The Scottish Office

2. The 1885 Creation

The Secretary for Scotland Act 1885 established the office of Secretary for Scotland and, with it, the Scottish Office, based at Dover House in Whitehall, London. The Act empowered the Secretary to appoint “such permanent secretaries, inspectors, clerks, and other officers as he may with the sanction of the Treasury determine”, and transferred to him assorted powers previously held by the Home Secretary, the Privy Council, the Treasury and the Local Government Board so far as they applied to Scotland. The first Permanent Under-Secretary was Sir Francis Sandford, previously secretary to the Scotch Education Department.

The first Secretary for Scotland, appointed on 17 August 1885, was Charles Gordon-Lennox, 6th Duke of Richmond and Gordon — a substantial landowner and senior Conservative who took the post in exchange for the Presidency of the Board of Trade. He doubted whether the office was needed at all, and its early workload was, in Mitchell’s phrase, “not very heavy”. David Torrance describes the new department as an “offshoot of the Home Office”: it supervised the pre-existing boards rather than replacing them with a bureaucracy of its own.

The scale was genuinely small. Analysis by Christopher Hood, Meg Huby and Andrew Dunsire in the Scottish Government Yearbook 1985 found that in the 1890s the Scottish departments’ staff “comprised roughly 0.6 per cent of the UK total”, accounting for “less than 3 per cent of UK gross estimated (civil) spending”. Nor did the post carry automatic Cabinet membership at first: the Duke kept Cabinet status by personal standing, but several early successors — the Earl of Dalhousie, the Marquess of Lothian and, for a period, A. J. Balfour — sat outside it. Consistent Cabinet membership dates from 1892.

3. The 1926 Upgrade

Through the early twentieth century the standing of the office was felt to be inadequate to Scotland’s dignity. During 1925 the Convention of Royal Burghs and others urged Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin to “raise the status of the Secretary for Scotland to that of a Secretary of State”. On 17 December 1925 Baldwin told the Commons that the King had approved. The Secretaries of State Act 1926 received Royal Assent on 15 July 1926; its section 1 provided that on the next appointment of an additional Principal Secretary of State, the powers of the Secretary for Scotland would become those of a Principal Secretary of State and the old offices be abolished. Sir John Gilmour was sworn as one of King George V’s Principal Secretaries of State eleven days later.

The significance was symbolic rather than substantive, and Parliament said so at the time. Moving the Bill in the Lords, the Marquess of Salisbury stressed that it was “a change of name and a change of status” in “recognition of what is due to the position of the great Kingdom of Scotland”, not a change of responsibilities. Even so, full Secretary of State rank cemented the office’s permanent place at the Cabinet table, and the pattern was later repeated for Wales in 1964 and Northern Ireland in 1972. The senior official became formally styled Permanent Under-Secretary of State for Scotland.

4. Growth of Functions

The Scottish Office’s history is one of near-continuous accretion. The old boards were progressively turned into departments: the Reorganisation of Offices (Scotland) Act 1928 replaced the Boards of Health and Agriculture and the Prisons Commission with departments, and the Reorganisation of Offices (Scotland) Act 1939 — following the Gilmour Committee — vested the functions of the Scottish education, health, agriculture, prisons and fishery bodies directly in the Secretary of State, reorganising them into departments including a new Scottish Home Department. The Crown Estates followed in 1943 and forestry in 1945.

After 1945 the list lengthened again: hydro-electricity, assistance to agriculture, the National Health Service in Scotland, town and country planning, forestry, civil defence, child care, and — taken from the Ministry of Transport — roads and bridges. Internal reorganisation in 1960–62 produced four core departments: Agriculture and Fisheries; the Scottish Development Department (local government, planning, housing, roads); the Scottish Education Department; and the Scottish Home and Health Department (health services, law and order). A Scottish Economic Planning Department followed in 1973, and new bodies proliferated: the Highlands and Islands Development Board (1965), the Countryside Commission for Scotland (1967) and the Scottish Development Agency (1975).

The department grew in size as well as in remit. Hood, Huby and Dunsire observed that from the 1880s to the mid-1970s Scottish Office staff numbers “roughly doubled every twenty years”, reaching about 1 per cent of the total UK civil service by 1984–85. Mary Macdonald and Adam Redpath, writing in the Scottish Government Yearbook 1980, recorded staff, excluding prison officers and State Hospital staff, growing “from about 5,000 [1954] to 8,000 [1979]”, adding that “the whole complex, with its 8,000 staff, was not large by comparison with some Whitehall departments”.

