Digital Economy Bill

Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope Excerpts

Committee: 3rd sitting Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Monday 6th February 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 82. This Bill is an opportunity possibly to enhance the lives of the most disadvantaged and vulnerable people in our society. The words of our Prime Minister always come to mind:

“a country that works for everyone”.

This amendment will help the country work for everyone. Currently, the parent of a child wishing to have a free school meal must apply for it. Not only does that provide a free school meal, which is hugely important for children because hungry children are not good learners, but it ensures that the school gets a pupil premium—a substantial sum of money—to help those disadvantaged pupils.

This simple amendment would ensure that local authorities automatically enrol those entitled to receive free school meals. Local authorities currently administer a number of benefits, such as council tax and housing benefit, so they are aware of families that would be eligible to claim free meals and would automatically contact the school. This would ensure that parents who, for a host of reasons, fail to claim would be able to do so.

It is estimated that a family with a child receiving free school meals can save up to £400 a year. Noble Lords may imagine that if the parents have more than one child the saving is quite substantial. As well as the family saving money and the child getting a free school meal it ensures that the school gets a substantial amount of money—the pupil premium—to help disadvantaged pupils.

The Minister will probably reply—as did the Minister from the other place—that the department’s own electronic eligibility checking system means that the clause is not really needed. That, however, is only a system which enables a school to check whether the parent is on the free meals register: it has speeded up the process but does not do the job that this amendment hopes to do.

I make a further point about this, at a time when we are all sensitive about the amount of private data that circulates: there is perhaps a fear that leads people to question why schools should have private data on pupils entitled to free meals. For that reason the amendment clearly states that parents will be notified before this information is made available and that there will be opt-out arrangements. I hope, therefore, that the Minister will be sympathetic to this very important amendment.

[Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope (LD)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow my noble friend. I support his Amendment 82 and shall speak to Amendment 92, which is in a similar vein but relates to the warm home discount. I am grateful to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans and to the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, who have other duties in the House and would otherwise be here.

It is my pleasure to speak to Amendment 92, which seeks to test the possibilities that Clauses 30 to 32 open up. For years I have been banging away at the Department for Work and Pensions to make proper and better beneficial use, in terms of client well-being, of the vast amount of data that it has on families. That, together with the data held by HMRC, and particularly the data generated when universal credit comes in, will give the Government as a whole immensely enhanced abilities to promote well-being, particularly in our low-income households. I warmly welcome Clauses 30 to 32.

I am listening carefully and correctly to some of the interrogation that is being properly directed at the Government, because we have to get this right; it is very important that the protections are there. Subject to those protections, I am an enthusiast for making use of these provisions. I am slightly surprised that there have not been more attempts—like mine and that of my noble friend—to prise open new opportunities as the Bill goes through. This amendment tries to test the willingness, enthusiasm and ingenuity of Ministers in seeing how they can expand public services to our citizens under Clauses 30 to 32.

Amendment 92 simply seeks to improve the use of data-sharing powers to extend the reach of the warm home discount. The provenance of this amendment is work that I have been doing over months and years for the Children’s Society, and I acknowledge and pay tribute to the work it does with families, particularly with children in fuel-poor households. The Children’s Society has been making the argument to me about the importance and urgency of getting the issue of fuel poverty dealt with more adequately. We need only look at the announcement from npower last week, and indeed some of the wider economic indicators that are showing that this group of fuel-poor households is likely to find things getting a lot worse before they get any better. We need to pay attention to that.

I am told by the Children’s Society that, according to the Government’s own figures, families with children are now the biggest group affected by fuel poverty: 45% of households that can claim the warm home discount are now families with children under 18. The Children’s Society has some valuable survey evidence of a project that it carried out in Bradford and in other places, which indicates clearly the distress caused by fuel poverty. For instance, there is the fact that parents in these households are frightened to turn up the heating in cold winter months because they fear the level of the increased bills it would occasion. Some of those same parents believe that their children’s health is potentially affected by not doing so, so it is a real concern for the parents involved.

Scotland Bill

Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope Excerpts

Monday 29th February 2016 Lords Chamber

Welfare and the payments within it are too important to just be left to hang, so we hope that some sort of committee—something similar to this—or some implementation of transparency would help. Again, public exposure, scrutiny and transparency all help. We propose that the joint committee publish a report on the transfer and implementation of the powers devolved at least once every three months for the first three years from the date on which this Bill is passed, and on the operation of the powers devolved to the Scottish Parliament at least once in each calendar year starting three years from the date on which this Bill is passed. Welfare is too complicated and important compared to other powers. It is essential that there be some monitoring and transparency on that. We hope the Minister can respond as positively as he did to the last amendment. I beg to move.

[Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope (LD)]

My Lords, I have three amendments in my name in this group. I am pleased to follow the noble Lord, Lord McAvoy. Social security is a very important subject and Part 3 is a very important part of the Bill.

I can dispose of my amendments briefly. At one point during Committee, I considered running a series of amendments that would have sought to take on employability. That is an important part within social protection but separate from social security. I welcome the fact that Clause 29 devolves a certain amount of power in terms of the Work Programme and related contractor-driven service provisions north of the border to Scotland. That is entirely sensible.

My original idea, which I think there is still a case for, is that employability as a subject could have been taken much further than the Smith commission suggested. I have for some time come to the conclusion that the whole of Jobcentre Plus services could be more efficiently and better served from a Scottish base run by the Scottish Government through the Scottish skills department, in a way that could improve on what we have at the moment. I decided against doing that because it was not in the Smith commission. There is a stateable case for doing it but I do not think that this Bill is the right way.

Instead, I decided to try to encourage Ministers to look more flexibly at the powers within Clause 29. Amendment 58 looks at some of the restrictions in claiming reserve benefits. Amendment 59 would try to give more flexibility and power to the Scottish devolved powers in Clause 29 to make them easier to tailor to individual Scottish circumstances.

I should declare an interest. Colleagues probably know that I am a non-executive, non-remunerated director of the Wise Group in Glasgow. I have been in that position for a while. As a result of that experience, I am pretty persuaded that the Scottish conditions, the shorter lines of communications and the set-up north of the border are of a different order to what happens throughout the rest of the United Kingdom and could be better developed in a way that would provide a better service if a maximum amount of flexibility was given. The providers who run the programmes already have a lot of discretion about the services that they deploy. It is all done on the basis of payment by results and the outcomes are all very carefully monitored, so I do not think that we would be giving very much away by encouraging the Clause 29 powers to be developed in as flexible a way as possible.

I suspect that the Minister will be advised that Amendments 58 and 59 would run counter to some of the legislative provisions that set up the Work Programme. I am prepared to accept that, if that is the case, but I think there is at least a series of questions to be asked about what are very important programmes delivering services to low-income households and jobseekers in Scotland in a way that I think could be improved. In parenthesis, I think that worklessness will be less of a problem in Scotland in the future and that low-income working households will have difficulties with poverty which will need to be addressed in a different way, because work incentives are not just about getting people into work but about getting them to progress through work. That is important, too. If the Minister does not mind, it is worth spending just a moment trying to give me a rationale on why we should not increase the flexibility available to work providers north of the border once Clause 29 powers are delivered to Scotland.

I do not think there are as many lawyers present in the House now as there were earlier this evening; otherwise, I might be tempted to press Amendment 60 to a Division because any self-respecting lawyer who looked at the complexity that now exists within this Bill compared with the parent Act of 1998—we are dealing with exceptions, reservations and exempted, as well as accepted, powers—would consider that a consolidation measure was easily justified. I hope that the Minister will note that I have made it easy for him in the amendment by saying that I would settle even for a draft, because trying to do what that amendment seeks to do in six months would be quite a tall order. However, it is a serious point. It would be of considerable assistance to all of us to have such a measure as this body of law develops. I hope rather than fear that it will develop; that is, I am fearful of that from a complexity point of view but hope for it from a political point of view.

On the previous group of amendments, the Minister rightly said that it was important to try to keep the template of the various sister Acts in some kind of cohesive shape. But in order to do that and to assist that process, a draft consolidation measure would be much appreciated by everybody in future. As I say, if there were enough lawyers in the House, I might even think about pressing this to a Division. I make the point facetiously but I hope that the Minister takes it seriously and gives us some comfort that he will go back to the department and explain how difficult it is for us—never mind members of the public—to understand the complexities of the interrelationships of the Acts that flow as a sequence from the parent 1998 Scotland Act.

