Scotland Office
When I became Secretary of State for Scotland in May, I set myself the challenge of getting around all 32 of Scotlands local authority areas before Christmas, to meet with the leaders of the councils and their chief executives.
Local government is a crucial part of our civic structure in Scotland, and one which is too often over-looked.
Now, a couple of them have not quite made it under the wire, so I will have wait until the New Year to complete the set, but I have succeeded in meeting 28 councils, spanning the length and breadth of Scotland.
Ive seen councils big and small, urban and rural, suburban and island. Of course they have differed hugely, and the variety has been vast.
But I found a common thread has emerged in nearly every council I have visited: a strong desire for greater devolution within Scotland.
Not from Westminster to Holyrood though most councillors I have spoken to are fully supportive of the new powers coming to Scotland in the Scotland Bill but from Holyrood, to local communities.
This was a message which Lord Smith of Kelvin heard loud and clear as he engaged with thousands of stakeholders from across Scotland, during the work of the Smith Commission.
It prompted him to make one of his personal recommendations in the Smith Commission Agreement.
He said:
There is a strong desire to see the principle of devolution extended further, with the transfer of powers from Holyrood to local communitiesThe Scottish Government should work with the Parliament, civic Scotland and local authorities to set out ways in which local areas can benefit from the powers of the Scottish Parliament.
Here in Glasgow, successive leaders of the City Council have been clear that they need more powers from Holyrood not from Westminster to give them the tools they need to let Glasgow flourish.
As Councillor Frank McAveety has said:
Glasgow is the powerhouse of the Scottish economy and should be given the power to decide more things locallyMerely transferring powers between one parliament and another does not advance the cities agenda.
The approach that Lord Smith and others advocate has been one of the defining policies of the UK Government in Westminster, and rightly so.
Over many years the United Kingdom, and Scotland particularly, has become one of the most centralised nations on earth.
Under the Coalition, progress was made to address this.
So far, 28 City Deals have been brokered between the UK Government, town halls, universities and businesses, to push power out of London and into communities across our country. And more of these are coming.
The Chancellor has made building the Northern Powerhouse connecting the great cities of the North of England, so they can become more than the sum of their parts and can truly take on the world one of his chief personal priorities.
The leaders of Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds and Sheffield none of them Conservatives have found willing partners in the Chancellor, in the Prime Minister and in my cabinet colleague Greg Clark, the UK Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, in the task of freeing them from central control and giving them the powers they need to make their areas prosper.
The message I have received as I have gone around Scotland and engaged with the leaders of our great cities, towns and communities has been that they have not yet had such a willing partner in the Scottish Government.
Whereas in England the direction of travel has been power and responsibility being willingly passed from ministers and civil servants to councillors in local communities, in Scotland that direction has been reversed.
Policing is a case in point. Eight local police forces in, of and for the local areas they served have been centralised into a single Police Scotland.
All power over policing invested in a single chief constable and all scrutiny and accountability the responsibility of a single, Scottish Government-appointed panel.
The claim is that this is more efficient, but compare the Scottish Governments approach with the UK Governments.
Theresa May has presided over considerable and necessary reductions in police budgets, without losing the 43 local police forces of England and Wales.
Instead, she has supported them to improve their performance and efficiency by sharing back-office functions, but keeping their local identities. And crime has continued to fall.
Instead of reducing the public accountability of policing, as the Scottish Government has done, she has transformed it, with the creation of locally elected Police and Crime Commissioners, who are democratically accountable to the people the police serve.
So my case today is that the issue of devolution to local communities is now an urgent one for Scotland.
There is a revolution going on in local government across the rest of the United Kingdom, with local areas regaining power and responsibility at an unprecedented rate.
Scotland cannot afford to be left behind as the rest of the UK revolutionises how it governs itself, giving towns, cities and counties more of the autonomy which our international competitors enjoy.
Its time we had a proper debate about devolution within Scotland.
We dont have time to delay the debate needs to start now and it needs to be front and centre of the Scottish election campaign next year.
This is a good time to start that debate, in the week following a Scottish Budget which put local government in the spotlight.
The choices which the Scottish Government have made are significant.
Serious cuts to local authority budgets, and absolutely no new powers to raise their own funding.
In fact the reverse with the Council Tax freeze retained for a ninth consecutive year.
Councils across Scotland are rightly concerned about the futures they face and it is about time we had an honest and frank debate about it.
More power to our great cities
And theres no better place to make the case for more power and responsibility for local communities in Scotland than right here in the magnificent Glasgow City Chambers.
The fact that this building is bigger and grander than many nations parliaments is testament to the power and prestige which local government in Scotland once enjoyed.
It is befitting of Scotlands largest city and the fifth largest metro-area in the United Kingdom, after London, Birmingham, Greater Manchester and West Yorkshire.
Glasgows interests are national and international and her ambitions are rightly global.
Her peers and competitors are places like Milan, Melbourne and Barcelona.
Global cities like these have powerful city governments.
But Glasgow, which can hold its own internationally in so many fields, be it cultural, architectural or commercial, cannot be said to enjoy a globally-powerful system of governance.
When considering Scottish local government in the light of international comparisons, a few things stand out:
First: Scotlands local government is highly uniform: Scottish councils operate on a one-size-fits-all model which does not take account of the variety that exists in Scottish communities.
With only a few exceptions, the powers which Glasgow City Council exercises on behalf of a population of 600,000 are essentially the same powers exercised by Clackmannanshire Council on behalf of a population of 51,000.
Look around the world and you see that this is a highly unusual state of affairs.
In most countries today, and in Scotland for most of our history, big cities like Glasgow would look after more of their affairs than smaller places, which have less capacity to do so.
As in the rest of the UK, Scotlands local government has evolved into its current centralised form over many years as the hundreds of royal burghs and over thirty rural shires were gradually agglomerated first into districts and regions and finally into local council areas.
A lot was lost in that process, not least local identity and pride in civic government.
The lower than average participation rates in local elections in the UK, Scotland included, demonstrate the lack of interest and enthusiasm which surrounds local government.
We should have it as our target to increase enthusiasm in all levels of our democracy.
To do that we need to respect difference.
Cities like Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Dundee have large populations and small geographical areas.
Council areas like Stirling and Scottish Borders have smaller populations, spread across much larger areas.
In a country with the variety and diversity of Scotland, one size can never fit all. But when it comes to local government, weve pretended it can for too long.
Another stand-out feature is that Scotland has relatively few local governments making them more remote from communities and individuals than is commonly the case around the world.
If I tried to repeat my exercise of visiting every local authority in a country with roughly the same population size as Scotland Finland I would have needed years rather than months to complete the task.
Whereas Scotland has 32 local authorities, Finland has exactly ten times as many: 320.
And in Norway, again with roughly the same population as Scotland, the task would be even harder: they have 421 local authorities.
Argyll and Bute is one of the few councils I have not made it to this year.