THE Calman commission review into Scotland’s constitutional future has been dismissed as an expensive farce after it failed to come up with a single recommendation.

The body, established by the three main unionist parties, has been given a budget of £550,000 to review the workings of devolution for the past nine months. However its first report, due out on Tuesday, will not include any proposals to grant the Scottish parliament additional powers.

Instead the document, running to more than 100 pages, will include a series of “discussions” of powers currently reserved to Westminster, such as firearms legislation, broadcasting and control over Scottish elections.

It follows a report this month by the economic advisers to the commission which also failed to make any recommendations to extend the financial powers of Holyrood.

The commission was launched last March in response to Alex Salmond’s “national conversation” on the constitution that will culminate in the introduction of a referendum bill in the Scottish parliament in 2010.

A source close to the commission said the interim report was concerned more with identifying problems rather than proposing solutions. “It will also address a lot of housekeeping issues with the legislative processes at the parliament but we’re not at the stage of suggesting any solutions.

“There are no recommendations on extending financial powers either although there is an extensive chapter with theoptions and the consequences of each option.” It is expected to indicate that certain functions, including defence and foreign affairs, should remain reserved to Westminster.

The commission has held 23 meetings since April 2008, including 20 in Edinburgh, two in London and one in Glasgow. It has staged 15 oral evidence sessions, 13 in Edinburgh and two in London, and six public roadshows, in Inverness, Dumfries, Glasgow, Stornoway, Dundee and Newcastle. It employs seven staff.

While its 15 members are unpaid they can draw on the £500,000 grant from the UK government and around £50,000 from the Scottish parliament, to pay for hotel and travel costs. The commission has received 136 written submissions and 35 oral contributions from organisations and individuals, including the UK government, Jack McConnell, the former first minister, and the Catholic church.

Mark Wallace, campaign director of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said many saw the commission as politically motivated. “It is vital that the Calman commission does not flunk its responsibilities. Taxpayers will be very angry that they are paying so much for apparently no conclusions.”

Keith Brown, the SNP MSP for Ochil, described the commission as “a political white elephant” and said the interim report “looks like being the biggest let down in Scottish politics”.

He added: “It seems set to be a complete waste of over £500,000 of taxpayers’ money with no recommendations for change and no new ideas.”

A spokesman for Scottish Labour, whose former leader Wendy Alexander put forward the idea of the commission a year ago today, said: “We expect the interim report to look at the current state of devolved powers and review the scores of new powers . . . transferred to the Scottish parliament. Scottish Labour will study it before responding in detail ahead of the final report in 2009. If the SNP refuse to do that, they will be making a huge strategic error.”

A Scottish Conservatives spokesman added: “The interim report will be an important staging post in a calm, independent and mature process in stark contrast to the nationalist conversation which is taking on an air of irrelevancy.”

A spokeswoman for the commission said: “Our report will be published on Tuesday and people should wait and see what it says.”

Meanwhile, a dispute over whether Scotland would be better off under independence has broken out between the Scottish and UK governments.

The SNP said Scotland would do better on its own after the UK government signalled it will cut Scottish funding by £1 billion between 2010 and 2012. The SNP claims a record £13.2 billion in North Sea revenues this year — plus oil income projections of £55 billion in the coming six — mean Scotland would have a budget surplus. But Alistair Darling, the chancellor, said the North Sea tax forecasts mean Scotland would have a deficit of around £7.2 billion.

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