By the early 1980s the breadth was remarkable. Per Mitchell’s Governing Scotland, “one estimate suggested that the Scottish Office had responsibilities equivalent to approximately eleven other Whitehall Departments. James Kellas went so far as to suggest that the Scottish Secretary had become Prime Minister for Scotland.” That comparison is a description of administrative range, not of democratic standing — the same minister remained accountable at Westminster, often on a Scottish parliamentary majority his party did not hold.

In 1991 the departments were re-badged with a “Scottish Office” prefix, and in 1995 reorganised once more into the Scottish Office Agriculture, Environment and Fisheries Department; the Education and Industry Department; the Development Department; the Home Department; and the Department of Health — the structure inherited by the Scottish Executive four years later.

5. St Andrew’s House

For its first half-century the Scottish Office was, physically, a London department. Dover House in Whitehall was both its base and the Scottish Secretary’s official London residence. The consolidation of Scottish administration in Edinburgh came with the construction of St Andrew’s House on Calton Hill, on the site of the former Calton Jail. Designed by Thomas Tait, built between 1935 and 1939, it opened on 4 September 1939— the day after war was declared — and was, per the Scottish Government’s 70 Years of St Andrew’s House, “the largest metal-framed building in Europe in 1939”.

It was the first time the government departments serving Scotland had been brought together under one roof in Edinburgh, and its monumental Art Deco form became the visible symbol of a distinct, centralised Scottish administration operating inside the UK state. Dover House remained the London liaison base for parliamentary business, and was abandoned for a period after bomb damage nearby. During the war St Andrew’s House hosted Tom Johnston’s Scottish Council of State. Sixty years later the same building housed the Scottish Executive — which is why the 1999 handover looked, from the street, like continuity.

6. The Referendums: 1979 and 1997

Demands for Scottish self-government predate the Scottish Office and ran alongside it throughout its existence: the Scottish Home Rule Association (1886), the Scottish Covenant of the late 1940s, the rise of the SNP. By the 1970s the question had reached Westminster. The Scotland Act 1978, Royal Assent 31 July 1978, provided for a directly elected Scottish Assembly with powers over matters such as health, education and housing, subject to a referendum.

During the Bill’s passage, an amendment by George Cunningham — a Scots-born Labour MP sitting for Islington South and Finsbury — added the requirement that the Act would come into force only if at least 40 per cent of the total registered electorate, not merely a majority of those voting, endorsed it. It was carried on 25 January 1978 against the wishes of the Callaghan government, with support from dissident Labour MPs and Conservatives. Sources differ slightly on the division: several accounts record 166 to 151, while the Scottish Government Yearbook 1979 chronology records 168 to 142.

In the referendum of 1 March 1979 a narrow majority voted Yes. Per House of Commons Library data the result was 1,230,937 (51.62%) to 1,153,502 (48.38%) on a turnout of 63.72 per cent (registered voters 3,747,112; votes cast 2,387,572). Because the Yes vote represented only about 32.9 per cent of the registered electorate — Commons Library Research Paper 97/113 gives 32.5 per cent unadjusted — it fell short of the threshold. The government was required to lay a repeal order; after the SNP and Conservatives brought down the Callaghan government in a confidence vote and the Conservatives won the ensuing general election, the Scotland Act 1978 was repealed.

Whether the threshold was legitimate is genuinely disputed, and the dispute is political rather than factual. On one reading it was a reasonable safeguard: a major, near-irreversible constitutional change should command broad active support rather than pass on a low turnout, and, as Cunningham himself argued, the amendment decided “only whether the matter goes back before Parliament in the event of an inconclusive referendum result”. On the other reading it was a wrecking device: because the threshold was measured against the whole electoral register, non-voters — and inaccuracies such as deceased or double-registered electors still on the roll — effectively counted as No votes, so a Yes majority was overturned. Both readings are advanced in good faith. This article records the numbers and declines to adjudicate.

