Let Glasgow flourish?

Some muddled thinking has been creeping - and yesterday marched boldly  - into the devolution debate. "Power over housing benefit should be devolved." This way of talking about and conceiving of devolution - as a box of tricks for distribution - is often a useful shorthand, but sometimes it leads us into deep confusion. 

So it is this morning, with reports that the Labour leader of Glasgow City Council, Gordon Matheson, thinks the city needs "more devolution" of its own, and has petitioned the Smith Commission to this effect. The Commission, argue cooncil chiefs, must apply itself not just to devolution within the UK, but also to "devolution" within Scotland. In the Daily Record, Matheson argues that while he shares:

"... the widespread consensus that more powers should be devolved to Scotland, this cannot just be pass-the-parcel between Westminster and Holyrood. Simply moving powers from one centralising parliament to another isn't true devolution."

Precedent for conceptualising greater local authority power in terms of "devolution" is to be found in Labour's Devolution Commission report, which is chock full of references to o'erleaping the Scottish Parliament, and investing civic authorities with additional "devolved" authority. You may or may not agree with Matheson's point about the importance of greater local control over political decision-making. But conceptualising this argument in terms of "devolution," and calling on Lord Smith and his colleagues to give effect to it in a new Scotland Bill in Westminster, entirely misunderstands the legal basis for devolution and - indirectly - calls for the UK parliament to be reinvested with sovereign sway over the shape of Scottish municipal and local government. A funny sort of outcome, for a proposal passing itself off as "true" devolution. Let's take it through in stages.

The bottom line is this: the debate about Scottish devolution is about the powers which Holyrood cannot exercise, what the Parliament cannot change, and which Westminster decisions are to be treated as set in stone. That's the framework which the Scotland Act gives us. It doesn't list powers devolved, but only powers retained. The rest, it commends to the Scottish Parliament's collective judgement.

In law, there is no such thing as a "devolved" power, only a reserved one. And the difference between the two is critical - and totally missed in Matheson's intervention. As things stand, Holyrood cannot introduce its own social security schemes, nor can it modify or repeal the Human Rights Act. What it can do, however, is shape, reshape or even abolish local government in Scotland. MSPs may decide to invest local forms of government with greater and lesser powers, or to diminish their powers in devolved areas. That's their purview. 

Against that legal background, Matheson's idea of "city" devolution is simply incoherent. The only feasible way in which additional powers could be "devolved" to cities by a Scotland Bill is to add local government to the list of things Holyrood can't legislate for under schedules 4 and 5 of the Scotland Act. That's the form of devolution Donald Dewar and his colleagues bequeathed to us in the 1990s, in framing the parliament's founding statute. It's logic is inescapable. What Matheson is - essentially - calling for is for local government to be re-reserved, and for Westminster to determine what form of local government is appropriate for Scotland, immunising Glasgow and its sister councils from unwelcome Holyrood interference. 

We're seriously at risk of conflating two different lines of thinking here. Is it desirable that Scottish local government should enjoy greater autonomy in some areas? Perhaps. There are certainly compelling arguments to be made. Interestingly, this is one of the few themes which Nicola Sturgeon has consistently referenced in her public remarks since the referendum result. Presaging what? Who knows? But it is not, I think, an insignificant choice of topic for the incoming First Minister to expend breath on. 

But the idea that powers should be "devolved" from Holyrood to local authorities by Westminster is a red herring. This could only be achieved by clawing back powers which the UK parliament willingly devolved when Holyrood was founded. It is one thing to agitate in the Scottish Parliament, and to remonstrate with the Scottish Government, for a different vision of local democracy in Scotland to be realised through ordinary legislation. It is quite another to ask for this aspiration to be inscribed, unalterably, in the Scotland Act by Members of Parliament in Westminster. But logically, that's what Glasgow civic leaders are pushing for. 

Is it "true devolution" to have the form and powers of Scottish local government decided by a faraway parliament in the imperial capital, depriving Holyrood of powers it has enjoyed since 1998 and for the foreseeable future? Pardon me, Mr Matheson, but colour me skeptical.