Ayr by-election 2000

'Phil Gallie's latest motion, his own personal demonstration of political activity, cleverly calls for the Scottish executive to support the proposed Scottish School of Music and Recording Technology in Ayr. For those not in the know, this is a project initially championed by Brian Wilson MP and which had been delivered as a South Ayrshire council project by me. Clever technique: table the motion; lead a debate; draft a press release; take the benefit of good local coverage; the constituency MSP is invisible. Geddit!' Ian Welsh in the Sunday Times, 26 th December 1999.

What really lay behind that painful decision

By Ian Welsh in the Sunday Times

Despite the constant criticism in the media, I think that the parliament is settling down remarkably well to the task of managing and scrutinising Scottish resources and institutions. Equally I believe that its legislative powers shared between the executive, the committees and the members themselves will prove to be a huge catalyst for change in Scottish society. I believe in a parliament whose success can only be measured in the decades to come rather than in the cold light of dawn.

I left because I was unhappy, feeling myself strangely marginal to the process of government because I took the time to reflect on where I was going. I'm not leaving the Labour party, a party to which I am proudly and inextricably bound.

I also decided for the first time in many years, at an admittedly particularly challenging personal time, that I needed to support my family more in return for the support they had been giving me and, by extension, the electorate, over a long period of time. Even this part of the decision fell prey to the gentle art of the spin and I was portrayed as either a naive carer who should have known better before he went to bat with the big boys in Holyrood or as some sawn-off St Francis of Assisi. Those who know me will know that I am neither. During the white heat of the moment, between Shaun Woodward and the Cubie report, my younger disabled son was characterised as "severely handicapped" while my perfectly healthy older son was apparently facing a major surgical procedure. The truth is both more simple and, of course, more complex than the spin.

Not unnaturally, I suppose, there was a quick dash to the nearest dial-a-quote politician. Tory MSP Phil Gallie said that I was a disappointment, I was invisible and I had never asked an oral question or tabled a motion. Something to the effect of not fighting for my constituents. The sentiments said something about the nature of the new Scottish parliament which concern me.

Asking oral questions and tabling motions seem to be a measure of the effective MSP. The political reality for me was that, as leader of South Ayrshire council, I had helped deliver the lowest council tax increases in Scotland over the past four years and had led what was described as one of the most innovative and progressive councils in Scotland. This represented real service to constituents, rather than the threadbare and raddled soundbites of politicians who promise everything and deliver nothing.

Some years ago, I decided that I would eschew the art of harsh political invective against opponents on the grounds that it did not help the political process. I hoped that it would be my contribution to the new politics, a faltering attempt to build around the positive aspects of policy rather than the perpetually negative. While there is clear evidence that many of our new politicians have moved to this more measured approach there is still the tendency to wound, to damage, to cripple. Journalists will say that the slide to anodyne interchanges is not the stuff of headlines but the sad reality is that there have been too many headlines generated from Holyrood and not enough heat about policy.

Phil Gallie's latest motion, his own personal demonstration of political activity, cleverly calls for the Scottish executive to support the proposed Scottish School of Music and Recording Technology in Ayr. For those not in the know, this is a project initially championed by Brian Wilson MP and which had been delivered as a South Ayrshire council project by me. Clever technique: table the motion; lead a debate; draft a press release; take the benefit of good local coverage; the constituency MSP is invisible. Geddit!

This makes Phil Gallie and his peers professional populists but it renders them philosophically puerile. They are politically visible in the same way that shadows are: insubstantial, fleeting, working off the substance of other people.

In truth, I prefer delivering rather than debating on demand. I was proud to see the A77 extension delivered after years at the forefront of campaigning and delighted to welcome £1.8m into my constituency for public transport initiatives.

I learned a long time ago that fighting for constituents is something you can do in two ways. When I began the fight to save, preserve and develop Prestwick airport in the mid-1980s, I shouted and screamed to the media but I also organised and rallied local support. I formed strategic alliances and, when the Tory government let us down, I worked with others in the private and public sector to secure control of the airport and make it work. I've been involved in this for virtually all my active political life. The jobs, the new companies, the new destinations, the exponential rise in freight. That's fighting for constituents!

The other way is to help real people - the woman whose partner has died in distressing circumstances, the girl who needs a surgical procedure to assist in dealing with her epilepsy, the parents whose special-needs child is being held in Cornton Vale (for God's sake!).

The activity I have described above will be familiar to every back-bench MSP. The work of the MSP is something more than motions, something more direct than an oral question to ministers, something that can be more meaningful than a three-minute speech on social exclusion, something more lasting than a dramatic intervention.

Taken in tandem with the political reality that there has been a generation jump in the front bench line-up, with talented thirtysomethings like Wendy Alexander and Jack McConnell deservedly to the fore and older politicians having to occupy the space left behind, the lack of direct involvement in decision-making was something which I found difficult to adjust to. Other council leaders must have found that, too. For me there was nothing else to completely compensate for that and part of the issue for all parties will be to ensure that there can be real, meaningful input into the process of decision-making beyond mere acquiescence with or ritual opposition to executive decisions. There is nothing more stultifying than the set-piece debate with purposeful motion against slightly modifed amendment. It seemed to me that one of the guiding principles of the new parliament was to be a new politics of emerging consensus but there still seems to me to be an underlying venom, an uncontrollable urge to get stuck in, a preference for the square go rather than a pavane for progress.

The executive has set about delivering distinctive and radical legislation and I wholeheartedly support the attention it has brought to the major issues facing Scottish families. I know it will continue to develop Scottish solutions which meet the aspirations of the Scottish people.

Ian Welsh resigned last week as Labour MSP for Ayr

26 th December 1999