Assess the significance of constitutional reform in the UK since 1997.

The most significant constitutional reform in the UK since 1997 is clearly the acceleration of devolution. Devolution is a tool to reduce the democratic deficit by creating a quasi-federalist governmental structure, with numerous layers of decision making, in the case of UK devolution since 1997, regional political institutions such as The Scottish Parliament have been created with the Scotland Act 1998. This is the most significant constitutional reform as it a step towards a more federal constitution rather than the UK's unitary constitution. However it could be argued devolution is not the most significant reform, as it failed to mitigate the divisions in Scotland for succession, and hence the 2014 Scottish independence referendum was held. Regardless, the arguments in favour of this been the most significant reform since 1997 are more convincing than those that disagree.