What is devolved to the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Senedd?

Politicians in Holyrood and Cardiff Bay make decisions on some but not all public policies, taxes and areas of public spending. Others remain the responsibility of the UK parliament and government in Westminster. The dividing line between what is and is not devolved can be complex – with the demarcations set out in legislation not always aligning neatly with how policy is designed and implemented on the ground.   

Powers reserved to the UK parliament

Both the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Senedd operate under what is termed a ‘Reserved Powers Model’. This allows them to make laws and policies on matters that are not reserved to the UK parliament. 

Powers that are reserved to the UK parliament, and which neither the Scottish Parliament nor the Welsh Senedd can make legislation on, include:

• Benefits (most aspects, including the state pension)
• Betting and gambling
• Broadcasting
• Competition policy
• Constitution (most aspects)
• Consumer protection regulation
• Currency
• Data protection
• Defence and foreign affairs
• Drugs misuse policy (some aspects)
• Elections to the UK parliament
• Employment law and industrial relations
• Energy (most aspects)
• Equality legislation (most aspects)
• Financial services (including banking, insurance and private pensions)
• Immigration, asylum and visas
• Insolvency
• Intellectual property
• Nationality and citizenship
• Postal services
• Taxation (most aspects)
• Telecommunications
• Transport licensing and regulation

If political parties contesting the Scottish or Welsh elections propose changes to these policies – for example, to immigration rules or to workers’ rights – they would not be able to legislate for and implement these changes unless the UK parliament and government agreed to devolve the necessary powers. 

In addition to the reservations that apply to both Scotland and Wales, several more powers are reserved to the UK in the case of Wales, including:

• Drugs misuse policy (most aspects)
• Freedom of information
• Marriages and civil partnerships
• Policing, prisons and the justice system
• Professional regulation and licensing 
• Registration of births and deaths
• Transport (further aspects) 

The precise details are complex, and full information can be found in the relevant legislation setting out the Reserved Powers in relation to Scotland and Wales. But these reservations end up determining what is devolved – because anything that is not explicitly reserved to Westminster is devolved. The Scottish and Welsh Governments fund their responsibilities using a range of sources (see our explainer on devolved government funding).

The powers devolved to the Scottish Parliament

The Scottish Parliament has powers over:

• Agriculture, forestry and fisheries
• Benefits (some aspects)
• Consumer advocacy and advice
• Economic development
• Education and training
• Elections to the Scottish Parliament and local government (most aspects)
• Energy (some aspects)
• Environment
• Equality legislation (some aspects)
• Fire services
• Freedom of information
• Health and social services
• Housing
• Local government
• Marriage and civil partnerships
• Planning
• Policing, prisons and the justice system
• Professional regulation and licensing 
• Registration of births and deaths
• Sport and the arts
• Taxation (some aspects)
• Tourism
• Transport (most aspects)

As a result, it is the Scottish Parliament and Government which decide how the NHS is organised and operated, and how much funding it receives; similarly with schools, social care, and other local government services, and the police, courts and prisons system. They also decide the design of and fund agriculture support, and decide where and how much to invest in public housing and transport (including railways). The more proportional system of voting for the Scottish Parliament means that the main governing  party typically relies on votes (or at least abstentions) from one or more other parties to pass legislation, including Budgets. 

More detail on the tax and benefit powers of the Scottish Parliament 

Taxes

Since its inception, the Scottish Parliament has had the power to determine the tax powers of Scottish local government – which currently consist of council tax (on residential properties), business rates (on non-residential properties) and, from 2026, a tourism tax (on tourist and visitor accommodation). The Scottish Government has also consulted on giving councils the powers to charge a ‘cruise ship levy’. If they wanted to, the Scottish Parliament and Government could reform or abolish these taxes, or create new local taxes – although they would have to consider the practicalities and other costs and benefits of doing so. 

Following devolution of further tax powers to Scotland in the 2010s, the Scottish Parliament now has powers over and the Scottish Government retains the revenues from:

• Taxes on the purchase of residential and non-residential properties – via the land and buildings transaction tax in Scotland.
• Taxes on the disposal of waste in landfill – via the Scottish landfill tax.
• Rates and bands of income tax on income other than from savings and dividends. Other aspects of income tax (including rates on savings and dividends income, the tax-free personal allowance, and rules defining the tax base) are reserved. 

The partial devolution of income tax means that decisions of both the UK parliament and the Scottish Parliament affect the income tax paid by residents of Scotland. For example, the extension of the freeze in the tax-free personal allowance to April 2031 announced in the 2025 UK Budget applies in Scotland too. However, it is up to the Scottish Government whether to freeze or increase the other income tax thresholds which apply above the personal allowance.

