Scotland’s Constitutional Future
Alan Reid Excerpts(12 years, 10 months ago)
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Michael Moore
No. If the hon. Gentleman looks at the consultation paper, he will see that no date was set in the consultation. I certainly believe it should be sooner rather than later and I hope to persuade the Scottish Government and people across Scotland that we should have it as soon as possible. However, 18 months is not the position of the Government and is not in the consultation document.
Mr Alan Reid (Argyll and Bute) (LD)
I welcome the statement. The Electoral Commission is independent and is the only body with the expertise to oversee this referendum. Does my right hon. Friend agree that it would be an outrage if the referendum proceeded as per the SNP’s draft Bill whereby it would be overseen by a body that would not be independent of the Scottish Government? The SNP has a mandate to hold a referendum not to rig a referendum.
Michael Moore
I absolutely agree that it is vital that people can have confidence in the referendum process, that it has a legal basis, that it is fair and that it will get a clear, decisive outcome. The role of a body such as the Electoral Commission will be vital because only through its neutrality, independence and experience can we get the necessary confidence so that the process and rules are not an issue. I hope that as we discuss and debate this issue across Scotland people will agree that the commission is the right body to oversee the referendum.
Public Sector Pensions
Alan Reid Excerpts(12 years, 11 months ago)
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Hywel Williams
I am sure that the £100 million cut that the UK Government are dangling before them is proving very persuasive for the Scottish Government, given the difficult position that they are in. I am sure that more will be said later about that as well.
Mr Alan Reid (Argyll and Bute) (LD)
Because of the council tax freeze in England, the Barnett consequentials provided an extra £66 million for the Scottish Government, and they received hundreds of millions extra as a result of the autumn statement. Does the hon. Gentleman not agree that the Scottish Government can choose whether or not to use that money to prevent an increase in pension contributions?
Hywel Williams
The hon. Gentleman is a keen student of Scottish affairs, and possibly of Welsh affairs as well. He will know that the block grant has been falling, and that the choices available are limited.
Hywel Williams
My hon. Friend has put it much better than I could have done. It is not surprising that the Liberals are, as usual, trying to spend other people’s money.
Hywel Williams
No, I must try to make some progress. No doubt the hon. Gentleman will have an opportunity to speak later.
Whatever the Government say, the 3.2% is seen by workers and by the general population as an additional and carefully targeted tax, aimed largely at those who have the least means to pay. As for the negotiations, they must be based on proper evidence rather than on the cases that the Prime Minister quoted selectively during last week’s Question Time, which were so effectively debunked in Radio 4’s “'More or Less” programme and in Channel 4’s “FactCheck”.
David Mundell
The hon. Lady knows that in all aspects of employment, the full-time equivalent applies. That is what will apply to pensions.
David Mundell
Indeed. The hon. Gentleman makes a very good point and I am about to come on to some of the issues about the Scottish Government. The point that has been underlined several times in this debate is that there are many issues on which the Scottish Government could make a decision but have chosen not to do so.
Mr Bain
Sadly, this Government will have had another three Budgets and, perhaps, another three autumn statements by the next general election, so we will make our spending plans clear at that general election—[Hon. Members: “Ah!”] We will, and those plans will not involve the massive cuts in capital spending that have put construction workers on the dole in Scotland—which the Scottish National party has made over the past two years.
Mr Bain
I accept that Liberal Democrat Members might be prisoners of a coalition agreement that they have signed up to for five years, but the hon. Gentleman has to explain to the Scottish people why the Chief Secretary to the Treasury now proposes further austerity, with £23 billion more in cuts in the first two years of the next Parliament, and to explain its effect on the lives of the Scottish people. The switch is a permanent change that will still hurt ordinary families even after the public finances have been restored to stability. The Government’s proposals harm those who are within 10 years of retirement and would have to pay the 3.2% increase in contributions for a pension that would be 15% smaller due to the Government’s changes to contributions and indexation.
The Government’s plans are a further attack on the living standards of women, as 90% of those affected are women, and they add to the effect of the Chancellor’s other cuts in spending, which hurt women twice as hard as men.
Dr Whiteford
I refer the right hon. Gentleman to the Order Paper and the motion that we are debating. It will come as no surprise to anybody in the House that I believe in independence—I am an SNP Member. However, we are talking about public sector pensions and the Government’s proposals. It might be a nice distraction for the Government to talk about other issues that are equally relevant to Scotland’s future.
One of the most disappointing things about this debate has been that the Government have tried to defend their proposals by constantly highlighting the disparity between public and private sector pensions. We owe a debt to the hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Katy Clark) for pointing out the detrimental state of private sector pensions. When the Government responded to the interim Hutton report, my understanding was that they accepted its conclusion that pensions should not become a race to the bottom. However, speaker after speaker on the Government Benches has resorted to the argument that because private sector pensions are really poor, public sector pensions should be levelled down. That will not in any way address our pensions challenge. It is not sustainable and it is not fair to anyone in the private or public sector.
We have some of the highest levels of pensioner poverty in Europe. Currently, 30% of pensioner households and a massive 43% of single pensioners, most of whom are women, are in receipt of income-related benefits, whether that is pension credit, housing benefit or council tax benefit. Having large numbers of older people on means-tested benefits is not the way to do things. It is the price that we pay for poor pension provision. It is not an efficient way to support people in retirement.
The other big myth that has been well and truly blown out of the water today is that public sector pensions are gold-plated. Quite simply, they are not. Member after Member has pointed out that most public servants retire on modest incomes. The PCS points out that its average member’s pension is only £4,200 year. That is £80 a week, which is only £4 above the Government’s pensioner poverty figure. If such people’s pensions are reduced or they opt out because of the new conditions and contribution increases, it will simply put the burden back on means-tested benefits to keep people out of abject poverty in their old age.
In local government, in which 67% of the work force are women, the average woman’s pension is only £2,800 a year. Almost half of local government workers are on pensions of less than £3,000, and even in the NHS, in which salaries are much higher because of the professional qualifications involved, three quarters of members are still on pensions of less than £9,000 a year.
The Government have tried to sell us their proposals on the basis that low and middle-income earners will be protected from contribution increases, and may even be better off as a result. That is one of their key claims. However, because of the switch in indexing from RPI to CPI, all public sector workers will lose out in the longer term, and they will all be working longer. That indexing switch has been mentioned in the debate, and I am sorry that more Members did not vote against it when they had the chance to do so back in February. They have a chance to rectify that now, and I hope that they will support us in the Lobby today.
Perhaps the most misleading aspect of the Government’s approach to the contributions increases is that they have said there will be protection for low-paid workers. As the Minister admitted earlier, the contributions of part-time workers will be calculated on the basis of full-time equivalent salaries, which will have massive implications for women, who make up the vast majority of part-time workers. About 32% of the women in our work force work part-time so that they can combine employment with unpaid work in the home or looking after others.
The Government have said that workers on incomes under £15,000 will not pay increased contributions, and that other low earners on up to £21,000 will pay reduced contributions, but when we look at the small print, we see that those thresholds, calculated on the basis of full-time equivalent salaries rather than their actual take-home pay, will mean that even professional people such as nurses and teachers who work part-time will have their pension contributions increased.
Mr Reid
But in Scotland, the Scottish Government decide the pension contributions of teachers, health service workers, local government workers, the police and firemen. If the hon. Lady believes in her argument, does that mean that when the SNP implements the contribution increases in Scotland, it will make an exemption for low-paid part-time workers?
Dr Whiteford
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for allowing me to point out two things. The first is the Scottish Government’s living wage, which has been raised to £7.20. That will significantly protect the household income of low-paid workers. The second and more substantial is the role of the Scottish Government in the matter. There has been a lot of chat around the Chamber about the room for manoeuvre that the Scottish Government do or do not have. Let me make it clear that the Chief Secretary to the Treasury wrote to the Cabinet Secretary in Scotland, John Swinney, pointing out that the Treasury would cut the budget by £8.4 million a month—that is half a billion pounds over the spending review period—if the Scottish Government did not impose the pension increases.
Scotland (Poverty)
Alan Reid Excerpts(12 years, 11 months ago)
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Sandra Osborne
These issues affect the whole community, which is why in many ways high unemployment is a false economy. It would be far better invested in the communities. Professor Steve Fothergill, who co-authored the report, said:
“The large numbers that will be pushed off incapacity benefits over the next two to three years are entirely the result of changes in benefit rules. The reduction does not mean that there is currently widespread fraud, or that the health problems and disabilities are anything less than real.”
He then goes on to say that
“the estimates show that the Coalition Government is presiding over a national welfare reform that will impact principally on individuals and communities outside its own political heartlands.”
The Minister will be painfully aware that Scotland certainly meets that description.
I do not have time this afternoon to go into the detail of the Government’s Welfare Reform Bill, but behind the stated intention of rolling up most means-tested benefits into a universal credit and making work pay, there are significant increases in the conditions attached to entitlement, and draconian sanctions for those who fail to meet these conditions. Welfare benefits cuts of £18 billion over the next three years, in conjunction with the proposals in the Welfare Reform Bill, will have a hugely negative effect on Scotland’s poorest communities, families and individuals. These measures will be across the whole of the UK, but will also cut across a whole raft of devolved responsibilities. They deserve the united resistance of Scottish MPs and MSPs.
Attention must be refocused on to the privileges and lifestyles of the affluent and rich as much as the more disadvantaged. The Government must tackle the banks and fuel companies rather than focus on hitting public sector pensions.
Recently my constituency Labour party launched a plan locally at a public meeting in Ayr: Labour’s five-point plan for jobs. We heard a compelling argument for why this is needed from STUC deputy Stephen Boyd. He said that in Scotland we have a huge full-time employment deficit; that is the deficit that the Tories do not want to talk about. There are more than 150,000 people who want to work in full-time jobs but are currently unemployed. There are also the underemployed, and the economically inactive but wanting to work. There is a total of almost half a million Scots who want to be in full-time employment but are not. Jobseeker’s allowance claimants in East Ayrshire are up 86% on last year, and they are up 65% in South Ayrshire. These are frightening figures. The number of claimants in the last six months in these areas is up 300% and 400%.
