Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Ian Murray and Alistair Carmichael(2 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Ian Murray
I thank my hon. Friend for his question. I am really sorry to hear of the difficulties facing Mitsubishi Electric’s workforce, and of the uncertainty those workers face during this difficult time. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for his efforts to support the workers in his constituency, and we have talked about this issue already. I will commit as a matter of priority to a meeting with the company and its workforce in the coming weeks.
Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)
I, too, welcome the Secretary of State to his new position and congratulate him on his appointment to what I can tell him is a splendid job to hold in government. On an industrial strategy, will he focus his ministerial colleagues’ minds on the potential development of tidal stream generation? That provides an enormous opportunity for our manufacturing sector to create a supply chain that is based here in the United Kingdom, rather than having to bring capacity from overseas.
Ian Murray
I agree with the right hon. Gentleman and congratulate him on his role when he was in the Scotland Office. We hope to emulate much of the work that he did. I have met the European Marine Energy Centre and those involved with tidal resources in his constituency. This is critically important to our net zero ambitions and in getting to clean power by 2030. I am due to meet them when I visit his constituency in the coming weeks, and I will make sure that this is top of the agenda.
Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill: Section 35 Power
Debate between Ian Murray and Alistair Carmichael(1 year, 10 months ago)
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Ian Murray
The point that the hon. Gentleman forgets is that this is going to end up in the courts regardless, because the section 35 order has been brought forward. Anyone who prays against it will get a debate and a vote, but the vote is not going to be won. It has already been said that the Government have a majority of 80, and perhaps a working majority of 100 on this issue. This will therefore have to be settled in the courts. As much as I do not want this constitutional battle to be fought on the backs of trans people’s and women’s rights, it would be good if the courts did settle these issues because maybe we could then move on with substance and do what is right by trans people and equality in this country.
Mr Carmichael
Paragraph 20 of the purported statement of reasons says that one of the barriers that would be encountered is existing IT infrastructure. Has the hon. Gentleman ever come across a case in which, apparently, the law has to be designed to fit IT infrastructure, rather than IT infrastructure being designed to fit the law?
Ian Murray
The right hon. Gentleman makes a valuable intervention. I am getting all the questions on the adverse effects, but this is a Government document. What we have missed in the debate over the past few months is that people in this country currently have gender recognition certificates under a different process, and the IT systems have to deal with that. How a person gets a gender recognition certificate is the argument here, not how they are implemented, because we implement them already.
Sewel Convention
Debate between Ian Murray and Alistair Carmichael(6 years, 5 months ago)
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Ian Murray (Edinburgh South) (Lab)
It is a great pleasure to be involved in this important debate and to follow the hon. Member for Dumfries and Galloway (Mr Jack), although I take umbrage at his claiming in opening his speech that this debacle, which has actually been made by his own Government, is somehow the fault of democratically elected politicians going through the Lobby to vote for Lords amendments to a major piece of legislation. That is our democratic right. I am sure that many of the hon. Gentleman’s constituents wrote to him last week to ask him to support the 15 amendments that came back from the other place, in the same way that many of my constituents wrote to me. That is what we committed to do and it is certainly what we did last week.
The blame for the House having only 19 minutes to deal with the devolution issues lies squarely with the Government’s programme managers—the Leader of the House and the usual channels—who decided to make it a six-hour debate, with a knife at three hours, so that the second three hours was eaten into by votes. They could have taken a completely different approach to the programme motion and allowed the votes to happen and then another three-hour debate after that. This travesty and devastation, and the grievance that has been given to certain parties in the House, is of the Government’s own making.
Mr Carmichael
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right: the answer did lie in the timetable. The Government could have protected the time for debating that string of amendments but they chose not to. Does he agree that, especially considering the nature of the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill, to suggest that this House should somehow have to choose between debating the amendments from the other place and voting on them is quite ridiculous?
Ian Murray
It is quite ridiculous, and I cannot help but feel that the programme motion was put in place for that very purpose. The Government would have known that the House would divide on the vast majority of those amendments, such that that three-hour knife would, by the nature of the process of amendments coming back from the other place in ping-pong, reduce the time available for debate.