[Lord Hope of Craighead]

My Lords, I support what the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, has said. Even with the advantage of the websites, it is very difficult to get an accurate and up-to-date version of amended legislation. If you go to the official website, you usually find that mention is made of amendments which have not yet been incorporated into the legislation as shown on the website. That time lag makes it very difficult for ordinary people to see exactly what the content of the legislation is. I think I am right in saying that when the Law Commissions were set up they had a function to keep an eye on the need for consolidation. If the Minister is not inclined to accept the amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, perhaps he might, through his offices, encourage the Scottish Law Commission to get to work on consolidating these measures in a way that would be useful for anybody working in the Scottish Parliament or who was trying to understand what the current legislation really is.

Scotland’s Fiscal Framework

Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope Excerpts

Wednesday 24th February 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dunlop]

As the Statement made clear, if the Scottish economy grows more slowly than the UK economy as a whole, that risk will be borne by the Scottish Government.

[Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope (LD)]

My Lords, can the Minister help us by expanding a little on set-up costs; he mentioned a figure of £200 million. Would that apply to the departmental expenditure limit from the DWP on the costs of the administration of the new social security powers that will be available to the Scottish Government in the future?

[Lord Dunlop]

The figure I mentioned is a one-off implementation cost to transfer the powers over and the systems that go with them. It is not an ongoing cost.

Scotland Bill

Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope Excerpts

Monday 22nd February 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope (LD)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble and learned Lord, Lord Davidson of Glen Clova, and support the amendment in his name. I am pleased to take the Minister into the slightly calmer waters of Head F1 of Part II of Schedule 5 to the Scotland Act 1998.

I am pleased to see my favourite Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Freud, who has taken the trouble to observe and listen to these amendments, which I appreciate because this is important. I want to make one preliminary point. The most important thing that the Minister can do for me this evening is to give an undertaking that the new-found spirit of co-operation and good working relations that is now evident between Whitehall departments, the Scottish Government and the community of pressure groups who apply these provisions on behalf of their clients will continue. My perception, which is strong because I have been working with these people all my professional life, for the past 35 years, is that at the beginning people in Scotland thought they were getting short shrift, to put it mildly. This is a DWP issue. The impression—this is their perception, not mine; I am simply reporting it—is that they were getting no proper consideration or understanding in what was being proposed by the Government. I think that has changed. From my experience with the current Minister and his team, I am much assured that the consideration that has now been given to these clauses in this important part of the Bill is much better. But we need to continue to work hard at getting a good relationship with the people who are implementing the provisions north of the border. The presence of the noble Lord, Lord Freud, underlines the fact that the Government have got that message. I have now got that off my chest.

I am speaking to the amendments in my name, beginning with Amendment 77A. I will not, however, move Amendments 77D or 77G. I was getting carried away with my enthusiasm for peppering the Marshalled List with probing amendments and inadvertently misdirected myself. I managed to eliminate the UK’s reserve power for discretionary payments in universal credit. I had no intention of doing that, so I will take away from the Minister the pleasure of saying that I got that substantially wrong because I have just realised that myself.

The best way that we can make progress in the Committee is for the Minister, in dealing with all my amendments and those of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Davidson, to take this opportunity to clarify how the provisions should be interpreted.

The one thing of which we should try to persuade people north of the border is that they need not necessarily be suspicious about everything. Some of this legislation is in quite dense language and a lot of it will have to be spread out into secondary legislation to make it work. The view in Scotland is that people in London are trying to have a narrower rather than a wider interpretation of the deployment of these powers. I do not believe that is true. That is why, as I said, it is important that Ministers give this serious attention.

The people who have been briefing the Committee, such as the Scottish CPAG and the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations, have done a very good job. They are anxious to avoid gaps—that is what they are good at—and they have managed to achieve that by identifying some of the amendments on the Marshalled List this evening. They do not care where the powers lie or who is deploying them. They want to make sure that they can look after their client groups as best they can in the circumstances.

As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Davidson, has already managed to do some of it, I am going to just sketch through some of the amendments in my name. They are all probing amendments. They are designed to capture the Minister’s attention and I think they have successfully done that: he has spent some serious time getting to grips with the concerns. Amendment 77 is a very good example of this. I knew in my heart that winter fuel payments were included because they are part of the regulated Social Fund but it is not explicit in the Bill. At an earlier stage, people in Scotland were not content to take at face value that the words,

“expenses for heating in cold weather”,

would naturally and automatically import the winter fuel payments scheme in Scotland. Therefore, the purpose of the amendment—and it illustrates why I am speaking to these amendments—is to enable the Minister to say on the record from the Dispatch Box that that is the case. If he can do that, I would be grateful.

