The Scottish Parliament’s original powers were set out in the 1998 Scotland Act. Rather than explicitly granting powers to MSPs, the law outlined which areas were to be ‘reserved’ to Westminster leaving Holyrood free to legislate about everything else.
At the outset, that meant education, agriculture, housing, the environment and health and social care were in the new parliament’s purview. Justice, economic development, arts culture and sport too. Although successive administrations have chosen not to use them, voters had also decided that the new Scottish Executive would have tax-raising powers - able to raise or lower the basic rate of income tax by up to three pence in the pound.
The 2012 Scotland Act varied this, allowing the parliament to vote to raise or lower income tax by up to 10 pence in the pound, so long as any change affected all tax bands. The Scottish Government, as it had been known since 2007, was also given the power to borrow up to £5 billion.
A third Scotland Act, in 2016, expanded the Scottish Government’s powers further, including the power to alter Air Passenger Duty in Scotland – the SNP have just U-turned over plans to use it. Similarly timely is the power the act granted to amend a Holyrood electoral system described as “unloved and overly complex” in the Herald yesterday by leading civil servant Sir Michael Grice.
A major change was the extension of control over eight benefits - including the housing element of Universal Credit, carers allowance, disability assistance and the ability to top up reserved benefits. This has led to the establishment of a new agency, Social Security Scotland - based in Dundee - which ministers promise will usher in a new respect-based approach .
But this steady growth in the Scottish Parliament’s powers is contrasted with the UK Government’s alleged ‘land grab’ in areas of law which will be ‘repatriated’ after Brexit, such as agriculture, fishing and food standards. This is likely to remain an area of tension.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here