Mr Alan Reid (Argyll and Bute) (LD)
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for giving way. I sat through her speech, which contained a lot of criticism of the Government, expecting her to come forward with solutions, but they have been lacking. For all of these spending projects that she has talked about, will she tell us by how much she wants to increase Government spending? What taxes will she put up to find the money? The only source of revenue she indicated was a bankers’ levy bonus tax; will she tell us how much that would raise and the rate at which it would be set?
Sandra Osborne
I do not have the figures to hand, but I actually referred to a number of policy initiatives that could be taken and were taken by the last Labour Government. I could go back into my speech and read out Labour’s five point plan for jobs, but I am aware that other Members would like to speak and I was genuinely trying to curtail my remarks. I will let the hon. Member know about it later.
I firmly believe that there is more than one Scotland, just as there is more than one Britain. In the end, how you see Scotland depends on your perspective, your politics and your priorities. To paraphrase Nye Bevan, socialism is a language of priorities, just a very different set of priorities. The trouble with the SNP is that, for all its rhetorical nationalism, there remains a single priority: independence. Today should be a day for getting away from the tired, endless wrangling over constitutional issues and the protracted debate over the long-time-coming independence referendum. It should be a day for getting away from the SNP’s dangerous lottery, playing with people’s jobs, incomes and life chances, ignoring all of the warnings, crossing their fingers and hoping for the best. Today is a day for concentrating on the real Scotland—a country of huge achievement and potential, and a country rich in diverse cultures, but a country that also knows the reality of poverty and the risk of increased poverty to come unless it gets the political leadership and policies it needs for a better way forward.
Ann McKechin
The hon. Lady makes a good point. I know that that matter is not currently covered in the regulations proposed by the Government. However, should there be any further expansion, we would be looking at something close to a total collapse of social housing, because of the sheer numbers of people, particularly pensioners, who are living alone in properties with two or more bedrooms.
One change due in 2013 is that housing benefit will be restricted for working-age claimants in the social rented sector to those who are occupying a larger property than their household size. Do the Government know how many will be impacted by that change? Why do I bother to ask them, because they have no desire to find out?
It has been estimated from the family resources survey that Scotland-wide there are approximately 100,000 households in the social rented sector in receipt of housing benefit where the accommodation is currently under-occupied. We do not, however, know how many of those are rented to retired tenants compared with those of working age. Glasgow Housing Association, which is Scotland’s largest social landlord, has estimated that roughly 13% of their entire housing stock will be affected by just that one change alone. That represents thousands of tenants in just one city in our country.
Such a change may occur simply because an adult child leaves home, even if the family still have children of school age. A family may be forced to move out of a property that they have lived in for many years and in some instances to move many miles from the community in which they are settled—or they might fall into rent arrears, or they could just eat less, or they could not heat their home. That is the reality of the real choices that thousands of low-income families will now face.
Mr Reid
I share some of the concerns that the hon. Lady is voicing. However, it is important to point out that the regulations have not yet been drawn up, so she cannot predict that such things will happen until we see the regulations. I certainly hope that they will be framed sensibly to take into account the issues that she is raising.
Ann McKechin
The proposals are currently in the Welfare Reform Bill. I hope that he and the Minister will think again and will persuade their colleagues in the Department for Work and Pensions and Lord Freud in the other place, who seems to be utterly resistant to making any changes to the clauses relating to those draconian measures. Hon. Members will remember the chaos caused by the implementation of the poll tax, and the consequences we faced for many years due to the scale of the arrears that built up and the misery that was heaped on our poorest communities. Perhaps the Minister will explain why his party has never learned the lesson of what occurs when a Government implement unplanned, arbitrary hits on those with the least resources to cope.
Coming back to my comments about this month’s report on hunger in the city that I am proud to represent, Paul Mosley, professor of economics at Sheffield university, said that the number of people using the Scotcash community bank service who struggled to buy food in the previous week was far higher in Scotland than in any other area of the UK. He said:
“In other cities outside of Glasgow the figure was 1% to 2%... In other words, there were some people whose poverty was so bad they were also in food poverty and sometimes didn’t have enough food to give to the children to eat. But in Glasgow the proportion was something like 10%.”
Mosley said that the findings supported suggestions that areas of Glasgow suffered a depth of poverty that
“you don’t encounter in other parts of the UK”.
That depth of poverty is no surprise to me, and I am sure it will be no surprise to you either, Mr Robertson. No other part of western Europe witnessed such an intense and rapid deindustrialisation in the 1970s and 1980s, in a city that already had a long history of poverty. I am in no doubt that it will take many years to reverse, but I have always believed that it is possible, if we are prepared to put in the necessary commitment and resources. In recent years, figures on absolute and relative poverty in Scotland have flatlined, but we now face a really tough challenge. Are we prepared to witness the reversal of the advances made during the first years of this century or are we willing to organise our priorities so that we can protect the poorest and do more to improve their lives? That is the real challenge that we face in our country—not the endless debates on constitutional niceties, but what kind of country do we actually want to be.
Just yesterday, as my hon. Friend the Member for Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock correctly mentioned, it was calculated that the Government’s freeze on tax credits and related benefits will put a further 100,000 children throughout the UK below the poverty line. I look forward to hearing the Minister explain in detail how his Government will now meet their legally binding targets on child poverty reduction. I am also interested to know when he last discussed poverty or any related issues with his counterparts in the Scottish Government. If that was not recently, perhaps he could undertake to make a real St Andrew’s day pledge to make the eradication of poverty his priority.
Dame Anne Begg
Those concerns are shared by all of us. It has been very difficult to get robust figures about the numbers who are being migrated from incapacity benefit on to employment and support allowance, and how many of them will fall out of the benefits system all together or find themselves on jobseeker’s allowance as an alternative. The early indication from the pilot that took place in both Aberdeen and Burnley would suggest that about 30% of those on incapacity benefit will move to JSA. That one single move is immediately a loss of £20, or slightly more, a week for that family. We do not know whether those figures are robust but we do know that, for new claimants, it is far less than that. Part of the reason why the tabloid press has managed to create the impression that there are lots of people languishing on incapacity benefit or disability benefit who do not deserve it is that they conflate the proportions who are new claimants getting the benefit with those already on the benefit but who have been migrated across. Potentially, 30% will be losing £20 or more a week.
We also know that the Welfare Reform Bill proposes to limit contributory employment and support allowance to one year. In areas such as mine and the one represented by the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Dr Whiteford), where it is more likely that people will live in a household with some income, because unemployment is relatively low, so a partner, husband or wife might be working, those people will lose benefits altogether because they will not qualify for the income-related benefit that would replace it. That is why 58,000 are likely to fall out of the benefits system completely. These are people who have paid into the system all their lives. They thought that, when things turned difficult for them, when something happened and they were not able to work anymore, the welfare state would be there for them and national insurance would work as the name suggests—as an insurance that they would get that contributory benefit. This Government have decided that that is not good enough and that this group will qualify only for employment and support allowance for a year. In a year, someone might have managed only to get a diagnosis. They might have only just started their cancer treatment, they might still be getting worse but not be bad enough to be in the support group, with a degenerative neurological condition that has just been diagnosed. After a year, their money will stop if they are in the work-related activity group of ESA.
Dame Anne Begg
Until they retire, which is what the position is at the moment. If they are in the support group, they will keep it for ever.
The hon. Gentleman’s intervention has given me the opportunity to raise something that he can discuss with his colleagues in the Department for Work and Pensions. The way that the national insurance system works is that if someone has not made a NI contribution for the previous two years, then they do not get the contributory benefit. I tabled a written question to ask what happened if someone had been in the work-related activity group for two years and then got worse, particularly if they had a degenerative illness, and found themselves in the support group. They would not have the national insurance contribution to go back on to the contributory element. Would they be able to get the ESA? The reply from the Minister was unequivocal—yes, they would be able to go back on to contributory ESA if they had moved from the WRAG to the support group after two years.
However, in correspondence with an official, some doubt has been cast on whether that is indeed the case. It is not clear from the Welfare Reform Bill, and it is certainly not clear from the debates around the Bill, whether someone who has been on WRAG for two years will get their contributory ESA back again should they get worse. This is very important for people with conditions such as multiple Sclerosis and Parkinson’s. If someone has a really bad episode and goes straight into the support group, they will be able to keep their contributory ESA for the rest of their working life, whereas, if they have a slowly progressing disease and go into WRAG for a couple of years, but then end up just as ill and disabled as the other person, they do not get it back. It seems unfair and arbitrary. The Government must get this right and be clear about it, or large numbers of people, potentially those with some of the most profound disabilities and ill health, will be disadvantaged simply because they fall the wrong side of the line when they go for their work capability assessment.
Mr Tom Clarke (Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock (Sandra Osborne) both on obtaining such an important debate on St Andrew’s day and on her excellent speech.
My hon. Friend challenged us to speak up for the poorest and most vulnerable, and we already have enough evidence to show that poverty in Scotland is rising. It is therefore appropriate to address that very serious matter. We have seen increasing youth unemployment and, right up to yesterday, reckless cuts to incapacity benefits, disability living allowances, winter fuel payments and the rest. Earlier this month, The Guardian reported that 500,000 people will be forced off incapacity benefit. Scotland will be one of the worst-hit areas. Child poverty, youth unemployment and fuel poverty have all increased, and are set to rise further. As I said, yesterday was no help.
A Government who promised
“not to balance the books on the backs of the poorest”
have barely responded to that pledge. They admitted yesterday that it will take another two years, with all the pain but without any gain. Youth unemployment, which is a scar over Scotland, stands at a quite remarkable figure of 1.02 million—the highest ever recorded. There will be a lost generation of young people, just as in the ’80s and Mrs Thatcher’s time, which will lead to broken homes, broken relationships, dashed hopes and broken dreams.
I would not for one second, particularly as I am asking all my colleagues to reflect on what youth unemployment means, condone the riots that took place in England. Indeed, I am pleased that they did not extend to Scotland. However, it would be naive in the extreme to continue with those figures and statistics—the reality in Scotland—and not expect young people to articulate their views. We were first warned about that as long ago as the war, when Sir William Beveridge wrote:
“If full employment is not won and kept, no liberties are secure, for to many they will not seem worth while.”
We can barely say that we were not warned.