Legislation also provides for the Scottish Parliament to design policy and the Scottish Government to retain the revenues from:

• Taxes on the extraction and import of aggregates (such as rock and sand) – from April 2026, via the Scottish aggregates tax.
• Taxes on the carriage of passengers on flights, for which the Scottish Parliament has passed legislation to create an ‘air departure tax’, but for which no date has yet been agreed for implementation. As a result, the UK air passenger duty still applies in Scotland.

In addition, legislation provides for the Scottish Government to request the devolution of additional powers (either for currently reserved taxes or for new taxes) from the UK government. The Scottish Government has so far done this once, gaining powers to introduce a levy on new or converted residential accommodation to help fund building safety measures. It plans to introduce this ‘building safety levy’ from April 2028, 18 months after a similar levy is introduced in England.  

Benefits

Devolution of benefit powers in the 2010s means that the Scottish Parliament now sets policy and the Scottish (rather than UK) government is responsible for spending on:

• Disability benefits that provide non-means-tested financial support for the additional costs associated with disability, which in Scotland is undertaken via adult disability payment, child disability payment and pension age disability benefit. 
• Carers’ benefits that provide financial support to those with significant unpaid caring responsibilities, which in Scotland is undertaken via carer support payment, the Scottish carer supplement and the young carer grant. 
• Winter fuel payments for pensioners, which in Scotland are undertaken via the pension age winter heating payment.
• Payments for households in receipt of means-tested benefits when the weather is particularly cold, which in Scotland have been subsumed within new winter heating payments paid more generally (see below). 
• Support for low-income pregnant women and families with young children to purchase healthy food via charge cards restricted to the purchase of such foods, which in Scotland is undertaken via the Best Start Foods programme.
• Support for low-income pregnant women via a one-off cash grant, which in Scotland is undertaken via the pregnancy and baby payment.  
• Funeral support payments, which provide means-tested support with the cost of funerals.
• Council tax reductions for households with low incomes and financial assets, which in Scotland are undertaken via a nationally designed scheme (in England, different councils design their own schemes). 

The Scottish Parliament and Government also have the powers to top up UK benefits and create new benefits, which they have used to create the following new benefits:

• Scottish child payments, which provide financial support to low-income families with children in receipt of the UK government’s means-tested benefits.
• Support for low-income families with two further cash grant payments, at ages 2–3 (the ‘early learning payment’) and at ages 4–6 (the ‘school age payment’). 
• Winter heating payments, which provide financial support in winter to low-income families in Scotland in receipt of the UK government’s means-tested benefits irrespective of how cold it gets.
• Child winter heating payments, which provide financial support in winter to families in Scotland with someone under the age of 19 eligible for disability benefits.

The Scottish Parliament has also legislated for two discretionary support schemes:

• Crisis grants, which low-income households or individuals can apply to their council for if they have suffered an emergency or major change in circumstances that means they are at risk of being unable to pay for essentials (such as accommodation, heating and food).
• Community care grants, which low-income households or individuals can apply to their council for if they would otherwise struggle to establish or maintain a settled home. This includes those leaving care or prison, those at risk of homelessness and those escaping domestic abuse. 

In addition, the Scottish Parliament and Government have powers over ‘discretionary housing payments’, which are managed by councils and can be used to provide support on top of UK-wide means-tested benefits to help cover housing costs for low-income families. Similar payments are available in the rest of the UK, but the Scottish Government has used these powers in a more directed way. In particular, they are used to provide additional payments to households in Scotland that would otherwise be affected by the so-called ‘bedroom tax’ (or ‘under-occupancy charge’) for social housing tenants deemed to have a property with more bedrooms than they need, and the overall ‘benefit cap’ which caps households’ total benefit payments. 

Payments to help young adults take part in further education (the means-tested education maintenance allowance) and access employment after a period out-of-work (job start payment) are also sometimes seen as part of the Scottish benefit system.

Finally, the Scottish Parliament and Government have the ability to make some changes to how the UK-wide means-tested universal credit is applied in Scotland. This includes the frequency of payments and whether payments to cover rent are paid to benefit claimants or directly to landlords. 

However, the rates of, eligibility for, and most rules of universal credit (and its predecessor benefits) are reserved to the UK Parliament; as are the state pension, pension credit, child benefit and many other smaller benefits, such as contributions-based jobseeker’s allowance and statutory maternity pay. 

