The
Geographer
Scotland: Social Welfare
14-15
Spring 2014
The Changing Welfare Geographies of Scottish Independence
Dr Gerry Mooney, Senior Lecturer in Social Policy and Criminology, Faculty of Social Sciences, The Open University in Scotland
That there is a referendum on
Scotland’s constitutional future
reflects a rapidly changing
political landscape in Scotland,
one that has undergone
significant transformation since
the introduction of devolution in
1999. This changing landscape
also reflects UK political
change, and in particular the
election of the Conservative–
Liberal Democrat Coalition UK
Government in 2010, which
gained relatively little support in
Scotland.
As it has been since the late
1970s, the political environment
in Scotland is markedly different
from the rest of the UK, and in
particular from the situation
that exists in England, with
the SNP and Labour by far the
most popular political parties.
Even since 1999, things have
changed dramatically. Then
on the eve of devolution, New
Labour ruled from London and
the first Scottish Government
was a Labour–LibDem coalition.
Now Scotland has a majority
SNP Government and the UK
Government is Tory dominated.
This gulf is reflected across a
range of policy and political
contexts, but few more so than
the issue of welfare.
A key aspect of the independence
debate has come to revolve
around issues of social welfare.
Indeed we can go further and
argue that in important respects
the debate is not about a UK
state or a Scottish state, but
about the kind of welfare state
that Scotland should have and
how this is to be achieved. This
is largely a reflection of the
changing political geography of
welfare across the UK today.
UK Government welfare reform
has been seized upon by the
SNP and the ‘Yes’ campaign to
claim that only full independence
would protect Scotland from such
policies, policies that are widely
unpopular in Scotland. This has
been given political expression
in the Scottish
Parliament.
In December
2011, for
example, SNP
and Labour
MSPs voted
to withhold
legislative consent for the UK
Welfare Reform Bill.
Key social welfare areas, such
as most taxation, benefits and
employment policy, remain
under the control of the UK
Government, and it is the further
devolution of these, or their
incorporation in a Scottish
welfare state in th