Since 2010, JSA claimants rose in most deprived areas of my constituency—I underline that—from 26.3% to 28.1%, against a UK average of 3.9%. We are asking what the response is. What is the coalition prepared to do? The whole picture is quite unacceptable, and certainly in my constituency. I will meet local officials from the Department for Work and Pensions on Friday to examine in detail what is happening to people in my constituency who are unemployed.
Unemployment, I think Opposition Members agree, is not just a statistic. Save the Children said that
“children living in low income households are nearly three times more likely to suffer mental health problems than the affluent.”
The link between life expectancy and income is well documented. These are real people with real lives that are about to be wrecked unless we rescue them in time. In my constituency, there are high numbers for unemployment and for people suffering from anxiety and depression, and—this is consistent with what my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen South (Dame Anne Begg) so eloquently said—those people often find that those things go together. That increases the number of DLA claimants. I therefore challenge the heart of the Government’s economic policy. Taking people out of poverty is a sensible thing to do. It is a moral responsibility, but it is also economically correct. How long are we prepared to go on paying people to be unemployed—3 million of them—and, as we did in Mrs Thatcher’s time, ask those who pay taxes to make that contribution? Taking people out of poverty is one of the biggest challenges that we face, particularly in Scotland.
Recently, my colleagues have raised the issue of fuel poverty again and again. Three thousand people in the UK die from fuel poverty every year, which is more than the number of Britons killed on the roads. In Scotland, there are nearly 1 million homes in fuel poverty. What have the Government done, and what should we urge them to do? Their policies have led to increases in fuel prices, and they have cut winter fuel payments and even cut the tariff for solar energy—hardly an approach to make Scotland a greener country.
Mr Alan Reid
The right hon. Gentleman referred to the cut in the solar energy tariff. If the Government had not made that change, it would have meant far higher electricity bills for everyone, so his argument is inconsistent.
Mr Clarke
I wish I had more time to develop an argument that I think the hon. Gentleman heard when I was fortunate enough to secure a debate on energy in the House a year or two ago. Indeed, on the subject of energy, that leads me very nicely to the next point that I wish to make. How long are we in Scotland and in Britain prepared to wait for six companies—for all the world, they look like a cartel to me, and I do not see the regulation that we expect from the regulators—to act? How long are we prepared to put up with this? Even last week, people were told by Ministers, “Well, what you do is change to another company.” We all know what happens then: if we change to another company, they put up their prices, too, and they do so again and again, which is wholly unacceptable.
Mr Clarke
My purpose is to make conversions, Mr. Robertson, and I have been able to do so.
In common with my hon. Friend for Aberdeen South, I would like to discuss disability because many of the people we are thinking about, many of those who have made representations to us and, indeed, many of those who are unable to make representations are those who might be considered either disabled or the family or friends of disabled people. Contact a Family told us that 52% of families with a disabled child are at risk of experiencing poverty. That is no surprise when we know that it costs three times as much to bring up a disabled child than a child without disability. The income of families with a disabled child averages £15,000, which is 25.5% below the UK mean. Barnado’s told us recently that only 16% of mothers of disabled children are able to work compared with 60% of mothers generally.
I am glad that my right hon. Friend for Stirling (Mrs McGuire) is present, because she brought the issue of the mobility component to the attention of the House. Yesterday, I was happy to see that after battle, including debates in this place, the Government announced that they were retreating on their intention to take the mobility component of DLA from people who live in residential homes. The original proposal was an outrage that should never have been considered and it caused a great deal of unhappiness among a large number of people and their families. That was unacceptable. As my right hon. Friend has said, however, the announcement was not made in this House, where it should have been, but in The Times.
For all the reasons that my right hon. and hon. Friends have given, I strongly support the attempt by my hon. Friend the Member for Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock to focus on the issue of poverty. It is St. Andrew’s day and we are concerned about Scotland. It can be, and will be, a great Scotland. Of late, I have been fortunate to invite new companies into my constituency, and I welcome that and those entrepreneurs’ enthusiasm. However, they are entitled to more encouragement than they are getting, but so far the Government have not shown any lead on that. Today, I believe we are speaking for Scotland, and I believe that Scotland is listening.
Mrs Anne McGuire (Stirling) (Lab)
I conscious of that, and I would not like to fall out with you, Mr Robertson. This is the first time that I have been in this interesting power position with you, and I will make sure that I obey your orders.
I would also like to add my congratulations to my hon. Friend the Member for Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock (Sandra Osborne) for initiating this debate in Westminster Hall. I only want to make a short contribution.
The emphasis today has been on welfare issues, to which I will return if I have the time, but I want us to recognise what poverty means for many people, particularly children. A group launch by anti-poverty campaigners in Glasgow clearly identified the fact that children and young people who are growing up in poverty suffer from a range of disadvantages that other children do not experience. They were far less likely to be involved in leisure activities than other children because their families could not pay for them. They were three times less likely to play a musical instrument— something that is about enhancing people’s lifestyle, but children in poverty do not have the same access to that advantage. It is interesting to note that, given the emphasis on football in Glasgow, the group also highlighted the fact that young people from better-off households were four times more likely to be involved in a football club than those children from poorer households. That sort of hidden poverty, which we do not always emphasise in debates such as this one, is the real price that many families are now paying.
The hon. Member for Argyll and Bute (Mr. Reid) asked us, “What would you do?” I would actually like to flip that coin back to him and say that it is not just what we would do, but what they have done that is making the significant difference to people in Scotland, for example the decision to reduce the Sure Start maternity grant to the first child only. That grant was of great benefit to many poorer families. The Government have also frozen child benefit and other benefits, even those in-work benefits, have been uprated according to the consumer prices index rather than according to the retail prices index. They have also removed discretionary tax credits, such as the baby element, which means the loss of £545 a year per family. According to the House of Commons figures, a baby born into a low-income family from April 2011 will be about £1,500 worse off compared with a sibling born into the same family before April 2010. That is the sum lost from a family where every penny counts.
Frankly, those supporting the coalition Government have to accept that it is not a question of what we would do, but what they have done. They need to answer whether they have made life better or worse for the poorest members of our society. As I look around my constituency and I look at others areas of Scotland, I think we must make the judgment that the coalition Government have made life worse for many of the poorest people in our communities. If there is anything that we need to give testimony to that, surely it must be the fact that there are now more people in cities in Scotland relying on handouts and food parcels than ever before. I never thought that I would see families having to rely on emergency food rations from organisations that were set up specifically for that purpose. What sort of civilised society are we that allows a family to be so poor that it cannot feed its own children? That is my condemnation of the way in which the Government operate.
I want to put a question particularly to those Lib Dem members of the coalition who I know are good people. They need to look back at their own history and see exactly where they came from. Go back and look at some of the great developments of the 19th century, such as those made by the Frys, the Rowntrees and the Cadburys. They took those actions because they recognised the link between poverty and lack of aspiration, between unemployment and people being unable to live a decent life. Over the Christmas recess, I hope that some of those Lib Dems will have time to reflect on what they are doing to collude in a situation that is making life much worse for many people in Scotland.
Mr Reid
I am grateful to the right hon. Lady for giving way. The economic situation is grim, and none of us wants to see people living in poverty. I came along to this debate because I wanted to hear what suggestions Labour Members had for doing things differently. So far, I have not heard any, and I would be grateful if the right hon. Lady could actually tell us what Labour would do differently if it were in power.
Mrs McGuire
Let me explain what we did differently. We did things differently over 13 years when child poverty decreased from 27% to 20%. We made it a legal obligation on Government that they should reduce child poverty. I will tell the hon. Gentleman what we would not have done. We would not have sacrificed the poor as the Government are now sacrificing them. I know that the hon. Gentleman is a good person, and he must ask himself that question during the Christmas recess when he might have wanted to think of other things. We have seen a deterioration in the standards in which the poorest in Scotland have to live their lives – 850,000 people, and rising, are living in fuel poverty, according to Consumer Focus. Finally, may I say in this debate that poverty is not just about money, although money is important? Poverty creates an environment where, if children cannot eat a breakfast in the morning, they cannot go to school and learn; where they are excluded from the company of their peers, because they cannot afford to enjoy that company; and where they cannot go to a school dance or participate in sport. Worst of all, it creates an environment where many of them suffer not only from financial, educational and health poverty, but from a poverty of ambition. Frankly, that is dangerously close to the legacy that this Government are going to give hundreds of thousands of children in Scotland, unless they start to reflect on what they are doing and deal with it quickly.
Mr Bain
My hon. Friend is entirely right. Yesterday, the OBR’s figures revealed that if we had followed the public spending plans of my right hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South West (Mr Darling), borrowing would be £37 billion less. There is an alternative—based around growth and job creation—that would not have visited the damaging effects of increased poverty and inequality which this Government are waging on the people of Scotland.
Mr Reid
None of us wants to see poverty or inequality, but the only solutions that the hon. Gentleman has brought forward are to cut taxes and to increase public spending. Please will he tell us where the money would come from to do all that, without getting the country even deeper into debt and the mess that his Government left behind?
Mr Bain
Thankfully, there are more enlightened Governments in Europe. For example, the newly elected Socialist-led Government of Denmark, who have introduced a stimulus package, have seen bond rates lower that those of the United Kingdom and have entirely defeated the arguments of the right-wing parties in Denmark, which predicted that bond rates would rise if a Socialist-led Government introduced such a stimulus package. The reality does not bear out the hon. Gentleman’s point.
Mr Bain
It is very clear that this Government are borrowing to cut, not borrowing to grow. The entire theory that the Chancellor has drawn on from some of the extremes of right-wing economics in America in the 1980s and 1990s—essentially, that Governments should shrink and shrivel the public sector and that the private sector will take up all the slack—has simply been destroyed by what the OBR published yesterday. That theory does not work, and it is causing increased poverty and inequality in our country. The hon. Member for Argyll and Bute (Mr Reid) should disown it today.
With both Governments—the one here and the one in Edinburgh—simply not having done enough about youth unemployment, we have a rate of youth unemployment across the UK of 20%, but it is even higher in Scotland, at 21.3%. Nothing speaks more to this Government’s failure of ambition to cut child poverty than yesterday’s cruel grab by the Chancellor on the promised uplift on child tax credits and working tax credits. For the coalition parties to slash the tax credits of low and middle-income mums and children in Scotland at a time when the real value of wages declining by 3.5% this year, as revealed by the Office for National Statistics last week—is an act of brutal contempt for the plight that the poorest are facing, with spending cuts that are too far, and too fast for ordinary families to bear.
