Fears over impact of partisan politics on Scottish Parliament

It was all about how parliamentary business would be conducted differently from Westminster and this was symbolised by the new horseshoe-shaped debating chamber which was designed for civilised discussion rather than the vitriol slung across the aisle at the “Mother of Parliaments” down south.

Fast-forward those 25 years to First Minister’s Questions on Thursday and any onlooker would be hard-pressed to tell the difference between that and Prime Minister’s Questions at Westminster.

“The acceptance of minority and coalition government was something that was baked into the Parliament when it was created to make it more representative and less partisan than Westminster, but that seems to have been abandoned, as has the notion of a responsible opposition,” said Richard Finlay, professor of Scottish History at Strathclyde University.

“A big part of this is the press which is partisan and doesn’t hold the opposition to the same standards as the Government. The opposition in Scotland seems to view its role as sabotaging legislation rather than amending or improving it.”

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However, political scientist Richard Parry, honorary fellow at Edinburgh University, said it was always going to end up this way.

“It was assumed that no single party would end up with an overall majority so they would be compelled to do deals, but the SNP proved that is not the case and that you can win a majority with less than 50% of the vote,” he said.

As a result, party discipline has become key, with MSPs more inclined to vote along party lines, especially after the constitutional divide hardened following the independence referendum in 2014.

“The curious thing is that Westminster was meant to be the home of strong party discipline and whips doing the arm-twisting, but Westminster backbench MPs are much more rebellious through the mechanism of parliamentary committees,” said Parry.

“Committees are pretty active and not afraid to make trouble for the Government whereas at Holyrood even the committees are pretty much under the control of the whips.”

He added that the Holyrood electoral system means that a candidate’s position on the party list becomes “incredibly important” while getting nominations for constituency seats is also difficult.

“You have to be on side and once you get into the habit of behaving like that, it is hard to stop because once you are inside the parliament there are ministerial jobs to be had,” Parry said.

Political scientist Murray Leith agreed politics in Scotland had become “more fractured and fevered” over the past few years but pointed out that there was still sometimes consensus across party lines, most notably in the Gender Reform Bill recently which received full backing from the LibDems, Greens, the majority of Labour and even some Tories.

“The Punch and Judy politics which everybody decries on a regular basis can be seen here as well as in Westminster but at the same time there is actually cross-party consensus on a number of bills,” said Professor Leith of the University of the West of Scotland.

“We saw this in 2007-2011 when the SNP were effectively able to govern by making issue-to-issue, bill-to-bill decisions. Sometimes one party would vote with them and other parties against, and other times it would be the opposite.”

Despite the regular disputes, Professor Leith pointed out that the Scottish Parliament had achieved a lot of improvements for society which simply would not have happened if it had not been set up.

“The bottom line is that in a Westminster Parliament which legislated for Scotland, there was a limited amount of time and certain bills did not get passed or were challenged in support,” he said. “People in Scotland were not able to make decisions specifically for Scotland.”

Since the Scottish Parliament was set up, he said, Scotland has been able to express itself, and decisions have been made that clearly make it distinct within the UK.