The amendments to Clause 22 seek confirmation on how top-up powers will be used and clarification on clawback powers. The use of the word “discretionary” in the title of Clause 22 caused some confusion because discretionary by definition means what it means. That could be usefully clarified by the Minister. Could he explain exactly what Clause 22 sets out to do? The amendments to Clause 23 and the two or three subsequent clauses are trying to get an understanding of exactly how the sanction restrictions will effect discretionary payments such as discretionary housing payments, crisis grants, community care grants and top-up payments. If he can help us understand that, the Minister will be doing us a favour.

The amendments to Clause 24 attempt to bottom out what power the Scottish Government currently have under the Welfare Funds (Scotland) Act 2015. It is the view of the people I have talked to that there should be support for families facing “exceptional circumstances”, which the Scottish Government, in spite of the fact that they have the Welfare Funds (Scotland) Act 2015, feel they do not have the competence to cover. I would be very interested—I think the same question was raised by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Davidson—to learn more about that as well.

In Clauses 27 and 28, I am really nervous about concurrent jurisdiction powers. I do not know how these will be implemented. It is a much smaller-scale problem than financial frameworks and so on, but we need a clearer understanding of how these things will work. I understand that the department thinks that they are well dealt with in Clauses 27 and 28, but I do not think that that is necessarily the case. The power to delay is an opportunity cost in terms of access to universal credit. If the Government did decide that they had to take advantage of the delaying power, that might mean, for months if not years, that people in Scotland were denied access to some of the advantages of universal credit—because there are some—and that would not be a cost-free decision for the Government to take.

I want to spend a moment on Amendment 79ZC on the Social Security Advisory Committee. I am genuinely puzzled by the Government’s approach to this because, as I read the Bill as currently drafted, they are excluding any role for the SSAC in relation to social security issues in Scotland. The Minister will know that the primary legislation for the SSAC was a 1980 Act later consolidated into the Social Security Administration Act 1992. Those provisions gave the SSAC an exactly parallel role in relation to the Social Security Agency in Northern Ireland. These two statutory accountabilities have been running in parallel ever since the SSAC was set up. Hitherto in Northern Ireland there was automatic parity with GB, so there was no real issue about any policy matters, but following last year’s fresh start agreement, it is obvious to anyone paying any attention to what is going on in Northern Ireland that the Northern Ireland Executive and the Northern Ireland Assembly now wish to introduce substantive changes to their devolved social security arrangements, so the SSAC statutory role there will now involve providing advice on devolved arrangements in one part of the United Kingdom.

My question is this: if that is appropriate for devolution in one of the nations of the United Kingdom, what is the Government’s rationale for wanting to take a diametrically opposite view for elements of social security now devolved in Scotland. It does not make any sense and I believe that there is a strong case for ensuring that the SSAC is able to take an overview of the way the UK social security system is evolving in the context of some elements being devolved to Scotland and Northern Ireland. It is certainly essential to have a single statutory independent UK body that can provide oversight of the rollout of universal credit in different ways in three parts of the United Kingdom, because that is what is happening, and of the implications of the way the exercise of the fully devolved powers in Scotland and Northern Ireland are impacting on the effectiveness and coherence of the social security system across the whole of the United Kingdom. I would be pleased to have a Government response to that.

Finally, Amendment 79ZD is the “Lord Freud” amendment, which I am now trying to promote everywhere I can because pilot schemes and test and learn have proved their value beyond any doubt in the policy area of universal credit. We should be encouraging Scottish Ministers and the Scottish Parliament to adopt them as they develop some of these important new social security powers. I understand that the government response might be, “It’s up to Scottish Ministers; it’s not up to us to tell them”, but it would be a good idea to make that explicit in the Bill as often and as clearly as we can. Perhaps the Minister will take some time in his response to clarify some of these amendments. That would do a great service to the understanding of the provisions of Part 3 of the Bill north of the border.

[Lord Purvis of Tweed]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for tabling these amendments, in particular Amendments 77N and 77R. As he has said, these provisions take us in a direction in which we have not travelled so far under devolution. That is quite understandable because this is a very significant transfer of powers.