In 2009-10, 153,000 families in work in Scotland received working tax credit and child tax credit, and this helped 250,000 children in Scotland. People in Scotland cannot see how it will be fair to snatch £1.2 billion in tax credits from low and middle earners while the Government have raised the bank balance sheet levy by a paltry £300 million in the same autumn statement. They will wonder how the Prime Minister can ever again have the brass neck to claim that we are all in this together. Scottish families will lose the extra £110 per child that they were promised in the Budget this year and expected to receive next year. Freezing the working tax credit will cut working families’ income by an additional £100.
As the Resolution Foundation established yesterday, more than three quarters of the burden in new cuts in tax credits is faced by people in the lower half of the income scale, with those in the top 10% simply meeting 3% of that burden. Total tax credit cuts next year will amount to £2.9 billion, a tenth of the entire tax credit expenditure. This afternoon the Institute for Fiscal Studies has given its verdict on the Chancellor’s squeeze on the living standards of ordinary people: average incomes will fall by 7.4% between 2009 and 2030. Based on the OBR’s own figures, it has calculated that families face a slump in the value of their household disposable income of 3% this year compared with a predicted 1.1% at the time of the March Budget, a fall of 1.1% next year compared with a predicted rise of 0.7% in March. Most damning of all is the finding by the IFS that the distributional effects of the changes announced by the Chancellor yesterday will punish those in the lowest two income deciles. Unbelievably, those in the wealthiest 10% are among the few gainers. Unsurprisingly, it is families with children who take the biggest hit. As Paul Johnson of the IFS said on BBC Radio 4’s “World at One”, this afternoon,
“failure to index some elements of tax credits…will leave some poorer families worse off, and will lead to an increase in measured child poverty…The Government have no chance at all of reducing child poverty.”
What a damning finding on what the Chancellor did yesterday.
In terms of public services, on which the poorest rely most heavily, the IFS has today discovered that the Government are planning a huge assault on public service spending, a 16.2% real-terms cut over the next seven years, far beyond the previous record of 7% real-terms cuts in the 1970s. The Chancellor’s promise not to balance the books on the backs of the poorest lies in tatters this afternoon. His own Treasury figures show that the poorest fifth of the population are amongst the biggest losers from the tax and benefits measures in his Budgets and autumn statements, and inequality is on the rise. He could not even bring himself to admit in his statement yesterday that his own figures show that child poverty will rise across the UK by a further 100,000 in the next tax year as a result of his cruel cuts in tax credits and housing benefits.
This Government have made their choice: slumping growth, rising poverty and higher unemployment are the prices worth paying for a failed economic theory that is letting Britain down and offering nothing but despair for the jobless millions. Now, Scotland can see them as they truly are—the downgraded Chancellor of a deflationary and uncaring Government.
Oral Answers to Questions
Alan Reid Excerpts(13 years ago)
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David Mundell
I tell the hon. Lady to be slightly less predictable and finally to take some responsibility for the situation in which her Government left this country, including the biggest peacetime deficit in our history.
Mr Alan Reid (Argyll and Bute) (LD)
Unemployment in Kintyre could be reduced if the community bid to take over the former RAF base at Machrihanish goes ahead. I hope that the Ministry of Defence will make a contribution towards making the water supply fit for purpose, so that the community’s bid is viable. Will the Minister please encourage the MOD to do so?
David Mundell
I am happy to meet my hon. Friend and take forward his concerns with the MOD.
Oral Answers to Questions
Alan Reid Excerpts(13 years, 2 months ago)
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Michael Moore
I think that everybody in the House is aware of the realities of fuel taxation. I am therefore sure that the hon. Gentleman was welcoming the fact that in our Budget earlier this year we reduced fuel duty rather than increasing it in the way the previous Government had planned. This question gives me the opportunity to remind the House that we have made further progress in the derogation for highlands and islands fuel prices, which is very welcome news indeed, so that we can get a reduction in fuel duty in the islands.
Mr Alan Reid (Argyll and Bute) (LD)
The highlands and islands economy is being held back by the high price of fuel. I warmly welcome the Government’s progress on the island fuel discount and on the cut in fuel duty in this year’s Budget. However, a further increase in fuel duty is planned for January; if the price of fuel remains high, I hope that that will not go ahead. Will the Secretary of State make representations to the Chancellor?
Michael Moore
I am very aware from my own travels around Scotland, particularly to my hon. Friend’s constituency, of the extremely challenging circumstances for users of cars and vehicles across rural areas and, indeed, all of Scotland. I therefore particularly welcome, to repeat my earlier point, the Budget reduction and the European Commission's announcement about its support for our derogation. We want to keep all these things in balance. My hon. Friend’s comments will have been heard by the Chancellor, but he alone is responsible for taxation matters.
Oral Answers to Questions
Alan Reid Excerpts(13 years, 5 months ago)
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Michael Moore
That is a typically interesting interpretation of the figures in this morning’s report, which show that, on pretty well every measure, Scotland is running at a deficit. That highlights the volatility and difficulties associated with the different measures. It is vital that we get Scotland’s economy back on the right footing. That is why, as a Government, we are cutting corporation tax, keeping interest rates low and reducing the burden on national insurance. I am happy to work with the Scottish Government, who have fantastic powers at their disposal to ensure that the economy grows. We need to work in partnership.
Mr Alan Reid (Argyll and Bute) (LD)
6. What recent discussions he has had with the Secretary of State for Transport on the Clyde coastguard station in Greenock.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (David Mundell)
I have regular discussions with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport on a range of issues of mutual interest, including the future of Scottish coastguard stations.
Mr Reid
May I pay tribute to David Cairns, who had been campaigning to save the Clyde coastguard station before his tragic early death? The waters around Argyll and Bute, with all its islands, peninsulas and sea lochs, present a unique challenge to seafarers. If the Clyde coastguard station is closed, however, all the valuable local knowledge of the area held by the people who work there will be lost. Will the Minister draw that to the attention of the Secretary of State for Transport and urge him to keep Clyde coastguard station open?
David Mundell
It is appropriate that there is mention of David Cairns, who gave distinguished service as a Scotland Office Minister, at this first Scottish questions since his tragic death. I assure my hon. Friend that his points will have been heard, as they were in the recent Westminster Hall debate in which he took part. The Department for Transport will make no announcement on the future of coastguard stations until the Transport Committee has reported.
Oral Answers to Questions
Alan Reid Excerpts(13 years, 6 months ago)
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Michael Moore
First, may I again recognise the hon. Gentleman’s consistent efforts on behalf of the computer games industry? I recognise the importance of the industry not just to Dundee and Scotland, but to the UK as a whole. As he knows—and as I hope the response to the Select Committee’s report reinforces—we have considered very carefully the incentives we need to offer not just to the computer games industry, but to a whole range of sectors in Scotland and across the country. It is our judgment that to get ourselves away from the danger zone we were in last May, it is important to tackle the deficit and to get ourselves on the path to growth. We have done that in successive Budgets setting out plans to reduce corporation tax, to keep interest levels low, to reduce the national insurance burden and to set out important new targets for banks and their lending to small businesses. That applies to the computer industry sector as much as to any others. Once again I will be happy to meet him to discuss the matter, if he would like.
Mr Alan Reid (Argyll and Bute) (LD)
Unemployment in Kintyre will be greatly reduced if the community group’s bid to buy the former air base at Machrihanish goes ahead. I thank the Secretary of State for meeting the community group recently. I have written to him with a list of outstanding issues that are still to be resolved. I ask that Scotland Office Ministers continue to work with Defence Ministers and the community group to resolve those outstanding issues as quickly as possible, so that the buy-out can go ahead, with exciting prospects for the Kintyre economy.
Michael Moore
Again, I pay tribute to my hon. Friend’s sterling efforts on this issue. I also welcomed the opportunity to meet representatives from the Machrihanish group a few months ago. I recognise that there are still issues that the group wishes to see resolved, and that these involve ongoing discussion with the Ministry of Defence. I will ensure that my right hon. and hon. Friends in the Ministry of Defence are aware of the details of my hon. Friend’s concerns, and that he receives a response to them.
Scotland Bill
Alan Reid Excerpts(13 years, 8 months ago)
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Mr Reid
According to Hansard, just before the hon. Gentleman sat down last night, he said that there would be 119 Members of the Scottish Parliament. He just said that there would be 118. My understanding is that all 59 constituencies, apart from the Western Isles, would have two Members, and that the Western Isles would get one. I think that that makes 117.
Mr Donohoe
I think that we are wandering into maths rather than arithmetic, but the hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. Of course, that would be a saving to the public purse, which is very important. Perhaps one could call it a Freudian slip. I have come to the conclusion that he is right and that the number should indeed be 117, and not 119 as I suggested.
Moving swiftly on—
Mr Reid
It will come as no surprise to the hon. Member for Central Ayrshire (Mr Donohoe) that I will not support his new clause. He ended by talking about fairness, but that goes to the hub of the debate. What is unfair about his system is that it would gerrymander the voting system in favour of one party—his own, the Labour party. It is an extremely unfair system. That is what the debate should be about, but the hon. Gentleman did not touch on that anywhere in his contribution.
Thomas Docherty
I am fascinated by the hon. Gentleman’s new-found passion for stopping gerrymandering. Will he remind us why he voted last week to give the Isle of Wight two seats?
Mr Reid
It was a product of the coalition agreement. I was in favour of the first part of the Bill; I did not like the second part, but we made a coalition agreement. The Liberal Democrats liked part 1; Conservative colleagues liked part 2, but not part 1: that is what compromise and coalition is all about.
The hon. Member for Central Ayrshire also said that people did not consider the voting system to be important. People may not be aware of the intricacies of the voting system, but the people of Scotland overwhelmingly voted in the referendum for a proportional voting system, so that is important to them. It was endorsed by the Constitutional Convention, of which the hon. Gentleman was a member, and then, as I say, by the people of Scotland in a referendum.
Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that there is a particular problem with the party list system? Many advocates of proportional representation argue that it will make people more accountable. The experience of the system in Scotland, however, has been that some people can bounce backwards and forwards from being constituency MSPs to being top of their party list—and back again, or not—so the public has little chance of dislodging them unless the party does. Might there not be a better list system than the party list system?
Mr Reid
That is a fair point. I am fully in favour of proportional representation, but every electoral system can be improved. One way of improving this system would be to move from closed to open lists, which would give the electorate a choice. Another reform is also possible: if cherry-picking of constituencies by regional list Members is considered to be a problem, we can adopt the system in Wales whereby no one can stand both for a constituency and on the regional list. That would remove the problem of cherry-picking at a stroke, because there would be no advantage for a regional list Member in cherry-picking a particular constituency.
Fiona O’Donnell
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that we have already seen improvements, such as the removal from the list of the vanity party that was “Alex Salmond for First Minister”?
Mr Reid
If the SNP wants to call itself Alex Salmond for First Minister, it is perfectly entitled to do so. What it cannot do is confuse the electorate by having two names. One minute it is called the Scottish National party; the next minute it is called Alex Salmond for First Minister. If only SNP members would make up their minds on what they want their party to be called.
Mr Reid
I think that the law was changed.
I understand that the hon. Member for Central Ayrshire chairs the all-party parliamentary group for the promotion of first past the post. He has continually extolled the virtues of the first-past-the-post system, but that is not my understanding of what his new clause actually means. I think that it would be more accurately described as promoting “first two past the post”.
Mr MacNeil
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that at least the alternative vote gives true believers in first past the post an opportunity to practise it? They can use their votes only once if they want. They can write “1”, or “X”, and not use any subsequent numbers. It is possible to use first past the post under an AV system, but the reverse is not the case.
Mr Donohoe
I am going to have to accuse the hon. Member for Argyll and Bute (Mr Reid) of cherry-picking. He has read only part of my new clause. His problem can be solved by paragraph (b) of the new section (4A) proposed in subsection (6), which requires provision for
“the two candidates with the most valid votes to be elected in such constituencies.”
The Chairman of Ways and Means (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
I think that the hon. Member for Central Ayrshire (Mr Donohoe) was signalling “first two past the post” and nothing more. I am reassured, am I not, Mr Donohoe? Yes.
Mr Reid
Thank you for that clarification, Mr Hoyle.
In these constituencies two Members will be elected—the two who receive the most votes. That is not first past the post; it is first two past the post. I do not think that the hon. Member for Central Ayrshire understands his own new clause.
Graeme Morrice
My understanding of the system is that there are two candidates, and therefore two votes. Of course that is based on first past the post. It is not dissimilar to the system that applies to local government elections in England when there are several candidates for several seats within a multi-member ward and electors have several Xs to put on a ballot paper.
Mr Reid
That is correct. However, two Members are elected: the first two. That is not first past the post.
The hon. Member for Central Ayrshire criticised the system for election to the Scottish Parliament in which the person who finished second in the constituency might still be elected on the list, but the same would apply under the strange system that he has come up with in the new clause.
Graeme Morrice
The hon. Gentleman has got this wrong. There would be two candidates—there could be two Labour candidates standing, or two Lib Dem, Tory or Scottish National party candidates—and the electors would have two votes. I would vote twice, and put down two crosses for two Labour candidates. There is not a second candidate, therefore; there are two firsts, and the electors have two votes—the two crosses.
Mr Reid
Yes, but some people might not vote for party tickets. This system is used in English local government elections, and it is very uncommon for the first two candidates to get exactly the same number of votes. One will finish first, and another will finish second, and sometimes where there is a close result candidates from different parties get elected.
Mr Donohoe
Even under the first-two-past-the-post system, it is highly possible that if a party candidate is unpopular for any reason, the electorate will choose one candidate from one party and another from a different party.
Mr Reid
Yes, that is possible, but there would still be two people elected, and the hon. Gentleman objected to having more than one person representing a constituency. He expressed objections about regional list Members holding surgeries in his constituency, but under the system he proposes there will be two people representing every constituency, so there are the same possibilities for disagreements and people duplicating casework. I find it illogical that the hon. Gentleman extols the virtues of first past the post, but proposes a different system.
The first-past-the-post or the first-two-past-the-post system could be very unfair. In the last Scottish Parliament election, the SNP got the most votes, and it rightly got the most seats. Let us consider what would have happened if we had adopted first past the post, however. In the constituency section, the SNP got 33% of the vote and Labour got 32%, but Labour won more than half the first-past-the-post seats—37 out of the 73 seats. Therefore, if we had purely been using a first-past-the-post system, even though the SNP was the clear winner of the election, the next morning we would have found we had a Labour Government with an overall majority, having more than half the seats.
Mr Reid
The hon. Gentleman takes the words out of my mouth: it would have been disgraceful gerrymandering if the first-past-the-post system had been adopted in that election, because in an election where the people voted for the SNP there would have been a Labour Government—and not just a minority Labour Government, but one with an overall majority. What is unfair about first past the post and first two past the post is that what counts is not the number of votes a party gets, but how they are distributed.
Mark Lazarowicz
Does the hon. Gentleman accept that if we do the electoral calculations, it is clear that had the AV system been in operation for the Scottish Parliament, the Labour majority would have been even higher?
Fiona O'Donnell
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that, once again, the constitutional cuckoo, the SNP, has benefited from a system drawn up by the Scottish Constitutional Convention, with which it did not even engage?
Mr MacNeil
I am listening closely to the hon. Gentleman’s arguments, and it is clearly game set and match against first past the post. In response to the point of the hon. Member for East Lothian (Fiona O'Donnell), does it not make the SNP victory all the better given that we won by a set of rules we did not even design?
Mr Reid
The SNP won because the election was fought on a fair set of rules—I hope that the hon. Gentleman will give the Liberal Democrats credit for participating in the Constitutional Convention and arguing and negotiating with the Labour party to get a proportional system. If his party had not gone off in a huff and had instead taken part in the Constitutional Convention, we might have got an even better system. He should be thanking the Liberal Democrats for the efforts we made.
The hon. Member for Central Ayrshire was arguing that one of the flaws with the current system relates to the number of MSPs who can turn up at health board meetings in Ayrshire and Arran—he cited a figure of 24. We have had arithmetical disputes before, but I calculate that 26 MSPs could attend. I have good news for him because the Boundary Commission has drawn up the new boundaries for the next elections and only 19 MSPs will be able to turn up to those meetings. However, he does have a point, and if he looks at the Arbuthnott report, he will find where a solution lies.
Sir John Arbuthnott’s report was set up by the previous Government to examine the problems of non-coterminosity. He proposed that we should make the regional list boundaries natural boundaries, rather than have the current unnatural boundaries. So, for example, the whole of Ayrshire would be covered by one regional list. There was a lot to be said for Sir John’s report. I did not agree with every part of the detail, but it was a pity that the previous Government did not take it more seriously. Importantly, the Arbuthnott commission said that when the overall result is proportional, it is less important that individual constituencies and individual regional lists all have the same number of electors than it is in a first-past-the-post system. As the final result will be proportional, it is less important for each constituency and list to be the same size. It would, thus, be better if the regional list boundaries for Scottish Parliament elections were drawn up first and constituencies were then fitted within the regional lists. That would allow us to get regional lists that are much closer to natural boundaries than the current system does.
Mr Donohoe
Will the hon. Gentleman concede that the biggest problem, in a party sense, of not having coterminous boundaries is that there is no accountability in respect of the list members, and that cannot be overcome on the basis of what he has just proposed?
Mr Reid
If the boundaries for the lists were natural ones, we would have much more accountability. For example, Ayrshire could be put with Dumfries and Galloway to form one regional list and we could, thus, have a much more natural boundary in south-west Scotland than we have at the moment.
Mr Davidson
I am listening with interest to what the hon. Gentleman is saying. He is arguing that if we have natural boundaries for the regional seats, it does not matter what size the individual constituencies are because we would have fairness overall. Such an approach would be very much to the benefit of the party, as it is a very party-focused means of coming to an arrangement. The parties would be doing okay, but we could have an enormous discrepancy in the “share” that any individual voter has of an MSP. I could be in a seat where there are 100,000 electors, whereas Orkney has just 14,000 electors, and clearly it would be expected that the person with only 14,000 people to represent would provide a much better service.
Mr Reid
That is a fair point. I would not propose having constituencies with anywhere near as many as 100,000 electors. Off the top of my head, I recall that the average Scottish Parliament constituency has about 55,000 electors, so the figure used would be close to that. Having individual constituencies that represent natural communities would make the work of the individual MSP much easier, because they would be representing a natural community, rather than a constituency that crosses a council or health authority boundary.
My preference would be to have the Parliament elected by the single transferable vote system in multi-Member constituencies—the same system that we use for local government. All MSPs would then be equal and we would not have the problem of conflict between constituency and regional list Members. I also outlined earlier how we could improve the present system. The important thing, however, is that we must have a proportional system in the Scottish Parliament. That is the only fair way for the whole of Scotland to be represented in the Parliament. It is what the Constitutional Convention agreed and what the Scottish people voted for in the referendum, so I urge the Committee to reject this backward-looking new clause and not to overturn the settled will of the Scottish people.
Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
I do not think that anybody in this House can doubt the tenacity of the hon. Member for Central Ayrshire (Mr Donohoe) on this issue. In the course of the past 12 years or so, he has been absolutely consistent in his contempt for list Members of the Scottish Parliament and the whole concept of proportional representation. I am sure that what he says about there being a large constituency for his views is true and I certainly saw a lot of people nodding along with his speech. I want to explore the issue today to try to see what level of support there is for his views, particularly in the Labour party.
The amendment was tabled in the name of the hon. Member for Central Ayrshire and in the names of five of his hon. Friends—a substantial and significant amount of Scottish Labour Members. An awful lot of Scottish Labour Members support the notion that this House should dictate the membership and voting arrangements for the Scottish Parliament. He also says that there is more support in the Labour movement more widely. If that is the case, it alarms and shocks me and we should hear more about it. If a substantial minority—
Mr Davidson
The hon. Gentleman is obviously struggling to see the difference because he is unaware of the extent to which the Labour party’s internal democratic mechanisms are a wonder to behold. I do not necessarily see why I should share in private grief.
