25 years of devolution: Scotland's first transport and environment minister Sarah Boyack looks back

When Sarah Boyack was elected to the new Scottish Parliament as Labour MSP for Edinburgh Central 25 years ago, she had never served as an elected politician - but she found herself plunged straight in at the deep end, appointed to the Cabinet in charge of three of the most contentious areas in politics - transport, environment and planning.

And although most Cabinet members got a deputy to assist them, she didn't even have that.

A thumbs up from Donald Dewar as he celebrates the opening of the Scottish Parliament 1999 with the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh

Today, Ms Boyack is the only MSP in the parliament who served in that first Cabinet.  And looking back, she says devolution has made a big difference to Scotland, but also believes more should have been done and sees a lot of work ahead.  

Ms Boyack harboured no aspirations for high office when she stood for election in 1999.  "The ambition for me was getting elected and I was thinking maybe I could be on a committee on a topic I care about, so to go in and become a Cabinet Secretary was unexpected and very exciting."

Her first surprise came the day after the election when she was called in to see Donald Dewar, the Labour leader who was about to become Scotland's first First Minister at the head of a Labour-Lib Dem coalition.  She recalls: "He said 'Ah, Sarah, congratulations, great to see you elected - would you like to be in my coalition negotiation team?' And that was it."

A few days later, when the coalition deal had been agreed, she was given the Cabinet job and was soon piloting two brand new pieces of legislation through the brand new parliament.  One was to create Scotland's first national parks, the other a transport bill, which included free bus passes for the over 60s.

"My first speech was about national parks. I was a town planner before I got elected and I worked in Central regional council and one of our key proposals was for a national park.  In those days we didn't have national parks in Scotland because we didn't have the legislation. There were lots of them in England but partly because of land ownership we'd never had them in Scotland.”

The legislation was passed and resulted in the creation of Scotland's first national park in Loch Lomond and the Trossachs, soon followed by Cairngorms.

Donald Dewar (centre) with his negotiation team in the 1999 coalition talks with the Lib Dems. From the left: Sarah Boyack, Sam Galbraith, Henry McLeish and Tom McCabe.

Reflecting on the 25 years of the parliament, Ms Boyack has been re-reading some of Donald Dewar's early speeches.  Presenting the government’s first legislative programme, he noted that before devolution, only one major piece of Scottish legislation could be expected to get through Westminster in a year. But the Scottish Parliament changed that. He told the chamber: “Day in, day out, it is here that the law of the land will be shaped and laid down - Scottish solutions for Scottish problems.”

Ms Boyack says: "The thing that none of us could have anticipated when we got elected was that Donald would pass away the next year - it wasn't even 18 months. When you look back, I think parliament's history would have been different because he was an incredible guy and he had lots of experience from having been an MP and having been a long-term supporter of devolution."

She picks out what Mr Dewar had to say about how the parliament worked. "'There should be vigorous debate, but it should be of serious intent aimed at improving, not wrecking; legislation must be necessary and well-prepared; our consideration must be thorough, open and accessible.'  That's so relevant now. 

"Parliamentary scrutiny, genuine dialogue with people, having stakeholders in this building - all of that was built in from the start of parliament and it's critical."

Ms Boyack says although the new parliament's first budget was tough, the financial situation improved, increasing the scope for new initiatives, including in transport.  "As the parliament continued, the budget increased massively under Gordon Brown and that enabled us to do lots of new things - free bus passes for over 60s and people with disabilities, starting the process to bring people together on the Borders Railway, as well as Airdire-Bathgate, Stirling-Alloa and Larkhall-Milngavie.  In Scotland we'd lost a lot of railways decades previously so to be able to reopen railways or build new railway lines was a big deal. 

Donald Dewar and his Cabinet at Bute House - (from left) Wendy Alexander (Minister for Communities), Lord Hardie QC (Lord Advocate), Jack McConnell (Minister of Finance), Tom McCabe (Business Manager), Jim Wallace (Deputy First Minister and Justice), Henry McLeish (Minister for Enterprise and Lifelong Learning), Sam Galbraith (Minister for Children and Education), Susan Deacon (Minister for Health and Community Care), Ross Finnie (Minister for Rural Affairs) and Sarah Boyack (Minister for Transport and the Environment).

"We also set the first renewable targets, which at the time were seen as quite bold and radical - 20 per cent of electricity from renewables.  On a windy, sunny day now it's over 100 per cent of our electricity.  It's about investing in time and something can seem quite ambitious but if you put in the heavy lifting you can actually deliver.  So in some ways there's quite a lot to be proud of."

And in her own field of planning, she was busy too.  She says while much of planning is rightly done at local level, issues like transport need to be considered from a more regional perspective. "We did the first national planning framework - the idea was to help local authorities and set national priorities that would assist planners across the country on the environment, building enough homes, new public transport."

But although she highlights these achievements, Ms Boyack is clear that many pressing issues have not been adequately addressed - and some have come full circle.

She found a speech she had made in February 2000 on making sure that when making decisions the government took the long-term view, taking into account economic growth, social justice and the environment. Now she was promoting a member’s bill with the same theme.

"Back in the day when you talked about global warming it was seen as a niche issue, where now the climate emergency is on our doorstep now.

"If you go back to early days, we were talking about tackling poverty, improving education, childcare and land reform - we've got another land reform bill coming up now. We didn't have climate targets then but we were talking about improving our environment, addressing waste, energy, travel and creating warmer homes.

“All those things are centre stage.  This place has to buckle down and sort out the day to day issues. We need the government and all parliamentarians to focus on actually improving the lives of our constituents. That should be our focus every day - fuel poverty, the housing crisis in Edinburgh, the longest waits in the NHS.”

She says the new parliament brought in a whole generation of people like herself who had not previously been elected in elected positions, but also had highly experienced politicians like Donald Dewar, Sam Galbraith and Leith MP and MSP Malcolm Chisholm.

“One of the things that was good about the parliament is our accessibility, not just as local MSPs, but also having stakeholders in here and school kids in here, getting to quiz MSPs.

“From day one, we wanted women to be more equal in politics - we're now at our highest level with 46 per cent of the parliament women. And that's quite step forward from the early days when having three Cabinet members who were under 40 and female was seen as being radical.

“Now you look across the chamber  and it’s more diverse - more women, people with diabilities, people from different ethnic minorities, people of colour, people who are gay.

“I think in terms of social progress we have come quite a long way, but there's still the day-to-day stuff of poverty, inequality, getting people a decent home, making sure all kids have opportunities in life - all of that is still a challenge. You’ve got to do the hard work all the time, it’s not just pass a piece of legislation and that's it fixed.”