‘Architect of devolution’ explains what’s gone wrong in Scotland

Outside government, she’s now chief executive of the influential charitable foundation Carnegie UK. Headquartered in Dunfermline, the organisation was founded with an endowment of $10 million in 1913 – worth around $316m today – from the Scottish tycoon Andrew Carnegie.

Carnegie, who rose from relative poverty to become one of the world’s richest men, gave the foundation a mission to “improve the wellbeing of the masses”. In other words: help the poor. Today, in a time of economic agony for millions, that mission not only continues, but is just as important now as it was a century ago.

Ahead of the General Election, Davidson sat down with The Herald on Sunday for a wide-ranging discussion about what’s gone wrong in Scotland when it comes to wellbeing and the lives of Scottish citizens, and how we fix the many problems facing our society.

Sarah Davidson of the Carnegie Trust 

Crises

First, to assess those problems, Davidson turns to the groundbreaking research Carnegie UK has compiled on the state of wellbeing in Scotland and the rest of the country. The findings do not make joyful reading. They show a series of deep-seated crises across the country.

What they reveal is important as the SNP has placed the notion of “wellbeing” right at the heart of government. The Scottish Government has said that wellbeing is as “fundamental as GDP”, used to measure economic success.

While there is no real difference between levels of wellbeing across the UK, what the figures show starkly is a huge gap between the wellbeing of the richest and the poorest. Older people are much happier with the quality of their lives than younger people. Disabled people, those on low incomes, and those renting or in social housing are all doing much worse. Nearly one-fifth of Scots have difficulty heating their home.

One in 20 can’t feed everyone in their household. One-quarter can’t afford a holiday and 12% can’t afford to socialise. One-third couldn’t afford an unexpected bill of £850.

Job opportunities worry 29% of Scots. In the UK, it’s 23%. Almost half are dissatisfied with political efforts to preserve the environment. Litter concerns 79% of Scots, and noisy neighbourhoods 55%. Air quality concerns 42% – lower than the UK figure of 52%

One in 10 Scots report poor health, and 13% poor mental health. In the UK, the mental health figure is lower at 10%. The poorer you are the more likely you are to report mental health issues.

One-fifth of Scots feel unsafe after dark – lower than the UK figure while 40% have experienced discrimination.

One of the most troubling findings focused on despondency around democracy. Nearly 80% of Scots feel they have no influence over the UK Government, and 60% feel they have no influence over the Scottish Government. More than half felt the same about their council.

The proportion of Scots who don’t trust the UK Government is higher than in the rest of the country – 60% compared to 52%. Nearly 40% report low levels of trust in the Scottish Government. Trust in the justice system fares better with only one in eight having low levels of trust in police and courts. Scotland has lower levels of trust in banks – just 22% – compared to the rest of the UK.

Holyrood

Scary

WELLBEING, says Davidson, must be about more “than GDP”. It’s about “what we need to live well”. That doesn’t mean “gold-plated taps”, but having “sufficient” resources for a “good life”.

Davidson found details of poverty uncovered by her organisation’s research “absolutely scary … the sense of polarisation in society is really significant”. The gulf between poor young people and wealthy older people is highlighted by the Conservative government proposing National Service at the same time as promising a pensions “triple lock plus”. Underscoring the sense of alienation was the fact that “there’s no evidence whatsoever that [policy] was developed in conversation with young people”.

The young “consistently tell us they feel the least likely to have any stake in decisions taken about them”. Davidson says Carnegie’s research “speaks to a sense of disconnect and disillusionment. People don’t feel that governments have their back or are interested in improving their lives”.

She adds: “For too many, the gap between the vision of what they’d like life to be and the reality is big and palpable.” Covid and the cost of living crisis “accelerated the factors that drive the bigger gap between those who believe they and their children and grandchildren have a good life, and those who don’t”. She adds: “It’s not just organisations like mine which would say that’s unacceptable.”

For too many, Davidson says, “neither work nor welfare delivers an adequate standard of living”. The struggle to get on the housing ladder or “progress to a better standard of living than their parents” creates a “sense of hopelessness” among the young.

Inequality is a political choice, Davidson says. “It’s absolutely the job of governments to make decisions about how they construct the economy and prioritise expenditure.”

She notes that the Scottish Government “has a vision expressed in its National Performance Framework about a society where all do well and thrive … Within the powers and levers available to government in Scotland, you should be able to do quite a lot with that. There’s a lot of money”.

However, “the full potential of that has not been fully exploited by government in Scotland”. Although political decisions in Westminster, like austerity, are beyond the Scottish Government’s control, that’s no reason “to let people off the hook for the decisions made about how you bend the spend, or align the spend to your priorities”.

Scotland has “comparative advantages” when it comes to good government. But have they been taken advantage of enough?

First, there’s scale. Scotland is small enough that “you can get all the senior leaders working in central government, local authorities, fire, police, health boards, agencies in one room”. Second, “each of these organisations” are “expected to help achieve the same set of agreed national outcomes for Scotland”. That’s been the case since 2007, and was “put into law”.