Mr Davidson
Indeed it did. I can think of several other Members of Parliament here today who were prevented from standing for the Scottish Parliament candidates list. That was in the days when new Labour was at its most sectarian. Fortunately, we have moved on, and that is to be welcomed. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely correct—that was a difficulty. The Labour party’s initial lists were drawn up in a sectarian fashion, and therefore a lot of people who would otherwise have been considered suitable for consideration by the party membership were unable to come forward.
Another difficulty about the existing system is the way in which vacancies are filled. It is absurd that when somebody on the list stands down, disappears, passes away or decides that they want to do something else, the person who gets that place is simply the next one on the list. There is no vote and the public are not involved in any way, unlike the situation for individual constituency Members. That is inappropriate and a fault in the system.
Mr Davidson
Turnouts have dipped since the change to proportional representation, as I understand it. The situation seems quite clear.
Mr Davidson
Is it not interesting that in debates about changing the voting system we were always told that changing to a proportional system would boost the turnout? In fact, if anything, the reverse is true. I accept much of the argument made by the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr MacNeil) about media coverage, and I recognise that the situation is more complex, but those who argued for proportional representation never made that point. They suggested a clear correlation that has been demonstrated to be untrue.
Mr Reid
I am genuinely confused by what the hon. Gentleman said in response to my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes South (Iain Stewart). The new clause is clear that only passenger services that start and finish in Scotland should be devolved, but the hon. Gentleman says he wants to devolve the ScotRail franchise. However, as we have heard, that franchise sometimes crosses the border.
Thomas Docherty
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for joining us at this late stage. I must clarify for him that the legal terminology in the Railways Act 1993 defines the franchise area as those services that begin and end wholly within Scotland. However, the franchise also covers the tiny stretch to Carlisle. He might wish to take up that legal point with the Library, but it does not affect the new clause.
I am conscious that we are keeping Conservative Members back from their drinks reception with the Deputy Prime Minister. I regret to say that I found the Minister’s arguments rather weak and will therefore press the new clause to a Division.
Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.
Mr MacNeil
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
In discussing new clause 10, which stands in my name and the names of my hon. Friends, I wish to present just a few simple questions to the Committee.
What accountability do Crown Estate commissioners have to Scotland? The head office of the commissioners is here in London, the revenues for the Crown Estate are paid here in London, and the commissioners are not obligated to report to the Scots Parliament, which is the most democratic forum representing Scotland—instead, they sparingly report to this Parliament. The Crown Estate commissioners in Scotland operate under Scots law, because areas over which they take so much control, such as the foreshore and sea bed, are governed by Scots law. My argument is that the administration of the Crown Estate in Scotland should be constituted and controlled within Scots law and the Scottish Parliament.
Scotland accounts for 6% of the Crown Estate’s moneys. Two years ago, that was £17 million, and last year it was £13 million. People to whom I have spoken consider the way in which the Crown Estate commissioners operate in Scotland to be parasitic. Other than demanding money, the commissioners are felt not to conduct themselves with much positive impact. In fact, they are found to be quite menacing. Year after year around the nation’s coast, they leech their danegeld from harbours, ports, moorings industries and some of the most fragile parts of the Scottish economy. In Stornoway alone, they take £17,000 from the port authority, whose tie I am wearing tonight. It is a galling circumstance in an island community to lose a greater part of a person’s wage to the commissioners, when they plough no profits into the harbour or investment, unlike the port authority. The port authority is dealing with a landlord—or a landlord agent—with no obligations at all. In addition, last year, for no visible return, £2.3 million vanished from the salmon farm industry in Scotland, which must compete with the sharp and capable Norwegians, among others.
The commissioners sold portions of their urban portfolio from Edinburgh’s lucrative Princes street for an £8 million loss to fund shopping centres and warehouses in England. We have been told time and again by successive UK Governments that Scotland is not getting short-changed from the Crown Estate. The commissioners say that they are the best managers of the land, but from what I have seen and from what people have told me, with respect, I must disagree.
The Crown Estate commission is a large management organisation, the sole purpose of which, according to the Crown Estate Act 1961, is to “maintain and enhance” the value of the Crown Estate
“and the return obtained from it, but with due regard to the requirements of good management.”
How can that organisation manage its land effectively for the people of Scotland when it need not report to the Scottish Government or Parliament, or indeed to Scottish local authorities?
Comhairle nan Eilean Siar, the local council in the Outer Hebrides, recently produced a paper on renewable energy that in fact turned out in large part to be about the limitations to development and the problems that the Crown Estate commissioners pose. It states:
“The current Crown Estate lease model is outdated, unfair and discriminatory and this inequality will be compounded as the industry grows…It is critical to the sustainability of the”
Outer Hebrides
“that significant lease income from the growing marine energy industry is retained in the”
Outer Hebrides. The people of the Outer Hebrides
“view their seas as they do their land…as a resource for the local community. Where possible, lease income from marine projects should follow the onshore wind model and remain in the”
Outer Hebrides.
“The islands of Scotland should”
be permitted to
“play a more active part in management of their coastal waters and should take a corresponding benefit from the resources present in these waters.”
The opinion of the Comhairle is that the advent of devolution has had a detrimental impact on the Crown Estate, which has unfortunately moved
“further away from Scottish sea-based communities and lessened”
its
“accountability in Scotland. Crown Estate administration and revenues of Scottish territorial waters should operate as part of the Scottish Government”
in partnership with the appropriate local authority. The Comhairle states:
“Management of the local foreshore should transfer to the”
appropriate
“Local Authority…The Crown Estate lease process is rigid and inflexible, incapable of responding to fast moving developments in the marine energy sector…a more responsive process”
is required to
“accommodate speculative marine deployments outwith the terms of current or proposed lease bidding rounds.”
That is fairly damning.
I understand that the Crown Estate commissioners offer annual reports to the Houses of Parliament under a compulsory legislative duty and do so to the Scots Parliament out of courtesy. Although this Parliament can hold the Crown Estate to account via the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Secretary of State for Scotland—in my opinion, it is not much of an account—the Scots Parliament holds no such right.
Let us look back at the genesis of all this. Robin Callander’s book, “How Scotland is Owned”, outlines the situation along these lines: although Scotland lost its independence in 1707—temporarily, I hope—it continues to be a sovereign nation and a stateless nation. In Scotland, sovereignty rests with the people, not in the persona of the monarch, as is the case in England. That is why we have had the King or Queen of Scots as opposed to the King or Queen of England. The Crown identity in Scotland is as a representative of the sovereignty of the people, hence the traditional phrase “the community of the realm”. That difference was again seen in the 1680s with the 1688 Bill of Rights in England, but the 1689 Claim of Right in Scotland.
As illustrated by the Comhairle’s statement, many Scotsmen and women of either an historical bent or, as in my case, Hebridean conditioning view the seas as a continuation of the land. It is perverse that the most democratic forum representing the sovereign Scottish people—the Scottish Parliament—does not have control over the estates of the people’s representative. In many cases, the Crown’s rights date back to the 13th and 14th centuries, and some of these are distinctively Scottish Crown rights with no legal equivalent in the rest of the UK. The Forestry Commission in Scotland used to act on similar lines to the Crown Estate, but its powers have now been devolved to allow it to function as an instrument of Scottish Government policy, which is what we need the Crown Estate to do at the level of local authorities.
The Crown Estate commission is a property management company that aims not at the public good but unfortunately at the maximum extraction of revenue, as I have seen and previously mentioned. The commission merely administers property rights and interests that comprise the Crown Estate; it does not own the estate. In many cases, it deals with Scottish public land with Crown property rights, which is certainly feudal behaviour. A report by the Crown Estate working group in 2006 stated that there is a stark contrast between
“the ways in which the public interest in the Crown’s ownership of the seabed and public foreshore could be managed to complement Scottish Executive’s policies designed to support rural, coastal and island communities and the public interest more generally.”
That group was composed of The Highland council, Highlands and Islands Enterprise, Orkney Islands council, Shetland Islands council, Comhairle nan Eilean Siar, Argyll and Bute council, Moray council and the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities.
The group concluded—this is a lengthy but worthwhile quote—that the
“administration and revenues of some of the property rights of the Crown in Scotland are already devolved to the Scottish Executive. Others which are still managed by the CEC as part of the Crown Estate in Scotland could follow, for example, through the planned UK Marine Bill. In considering the case for a review, some of the lesser property rights of the Crown in Scotland might be seen as historical anachronisms where reform will bring only modest benefits. However, reforming the management of Scotland’s seabed and public foreshore offers an opportunity to secure benefits on what might be considered an historic scale to Scotland’s coastal and island communities and the nation as a whole. The reform of these property rights of the Crown in Scotland could be as symbolic for Scotland as the Scottish Parliament’s abolition of other property rights of the Crown in Scotland with feudal reform. The potential benefits for Scotland in this case, however, would be much more tangible and substantial.”
We have a serious problem when one of the largest land managers in Scotland is not accountable to the people of Scotland. The Crown Estate commissioners have a major impact on salmon farming, shellfish farming and aquaculture, they derive income from harbours and moorings and they own the entire foreshore around Scotland, yet they have absolutely no legislative duty to speak to the Scottish Parliament. A group with that much power should be accountable to the local communities of Scotland, not the Chancellor of the Exchequer at No. 11 Downing street, which is many miles away.
Our new clause calls on the Crown Estate commissioners to do what they should be doing anyway. We are seeking that the Crown Estate revenues be devolved to Scotland and that the management of the estate come under the power of the Scots Government. We want the Crown estate to become another Scottish success story, like the NHS and the police, and we want to amend the 1961 Act with new clause 10. We hope to remove the restrictions in the Scotland Act 1998 that prevent the Scottish Government—and by extension the nation, the businesses and the communities, including the islands and coastal communities, of Scotland—from running and directly benefiting from the organisation. It is at best odd that this particular function of the Crown was not devolved immediately, given that Scotland has more than 60% of the UK’s coastline. The Government’s plan for a Crown Estate commissioner do not go far enough, because this person will be accountable to the Treasury, not Scotland—more like a colonial administrator perhaps. The Crown Estate commissioners should operate as a body under Scots law, which is best accomplished by devolving their powers to the Scots Parliament and further to local authorities.
