I briefly met Alison Payne, Enlighten’s Research Director, at the Adam Smith Global Foundation event in Kirkcaldy celebrating the 250th anniversary of the publication of Smith’s An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations.
Amidst our brief conversation I mentioned some behavioural changes I would like to see in the new session of the Scottish Parliament. She responded by challenging me to write 1000 words about it for Enlighten.
Given where we met, I think it particularly appropriate to reflect on an aspect of Smith’s thinking: Trust. As Professor Jerry Evensky explained some years ago “Trust is a constant theme in Smith’s moral philosophical analysis for progress”[i] .
For me, trust is the expectation of benign intentions in another free agent[ii]. My concern is that to achieve stronger progress within Scotland whether in political, economic, social or ethical terms, we need to strength trust in institutions, such as the Scottish Parliament, and in individuals such as elected representatives. There are of course many other areas and players in life, including the media, journalists, justice system and lawyers where trust is an issue, but these areas I shall leave to others.
The Evidence
There is a considerable body of both academic research and political commentary that points to declining trust across western democracies. For example, the 2023 report entitled’ The UK in the World Values Survey’ by King’s College and The Policy Institute[iii] presented compelling evidence that “By international standards, the UK public have little confidence in their political institutions” and as an example states that “Confidence in parliament has halved over the last three decades”.
That there is declining trust in politicians and political institutions is one factor in the rise of populist parties of the left and right, and of the undermining of faith in the democratic process. Of particular concern is that declining trust appears most acute amongst the young. Again quoting from the King’s College and The Policy Institute report “One in five people in the UK have confidence in parliament – lower than in many comparable nations – and confidence has declined the most among younger generations”. I do not believe Scotland is immune from such trends.
No one has all the answers to this problem we face, and certainly not me. However, I have reflected on aspects of politics in the Scottish Parliament and accepted Alison Payne’s challenge to make some suggestions.
Quality of Debates
The quality of debates in the Scottish Parliament has regularly been castigated in the press, and in my view rightly so. The stage managing of debates; the provision of detailed party briefings; and the control exercised by whips are amongst the factor that lead to a lack of thoughtful and articulate contributions. I would argue this contributes to an excess of ad hominem performance contributions in the absence of reasoned debate.
However, there are lessons to be learned from some of the best debates. The recent debate on assistant dying where a free vote was allowed was of a much higher quality than the typical debate. Individuals were able to strongly disagree, but in a respectful way. There were also a few members’ business debates that produced thoughtful ad hominem free contributions from members of all parties.
Particularly in areas of ethical contention, there is every reason to have such debates made free votes. In the last parliament many of the debate contributions in discussing gender reforms degenerated into ill-informed name calling. A complete lack of tolerance of different views was the antithesis of what good democratic institutions should be fostering.
One of the problems, in my opinion, was a lack of effective engagement with and respect for the public. It would appear that small interest groups had captured the policy process to the extent that the wider views of the public were ignored, and parliamentary representatives were under considerable pressure from whips to conform. In the new parliament I would suggest that free votes could be allowed on matters such as reforming the law in relation to Strategic Law Suits Against Public Participation ( of which I played a modest role in getting it on the agenda via a parliamentary petition[iv]) and legislative proposals regarding Conversion Therapy. The first because gaining support via a free vote will add to the legitimacy of subsequent legislation, and on the latter example because of the disputed ethical issues involved.
I am encouraged that the new Presiding Officer has already made some helpful contributions, encouraging MSPs to abandon mere script reading. A debate should involve active listening as well as speaking. Too often serious points raised by opponents are ignored.
It is my belief that more open debates of the type exemplified during the passage of the assisted dying bill, would assist in restoring a little of parliament’s reputation and a little more respect for elected representatives.
Committees and Scrutiny
It is deeply disappointing that parliamentary parties and parliamentarians have failed to grasp the opportunity afforded by the introduction of voting for committee conveners. I agree very much with former MSP Andy Whiteman that “It looks like each party appointed there chosen nominee and said to another – “you second our candidate and we second yours”[v] In doing so party managers have colluded in undermining the intentions of having conveners freely elected by members. This kind of behaviour needs to be more effectively challenged.
With the commendable exception of the Finance and Public Administration Committee (Led by the now Presiding Officer Kenneth Gibson MSP), in parliamentary session 6 committee scrutiny of government and of legislation was often weak, leading in a number of cases to weaknesses in legislation.
There needs to be a change in culture in many committees, with members from the governing party (or parties) more willing to ask ministers the challenging questions, and opposition members more willing to favour proper scrutiny instead of mere point scoring. This will require tolerance from party leaderships, but the result could be more effective scrutiny of government and legislation, and better selection of topics for committee led inquiries.
Political Engagement
One of the reasons cited for a lack of trust in politics is that many people feel politics is something that is done to them, not with them. At present there is limited scope for direct influence by the public on issues that are to be addressed in parliament. Perhaps we need more experimentation to enhance engagement. Others are likely to be more imaginative than myself in making suggestions, but my own suggestion would be to pilot public engagement sessions in different parts of the nation where the focus will be on developing a small number of agreed topics for full debate in parliament. Monday afternoons or Friday mornings could be set aside for the public’s agenda debates.
There are many other areas that arguably need addressing. This essay is intended as a stimulus for discussion. I would be more than happy if my suggestions are rejected because better ideas have been identified. The only proposal that at this stage I would argue fiercely against is keep doing the same thing. Sticking to the status quo will simply mean a continuing decline of trust in politics and all the dangers that that will present.
Roger Mullin is the former SNP Member of Parliament for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (2015-2017). He is an Honorary Professor, Philosophy and Law, at Stirling University, a director of the humanitarian organisation REVIVE Campaign, and an anti-corruption campaigner.
[i] Evensky, Jerry M., “Adam Smith’s Essentials: On Trust, Faith, and Free Markets” (2011). Economics – All Scholarship. 6. Retrieved June 2026 at https://surface.syr.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1134&context=ecn#:~:text=In%20Smith’s%20vision%20of%20humankind’s%20progress%2C%20trust%20is%20the%20central%20theme.&text=Smith%20is%20first%20and%20foremost,in%20making%20that%20progress%20possible.
[ii] See for example Dunn, John (2000) ‘Trust and Political Agency’, in Gambetta, Diego (ed.) Trust: Making and Breaking Cooperative Relations, electronic edition, Department of Sociology, University of Oxford, chapter 5, pp. 73-93. http://www.sociology.ox.ac.uk/papers/dunn73-93.pdf
[iii] The Policy Institute and Kings College London “Trust in trouble? UK and international confidence in institutions” (2023), retrieved June 2026 at https://www.kcl.ac.uk/policy-institute/assets/confidence-in-institutions.pdf
[iv] See https://www.parliament.scot/get-involved/petitions/view-petitions/pe1975-reform-the-law-relating-to-strategic-lawsuits-against-public-participation-slapps
[v] Whiteman, Andy as quoted by him on X.