

How much time can each minister allocate to each individual quango? Does their accountability to the Scottish Parliament and in responding to the media and the public mean that ministerial minds get driven into excessive quango detail?

Surely our ministers should be looking to the horizon, detecting opportunities and anticipating upcoming issues and also pinching the best ideas from other nations? Precisely the freedoms and innovative opportunities that devolved government provides.

If however the answer to the above train of thought is, “Ministers don’t really spend that amount of time dealing with quangos,” it poses the response “Well, who is accountable for the £22billion that quangos receive?” (2021/22)

The real challenge for a government is finding robust cross departmental solutions to the big issues. Devolution was supposed to make that easier, however, add the challenge of coordinating the activities of over a hundred quangos piles on the complexity.

Exceptionally, in 2003 the Scottish Parliament placed a duty on councils to each prepare and deliver community plans focusing on local needs and opportunities. After all councils have local knowledge and experience in coordinating services to deliver solutions.

They are also accountable via their 1200+ councillors. All quangos were required to participate but did not have a duty to adhere to each community plan’s policy and investment outcomes. Being answerable to government ministers meant their focus was national. Primarily for that reason, community planning has still not delivered on its early promise of fully integrated local public services.

Scotland’s 111 national public bodies, their boards, management and the thousands of public servants work hard to deliver their organisation’s and national priorities. It is, however, a serious challenge to a devolved parliament that seems to believe that channelling many £billions/annum to organisations that have no local accountability is a satisfactory outcome after 23 years of devolution.

Arguably the absence of local accountability and transparency from so many public services feeds alienation.

It is surely time to think again on the respective roles and responsibilities of unelected quangos and democratically accountable local authorities to avoid a new democratic deficit.

George Thorley was assistant CEO for Strathclyde Regional Council