Michael Gove's 'levelling up' agenda undermines Scottish democracy

The Secretary of State for Levelling Up was trying hard to appear reasonable – a hard task when his job was essentially to justify Westminster moves which can only be interpreted as a bid to diminish the Scottish Parliament’s powers and undermine the generally high regard in which it is held by voters north of the Border.

The attack on devolution has been carried out under the cover of Brexit, which may have been pushed out of the headlines by other matters recently but has left us reeling from its disastrous impact on the UK economy. It has dramatically reduced exports – particularly Scottish exports ­– and introduced time-wasting complications in a process which was previously smooth and efficient.

READ MORE: Scotland failed by key flaw in Michael Gove's EU replacement cash system

It has damaged relationships with our neighbours and put in peril peace in Northern Ireland. It’s hard to think of any single issue which has brought as many serious problems in its wake.

But Boris Johnson’s Tories still cling to one potential upside: they hope that by snatching control of the money once distributed by Europe in Scotland and claiming the credit for new projects north of the Border they have a realistic chance of stemming the growth in support for independence.

Let’s be clear … the Tory plan to replace European funding for Scottish projects has nothing to do with the best interests of this country and everything to do with countering what the UK Government perceive as the annoying popularity of the Scottish Government.

When Labour backed the principle of devolution and the reconvening of the Scottish Parliament in the late 1990s, it believed it would still ever-more insistent calls for devolution. After all, it argued, it would give Scots more powers but retain the “comfort” of remaining within the Union.

The years since the Scottish Parliament began sitting again have demolished that argument. The support for the SNP has grown to the extent that it has been in power at Holyrood since 2007 and has been the unchallenged dominant force in Scottish politics since then.

The pro-independence side did not quite manage to win the day in the first independence referendum of 2014, but support for the cause has been growing since then. It’s no wonder that Boris Johnson is known to believe that devolution has been a “disaster”.

Although the farce that has followed Brexit has been one of the drivers of the growing support for independence, the Prime Minister still believes it the departure from Europe offers him a major opportunity to dampen enthusiasm for indyref2.

Which is exactly why he wants to plaster the UK flag over all manner of spending projects financed by the cash which would have previously been distributed through the EU.

READ MORE: Tories in 'ridiculous' bid to strip spending powers from Holyrood

Between 2014 and 2020, the Scottish Government received €944 million from the EU’s Structural and Investment Funds – predominantly through the Rural Development Fund and the Social Fund.

That money should have been replaced though extra spending power for the Scottish Parliament. That way it could have been used according to the priorities agreed by MSPs we actually voted for. Instead the UK Government took control of the cash through a UK Shared Prosperity Fund, which sits alongside a Westminster Levelling Up white paper.

Altogether this will provide £2.6 billion across the UK. But we don’t yet know how much Scotland will get and what criteria will be applied to determine that. Most of the paper applies to England only and the UK Government has said only that it hopes to “lead on delivery” in reserved policy areas and “work collaboratively” with devolved governments on devolved areas. That’s not a lot of detail.

To make matters worse, the UK Internal Market Act, passed after the UK left the EU, gives the UK Government an effective veto over anything the Scottish Parliament does that clashes with its own plans.

Clare Adamson (above), the convener of Holyrood’s Constitution Committee, has already warned the act “effectively removes the Scottish Parliament’s ability to act in many devolved areas”.

Gove’s relatively mild-mannered response to questions at Holyrood’s Finance Committee meeting yesterday couldn’t quite cover up the fact that most of the detail in the moves to replace EU funding has been a mess.

He admitted that there had been problems allowing local authorities enough time to properly submit bids and had to face down claims that councils might be left out of pocket buying in expertise to put together bids which might ultimately fail.

The system of deciding which areas would benefit from extra cash was also mired in confusion. Areas deemed to deserve the highest priority would be “first in the queue” for the cash but wouldn’t necessarily get it.

He denied suggestions that MPs, or indeed MSPs, would have a veto on decisions to fund projects, although their support would be a “very powerful additional force to be reckoned with”. However, projects deemed worthwhile by Westminster would be considered on their own merits and might end up winning the cash even if local representatives opposed them. Gove had to admit that even the system for allocating priorities was a muddle. The Highlands and Islands somehow ended up with the same lower priority status as the City of London, one of the richest areas in the UK.

How did that happen? Because the people making those decisions in London don’t know enough about the areas affected. Just as the people deciding which projects should be given the green light don’t know enough about the needs of areas in which the projects are based. There’s an obvious solution to these problems – give the responsibility to the Scottish Government.

Michael Gove tried several times to insist that Westminster was determined to work with local authorities and the Scottish Government, but the facts tell a different story.

The Scottish Government has been kept firmly out of the loop while these decisions have been taken elsewhere. Worse, this is no accident. It was a deliberate exclusion by a party in power at Westminster but with no hope of winning anything like a majority at Westminster. There is no moral argument for leaving major spending decisions to a party with so little public support while refusing to consult with a government with such considerable backing.

Also left out in the cold are organisations who depend on these funding decisions for their very existence and yet have not been given the information they have asked for. When Gove was challenged about these delays all he delivered were the usual empty promises. The Levelling Up department may have fallen down on the job until now, but we are expected to believe matters will dramatically approve in the future.

On top of all these mistakes, we are no further forward in wringing assurances from London politicians that Scotland will not emerge from this whole fiasco with less money than before. The Scottish Government suggests the end result will be a shortfall of at least £138m each year.

When pressed on that issue, Gove delivered a defence staggering under the weight of a blitz of acronyms which obscured any meaning. There was something about legacy spending dipping while the new Share Prosperity Fund increased. What that will mean for bottom-line comparisons remains to be seen.

What’s clear is that Gove, Johnson and their cronies want to strip powers from the Scottish Governrment in a deliberate bid to limit Holyrood’s effectiveness.

That same ambition is behind a call from Gove that the Scottish Government should devolve more of its remaining powers to local authorites, which is a bit rich coming from a politician whose party is desperately trying to bring more and more devolved powers back under its control.

It’s a warning shot which, combined with Gove’s increasing determination to deal with local councils over the head of the Scottish Parliament, makes it more imperative than ever that the upcoming council elections deliver a strong and clear message to Westminster: get your hands off Scottish democracy.