THEY called it the biggest transfer of powers to the Scottish Parliament and Scottish ministers since the start of devolution.

The Tory Government’s man in Scotland said the vote on the Scotland Bill marked a “significant day for Scotland”.

By any measure, the debate on the final stages of the Scotland Bill in the House of Commons on Monday evening was at least a significant parliamentary event.

Despite previously refusing to accept any amendments to the Bill proposed by any of the opposition parties at any stage of progress, the Tory Government had tabled more than 80 amendments at the last possible moment before the Bill completed its period of scrutiny and consent in the House of Commons.

In total, about 200 amendments and new clauses were lodged on the Bill for debate, totalling 76 pages of material for MPs to consider.

Procedure dictated that only around half of these were actually chosen for debate.

These were significant and substantial issues for Members of Parliament to discuss.

But despite this, the Government only set aside a total of six hours for the debate, including any votes. Regular viewers of the BBC Parliament channel will know that given Parliament’s bizarre and ancient processes and procedures, its takes elected parliamentarians 20 minutes to vote on one single proposal.

Just 360 minutes to debate the biggest transfer of powers to the Scottish Parliament and Scottish ministers since the start of devolution, an issue on which the voters of Scotland made their voice clearly heard in last May’s General Election.

It’s a national and constitutional scandal and is wholly reflective of the Tory Government’s dismissive and condescending attitude towards the constitution in general, and Scotland in particular. Even worse were the contributions by some of their right-wing backbench MPs.

That said, even within the heavily restricted timetable of this debate we heard some astonishing contributions from across the Chamber.

We heard from the failed Scottish Tory Alberto Costa, who was so comprehensively beaten by my colleague Mike Weir in Angus in 2010 that he gave up on standing for a Scottish seat in the following election. Subsequently elected to represent South Leicestershire earlier this year, his stunning contribution to the debate was to loudly declare from the Tory backbenches that it was “good” that no Scottish MP was selected to sit on Parliament’s influential Joint Committee on Human Rights, despite the group comprising of six members of the unelected House of Lords.

Then we had English Labour MPs using the valuable time for debate to set out the case for devolution in England, rather than the important matter in hand.

But it was only when we got down to the brass tacks of the business that the true nature of the Westminster parties came to the fore.

For example, despite the much-heralded devolution of powers over parts of the benefits system, which were proclaimed by Labour’s Ian Murray as allowing a new Scottish system of social security, during the debate David Mundell failed to provide any clarity whatsoever on whether Westminster would claw back cash from vulnerable Scots if Holyrood chooses in future to top up a benefit administered in the UK. How can we have a proper Scottish benefits system if the DWP or the Treasury simply takes back the money given to people by the Scottish Government?

In particular, the SNP made a firm proposal to devolve responsibility for the whole tax credits system to Scotland, so that we can create our own system for supporting families and individuals living off a low income. While the Tories don’t care, and Labour tries to talk a good game on the issue, when it came to voting on the SNP’s proposals they once again joined forces to vote together and reject this important measure.

It is still astonishing to me that Labour could once again step into the lobby with the Tory Party over a vital issue like this. Why would anyone vote to leave control over tax credits with George Osborne rather than the Scottish Parliament?

Even on areas such as the full devolution of responsibility for equality law, which has overwhelming backing from Scottish civic society, reasonable amendments proposed by the SNP were simply rejected out of hand.

The Scotland Bill has now been passed, despite the fact it fails to satisfy the vast majority of Scotland’s MPs and doesn’t meet the full demands of the people who voted for them.

But this won’t be the final chapter in Scotland’s constitutional story.