The powers devolved to the Welsh Senedd

As with Scotland, the powers reserved to the UK parliament determine what is devolved to the Welsh Senedd:

• Agriculture, forestry and fisheries
• Benefits (some aspects)
• Economic development
• Education and training
• Elections to the Welsh Senedd and local government
• Energy (some aspects)
• Environment
• Equality legislation (some aspects)
• Fire services
• Health and social services
• Housing
• Local government
• Planning
• Sport and the arts
• Taxation (some aspects)
• Tourism
• Transport (some aspects)

As a result, it is the Welsh Senedd and Government which decide how the NHS is organised and operated, and how much funding it receives; similarly with schools, social care, and other local government services. They also decide the design of and fund agriculture support, and decide where and how much to invest in public housing and roads. They can invest in rail infrastructure but it is the UK government that is mainly responsible for this – and the Welsh Government does not receive funding specifically in relation to rail infrastructure. The more proportional system of voting for the Senedd means that the main governing party typically relies on votes (or at least abstentions) from one or more other parties to pass legislation, including Budgets.

More detail on the tax and benefit powers of the Welsh Senedd 

Taxes

The Welsh Senedd has the power to determine the tax powers of Welsh local government – which currently consist of council tax (on residential properties), business rates (on non-residential properties) and, from April 2027, a tourism tax (on tourist and visitor accommodation). If they wanted to, the Welsh Senedd and Government could reform or abolish these taxes, or create new local taxes – although they would have to consider the practicalities and other costs and benefits of doing so. 

Following devolution of further tax powers in the late 2010s, the Welsh Senedd now has powers over and the Welsh Government retains the revenues from:

• Taxes on the purchase of residential and non-residential properties – via the land transaction tax in Wales.
• Taxes on the disposal of waste in landfill – via the landfill disposals tax in Wales.
• 10 percentage points of each rate of income tax on income other than from savings and dividends. Other aspects of income tax (including tax bands, rates on savings and dividends income, the tax-free personal allowance, and rules defining the tax base) are reserved. 

The powers over income tax are more limited than in Scotland. The UK government has reduced the rates of tax it applies in Wales on income other than savings and dividends income by 10 percentage points (e.g. the basic rate applied by the UK government has been reduced from 20% to 10% and the higher rate from 40% to 30%). The Welsh Senedd is then able to levy its rates of income tax on top of these now-lower UK rates – which it does, each at the rate of 10%, leaving overall rates in line with those charged in England and Northern Ireland. It could, if it wished, charge different rates on different bands, but cannot vary the tax band thresholds or introduce or abolish tax bands, in contrast to Scotland. This approach also means that changes in income tax rates and bands made by the UK government still apply in Wales, again in contrast to Scotland.

As in Scotland, legislation allows the Welsh Government to request the devolution of additional powers (either for currently reserved taxes or for new taxes) from the UK government. The Welsh Government previously started this process to request the powers to introduce a ‘vacant land tax’ (on land with planning permission for development but is still not developed after a period), but was unable to secure agreement with the UK government for these powers. Unlike Scotland, the Welsh Government has not requested powers for a building safety levy. 

Benefits

The Welsh Senedd and Government’s powers over benefits are more limited than the Scottish Parliament and Government’s: they do not have powers over disability benefits, winter fuel payments, or how universal credit is operated in Wales. 

They do have powers over and responsibility for funding some benefits:

• Council tax reductions for households with low incomes and financial assets, which in Wales are undertaken via a nationally designed scheme (in England, different councils design their own schemes). 
• The Discretionary Assistance Fund, operated by councils, which provides two types of grants: first, emergency assistance payments for those facing an emergency that means they are at risk of being unable to pay for essentials (such as accommodation, heating and food); and second, individual assistance payments to help someone purchase white goods or furniture if they lack these and are in receipt of UK government means-tested benefits, and have no savings or access to credit. 

In addition, the Welsh Parliament and Government have powers over ‘discretionary housing payments’, which are managed by councils and can be used to provide support on top of UK-wide means-tested benefits to help cover housing costs.

Payments to help young adults take part in further education (the means-tested education maintenance allowance) and workers retrain if they are made or at risk of redundancy (ReAct Plus) are also sometimes seen as part of the Welsh benefit system.

Can the UK government legislate in devolved areas?

The short answer is yes. The UK parliament is sovereign and can, if it decides, legislate on any devolved as well as reserved issue. However, the so-called ‘Sewel Convention’ states that the UK parliament will ‘not normally’ do so without the relevant devolved government(s) having passed a ‘legislative consent motion’, indicating that it is content for the UK parliament to legislate on a devolved issue. 

However, this is only a convention (rather than a binding rule), and what constitutes ‘normal’ is not specified. For example, the post-Brexit UK Internal Market Act – which governs trade in goods and services, the recognition of professional qualifications, and rules on financial support for business and industry (‘state aid’) within the UK – covers areas that are technically devolved to Scotland and Wales (in that they are not explicitly ‘reserved’ to the UK parliament). Most significantly, this includes economic development (and related areas of education and skills policy), where the UK government designs and funds schemes (such as the Shared Prosperity Fund and Pride in Place programme) across the whole of the UK. Neither the Scottish Parliament nor the Welsh Senedd gave its legislative consent for this Act, or the policies implemented under it.