Before the Committee commences its usual assault on the ability of Scots to govern more than Westminster wants, I want to draw attention to five Liberal Democrat MPs who supported a private Member’s Bill on the subject in 2006, including the hon. Members for Argyll and Bute (Mr Reid) and for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (John Thurso), the Chief Secretary to the Treasury and the right hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Mr Kennedy)—I am sure that they will not have changed their views in the meantime and that government has not softened their strongly held beliefs. In support of the private Member’s Bill, the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) said:
“The notion that somebody other than the local community should own the seabed, particularly around our islands, and make money out of it for the Treasury, is quite offensive… The Crown Estate derives significant income from owning something the communities have an absolute need for in terms of piers and harbours, cables, fish farms and now the prospect of offshore windfarms. These are things we can’t do without.”
In November 2010, the Liberal Democrat MSP for Orkney said:
“The Scotland Bill provides an opportunity to help coast communities and our aquaculture and marine renewable energy industries. The UK Government should review the Crown Estate’s role in Scotland and look at using the Bill to devolve powers and controls over the seabed.”
Even a senior Liberal Democrat Whip spoke up when he called on the Secretary of State for Scotland to direct the Crown Estate commissioners to relinquish their control of the Scottish seabed to local communities in Scotland. I hope that those words will be followed up with action tonight.
As the land reformer Andy Wightman has said:
“We thus now have a position where the Scottish Government supports the return of the administration and revenues of the Crown Estate to Scotland. It is joined by many others including the former Labour Minister of State at the Scotland Office, Brian Wilson, Highland Council, Professor James Hunter CBE, Orkney Islands Council, Lesley Riddoch”—
the broadcaster—
“the Scottish Islands Federation, Local People Leading…and Reform Scotland”.
In 2010, The Highland Council said of this clause:
“The Highland Council is firmly of the view that Clause 18 of the Scotland Bill does not go far enough. The Council believes that the only way to ensure improved accountability and that direct benefits are delivered to Scottish communities is through fully devolving the management, administration and revenues of the Crown Estate in Scotland to Scottish Ministers in the first instance. Given the new management, regulation and planning roles of Marine Scotland, the case for full devolution is even stronger.”
Crown Estate lands in Scotland are best managed by the Scots Government. Holyrood’s sole purpose is to look out for the best interests of Scotland. By definition, the UK Parliament must have a different perspective. So far, that has meant cutting coastguards and the armed forces in Scotland and increasing fuel taxes. A Crown Estate that is only accountable to this place is bound to act by that same logic. If the Government truly intend to make the Bill the greatest act of devolution for 300 years, the Scots Government, of whichever party, should entirely run the Crown Estate lands in Scotland. Anything else is utterly unacceptable.
Mr Reid
A lot of what the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr MacNeil) has said about the Crown Estate is correct. It should be working much more closely with local communities, and coastal communities should be benefitting from the money that the Crown Estate gets from leasing the sea bed and foreshore. My problem with new clause 10 is that it does not tackle section 1(3) of the Crown Estate Act 1961, which reads:
“It shall be the general duty of the Commissioners, while maintaining the Crown Estate as an estate in land (with such proportion of cash or investments as seems to them to be required for the discharge of their functions), to maintain and enhance its value and the return obtained from it, but with due regard to the requirements of good management.”
Mr Reid
I wanted what I still want—the devolution of power to local communities, so that the benefits go to those communities. As I have said, however, new clause 10 does not deliver that, because it does not amend the section from the Crown Estate Act 1961. The Secretary of State has powers of direction, which the new clause would transfer to a Scottish Minister rather than to local communities.
Another problem is the legal advice received by the Government about the operation of section 1(3). When the Secretary of State gave evidence to the Scottish Affairs Committee on 16 February, he was asked about the Crown Estate. He told us about the legal advice he had received. He said that
“the power of direction remains a kind of power of last resort if there are some very serious problems with the Crown Estate. The power of direction is not an invitation to the Secretary of State to micro-manage how the Crown Estate operates.”
By simply transferring that power of last resort to Scottish Ministers, the new clause is not going to achieve anything for local communities in Scotland. We need much more radical reform of how the Crown Estate operates than that.
A lot of evidence was given to the Calman commission to the effect that the Crown Estate was giving too great a priority to maximising income. That is certainly correct, because the Crown Estate Act 1961 puts that duty on the Crown Estate commissioners. We need a review of the 1961 Act and an amendment to section 1(3). The Scottish Affairs Committee has decided to investigate the operation of the Crown Estate in Scotland, and I hope that out of that will come proposals for reform to allow powers genuinely to be transferred to local communities, so that they also benefit from the lease of the sea bed and the foreshore. As the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar has pointed out, marine renewable projects are likely to go ahead in Scottish waters in the next few years, and I want the income from that to go to the local communities.
On the income from the Crown Estate, as the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar has said, only 6% of its UK-wide income is generated in Scotland, which would mean Scotland being given only 6% of the Crown Estate’s income. That does not seem to be a particularly good deal in comparison with Scotland’s current share of UK public spending. The important point is that the income, instead of just disappearing into the coffers of the Scottish Government and instead of going into the coffers of the Treasury, should actually go to local communities.
Mr MacNeil
I am listening carefully to what the hon. Gentleman is saying, and I am sure that many other people will be listening to—and especially looking at—it. For the purpose of clarity, will he outline how he has changed his viewpoint over the past few years on this issue? I hope getting into government is not the reason.
Mr Reid
My viewpoint has not changed. I still want to see the benefits from any developments going to local communities, and I want local communities to be much more involved in the planning stages, so that they can affect any decisions about developments on the sea bed close to their island or coastal community. The point that I am making is that the new clause does not remove the duty on the Crown Estate commissioners to generate revenue for the Treasury. The provision is defective in that regard.
Mr MacNeil
To sum up the hon. Gentleman’s views, then, London is best and control from London is best.
Mr Reid
I have already said umpteen times that I want power devolved to local communities, which the hon. Gentleman’s new clause simply would not achieve. I would have thought that in Argyll and Bute, as much as in the Western Isles, Edinburgh is not seen as part of the local community. The money would simply be transferred from the Treasury to Edinburgh. It is not going to help those local communities, and it will not even help the Scottish budget, which would benefit from only 6% of the income, which is less than Scotland’s current share of UK public expenditure, as I have pointed out.
The ownership of the sea bed and the Crown Estate’s management of it impacts on many remote communities, which often have fragile economies and their own local culture. One fundamental policy of the Government is the principle of localism, and I would like to see the Government implement that principle with regard to the Crown Estate. The Crown Estate must become much more democratically accountable to the communities where it operates, and it must work much more closely with local communities in the planning stages of any developments, which must benefit those local communities —for example, by making improvements to harbours and other local infrastructure or using the profits from the rent of the sea bed to set up funds for the benefit of the local community.
I am sorry that I cannot support the new clause. As I have said, it is defective, because it does not touch section 1(3) of the Crown Estate Act 1961. Given the importance accorded by the Government to the localism agenda, I hope that the Minister will be able to tell us later that the Government have plans for the Crown Estate in that regard.
Ann McKechin (Glasgow North) (Lab)
The hon. Member for Argyll and Bute (Mr Reid) has carefully explained some of the technical problems with the new clause. What it proposes was not a recommendation made by the Holyrood Committee in its report last week. The hon. Member for Argyll and Bute made an important point when he said that devolution is not simply a one-way process from the UK Government to the Scottish Government, but is also about transfers of power from central Government—whether based in London or Edinburgh—to bring about more localised control. It is about not only having powers, but how those powers are going to be used and made accountable to local communities.
It is interesting to note that the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr MacNeil) has raised the issue of the Forestry Commission. It was his party’s Administration in Holyrood, of course, who were the first to propose privatisation of Forestry Commission land. Thankfully, there was a successful public campaign in Scotland—just as we recently saw in England—which forced the Scottish Government to reverse their policy. I note from recent reports, however, that they are continuing to sell off much more forestry land than they are purchasing from the Forestry Commission. That brings us back to the question of how powers are used. The Opposition will not support the new clause, but we hope to come back to this matter with our own amendments on Report.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
I entirely accept that Scotland has its distinct characteristics. They are, in many ways, extraordinarily admirable and worthy, and they have the full support of those who support the Union. We do not want an homogenised United Kingdom. I have never been a great believer in homogenisation, whether it be of cultures, nations or, for that matter, milk. However, it is important to recognise the rights of property. The new clause seeks to confiscate the revenue that would come to the Crown Estate and take it for local communities—whoever they may be.
Mr Reid
The new clause does not do that. It merely transfers the power of direction of the Crown Estate from the Secretary of State for Scotland to a Scottish Minister, and that is why I consider it defective. It does not take the property that is in the seabed and give it to local communities.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
I said earlier that I was against Scottish independence, because if we had it we would not benefit from such helpful and informative interventions as the one that we have just heard from the hon. Gentleman.
Mr Reid
I think that the hon. Gentleman has miscalculated. The hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr McNeil) is being principled. He believes in Scottish independence. Transferring the Crown Estate in its entirety would be disadvantageous to Scotland, because only 6% of the profits are generated there. That is less than Scotland’s current share of public expenditure. The new clause ought to appeal to the hon. Gentleman in financial terms.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
I think that those of us who support the Union are also being principled. These tax revenues—these forms that generate income for the state—must be preserved in their entirety. Once we start cutting them up bit by bit, we end up making calculations and saying “Actually, Scotland is receiving rather too little from the Crown Estate rather than too much.” I do not think that that argument works. I think that the Crown Estate must be viewed as a whole, as an indivisible part of an indivisible Crown. That is what I want to see: the traditional constitutional position which this country has enjoyed and which has made it such a great nation. Let us have no more attacks on private property or the indivisibility of the Crown, and let us have a reasonable settlement in taxation between the people of England and the people of Scotland, not to mention those of Northern Ireland and Wales, who also deserve their fair share of the total pie of economic wealth.