I shall come to why it affects the Sewel convention, but the reason why everyone is so frustrated and angry about the process is that the Secretary of State—I will not get into the personal politics; I disagree with his politics fundamentally, but he is an honourable man and has always dealt with me fairly, and I think he will perhaps look back and regret some of the Government’s actions in this process—promised at the Dispatch Box, on several occasions, that this elected House would get to debate the amendments on devolution that were being put to the other place. He promised that the amendments would come in Committee, and they did not, and that they would come on Report, and they did not. His own Back Bencher, the hon. Member for East Renfrewshire (Paul Masterton), who is in his place, said that he would reluctantly back the Government’s position on the Opposition amendments, after he was given assurances by his own Front Benchers that the amendments would come on Report.
The very fact that the amendments have been tabled in the other place, meaning that the elected House has been unable to debate them or, indeed, have any kind of say in them, has left us with a grievance to exploit, because we have not even debated on the Floor of this Chamber the fundamental issues relating to the Sewel convention, the individual parts of the amendments, the impact on the Scottish Government, the impact on the Scottish Parliament, the impact on the UK Government or the impact on UK-wide frameworks that are being put in place as part of the process.
Scotch Whisky Industry
Debate between Ian Murray and Alistair Carmichael(7 years ago)
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Mr Carmichael
The hon. Gentleman tees up my next point for me beautifully. I promise that is the last time there will be a reference to “tee” this morning. The work in question was done for the Scotch Whisky Association by KPMG, an organisation that is not just going to tell clients what they want to hear. The work is underpinned and supported by the Treasury’s own figures. The increase in March damaged confidence and led to a sharp decrease in sales—1 million fewer bottles were sold in the first two quarters of this year, compared with last year. That can be tested against the experience of 2015.
I was a Cabinet Minister in 2015 and was proud of the fact that that Government delivered a 2% cut in the level of whisky duty. I cannot remember exactly, but I recall that the expectation in the Government at the time was that a 2% cut would cost in the region of £600 million. That was what we thought we would lose in revenue. In fact, however, a significant increase in revenue was delivered as a result of lower taxation.
Ian Murray (Edinburgh South) (Lab)
The right hon. Gentleman is a massive defender of the whisky industry and I am sure he likes a tipple himself. Will he comment on the way in which the Treasury is set up? Perhaps the problem is that the Red Book would have to determine a minus figure when the reality might be positive. The Treasury should look more imaginatively at how it taxes not only Scotch whisky but spirits in general.
Mr Carmichael
I am keen to encourage creativity within the Treasury. I must say that that message is not always well received in that particular Department and change is often slow in coming, but I encourage the Minister to pursue that agenda, because—to return to the experience of 2015—having anticipated a £600 million decrease, there was an increase of £124 million in revenue to the Exchequer. Although I obviously have some concerns about the Chancellor, I do not believe that he put the rate of duty up in March believing that he would take in less money. The underlying problem is that the elasticities that underpin the modelling used by the Treasury are clearly out of date. They have not been updated since 2013 and they have been wrong at least twice. They were wrong in a good way in 2015, when the cut in duty delivered an increase in revenues, but they were also wrong in March, when the increase in duties delivered lower revenues.
My essential message to the Minister is that to embark on a progressive increase of the sort planned, with a year-on-year 3% increase on the basis of Treasury modelling that is at best flawed and in need of updating, is ill conceived and risks the emerging growth not just in whisky but in other spirits. It is difficult to go on any social media platform these days without seeing an advert for yet another craft gin. Gin is another emerging spirit and important part of our export portfolio. From the outside, as the industry sees it, it looks as if one of our most successful industries is being punished by the Treasury at a time when, frankly, we are going to need the contribution it makes to our economy.
I say to the Minister that it is now time to be bold. The Chancellor could use 22 November as an opportunity to cut duty, as was done in 2015. If he is not prepared to do so, there is a good business case for at least a freeze or for walking away from the escalator effect. If he continues with the escalator, he must come up with some justification for it, because all the indications go in the opposite direction.
Turning briefly to the question of the medium to long term, there is an opportunity to recalibrate the way in which the Treasury engages with the industry. During my time in Parliament, the successful PILOT partnership scheme between Government and the oil and gas industry has allowed the Government to better understand what is happening in the industry and allowed industry to engage, see the direction of travel and plan accordingly. The Scotch Whisky Association now talks about a sectoral deal, perhaps for the whisky industry but more likely for spirits or alcohol manufacturers as a whole. I encourage the Minister to take that suggestion seriously. We have seen tremendous success as a result of the city and regional deals, a model that has worked well. Taking that to a sector such as spirits production or the whisky industry would be a new iteration of the model. Given the opportunities that exist, the model is well worth considering. Those are the medium to long-term opportunities. In the medium to long term, the Government can do good to help the industry and, most importantly, the communities that depend on it. In the short term, on 22 November, the very least they can do is stop doing damage.