“Add those things together and they ought to give Scotland a considerable comparative advantage over the UK. However, it’s not yet delivered as much for Scotland as it could have done.”

Today's political leaders

Poverty

SHE turns her attention to two Scottish government decisions: first, the vow to tackle child poverty; and secondly, cuts made to affordable housing when nearly 10,000 children are homeless.

Housing, she says, “is such a good example if you want to understand whether a government is practicing what it preaches … If we really want to achieve – as per the current First Minister – a very significant dent in child poverty then affordable housing is clearly a key issue.”

Child poverty, like all major crises, requires “joined-up” government. The conversation turns to reports of working parents in such dire poverty they’re reduced to eating scraps from their children’s plates.

Davidson notes that “First Ministers and other senior ministers often have at least two or three ‘Number One priorities’. That’s part of the challenge”. She blames the “acceleration in retail politics and the short-term nature of political commitments”.

One of her biggest concerns – and something Davidson saw within government – was the increased desire by politicians to have an answer for everything. Evidently, nobody has all the answers, and sometimes it’s better to admit that and seek advice from others.

“That’s absolutely got us to a place where what appears to be fetishised and celebrated is the publication of the ‘commitment’ rather than achieving the goal. All that happens is you add and add to the number of commitments”.

There is an “impulsion towards solving problems by publishing strategies, and not towards deep collective understanding of what’s working and what’s not”. There’s also been a “proliferation in recent years of ministers and portfolios”.

Alex Salmond’s 2007 Cabinet was “much smaller” than recent Cabinets. Smaller Cabinets, says Davidson, calling on her experience as a leading civil servant, “help focus on the big things that matter”.

Mission

THE more ministers, the more they will want “their column inches”. But that means “fundamentally pulling in the opposite direction” when it comes to prioritising key objectives like child poverty. “Mission-led” government is what’s required, as that breaks the “siloed way government works. It’s a rethink of how you govern”.

Big missions like ending child poverty aren’t something “one government department or secretary of state can deliver alone”. Davidson notes that Holyrood’s committee system means MSPs hold ministers accountable “for their portfolio”, rather than major government missions. “How often do they ask the question what are you doing about child poverty? Health inequalities? That life expectancy is going backwards rather than forwards in Scotland?.”

She adds: “So, are we using all the levers available to us as a country? No, or at least if we are, the evidence isn’t sufficient to back it up. Are we putting good quality housing at the heart of our vision for health outcomes and child poverty? Clearly not.”

Budgets are stuck in “departmental silos … We aren’t seeing governments making choices about how they move money around the system, so that, for example, they invest more in preventative activity”.

She adds: “It’s a real challenge with retail politics. If you want to shift outcomes for future generations you need to take tough choices about investing in more preventative activity.” In other words: good housing helps reduce child poverty and bad health.

Shelter Scotland recently accused the SNP of “gaslighting” voters. Davidson says she “absolutely” understands why some feel so angry. However, her experience in government taught her that politicians are “generally motivated by wanting to make things better”.

The problem is “they get trapped between the vision they have for things to be better and the reality of the moment they’re in and the need to have immediate answers – to say they’re going to make things better”. That demand for immediate solutions “is what the machine requires of them”.

That leads to allegations of empty promises and “gaslighting”. “That’s deeply damaging. It leads to a fracture between civil society and government, and citizens and politicians”. It’s part of the reason why there is such a sense of “democratic deficit” among voters. “It serves nobody,” Davidson adds.

Sarah Davidson of the Carnegie Trust at Andrew Carnegie House in Dunfermline. Pic: Gordon Terris

Fiction

PART of the problem is institutions like First Minister’s Questions or Prime Minister’s Questions, where “at a deep level the assumption is baked in that there’s an answer to every question, and that a First Minister or Prime Minister is capable of coming up with that answer. That’s for the birds. It’s not the nature of problem-solving or governing”. FMQs “maintains a fiction”.

We need “honest conversations about what the challenges are and the fact nobody has a monopoly on answers”. Scotland will “only make progress” if politicians admit that they alone haven’t got the answers. Davidson’s organisation favours increased use of Citizens’ Assemblies to improve democratic engagement and political decision-making. She notes one case where a group was asked for the causes of health inequalities. They blamed personal choices like smoking, drinking and idleness.

However, when – as is done in Citizens’ Assemblies – another group was given expert evidence on health inequalities, they were much more likely to blame “the role of government” due to “socio-economic factors and housing”.

However, Citizens’ Assembly experiments in Scotland haven’t been done well. Participants felt assemblies were “performative”. They “were unable to track” the outcomes – in other words, see real results – and questions asked felt designed to elicit specific answers by government.

If done well, however, assemblies would be a perfect response to the decline in trust in democracy. Assemblies would also help mitigate political polarisation and the dearth of reliable information in public debate. Davidson believes they would lead to a more “healthy society” where everyone feels they have “a stake”.

