THE SMACK OF WEAK GOVERNMENT

Alan Cochrane says that everyone in Scotland

from lairds to ghillies is threatened by the new political correctness

Edinburgh HARDLY anyone blinked at the report last weekend that parents could find themselves before the beak, facing jail sentences, if they lose their tempers or raise their voices at their children. This is Scotland, after all. Two years ago I wrote in The Spectator that the 'um° guid' who now run this country were hell-bent on turning it into the most politically correct state in the Western world, I was mocked for my pains. However, I am content to be judged on the record — their record.

Only last week the country's second most senior politician outlined a Criminal Justice Bill that would send mothers and fathers to jail if they administer any form of physical punishment to toddlers under three years of age. A smack on the bottom or a clip round the ear will suffice, it seems, for the 'polis' to be summoned to decide if the punishment adds up to 'unreasonable chastisement'. So making a criminal offence out of shouting at the little darlings, as the report in the Scottish Sunday newspaper suggested, was to be next in line, didn't look at all unlikely. Did it?

In fact the story wasn't strictly accurate. What is to happen is that adults with a record of temper tantrums are to be banned from working with children. Not so much a register of abusers as a register of shouters, it would appear. However, the fact that we Scots are not surprised by this or any of the other idiocies being dished up in our name by our two-year-old parliament and its offspring, the Scottish Executive, reveals in the starkest fashion to what depths this fledgling state has now sunk.

Have a look at the evidence. It is Jim Wallace, the deputy first minister and leader of the Liberal Democrats in Scotland, who is putting forward the 'Jail the Parents' legislation. Imagine! The party of Charlie Kennedy — the all-smoking, alldrinking, laid-back, cheeky chappie of British politics — has this sort of zealot as his apostle north of the border.

Mr Wallace has the air of a reasonable man, which makes him all the more dangerous, and anyone who has had the audacity to point out his nuttiness — and sadly there have been all too few — has been denounced as a thrasher and flogger of children. Politicians of all parties — especially those with children — know how stupidly the minister is behaving but have been cowed by the all-pervasive PC atmosphere.

Ponder this list of other politically correct actions by the new masters north of the border.

Last year the Scottish Parliament, in the teeth of furious opposition, repealed Section 28 and ended the ban on the promotion of homosexual material in schools. Westminster still fears to tread this road, if it ever will.

A few days after the 'smacking' announcement came a planned Bill from the Scottish National party's health spokesman, the scarily PC Nicola Sturgeon, to ban tobacco advertising. Susan Deacon, the health minister in the Labour/Lib Dem coalition, agrees that the ban should be implemented but cannot move on the measure because of opposition from Bernie Ecclestone — sorry, Alan Milburn, the English health minister.

If a ban on advertising fags isn't enough for you, don't worry. Another nationalist wants lighting up in public places outlawed. It is hard to believe, isn't it? A Glasgow politician advocating no smoking in pubs! Whatever next? Wholemeal pies, perhaps?

In addition, every commercial break on Scottish television these days is dominated by hugely expensive health-education (so called) advertisements telling viewers that their lives will be a misery unless they stop smoking/drinking/having unprotected sex. Oh yes, and yesterday saw the appointment of the National Diet Co-ordinator —or Fat Tsar, to give the job its tabloid title — who will tell us what to eat.

Yet what effect does any of this nonsense have? Zero. Zilch. Scotland continues to have the worst record in Western Europe — and one of the worst in the world — in terms of smoking and alcohol-related diseases, and, yes, also the worst record in the numbers of teenage pregnancies. It should also be said that violent crime has been rising in Scotland since devolution, as have NHS waiting lists and class sizes, all in clear breach of Labour election promises.

Given these statistics, it might be thought that the home rulers would have better things to do. Not a bit of it. Last week's legislative programme for the forthcoming session highlighted the different measures planned in Scotland for student tuition fees and for the long-term care of the elderly. But the agenda is shaping up to focus not on Scotland's pressing problems but on issues that have a resonance with only a tiny minority in this country.

Next Wednesday is a good example. The first major debate of the new session of the Scottish Parliament is about whether people should be sent to jail for hunting foxes. That's the burning issue of the day, apparently, in the tower blocks of Sighthill in Glasgow where asylum-seekers are not so much abused as killed, stabbed and slashed. A parliamentary committee has already ruled that the fox-hunting measure is shot full of holes, but don't bet on that fact killing the Bill. The Parliament has an antihunting and PC majority, and the Bill will probably survive.

Continuing in the same vein, the Class War (Remaining Stages) Bill sees Scotland face one of the daftest pieces of legislation ever witnessed. The measure is a legacy of the late Donald Dewar. The donnish, austere and — as it turned out from his will — multi-millionaire appeared to have not a socialist bone in his body. But as well as a splendid library of books and a fine collection of the works of the Scottish Colourists, Donald left behind the Land Reform Bill. It is a mare's nest of ill-concealed prejudice and badly drafted spite, and as such has been two years in the bowels of the Scottish civil service as parliamentary draughtsmen have tried to make sense of it.

What it seeks to do is to give 'communities' the right to buy the land on which they live, crofters the right to buy their local rivers, and 'ramblers' virtually unrestricted rights of access. As a prime example of a misguided attempt by present-day politicians to right the perceived wrongs of the past — in this case the Highland Clearances — it takes some beating.

Landlords claim that the buy-out proposals, which would be funded from the Scottish Land Fund — itself partly financed by the National Lottery — are a mirror of Mugabe's land-grab in Zimbabwe. Perhaps the Commonwealth Secretariat should take

a hand. Or maybe the lairds should say sorry for the sins of their forebears. a la the anti-racism conference in Durban.

Earlier this week hundreds of workingclass men and woman on Highland estates — gamekeepers, ghillies and water-bailiffs, many of them descendants of the 'cleared' — held a meeting in Rossshire to protest at the Executive's plans. Their particular anger is directed against the river buy-out plan which, they say, would decimate the still lucrative salmonfishing 'industry' on Highland rivers. If relatively poor crofters, instead of wealthy lairds, owned the rivers and thus the fishing rights, investment and ultimately their jobs would disappear.

On the other side of the argument there is anger, too. Ramblers fear that, far from increasing access to the countryside, the Bill — through allowing lairds effectively to 'close' their estates when shooting is in progress — will restrict it even further.

So. after 3,500 responses to its consultative process, this revolutionary Bill is back with the draughtsmen for who knows how long. Mr Wallace — yes, It's That Man Again — insists it will have Royal Assent by next summer.

Jim Naughtie's new book on the relationship between the Prime Minister and the Chancellor says that Tony Blair was mightily worried about devolution but — as always? — was overruled by Gordon Brown. All I can say now is, 'Why didn't you tell us at the time, Tony?'

To those of you who feel relieved that you don't live under the tender mercies of Scotland's new devolved institutions, let me simply point out that this week Robin Cook, leader of the Commons, and Lord Williams of Mostyn, leader of the Lords, have been in Scotland. Their mission? To see what lessons Westminster can learn from Edinburgh. You have been warned.

Alan Cochrane writes for the Daily Telegraph.