Renewable Energy Generation: Island Communities
Debate between Ian Murray and Alistair Carmichael(7 years, 4 months ago)
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Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered support for renewable energy generation in island communities.
I am delighted to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David, and I am pleased to welcome the Minister to his new role. He is one in a fairly long line of Energy Ministers during my tenure in the House—I am not entirely sure how many I have seen—but he brings with him a reputation for being a diligent and effective Minister, and I wish him well in his time in the Department. It is the convention on these occasions to say how pleased we are to have secured the debate. Although I will keep my tie on, I will break with convention by saying that I am not particularly pleased; I have been around this course for the past 15 years and I am immensely frustrated that debates of this sort are still necessary.
I think it will be helpful for those who might be watching our proceedings from elsewhere to be quite clear not only what the debate is about but what it is not about. It is not about individual projects that may be under consideration; there are a number in my constituency, including in Orkney and with Viking Energy in Shetland. To say that we need a strategy to unlock the potential of renewable energy generation is not to say that any individual project in itself is right or should go ahead, nor is it to be confused with the consultation currently being undertaken by Ofgem on replacing Shetland’s power station with a 278 km, 600 MW high-voltage direct current cable. That is exciting some comment at the moment, but it is a proposal of which I remain to be convinced; having been around this course for many years, I do not regard it as quite so difficult or challenging for that particular project to get a cable on the seabed.
The debate is about how Government and the forces of government can unlock the potential for renewable energy generation that we all know is there within our island communities. A study commissioned jointly by the then Department for Energy and Climate Change and the Scottish Government in 2013—the “Scottish Islands Renewable Project”—estimated that the Western Isles, Orkney and Shetland could between them supply up to 5% of Britain’s total electricity demand by 2030. That is a quite significant prize and it is within our grasp. However, it is something that we already know will only happen if we can get everybody working together.
In that connection, I welcome the intervention this morning from Councillor Donald Crichton, chair of the Sustainable Development Committee in the Western Isles Council, calling for cross-party consensus building on this. As he said, the Conservative party’s manifesto commitment at last month’s general election to
“support the development of wind projects in the remote islands of Scotland, where they will directly benefit local communities”
is an important and welcome step. Similarly, I also place on the record my appreciation of the efforts of Lord Dunlop of Helensburgh, who, in his time as a junior Minister in the Scotland Office and before, did a lot to push this particular issue.
That manifesto commitment was welcome, and I am pleased that it has survived the cull of so many other commitments from that unfortunate document. However, we are looking to the Minister for some outline of what the commitment will actually mean in practical terms. If you will forgive me, Sir David, there is quite a history here, and it is important that we remind ourselves of some of it. A lot of the issues that underpin this history come from the fact that Ofgem—for reasons that are understandable in relation to non-renewable technologies—has for some time adhered to a system of locational charging. For renewable projects, far from the centres of populations and the ultimate points of consumption, that does not necessarily make the same sense, so we have looked for different ways around that over the years.
Back in the days of the late Malcolm Wicks, we tried the idea of a cap on transmission charges. That was brought in by him and the then Labour Government, and was then extended by Chris Huhne when he was Secretary of State for Energy, but that in itself did not provide the solution we had hoped for. We then moved on to the new contracts for difference regime, and within that it was suggested that we could have a dedicated islands strike price. Unfortunately, at the point that that was being submitted to the European Commission for state aid approval, it was felt that it could be delayed by the islands element, so it was removed for later submission. It was resubmitted at a later stage and went through the pre-approval application process, which concluded some time around the end of 2015.
In the meantime, we had a general election, and the Conservative Government that came in in 2015 had a manifesto commitment to have a moratorium on onshore wind developments. The point at which the Government decided to go ahead with the CfD auction round that we are currently part of, without any provision for the islands, sticks in my memory for two reasons. First, it was the morning after the American people had elected President Trump, and secondly, I remember very clearly taking the call from the Secretary of State on my mobile phone while I was going through Edinburgh airport. However, a consultation period followed, which should have ended in the early part of this year and to which we I think we still await the Government’s formal response.
