The weekend visit of the King and Queen to Holyrood has once more switched the focus on to the success – or otherwise – of devolution.

Earlier this week, Kevin McKenna penned an excoriating column on the performance of “a wee pretendy parliament”.

👉 Read his column here

That prompted a call from a correspondent to “dismantle and abandon” the Scottish Parliament.

👉 Read that letter here

Today, however, one our readers argues that while Holyrood could do better, it is Westminster that has let down the most.

David J Crawford of Glasgow writes:

"In response to James Millar’s critique on the function of Holyrood, I have to ask if he thinks Westminster is any better, because when I look south of the Border or at Wales or Northern Ireland the common man there doesn’t seem to be doing any better and in many cases is worse off than we Scots. Sure, Holyrood has made a hash of some things and has more than its fair share of useless numpties and hangers-on, but Westminster is far worse.

What he seems to have forgotten is that 25 years ago the UK Establishment gave us Holyrood in an attempt to shut us nationalists up and for no other reason. If it is a 'pretendy government' that is what it was meant to be; that is why Holyrood has the D’Hondt electoral system rather than Westminster’s 'first past the post' method to ensure we never can have an SNP government with a massive majority whereas Keir Starmer currently has one with a meagre 37% of the Westminster vote. That is why Holyrood’s revenue is controlled by Westminster, why it must balance its budget and why its borrowing powers are strictly limited by Westminster.

I agree that Holyrood could do a better job for Scots and Scotland. This could be achieved simply by allocating all the tax raised in Scotland and from products created and produced in Scotland to Holyrood. Currently it all goes to Westminster which then gives Holyrood approximately 40% of it back to run all the public services in Scotland.

In the 25 years that Holyrood has existed, Westminster has run up a colossal UK national debt of £3 trillion and currently pays more interest annually on this accumulated debt than it gives Holyrood to run a country.

If anything needs to go it is Westminster, not Holyrood."