The use of the phrase “operating concurrently” has the potential to raise not only some constitutional issues, but practical issues in the relationship between the two Parliaments. If my understanding is correct, this will be a novel area where this Parliament is able retrospectively to amend what is in effect devolved legislation. Obviously that would be done in circumstances where agreement has broken down. The Scottish Government will have had a view on the practicability of implementing the powers that have been transferred to them, on who is able to receive universal credit and when. That cannot be done unless with consultation with the Secretary of State.

That is, of course, reasonable: it is an area where there was considerable political disagreement before the Bill came to Parliament, when the Scottish Government claimed that there were veto powers. I think there has been significant movement on both sides, so we have moved away from that political disagreement, but this situation may arise where the Scottish Government have a view, the Secretary of State has another and, in effect, if the Secretary of State believes that the Scottish Government are wrong, it is open to this Parliament to retrospectively amend devolved legislation. That would be a high-profile set of circumstances, so my noble friend is justified in asking the Government for a bit more information as to how the Secretary of State would define “practicable”. An enhanced requirement for the Secretary of State to state why he thinks measures would not be practicable to implement is very reasonable. As my noble friend said, the power to delay implementation is a significant power, in addition to the relationship that it would have with the Scottish Parliament.

--- Later in debate ---

The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions remains legally responsible and accountable for delivery since universal credit remains reserved, and of course he has power to make regulations to postpone timing. I make clear that this is very much a backstop safeguard in the unlikely event that changes cannot be delivered in the proposed timescale. It is absolutely not a means for the DWP to frustrate what the Scottish Government are trying to do.

[Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope]

The Minister is being helpful but this is important. I do not see any escalation mechanism. I supported some of these universal credit changes that the Scottish Government are now seeking to win back—flexibilities in Clauses 27 and 28. However, if we are to use this mechanism, there needs to be some way of resolving disputes in situations where agreements simply cannot be reached. Postponing the introduction of changes indefinitely is not an answer to that question.

[Lord Dunlop]

The first thing to say is that we do not anticipate problems. That is why I go back to this being a backstop power. The powers to vary are discrete. We shall come on to talk about the amendments regarding a welfare commission, but already close intergovernmental working has been established both at ministerial and official level and a lot of work is going on through visits and teach-ins and the like. Given where we are with universal credit rollout—it is already fully rolled out in Musselburgh; by June it will be rolled out in Inverness and by autumn in another five centres across Scotland—there is an opportunity to look at how these changes and the flexibilities that the Scottish Government have got might actually work in practice. There is a good dialogue between the two Governments to establish what the Scottish Government want to do with these powers and what draft Scottish Parliament universal credit regulations might look like. In terms of dispute resolution, we have already established a joint ministerial group on welfare. That has already proved an effective mechanism for resolving any issues between the two Governments.

I turn to the government amendments. Amendment 77B is technical in nature and ensures that executive competence will be transferred to the Scottish Ministers so that they can make payments of Sure Start, maternity grants, funeral payments, cold weather payments and winter fuel payments when Clause 21 is commenced. Clause 21 provides the Scottish Parliament with legislative competence to create a scheme that would allow it to make payments or provide other assistance for funeral and maternity expenses, and expenses incurred due to cold weather. Without the amendment to Clause 21, executive competence would not be transferred to Scottish Ministers when the clause is commenced. This would prevent Scottish Ministers being able to make payments in respect of Sure Start, maternity grants and all the other payments to which I have referred. This amendment therefore ensures that people in Scotland can be paid these benefits by Scottish Ministers and that payments will be made out of Scottish funds.

Our amendments between Amendment 77P and Amendment 79ZB are again technical amendments. They deal with the way in which existing social security legislation will apply after the transfer of powers under the Bill. The amendments to Clauses 27 and 28 relate to universal credit and put beyond doubt the intention that where regulations are made by Scottish Ministers under the new powers, the Scottish Parliament’s procedure for negative instruments applies. Clause 31 is a technical provision that requires legislation to universal credit to be read as if references to the Secretary of State were references to Scottish Ministers. After careful consideration and since universal credit will remain a reserved benefit administered by the DWP, this clause is not required.

The noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, mentioned the Social Security Advisory Committee and its role to advise the Secretary of State on relevant matters relating to social security. The Industrial Injuries Advisory Council advises the Secretary of State on matters relating to industrial injuries benefit and its administration. The roles of the SSAC and IIAC are to remain unchanged. Scottish Ministers, however, will not be able to refer their draft regulations to these bodies for consideration. Once legislative competence has been given to the Scottish Parliament it may, if it wishes, put in place separate scrutiny bodies to consider legislative proposals made by the Scottish Government within the scope of the legislative competence and report back to Scottish Ministers. It is for this reason that we do not support Amendment 79ZC, which seeks to change the role of the SSAC to give it a duty to advise Scottish Ministers. We would of course want to put in place arrangements to facilitate information and co-operation between the two Governments.

Finally, Amendments 79ZE, 79ZF and 79ZG will ensure that UK Parliament procedure is converted into Scottish Parliament procedure in relation to the secondary legislation that Scottish Ministers will be able to make in relation to welfare foods. I will move these government amendments and I ask noble Lords to withdraw or not move their amendments.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Dunlop]

I thank the noble Lord, Lord McAvoy, for his amendment. With this Bill we are moving into a new world of two parallel systems, and it is absolutely the responsibility of both the UK Government and the Scottish Government to ensure that there is a seamless transition from the current situation to that new world and that there are no cracks for people to fall between. We have an important duty in that regard. There is very much a common interest in the UK Government and the Scottish Government working together.

The Government are very sympathetic to the intent behind the amendment but we argue that it is unnecessary because there are existing arrangements in place. However, I agree with the noble Lord on the principle of co-operation, and there is a good level of intergovernmental co-operation in this space already.

The first example of that is the joint ministerial group on welfare, which was proposed by the Prime Minister to the First Minister when they first met after she was elected to her post in November 2014. This body is jointly chaired by the Secretary of State for Scotland and the Scottish Government Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice, Communities & Pensioners’ Rights. Its membership includes not just Scotland Office and Scottish Government Ministers, but is also attended by DWP and Treasury Ministers as required and their Scottish equivalents: for example, the Finance Secretary and the Cabinet Secretary for Fair Work, Skills & Training.

Since February 2015, the ministerial group on welfare has met four times and its agenda covered very practical issues that one would expect as a part of inter-governmental co-operation: information sharing, policy issues, operational and transitional issues and, crucially, dispute resolution. To give some examples, two issues that were resolved through this mechanism were the Work Programme contract extensions and the facilitation of the early introduction of UC flexibilities.

[Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope]

That is an important group; I confess that I did not know that it met and dealt with those things. How do people find out about this? Are there minutes on websites of decisions taken? If people are trying to find out about this important work that the Minister is telling us about, how do we find out about it?

[Lord Dunlop]

The noble Lord raises a good point. One thing that I will take away from this debate is to see how we can promote a better understanding of how this group works and the issues that are being discussed. If I can give him this reassurance, I will certainly take that away.

Along with the ministerial group, there is also a senior officials’ group, which covers very much the same agenda of issues as the ministerial group. It is jointly chaired by the DWP director of devolution and the Scottish Government director of welfare, housing and regeneration. It has a remit to meet quarterly; I think that the next meeting is coming up very shortly, on 1 March. As other examples of co-operation, the DWP has seconded officials to the Scottish Government and, as I mentioned earlier, there is a programme to brief Scottish Government officials and get them up to speed on how the existing system works, so that the Scottish Government are in a much better position to determine how they are going to develop the powers that are coming to them.

In terms of parliamentary scrutiny, DWP Ministers and officials obviously appear before the Scottish Parliament Welfare Reform Committee and are available to appear before the committees of this Parliament. On local authority and other stakeholder engagement, the DWP runs three stakeholder forums in Scotland per year to provide operational updates and improve joint working. It engages with a range of stakeholders from CoSLA, Citizens Advice Scotland, the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations, the Prince’s Trust and the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations. CoSLA and the Scottish Government are both represented on the universal credit partnerships forum, chaired jointly by the DWP and the Local Government Association.

As to reporting, I am happy to take on board and explore with the Scottish Government how we can improve reporting on the working of the joint ministerial working group on welfare, and our intent would be to provide annual reports on implementation.

Therefore, we regard the amendment tabled by the noble Lord as unnecessary, but it also confuses executive and scrutiny functions and perhaps lacks a clear objective—what outcome are we looking for here? One difficulty is that there is no precedent that I am aware of to fall back on. To whom will this body report? As I have explained, there are better ways to achieve the intent behind this amendment, to which, as I say, I am sympathetic. Therefore I ask the noble Lord to withdraw it.