I remind the House of that history at this point because it is germane to the debate. Although the commitment in the Conservative party’s manifesto from last month is new, the issue is not—it has been within the machinery of government for some considerable time. Although we hope that that commitment will be given the green light, it is far from the case that the work needs to start from scratch. What is now needed is the degree of political commitment to implement the commitment and to tell us exactly what it means, because time is not in plentiful supply.
If provision for the islands of Scotland is to be included in the next round of CfD auctions, we are looking at something that has to go through the machinery of government and possibly even the state aid consent procedures in order to be in place by the end of next year, so there is a need for some degree of urgency in the approach to this. When the industry hears from the Minister later, it will be looking for a degree of clarity. We are not looking for the blueprint on everything that is meant by the manifesto commitment, but we want to hear some sort of outline or framework through which this can be turned into a reality.
What are we looking at here? Are we revisiting the idea of an islands strike price, or are we looking at something that might, somehow or another, find a mechanism for including onshore island generation with offshore wind? I do not know just how doable that would be, or how workable it would be from the point of view of the industry, but those are some of the ideas that have been floated. Alternatively, does the Department have some new mechanism that is going to be brought forward?
In any event, when in all those processes will the work start in order to obtain state aid approvals? I understand that the Government will proceed on the basis that, regardless of what happens with Brexit, state aid regulation compliance remains a feature of our regulatory landscape for the foreseeable future. Is it the Government’s aspiration that any projects that would be brought forward under this new scheme would be eligible for the next round of CfD auctions? If that is the case, will the Minister at this stage consult within Government to get a commitment that the next auction round will not go ahead unless and until this scheme is in place and island-based projects are able to compete?
Ian Murray (Edinburgh South) (Lab)
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for allowing me to intervene in the limited time he has. Will he explain to the House whether there is any other route to market for island wind if there is no access to the next round of CfD funding?
Mr Carmichael
The answer to that depends on what we mean by “route to market”. There are other ways in which the energy generated can be used, and a lot of innovative work is being done in relation to non-distributing technologies such as the use of hydrogen, but for all intents and purposes, for the projects being considered at the moment across the country, there really is not. Those in the industry will have a view on that, and if they bring forward something we are not currently considering, I think we will all be in the market for hearing it.
Finally and most obviously, we will want to hear in fairly early course exactly what is meant by the expression “community benefit”, which has been around the renewables debate for as long as I can remember and has meant different things to different people in different places at different times. If it is to form part of policy, a clearer definition will be necessary.
Scotland Bill
Debate between Ian Murray and Alistair Carmichael(9 years, 4 months ago)
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Ian Murray
I think that the hon. Gentleman is confusing two issues. We fundamentally agree with the clauses relating to the devolution of income tax, but these are hugely complex matters, as is demonstrated by the complicated nature of the devolution of the 10p income tax provision in the Scotland Act 2012. The new clause would not prevent the Bill from proceeding; it would merely allow the Secretary of State to bring to the House a report on the progress of implementation.
There is another difficulty. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right—the Scottish Parliament could produce a report and submit it—but I cannot, in the House of Commons, command a different Parliament to do something, which is why I am asking the Secretary of State to produce the report.
It is right for these issues to be raised. I hope that the Scottish Parliament will also examine them in great detail, and will present a full report to both Houses. Our aim is to protect Scottish taxpayers rather than to create a political divide. It is disappointing that, although we agree on the broad principles of the devolution of income tax, Members are trying to bring about division between us. We are trying to be a responsible Opposition in calling for a report on the implementation of income tax rates.
New clause 32 calls for
“a report on the identification of Scottish taxpayers”.
The aim is to ensure that individuals are either Scottish or UK taxpayers but not both, to prevent the double taxation that was mentioned by the hon. Member for Dundee East, and to deal with cross-border mid-financial year movements, which is important in the context of where people may live or work.
The review must include the rates and bands at which the Scottish income tax will be set, and a projection of the impact of the tax on revenues generated in Scotland and across the United Kingdom. That is primarily designed to ensure that Scotland does not become worse off over time owing to the relative tax bases and demographic or behavioural changes in the United Kingdom overall. Such a review would allow us to assess the transitional process, and to ensure that the projected rates and bands accorded with the principle of no detriment for both Scotland and the rest of the United Kingdom. That would protect Scottish taxpayers, as well as taxpayers in the rest of the UK.
Critically—the Smith agreement restates this—any updated fiscal framework should secure the Barnett formula, with the Scottish budget bearing the full costs of policy decisions that reduce or increase revenues or expenditure. That is crucial to the fiscal framework.
My hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne) mentioned gift aid, and I hope that the Minister will be able to respond to what he said.
I think it important for the people of Scotland to know what their Government are doing about these substantial income tax powers, whatever the colour of that Government. Those powers are worth £11 billion, and they are fundamental to the working lives of people in Scotland. As I have said all along, this is about transparency: transparency in regard to whether additional powers should be devolved, and transparency in regard to the use and impact of those that are devolved. That is what our new clauses 1, 21 and 32 seek to foster.
All I ask is that the United Kingdom Government, and, indeed, the Scottish Government, approach the Bill in the same spirit of transparency and openness as us, and agree to new clause 32. We shall be pressing it to a vote later this evening.
Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)
As others have said, the genesis of the clause lies in the report of the Smith commission. I have supported the commission since the day, indeed the hour, when it reported, but we cannot ignore the fact that the process was undertaken at great speed. Necessarily, given that five parties were engaged in the process, it involved a degree of compromise all round. It is for that reason that all of us undertook to ensure that there would be consultation following the publication of the report and, subsequently, the draft clauses.
In a debate in which consensus is not always easy to come by, I am pleased to note that there is consensus on the fact that the clause is a faithful replication of the agreement that was reached under the chairmanship of Lord Smith. However, the consultation that has been conducted since the publication of the draft clauses at the end of January has highlighted, and generated, a substantial number of important matters, some of which are technical and some of which go to the heart of the issue of taxation itself.
I suggest to the Secretary of State that further consideration may be necessary. He has the ability, through the good office that he holds, to bring all the parties together again to consider the representations that have been made during the consultation, and to consider whether, given the complexities and possible areas of conflict that could arise, it is actually worth implementing the tax power in the way that is currently envisaged. If the consultation is to be carried out in good faith—and, for my part, it always has been—there are sufficient matters about which we should be talking. That would still allow us—if it were necessary, and if it were possible to construct a consensus—to return to the issues on Report.
Nigel Mills
I rise as a reluctant supporter of the devolution of income tax to the different countries of the Union. I agree with the hon. Member for Edinburgh South (Ian Murray) that people throughout the United Kingdom should feel that they are paying the most important tax—the tax that puts the largest amount of money into the UK pot—and seeing it redistributed. We are where we are, however, and we are talking about devolving income tax to Scotland.
I fear that we have one foot in each camp, with part of the tax in this Parliament and part of it in the Scottish Parliament, and that we will end up in a real mess. I am not sure how it is possible to make a tax work when a Parliament can set the rate, the bands and the starting point, but not the actual rules. A particular policy issue in Scotland may mean that the Scottish Parliament rightly wants to incentivise certain employment and income activities. That may not be not a priority for the United Kingdom as a whole, perhaps for reasons of scale or owing to a different approach, but there will be no mechanism enabling income tax in Scotland to promote that certain activity. A new tax relief for people working in the offshore oil and gas industry, for instance, might not be a priority for the UK as a whole, but it might be a priority in Scotland.
The record of our income tax code is cluttered with examples of the use of the tax code to promote certain types of behaviour. I am not sure that we can secure the full and effective use of a tax code if our Parliament is not setting the rate and looking after local activities.
The flipside will be that tax avoidance as a result of a loophole may become material for the Scottish Parliament in the case of a certain piece of exploitation, but will not become material to the budget of the whole UK. It may be extremely important in Scotland to get that loophole closed, but in the UK there may be several others that are ahead of it in the queue, because it does not represent a large loss to the Westminster Parliament. An action that ought to be taken on something that has a material impact in one part of the UK will not be taken because of the strange disparity that exists.
If we are going to start devolving taxes, we should step back and have a look at what a federal UK tax system would be like. We should work out which taxes are federal and which are devolved, and then try to bring about some consistency in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland so that similar taxes can be devolved in the same way, rather than adopting a piecemeal approach in regard to corporation tax in Northern Ireland, income tax in Scotland, and so forth. I do not think that anyone in the country will know to which Parliament they are paying what tax, and who has complete control of it. That means that we will not get all the advantages that we expect, such as the ownership and the accountability that my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) mentioned.
I do not think that we are achieving the sharing and the pooling that the hon. Member for Edinburgh South wanted, the coherent use of income tax that the SNP wants, or the full devolution that would make sense. We appear to have become involved in a strange halfway fudge which we may regret in a few years’ time. I think it would be better to step back and try to get this right from the start, rather than trying to find a way of clearing up the mess.