The 1997 referendum was deliberately designed to avoid a repeat. Held on 11 September 1997, after Labour’s landslide and before legislation was introduced, it posed two questions and required only simple majorities. The result was emphatic: on the first question, Yes 1,775,045 (74.29%) to No 614,400 (25.71%); on the second, Yes 1,512,889 (63.48%) to No 870,263 (36.52%). Turnout was about 60.4 per cent — Denver, Mitchell, Pattie and Bochel noted that “in the event, the participation rate was respectable” — with the official figure 60.18 per cent on 2,391,268 votes. Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the SNP campaigned for Yes; the Conservatives, who had lost every Scottish seat that May, campaigned against. The Secretary of State, Donald Dewar, then piloted the resulting legislation through Parliament.

7. The 1999 Transition

The Scotland Act 1998 received Royal Assent on 19 November 1998. It established a Scottish Parliament and a Scottish Executive, and defined the settlement not by listing devolved powers but by specifying reserved matters in Schedule 5 — defence, foreign affairs, the constitution, macroeconomic policy, immigration and the like. Everything not reserved was devolved. The first elections were held on 6 May 1999, and the Parliament and Executive assumed full powers on 1 July 1999, when the Secretary of State’s powers transferred to Scottish Ministers by the Scotland Act 1998 (Transfer of Functions to the Scottish Ministers etc.) Order 1999.

What happened to the department itself is best described as a combined abolition and transformation. Its constituent departments were wound up, and the overwhelming majority of their functions and staff passed to the new Scottish Executive, which took over St Andrew’s House. The UK Cabinet post of Secretary of State for Scotland was retained, and the rump UK department was renamed the Scotland Office, responsible for representing Scottish interests in the UK Cabinet, overseeing the operation of the devolution settlement and acting as guardian of the Scotland Act for reserved matters. The First Minister, not the Secretary of State, became Keeper of the Great Seal of Scotland. Donald Dewar — the last Secretary of State to head the old Scottish Office — became Scotland’s first First Minister on 17 May 1999.

8. Notable Secretaries of State

• Charles Gordon-Lennox, 6th Duke of Richmond and Gordon (1885–86) — the first holder, notable both for his political weight and for his own scepticism about whether the post was necessary.
• Tom Johnston (1941–45) — widely regarded as the outstanding holder. A former Red Clydesider, he extracted from Churchill a free hand in Scotland, created the North of Scotland Hydro-Electric Board in 1943, convened a Council of State of former Secretaries, and worked to attract industry and stem depopulation. Churchill is said to have called him the “uncrowned King of Scotland”.
• Willie Ross (1964–70, 1974–76) — the longest-serving holder, a forceful figure under Harold Wilson who established the Highlands and Islands Development Board and the Scottish Development Agency, and who opposed devolution.
• Michael Forsyth (1995–97) — the last Conservative holder, remembered for the return of the Stone of Destiny to Scotland in 1996 and for a tenure ended by the 1997 Conservative wipe-out.
• Donald Dewar (1997–99) — the “architect of devolution”, who steered the Scotland Act 1998 and became Scotland’s first First Minister.

Timeline

1. 1707

   Union of the Parliaments

   A Secretary of State for Scotland exists intermittently thereafter

2. 1746

   The post is abolished

   The Lord Advocate manages Scottish business after the Jacobite rising

3. 1827–28

   Scotland passes to the Home Office

   Scottish business handled by the Home Secretary

4. 1869

   Scottish MPs petition Gladstone

   A Scottish Secretary is requested; none is created at that time

5. 17 Aug 1885

   Secretary for Scotland Act 1885

   The office and the Scottish Office are created at Dover House, London

6. 1886

   Scottish Home Rule Association founded

   National Records of Scotland dates the office's effective establishment to this year

7. 1892

   The Secretary for Scotland sits in Cabinet consistently

   Earlier holders had sat outside it

8. 1926

   Secretaries of State Act 1926

   The post becomes a full Secretary of State; Royal Assent 15 July

9. 1928 & 1939

   Reorganisation of Offices (Scotland) Acts

   The old supervisory boards become departments under the Secretary of State

10. 4 Sep 1939

    St Andrew's House opens

    The day after war was declared; Europe's largest metal-framed building at the time

