Edexcel A-level Politics: UK Government, component 1.3 — the role and powers of devolved bodies in the UK, and the impact of devolution on the UK
“Devolution is a process, not an event.”
— Ron Davies, Secretary of State for Wales, 1997
Ron Davies said this just before the 1997 devolution referendums, and it has turned out to be one of the most accurate predictions in British politics.
What began in 1997 to 1998 as three quite different settlements for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, plus a patchwork of arrangements for England, has kept changing almost every year since.
In May 2026, Scotland and Wales both elected new governments under new voting rules.
Then, in July 2026, devolution reached the very top of UK government: Andy Burnham, who had been the UK’s first ever directly elected metro mayor (in Greater Manchester, since 2017), became Prime Minister after Keir Starmer resigned.
Burnham has made devolution one of his top priorities in office, announcing plans in late July 2026 to let English mayors keep a share of the income tax raised in their own areas. Section 5 explains this in more detail.
The pages in this section set out the powers of each devolved body, explains why the four nations were given different settlements, and evaluates what nearly three decades of devolution have done to the UK as a whole.
| Key terms Devolution: the transfer of power from the central UK government to national or regional bodies, such as the Scottish Parliament, so they can make some decisions for themselves. Westminster still keeps the ultimate legal power to take this power back or overrule it. Unitary state: a state where supreme legal power belongs to one central government. This is different from a federal state (such as the USA), where power is shared out between the centre and regional governments by law. The UK stays a unitary state despite devolution, because Westminster could, in theory, abolish the devolved bodies. Quasi-federal: a term some experts use for the UK today. The UK is not a federal state in law, but some devolved powers now feel very hard to reverse in practice, especially since the Scotland Act 2016 called the Scottish Parliament “permanent”. This makes the UK behave a little like a federal state, even though it is not one in law. Reserved powers and devolved powers: under a reserved powers model, a devolved body can make laws on anything that has not specifically been kept back (“reserved”) for Westminster. Scotland has used this model since 1998, and Wales since 2017. Wales used a different, more confusing model from 1998 to 2017, the conferred powers model, where it could only make laws on subjects that had specifically been listed as devolved. Sewel convention: a rule, but not a law, that Westminster will normally ask a devolved body for its consent before changing its powers, or making law on a devolved matter. Because it is only a convention, not a law, Westminster can break it if it chooses to. Asymmetric devolution: the fact that Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and England have all been given different powers and different institutions, rather than one single system used everywhere. |