I accept that there are always good reasons why the line is drawn where it is. We must be very careful about tax avoidance through the use of residency, or pretend residency. If I am working full-time in Scotland, to get the Scottish rate—which may be higher or lower than the rate in the rest of the UK—I shall probably have to go and live in Scotland. I suspect that I cannot achieve that artificially. If I have large dividend flows, I can probably pretend that I am in Edinburgh when I am in London and vice versa in order to obtain the tax advantage. I can see why there is an attraction in having one UK-wide passive income tax, rather than an active tax.
Smith Commission
Debate between Ian Murray and Alistair Carmichael(9 years, 11 months ago)
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Mr Carmichael
I think we should all be cautious of trying to predict the outcome of next May’s election.
Ian Murray (Edinburgh South) (Lab)
May I commend the work of all the commissioners on the Smith commission, particularly—not to single anyone out—my hon. Friend the Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Gregg McClymont)? There is a perception that politicians do not keep their promises, but the truth is that the solemn promise we made to the Scottish people during the referendum campaign has today been not only delivered, but delivered with bells on. May I encourage the Secretary of State to look seriously at double devolution, to make sure that today’s announcements and the commission report create not just a powerhouse Scottish Parliament, but powerhouse local authorities and, more importantly, powerhouse local communities?
Mr Carmichael
Indeed. The hon. Gentleman will see some support for his latter proposition in the report’s foreword, under the heading, “Devolution from the Scottish Parliament”. Lord Smith articulates, in a very measured way, the galloping centralisation we have seen in recent years in the Scottish Government. I appreciate the way in which the hon. Gentleman did not single out the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East. In the same tone, I should not single out my right hon. Friend the Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (Michael Moore), who, along with my constituency colleague, Tavish Scott, played a tremendous role in getting this deal.
UK Government: Scotland
Debate between Ian Murray and Alistair Carmichael(10 years, 1 month ago)
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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.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Ian Murray and Alistair Carmichael(10 years, 1 month ago)
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Mr Carmichael
I can only repeat to my hon. Friend that the timetable that we have given to Scotland will be met. Let me add, however, that the distinction between Scotland and England is that we already have a well-established consensus. The main thing that was apparent to me from yesterday’s debate in the House was that the people of England still have some way to go in building that consensus, and I wish them the best of luck.
Ian Murray (Edinburgh South) (Lab)
The Secretary of State at the Dispatch Box and many Opposition Members continue to repeat that the timetable is on track, but the nationalists keep putting it about that it has been broken. Why does the Secretary of State think that is, and what does he think we can do about it?
Mr Carmichael
I confess that that timetable has been broken, because the Command Paper that was published on Monday was published two and a half weeks before the deadline that had been set for publication. The nationalists will have to speak for themselves, but every time they seek to undermine the work of Lord Smith and his commission, it raises a suspicion in my mind, and among a growing number of people in Scotland, that although they are part of the process, they are not acting in good faith. [Interruption.]
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Ian Murray and Alistair Carmichael(10 years, 6 months ago)
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Mr Carmichael
I thank my hon. Friend for his support for the continuation of Scotland within the United Kingdom. The position on any currency union or central banking arrangements if Scotland were to vote for independence has been made very clear recently by the Chancellor and the Chief Secretary and also by the shadow Chancellor: there will be no such arrangements.
Ian Murray (Edinburgh South) (Lab)
In the event of an independent Scotland, will the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee take its instructions from the UK Treasury or the Scottish Government?
Mr Carmichael
The Bank of England will continue to take its instructions from the UK Treasury. It is a UK institution and that would not change.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Ian Murray and Alistair Carmichael(10 years, 8 months ago)
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Ian Murray (Edinburgh South) (Lab)
There are tens of thousands of financial services jobs in my constituency, and my constituents are getting increasingly upset by the uncertainty around the independence referendum and the fact that many financial institutions might leave Scotland. What can the Secretary of State say to my constituents to ensure them that those jobs will not only stay, but increase in the future?
Mr Carmichael
The best way to ensure that those jobs stay is to vote no on 18 September and ensure that Scotland remains part of the United Kingdom. In recent weeks we have seen a growing number of companies—Standard Life, Royal Bank of Scotland and Alliance Trust Ltd—explaining that, if Scotland was to become a foreign country, as good Scottish companies operating through the whole of the United Kingdom, they would be required to remove their headquarters from Scotland to the rest of the United Kingdom. That would not be good for Scotland’s economy.