Scotland Bill

Way back in the mists of time, I used to construct a series of social surveys. One of them was a series of questions on the powers of local government. We asked people two sets of questions: the first on which powers were at which tier of local government; and the second on whether local government should have more powers. The initial answer to the latter question was always yes. Then we asked what powers they wanted to see local government have, and about 90 per cent of them were powers that local government already had. That is the problem with the ““more powers”” argument: it assumes that people are fully aware of the powers that the Parliament already has. I simply do not think that that is the case.