‘Underperforming’ Scottish Parliament beset by ‘shallow partisanship’

A survey of former MSPs has found wide-ranging criticism of the way the Scottish Parliament operates and concerns about the quality of its politicians.

Think tank IPPR Scotland carried out a series of “exit interviews” with former MSPs, including ex-backbenchers and senior cabinet figures.

It said it found “deep frustration and disillusionment” with the way politics and policymaking operate at Holyrood, with MSPs increasingly falling back on party lines.

One anonymous former government minister complained about “rubbish” questions from opposition MSPs and members scrolling social media during committees.

The IPPR report found a shift towards “shallow partisanship” with MSPs increasingly falling back on party lines and “formulaic debates”.

On Holyrood committees, former MSPs complained that members pay little attention to one another and fail to seriously engage with the issues at hand.

One anonymous MSP who was surveyed said: “If you go as a minister to be interrogated by the opposition or backbenchers, the greatest disappointment is always how rubbish their questions are because they're all sitting on their phones, you get to their shot, they ask a pre-prepared question. It's either political or general most of the time. And then they go back to scrolling on Twitter.”  

Researchers found that short committee tenures are limiting the development of expertise. The median time MSPs serve on committees has hovered around one-and-a-half to two years, compared with five-year parliamentary terms. This restricts their ability to develop the kind of subject expertise that longer tenure would provide.

And instead of interactive discussions, MSPs increasingly resort to monologues. In the first parliamentary session, a committee member spoke an average of 117 words before another member spoke. By the sixth session, this had doubled to 232 words.  

The former MSPs also noted that due to poor scrutiny in committee sessions, debate has shifted to the final stages of legislation with poorly thought through amendments introduced at the last minute.

The researchers’ analysis of parliamentary data backs this up. In the first session (1999-2003), final-stage debates were about half as long as committee discussions. By the sixth, (2021-2026) the pattern had reversed, with final debates longer than committee stages.

The think tank said Holyrood needed to strengthen its “consensus-building mechanisms”.  

It recommended that reforms to parliament be designed by a new Citizens’ Commission on Scotland’s Democracy, giving citizens a formal role in reviewing and reporting on the functioning of Scottish democracy through citizens’ assemblies and juries.

Dave Hawkey, senior research fellow at IPPR Scotland, said: “Scotland faces formidable challenges, from cutting emissions and mitigating the impacts of climate crisis to managing the ageing population and reducing inequality.

“Solving each of these will need bold and far-reaching policy, including ideas from every corner of Scottish society. Low trust in politics is a major barrier to building the consensus we need to successfully guide Scotland through these changing times. Concretely, if citizens lack trust in politics, they will not agree to pay the taxes we need to fix our shared problems.”