Scotland Bill

Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope Excerpts

Tuesday 24th November 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope (LD)]

My Lords, it is always a great pleasure to follow the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern. He is one of these unique individuals who never says anything that is not worth listening to, and his speech will repay careful study. I remind the House of my interest in the Wise Group, which will become obvious in a moment because I want to restrict my remarks in the next five minutes to the welfare clauses, Clauses 20 to 29. I also want to express the hope that someone in our Whips’ Office reminded my noble friend Lord Campbell of Pittenweem that the last time he was here, he got his clerk to send a fee note for £3,000 for his performance. I hope someone will put him right about the going rate at today’s prices, although it was probably worth £3,000 in terms of the value of his contribution.

This has been a more optimistic debate than I expected. I take my cue from my leader, my noble and learned friend Lord Wallace of Tankerness, by saying that I think this is an opportunity. If I can claim to be a kind of specialist in social policy, I have a distinct feeling that investing in social protection is something more easily accepted by the electorate north of the border than in other parts of the United Kingdom—I put it no higher than that. I have come across a number of exceptional examples in Scotland of investing in preventive spending and giving early attention to preventing recidivism, for example, some of which I have seen as a non-executive director of the Wise Group. There are such opportunities in smaller scale communities across different parts of Scotland that I think would benefit from having more control over what they do.

I agree with everyone who says that it is essential to retain for the benefit of the population of Scotland the residual machinery that deploys universal credit and the private pensions industry in the United Kingdom, but there are areas that I am increasingly coming to believe would be better devolved. I include in that category—it is not in the Bill but we need to think about it for the future; maybe 2020, not 2017—devolving Jobcentre Plus and putting it under the control of the Scottish Government. According to a report published by Cambridge Econometrics, £660 million is spent on employability in Scotland. It comes from all sorts of different places of different sizes, such as the European Social Fund and the Government’s Work Programme. I am absolutely certain that a Scottish Government who were sensible about planning and controlling that expenditure could get better results. The Bill opens the door to that.

I understand the powerful speech of the nobble Lord, Lord Foulkes. I was his best man, and that has been held against me—particularly by his wife. He stands up to the cybernats; I do not have the bottle to handle them the way he does. I have a Twitter account which I hide in; he has a Twitter account through which he attacks everybody in sight. My noble friend Lord Steel made the point that there is a danger of a single-party state. We must remember that the nationalists will not be the Government for ever. I come back to the point made by my noble and learned friend Lord Wallace of Tankerness. We are setting plans in train, and this is an opportunity to think about how we do things better in future. I am more confident than some others; I might be more naive, but I am more confident.

I have two more things to mention before I turn to the eight clauses I will concentrate on. I listened carefully to the noble Lord, Lord Smith of Kelvin, and it was his last point that worried me most. If he is of the considered view that the relationship between our two Governments still is not good enough, the Government need to respond. The Minister has a hard job responding to what will be a detailed and complicated debate. If he does nothing else, I ask him to address that point, if he can. Secondly, it is entirely correct that we put Part 3 at the end of Committee. I am against any principle of detriment, whether it is the first or the second; I just do not think that detriment is a good thing. We should take our time and give the clauses due consideration. If Part 3 comes last, nobody will be more pleased than me, because I will be tabling amendments the like of which I have a minute now to describe.

One thing we need to think carefully about is that Clause 27 introduces the notion of concurrent powers. I do not know of any other part of the social security legal framework that contains that concept. We need to be very careful about how the machinery is put in place to ensure that that works.

We should also consider—I will be tabling amendments to this effect—introducing the Social Security Advisory Committee in some form north of the border, because I do not believe that social security provision will lessen in future in the devolution settlement. I support those who say that the constitutional framework now needs to be addressed. There is a whole series of such questions, and I give notice to the Minister that I will be tabling amendments to try to clarify the Bill, make it more effective and less ambiguous and ensure that there are no unintended consequences.

I end on a point made by the noble Lord, Lord McAvoy, in what was a very measured speech: the important thing is to get a smooth transition in 2017, because the welfare changes affect hundreds of thousands of families. If the machinery does not work, it is not the politicians or the policymakers who will suffer; it is the families who depend on those benefits coming in week by week, month by month. Let us hasten slowly; let us get this important Bill on the statute book in good time to plan for the social security work necessary to ensure that smooth transition in 2017.