Mr Reid
The hon. Gentleman is right to say that the Scottish Parliament already has those powers. He has not responded to what I said earlier about section 1(3) of the Crown Estate Act 1961, however. The hon. Gentleman says his new clause will do great things for highland communities, but how is transferring the 6% of the profits of the Crown Estate from London to Edinburgh going to benefit local communities?
Mr MacNeil
The hon. Gentleman has been living in Scotland long enough to know that Ministers in Scotland and the Scottish Parliament are far more susceptible to pressure from communities in Scotland than the Chancellor of the Exchequer is at No. 11 Downing street.
The hon. Member for North East Somerset will not be surprised to learn that I am no great fan of the 1707 Union, but I am quite relaxed about the 1603 Union and the maintenance of Her Majesty as the Queen. The hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Steve Rotheram) put it to me that Scotland does indeed have a king and his name is Kenny, but that is a little beside the point. I am happy to maintain the Crown, as Canada, Australia and New Zealand do. My point is about the movement of powers from Westminster to the most democratic forum representing Scotland, which is the Scottish Parliament—that is the right way to proceed.
Mr MacNeil
The hon. Member for Milton Keynes South (Iain Stewart) pronounced my constituency name well, putting the Minister to shame—I note again that he referred to my constituency by its old name.
The hon. Member for Milton Keynes South and I agree on many things, and have together worked to fight off the forces of darkness who are trying to force central European time on us—they call it Churchill time, but we call it Chamberlain time, because it is definitely appeasement. He can rest assured that the date of Easter will remain the first Sunday after the first full moon after the equinox, which perhaps brings me neatly to the hon. Member for Glasgow South West (Mr Davidson). He is not keen on Bannockburn time, but I wondered whether he was working on moon time given some of his interventions and suggestions.
I am calling not for the time zone to change, but for the power to ameliorate if London makes a change. We in Scotland want to keep the time as it is. The danger is that London will foist something on Scotland that we do not want. The new clause is about giving the power to Scotland.
Mr MacNeil
That is very useful, but we do not know how long the Government will stand. How long will the Liberals and Tories remain in this embrace? We know that one Government do not bind another, and certainly that one Parliament does not bind another. This Government will probably not even bind themselves for much longer, but who knows? We want to give Scotland the power that Northern Ireland and the Isle of Man have.
The hon. Member for East Lothian (Fiona O'Donnell) has moved from what might once have been called rapacious socialism to a great concern for Microsoft—with not so much concern for the darkness of her constituents. Could Microsoft cope with the new clause? Yes, I think it could.
The hon. Member for Dumfries and Galloway (Mr Brown) seemed to be happy for the time difference to be foisted upon us and for us not to have a say. Many countries throughout the European continent—there are about 50—including small countries, have such a power. They choose to work together, but they feel that it is better to have the club in their bag. They find stability in that. There is instability here because Members from the south of England are ganging up and, because of amnesia of the last 30 or 40 years, changing the time zone on us.
I have a note here on the hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Thomas Docherty)—it says simply that I am disappointed in him. It is more likely that we would have different time zones in Europe if different countries did not have such a power. People tend to work together, but we should ensure that everybody has the same thing to take to the table. If we do not give Scotland this power, and if the time zone changes and we want to keep it as it is, the guilty will be all around us.
Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.
Oral Answers to Questions
Alan Reid Excerpts(13 years, 8 months ago)
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Michael Moore
I welcome the hon. Gentleman’s implicit recognition of the importance of the derogation, which we are seeking and on which my right hon. Friends in the Treasury will make formal submissions in the near future. As for distribution issues, the hon. Gentleman is right to highlight the complexities of the price of fuel across the country. He knows that better than most people, and I am happy to meet him to discuss the issue further.
Mr Alan Reid (Argyll and Bute) (LD)
I greatly welcome the introduction of the fuel duty discount pilot scheme on the islands, and I also welcome its extension to the Isle of Bute. While we wait for permission from the EU, however, urgent action is needed to stop the price of fuel going up even further. Will the Secretary of State speak to the Chancellor and tell him that he must cancel the 4p fuel tax rise that Labour planned for this year’s Budget?
Michael Moore
My hon. Friend will be the first to acknowledge that the fuel duty increases over the past year reflect the previous Government’s plans to increase duty by 1p per litre over the retail prices index this year and for years to come, and, as we have already discussed, the derogation is now being sought. The Chancellor and the Chief Secretary to the Treasury will have heard my hon. Friend’s strong representations on behalf of his communities, and I recognise how serious an issue petrol and diesel prices are throughout the country.
Scotland Bill
Alan Reid Excerpts(13 years, 8 months ago)
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Pete Wishart
There would probably be a strong case for that. The hon. Gentleman is entirely right. In Scotland, all the regulations for the regulation of health professionals that existed before the 1998 Act came into force are continuing to be regulated at a UK level from the Department of Health. That includes nearly all doctors, nurses and dentists. The Scottish Government have a little toehold into regulation as regards important new professions that have been designed since the 1998 Act came into force—for example, operating department practitioners, dental nurses, dental technicians, orthodontic therapists, pharmacy technicians and practitioner psychologists. It is incredibly important that we do not lose that toehold.
Mr Alan Reid (Argyll and Bute) (LD)
If the hon. Gentleman were consistent, he would be arguing that all the health professions should be regulated in Scotland. Surely it does not make sense for dentists to be regulated UK-wide and dental technicians to be regulated in Scotland, but for them all to be regulated in one place.
Pete Wishart
There is eminent logic in what the hon. Gentleman says, and there is very little of it that I could not support. Of course all these important health professionals should be regulated in the Scottish Parliament.
Pete Wishart
The hon. Gentleman confirms what I was saying. Of course they should all be regulated in one place, and that should be the Scottish Parliament. They should be under the direct control of Scottish Ministers, because we have a Scottish national health service—perhaps the hon. Gentleman is not aware of this—that has been designed and structured by Scottish Ministers who are accountable to the Scottish people.
Pete Wishart
I have already given way to the hon. Lady. The UK Department of Health evidence to the commission concluded:
“The Department of Health is not seeking any change to the reservation of the health professions in the Scotland Act 1998. In practice, both the Government and the devolved administration have always sought to apply a UK-wide framework to the regulation of health”.
It is not interested in re-reserving the issue, and I do not know why we are.
We have a different NHS in Scotland, and it is recognised that the implementation of some policies would have to be different in Scotland. Given that the provision is clearly anti-devolutionary and not in the interests of the NHS in Scotland, we will not support it, not because of any knee-jerk response but because of the examples that I have mentioned and that I hope have been accepted by the Committee. We have a toehold in regulation across the UK, we will not give it up lightly and we will oppose the clause.
Mr Reid
I am fully behind the Government on the clause. If we listened to the advice of the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart), we would end up in a confused position. If we joined him in the Lobby tonight, some health professions would be regulated UK-wide and others would be regulated in Scotland. The hon. Gentleman referred to some dental professions that would be regulated in Scotland while dentists would be regulated UK-wide. That is clearly an anomalous situation.
Mr MacNeil
Does the hon. Gentleman believe that the sky would fall in if we had an anomalous situation?
Mr Reid
We would end up with a much worse situation than the position whereby all professions were regulated UK-wide. The latter makes much more sense. I understood from the answers that the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire gave to interventions that he wants all health care professions to be regulated separately in Scotland from the rest of the UK, although I note that the SNP has not tabled an amendment to that effect. It would lead to a strange situation, which would not benefit patients.
Mr Davidson
Surely the hon. Gentleman is in error to suggest that SNP Members did not articulate the fact that they want all the professions to be separately registered in Scotland. The spokesman said that he wanted doctors and dentists to be regulated separately in Scotland—even more evidence that he is a bad man.
Mr Reid
The hon. Gentleman is perfectly correct—[hon. Members: “Oh!”] I did not say in what he was correct. He was correct when he said that the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire stated that he wanted all professions regulated separately in Scotland. However, my point was that SNP Members have not tabled an amendment to that effect, which I suspect indicates that even they lack confidence in their case.
Fiona O'Donnell
Perhaps I could assist the hon. Gentleman in correcting my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South West (Mr Davidson). He was wrong in omitting to point out that not only did the Lib Dems come sixth in Barnsley, they lost their deposit.
Mr Reid
I suspect that if I respond to that intervention, Mr Hoyle, you will rule me out of order.
To go back in order, if as the SNP suggests all health care professions—doctors, dentists and so on—are regulated separately in Scotland, it would add more cost and bureaucracy. It would also mean that a doctor who is qualified in Scotland and who wants to move to England would have to get separate qualifications, and vice versa. That would not benefit patients, and nor would it assist professional development.
Mr MacNeil
Does the hon. Gentleman find it strange that a nation would want to regulate its own health professionals?
Mr Weir
I am listening closely to the hon. Gentleman. Do we not already reciprocally recognise qualifications within the EU, and is it not the case that doctors can come from other parts of the EU to practise in the UK? Therefore, what is the problem with the recognition of Scottish qualifications and Scottish regulation?
Thomas Docherty
The hon. Member for Carlisle (John Stevenson) and the Minister, who represent the north-west of England and the south-west of Scotland respectively, are both in the Chamber. The hon. Member for Argyll and Bute (Mr Reid) will probably be aware that many of their constituents, and the constituents of Members on both sides of the House, will travel to use services on both sides of the border. Does he not agree that this debate is another example of the tabling of Mickey Mouse amendments to slow down the process by a party that will come worse than sixth in the forthcoming elections?
Mr Reid
I agree with the hon. Gentleman on cross-border traffic, which is important, but he gives SNP Members more credence than they deserve. They did not actually table an amendment—they did not put that amount of work in—and are simply opposing the Government. If the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire had been consistent, he would have tabled a new clause to the effect that all health professions would be regulated separately in Scotland, but he did not bother to do so. He is simply opposing a sensible Government measure.
I meant to speak for only a minute or two, but all those interventions took up quite a lot of time. I conclude by reminding the hon. Member for Glasgow South West (Mr Davidson) that in the Henley by-election, the Labour party were fifth with a lower share of the vote than the Liberal Democrats got last week.
Mr Davidson
Is it appropriate at this point to mention that fifth is actually higher than sixth? I have been approached by a number of Members in the Lobby who have told me that the Liberal Democrats came sixth only because the SNP did not stand—