Scotland Bill

Debate between George Kerevan and Lord Beamish

Monday 15th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jones]

I entirely agree. If we are to give the Scottish Government more powers over entire areas of taxation, including the raising of money that they will actually spend, we cannot do that twice. They cannot have the ability to raise revenue and, in addition, a top-up power allowing them to make some of the difficult decisions that they will have to make. The hon. Member for Dundee East seems to think that, overnight, Scotland will be turned into some beautiful paradise on a par with Switzerland—[Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”] I must say that, in terms of beauty, it already is.

[George Kerevan]

The SNP won the majority of the vote on 7 May on the basis of a clear commitment to go beyond the proposals of the Smith commission. What we are trying to decide now is how far beyond Smith we should go. The hon. Gentleman seems to be rejecting that, while not coming up with a positive argument about what we should be doing.

[Mr Jones]

I am not, actually. I agree with the hon. Gentleman. I doubt that most people were thinking about the Smith proposals when they voted. That is not the way in which the debate in Scotland has been portrayed over the last few years. Romanticism has taken over, obscuring the practical issues that will face the Scottish economy whether we like it or not.

The hon. Gentleman cannot have it both ways. He cannot argue that he wants Smith-plus without making clear what that means. As my hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne) pointed out, what the hon. Member for Dundee East has proposed in his “trickle-down” amendment cannot be done in a vacuum by people who have no idea what the transitional framework is.

Whether we like it or not, the Scottish economy faces issues that have nothing to do with who is in either Holyrood or in this place. Those issues are an ageing population and the decline in the working population, which is expected to drop by 3% over the next 15 years in Scotland while rising by 5% in the rest of the United Kingdom. If that does happen, the tax base in Scotland will contract when it has full fiscal autonomy, and if there is no backdrop of Barnett money, or some other pool of money on which to draw, hard decisions will have to be made. When working people in Scotland wake up to the fact that what is being proposed is not Barnett plus full fiscal autonomy, but full fiscal autonomy or independence on its own without the existing safety net, and when they become aware of some of the tough decisions that the Scottish Government will have to start making, they may think differently about what is being recommended tonight by the Scottish nationalist party. [Hon. Members: “Scottish National party.”] I am sorry. I am not known for my delicacy when it comes to not wanting to offend people, but the over-victimised mentality that some Members bring to the Chamber, and to this debate in particular, is irritating, to say the least.