Chris Murray

Chris Murray

Labour — Edinburgh East and Musselburgh

Speaking in the House of Commons on 22 October 2025

Debate

Devolution in Scotland

Contribution

My hon. Friend makes an important point. The concentration of power in the Scottish Parliament does not work for cities, rural areas, the central belt or the highlands and islands, because it treats Scotland as one monolithic whole and does not address the differences in its communities. That brings me to my next point. Although devolution has been successful in establishing the Scottish Parliament, we have to be honest about where it has fallen short. Many hon. Members have laid out a litany of failures: poorer health outcomes, falling schools standards that were once the envy of Europe, a housing emergency and stubbornly high poverty, and the drugs crisis, which shames us all. We once led the world in setting climate targets, but we now lead the world in ditching them. We must understand why that happened. If we think of devolution only as the establishment of the Scottish Parliament, we get it wrong. In 1999, another institution was created—the Scottish Government, then the Scottish Executive.

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