11. 1941–45

    Tom Johnston as Secretary of State

    Founds the North of Scotland Hydro-Electric Board in 1943

12. 1965 & 1975

    Highlands and Islands Development Board; Scottish Development Agency

    Economic development becomes a core function

13. 31 Jul 1978

    Scotland Act 1978 receives Royal Assent

    A Scottish Assembly, subject to a referendum

14. 1 Mar 1979

    Devolution referendum

    51.62% Yes, but only about 32.9% of the electorate — the 40% threshold is not met

15. 11 Sep 1997

    Second referendum

    Yes–Yes on both a Parliament and tax-varying powers

16. 19 Nov 1998

    Scotland Act 1998 receives Royal Assent

    Devolution defined by reserved matters in Schedule 5

17. 6 May 1999

    First Scottish Parliament elections

    Donald Dewar becomes First Minister on 17 May

18. 1 Jul 1999

    Powers transfer to Scottish Ministers

    The Scottish Office is wound up; the residue becomes the Scotland Office

Did You Know?

• St Andrew's House opened on 4 September 1939 — the day after Britain declared war — so staff moved in without the royal opening ceremony planned for 1940.
• The building stands on the site of the old Calton Jail; the graves of ten executed prisoners reportedly remain beneath its car park, and the turreted Governor's House is the only surviving fragment of the jail.
• The very first Secretary for Scotland doubted whether the office he headed was actually necessary.
• From 1885 to 1999 every Secretary or Secretary of State for Scotland was also Keeper of the Great Seal of Scotland — a role that passed to the First Minister in 1999.
• The 1926 upgrade was described in Parliament as merely “a change of name and a change of status”, not of powers.
• Tom Johnston took no ministerial salary during the war, telling Churchill his “resources are adequate to my needs”.
• In 1979 a majority actually voted Yes and devolution still did not proceed — one of very few UK referendums where the winning side did not get its way.
• By the early 1980s scholars were comparing the department's remit to that of around eleven Whitehall departments combined.
• Dover House was both the department's London office and the Scottish Secretary's official London residence.

Honest Caveats

• The “40% rule” is genuinely disputed. Supporters saw a legitimate constitutional threshold; critics a wrecking device that counted abstentions, and inaccuracies on the register, as effective No votes. Both positions are held in good faith and the argument is still live in Scottish politics. This card records the facts and presents both readings.
• “Scotland voted No in 1979” and “Scotland voted Yes in 1979” are both misleading in isolation. A majority of those voting said Yes; the statutory threshold was not met; no Assembly followed. Precise wording matters.
• 1885 or 1886? The Act passed and the first Secretary was appointed in 1885, but National Records of Scotland dates the office’s effective establishment to 1886. That is the gap between legislation and an operating department, not a contradiction. This card uses 1885.
• Division figures on the Cunningham amendment differ. Widely cited accounts record the 25 January 1978 vote as 166 to 151; the Scottish Government Yearbook 1979 records 168 to 142. A minor documented inconsistency in the record.
• The 1979 electorate share is quoted as both 32.9% and 32.5%, depending on how the register is measured. Neither figure is wrong; both are below 40 per cent.
• “The Scottish Office was a Scottish government” is a simplification to avoid. It was a UK-government department practising administrative devolution, not a devolved government accountable to a Scottish legislature.
• Staffing figures need care. Widely quoted totals of 10,000–12,000 civil servants for the late twentieth century include prison, State Hospital and operational categories. The best-verified core figures are about 5,000 (1954) and 8,000 (1979).
• “Abolished” and “transformed” are each incomplete for 1999. The department was wound up and its departments abolished; most functions and staff continued inside the new Scottish Executive; a residual UK department survived as the Scotland Office.

Frequently Asked Questions

Related Cards

• Scotland's Two Parliaments

  The body the Scottish Office was finally replaced by.

• North of Scotland Hydro-Electric Board

  Tom Johnston's 1943 creation, run from St Andrew's House.

• NHS Scotland

  A Scottish Office responsibility from 1948 to 1999.

• National Records of Scotland

  Where the department's files now live.

• Convention of Royal Burghs

  Campaigned for the office in 1885 and for its upgrade in 1926.

• The Procurator Fiscal

  Scottish law and order, the department's other great remit.

• Scotland's Supreme Courts

  The legal separateness administrative devolution worked around.

• The Scottish Parish School System

  The education tradition the Scotch Education Department inherited.