Current first sentence is nonsense The opening sentence at present reads In the United Kingdom devolved government was created following simple majority referendums in Wales and Scotland in September 1997 This is total nonsense I m afraid I can not answer for Wales or Northern Ireland but Scotland has always had devolved government since it co founded the Union in 1707 The separate legal and education systems were under the control of devolved administrations And as time went on there were separate devolved government departments for just about everything else too eg Agriculture Transport Industry and of course Health the NHS has always been devolved since day 1 What happened in 1999 is that Scotland re gained a democratically devolved legislature to control the previously largely unchecked devolved government departments