She finds the rise of authoritarianism and the far-right “terrifying”, especially polls showing young Europeans say they have “more faith in authoritarian regimes addressing the climate emergency than democracy. We should worry more about young people trending to authoritarianism than anybody else. They’re the electorate of the future”.

It’s “not hard to see the connection”, Davidson adds, between the appeal of authoritarianism and both people who “are furthest from having a good life” and those who “feel they’ve got no ability to influence democracy. They may live in a democracy, but how does that actually show up for them?”.

Governments should “invest to secure future generations against these threats”. She adds: “It’s on politicians to decide whether they collude with the ‘all politicians are as bad as each other’ narrative – which, of course, every politician hates, but actually they’re instrumental in creating that narrative.”

Attack

THE highly personalised, presidential, attack-dog politics “we see at the moment just turns people off”.

Davidson understands why authoritarianism would appeal to people who feel they and their children are “cut adrift from the basics for a decent life”. Voting every five years “might not seem a very good solution to their problems”.

However, Davidson is quick to underscore her desire for “everyone to vote” and have faith in democracy. The sense of democratic disenchantment is “pretty bleak”, she adds.

Unless governments grapple with this collapse of trust, society is heading “nowhere good”. If families are living in poverty and offered no hope from government “you can’t blame people who hear and engage with the populist message for the fact that nobody is setting out the alternative. It’s a very human response”. As an “architect” of devolution, Davidson sees the creation of the Scottish Parliament as “unequivocally good”. Previously, power rested far from Scotland and “the democratic deficit was absolutely clear”.

However, she adds: “Does that mean everything [Holyrood] has done has been perfect? That it’s done everything it possibly could have done well in the last 25 years? Of course not.”

In the early days of devolution, there was a strong “consensual approach” to policy around groundbreaking legislation such as the smoking ban, which Davidson worked on. “That’s bluntly not what we tend to see more often than not in the Scottish Parliament in recent years,” she says.

“Big societal challenges”, she adds, require politicians “coming together, not coming apart”, adding: “There’s no reason why the Scottish Parliament shouldn’t be capable of that.”

Holyrood

Constitution

WHAT caused the shift from consensus to division? “There’s no doubt the focus on constitutional politics from 2011 onwards had an impact.” When the SNP was a minority government it operated a “big tent approach”. The “binary” nature of the constitutional debate “drove political polarisation”.

If the current General Election, and the forthcoming Scottish election, saw a “move into a period where [the constitution] was less a factor driving where people stand, then we might create space for other issues”.

However, if the “constitution remains live”, politicians should not allow themselves to be “diverted from a shared vision for the solutions to the social challenges we’re facing”.

Politicians failing to work together is not “in the interest of Scotland”, even though they may have “different means to reach the ends”.

Davidson questions whether parliamentary “consensus” is helped by membership and convenership of Holyrood committees being “decided by party whips”. Given there’s no second chamber, “the committee system absolutely could and should be strengthened. There needs to be a place where people can ask questions without fear or favour”.

Davidson doesn’t believe the constitutional divide will “permanently disfigure” Scottish politics, however. “I’m by nature an optimist,” she adds. Although the healing required “lies particularly in the hands of politicians and how they choose to carry themselves and govern, and what they prioritise and how they engage in discourse”. She adds: “It goes back to leadership – how you speak about your vision for the country, and how you speak about other people.

“What’s been done in recent years has accentuated the different visions as opposed to accentuating the common ground and areas where progress can be made. If we believe in the collective wellbeing of people – particularly those furthest from that at the moment – a coming together is necessary, not a pulling apart.”

However, Davidson isn’t saying we should never have embarked on the constitutional debate. “I’m a believer in democracy,” she says, and the people of Scotland voted for an SNP majority which led to the referendum.

When it comes to this election, what Davidson wants is for the winner to start operating “joined-up government”. That’s key to tackling the challenges society now faces. And in terms of what the winner should prioritise, she adds: “All the evidence tells us that we’ll not make progress unless we’ve a more equitable society.

“Whatever government is in power, the priority must be for them to reduce the wellbeing gap.

“We can’t have a positive future as a country while we have gaps as big as we have at the moment.” There is huge disparity in economic wellbeing and “that doesn’t end well”.

Social mobility must improve, which means better job opportunities, education and housing for young people. Government must “focus on what it takes for people to have a good quality of life”. That means “decent wages”.

Governments must also “recognise how fragile democracy is” and “give people faith again that it’s worth putting their trust in politicians”.

Davidson says the poverty and exclusion many experience in Scotland makes her “angry”. That’s what “motivates” her, she adds.

“In 1913, Andrew Carnegie told us that the wellbeing of the masses – those who have least – was of critical importance. Yet here we are, 111 years later, and I’m still saying that the wellbeing of those who have least, who are most deprived, who are most excluded, must be the priority for decision-makers.”