UK Government: Scotland

Ian Murray Excerpts

Thursday 16th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Carmichael]

I see nods coming from the hon. Lady, who also sat through most of that debate.

[Ian Murray (Edinburgh South) (Lab)]

I know that time is short, and I appreciate the time the right hon. Gentleman has spent at the Dispatch Box this week re-emphasising that the vow and the timetable are on track, but will he at least acknowledge that the Prime Minister’s clumsy, inappropriate and highly political speech on the morning after the referendum has opened up the door for these kinds of questions to be asked? If he had not done that and had abided by every single part of that vow, we probably would not have been in this position this week.

[Mr Carmichael]

What I would say to the hon. Gentleman is that I think the Prime Minister was reflecting questions that are being asked in other parts of the United Kingdom. However, I am able to give him an assurance from the Dispatch Box today—this is an assurance that repeats the comments of the Prime Minister himself—that, as my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for North East Fife (Sir Menzies Campbell) put it the other day, change in Scotland will not be held up while England catches up. These two debates obviously have issues that have a symmetry and run in parallel, but one debate will not be allowed to hold up the progress of the delivery of the vow in Scotland. As I have said, it is pretty clear that we have already done much of the work and built much of the consensus there that is still required in the rest of the United Kingdom.