Decoding yesterday’s data centre vote

Important things happened in the Scottish Parliament yesterday but if you just read the final decisions it does not give a clear picture of what it means for Scotland's future. Sadly it is yet another case of compromised decision-making in Scotland.

The first thing to understand is what yesterday's debate was not about. In the end this was not about the future of data centres in Scotland but about how we produce the planning regulations for data centres. The reality is that a full moratorium was on the table but was never going to pass. In the end only the Scottish Greens backed it.

What is left is bit of a mess because it is a weak political compromise. This a result of roughly three blocks of opinion in the Scottish Parliament. These do not entirely map against the parties with differing views in each, but in Scotland parties almost always vote as a whipped block so the distinction is minimal.

The three blocks might be called 'no data centres', 'investor first' and 'political compromise'. For the most part it doesn't really matter whether these positions are the result of strong moral principle, ideology or political calculation, because again these became party-whipped votes.

All but one of the parties unambiguously fit into one of these categories. The Greens are anti-data centre, the Tories and Reform are very much pro-investor, Labour and the Lib Dems were seeking a political compromise. The key vote is therefore the Scottish Government. It appears to exist in two different blocks.

Its words and actions largely place the SNP firmly in the pro-investor block with Reform and the Tories, but in the end it voted for a political compromise. What does this mean? The most obvious conclusion to draw is that the SNP leadership is pro-investor but the party membership is split between anti-data centres and political compromise and there is a party conference coming up.

The clearest interpretation of what happened is that the SNP is pro-investor but for internal political reasons decided to kick the can down the road with a loose moratorium while it gets on with writing planning guidelines for data centres.

So how long is this pause? Here is where we get to the poor policy-making aspect. The SNP broke from a voting block with Reform and the Tories to join one with Labour and this happened for reasons of political compromise rather than good legislating. The result is hybrid amendment leading to a moratorium with the Scottish Government making an announcement before the end of this year and bringing planning guidelines within 12 months.

Again, how long is this pause? Three months or 12 months with a three-month update? And what happens at the end of the pause – a new vote or not? None of this is clear or specified, and this raises numerous alarm bells.

Another story in today's news shows that the promises delivered around ScotWind are predictably turning out to be nothing like the promises made. Rather than face up to failure in one go, this matter has been a series of delayed decisions and reporting trickling out gradually.

That may not happen in this case because that is not the pattern with investor-friendly policy. Those tend to be railroaded through – think policy decisions like Freeports or one-off decisions like Flamingoland. It is pro-social policy which keeps failing, pro-investor policy keeps being implemented. It is possible that yesterday’s vote will actually accelerate the development of data centres.

There are two other important notes to be made. The first is that the debate itself raises alarm – in continually conflating and mixing up data storage and compute power (two completely different kinds of data centres), for the most part politician did not sound like they understood what they were actually voting on or for. This debate was largely carried out at the level of soundbites.

But arguably the most important point was made by Government Minister Hannah Mary Goodlad when she said that the reason the Scottish Government was taking the stance it was was because to support a moratorium would “send the wrong message”. Articulating the 'wrong' message helps to understand the debate.

The 'wrong' message appears to be that the Scottish Parliament might ever side with communities over billionaire equity investors. The fear seems to be that if we ever stand up for our own population then the goal of 'inward investment' (largely the sale of Scottish assets to foreign equity firms) might be compromised.

A political fudge because politicians wanted to hide from decisions they appeared not to understand resulting in a mess of a position which exists only because the governing party won't come out explicitly as prioritising investor class interests over those of Scottish communities? That would not be an unfair summary of what happened yesterday.

We are no further forward in this debate as a result. We may actually have gone backwards.