Jacob Rees-Mogg
Main Page: Jacob Rees-Mogg (Conservative - North East Somerset)Department Debates - View all Jacob Rees-Mogg's debates with the Scotland Office
(9 years, 4 months ago)
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Mr MacNeil
I know what they wanted, but it is clear from that answer that the right hon. Gentleman did not take their advice. He had no influence on that Government, but he is now telling us to take their advice. He has a very different agenda. If he had accepted our amendment four years ago, we would already have had control, because the Scottish Government would have given it to us. In fact, he was a blocking force and an obstacle to progress for Scotland four years ago, as he still is. As for his colleagues who were here at the time, as a result of that very attitude, they are gone. Instead, I am one of 56 Scottish National party Members, rather than the mere five last time. I should thank the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland for his intransigence four years ago, because it was that very intransigence that led to this raft of colleagues beside me, together debating the Scotland Bill.
The Crown Estate has tremendous control over areas of life in Scotland. It takes millions out of salmon farming each year, and we want more control over what we are doing there. We could stimulate growth and activity in different areas. If we control the taxes, we can do what we feel like. We could do something about revenues from marine renewable energy going south and ensure that they stay within Scotland. We could also ensure that no development is hampered because of the money demanded by the Crown Estate—rentiers’ money that it is lucky to be getting. Years ago, it got nothing from the seabed, but a lucky windfall has now come its way in the shape of offshore renewables.
What is required is for the powers to go to the Government in Edinburgh and for that Government to decide what happens with the community of the realm in Scotland. That is where power and sovereignty rests—with the community of the realm and the people of Scotland. It is for them to decide exactly what they want. Yes, the powers should be devolved. As the Secretary of State said four years ago, the idea of the SNP was to devolve at any cost. He did not listen then, but by goodness, he is listening now.
Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)
Thank you, Mr Crausby—[Interruption.] I did not hear that interruption by the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr MacNeil), which is always a great loss because his interventions are some of the most amusing that we ever hear. On this occasion, however, I am going to disagree with him. I do not like clause 31 at all; I think it is fundamentally misconceived. I have tabled a number of amendments, which I hope will improve it—if it is possible to make a silk purse out of sow’s ear.
Let me start by explaining why I do not like the clause in principle. I think there is a danger that it is attempting to give away something that does not actually belong to the state. The Crown Estates belong to the sovereign and are given in trust to the Government at the beginning of every reign. This started at the beginning of the reign of George III and has been recommitted by every monarch subsequently. However, the Crown Estates must return entire to a new sovereign at the beginning of a new reign. It is not possible—it is not right; it is not proper—for the Government to give away the Crown Estates or to put them in such a state that an incoming sovereign could not take them back in their entirety. I therefore have concerns about the underlying principle of clause 31 in that it is seeking to divide the Crown Estates, which ought not to be divisible because of the unity they are required to have at the beginning of each reign.
I also do not like it symbolically because, although I am very sympathetic to the demands of the SNP for more government in Scotland and for more rights for the Scottish Parliament, I think the Crown is more important than the union of Parliaments.
Mr Rees-Mogg
It is an honour to give way to the right hon. Member for Gordon (Alex Salmond).
Alex Salmond
I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman is familiar with the phrase “the land belongs to the people”. Surely that applies to the foreshore as well—except the bit that belongs to Caledonian MacBrayne, I suppose.
Does the hon. Gentleman regret jumping at the bait from the metropolitan press? I refer to the silly, foolish, extraordinary story that appeared three weeks ago suggesting that the Crown’s income would be damaged by the devolution of the Crown Estate. Does he regret jumping so quickly at that bait on a hook, and associating himself with such a scurrilous rumour?
Mr Rees-Mogg
I am very grateful for the right hon. Gentleman’s characteristically helpful intervention. What was so wonderful about that bait was the outpouring of patriotic royal fervour that it elicited from my friends in the Scottish National party. I must confess that I was thrilled and surprised when a party that I had thought to have republican leanings turned out, to a man and woman, to contain some of the staunchest monarchists in the land. That is desperately reassuring—
Mr Rees-Mogg
And it is, of course, an even greater honour to give way to the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar.
Mr MacNeil
I am also grateful to the hon. Gentleman, who has described giving way to the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar as a greater honour than giving way to the right hon. Member for Gordon (Alex Salmond). I wanted to repeat that for the purpose of my own amusement.
May I return to the hon. Gentleman to the quip that I made at the beginning of his speech? I said that he had contributed to this debate four years ago, on 15 March 2011. Times have changed since then, but it clear that, in another sense, times have not really changed, because the argument that he was advancing then—the argument that the Crown Estate was the property of the monarch—is the argument that he is advancing now. Indeed, in many respects it is an argument that has been advanced for hundreds of years. It is time to move on. It is time for the royal windfall to end, and for royalty to end its control of local people. As I am sure the hon. Gentleman knows—because we have been friends for a number of years—I say that as a staunch monarchist myself.
Mr Rees-Mogg
The hon. Gentleman really cannot have it both ways. He teased the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) for being inconsistent, because four years ago he had been against the devolution of the Crown Estate and today he was in favour of it. Now he has objected to my being consistent, in that I opposed it four years ago and continue to oppose it today. Either the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland is right to have changed his mind, or I am right not to have changed mine. Both cannot be true.
Mr MacNeil
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on his consistency, and, similarly, I congratulate myself on mine. I want this power to be moved to Scotland so that the most democratic forum in Scotland—the Scottish Parliament—can decide, in consultation with the people of Scotland, exactly what happens to the Crown Estate.
Mr Rees-Mogg
The problem with that view is that it does not respect the rights of property. The Crown is entitled to protection of the rights of property as much as—indeed, some might say more than—anyone else in this country. If even Her Majesty’s property, the property of the sovereign herself, is not sacrosanct and protected, but can be taken for the benefit of the people—whatever that means—no one’s land is safe.
Mr MacNeil
I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way again. I am also grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey (Drew Hendry) for having a word in my ear.
In Scotland, the people are sovereign, whereas here, as the hon. Gentleman will of course know, the Treasury already controls the vast majority of the revenues of the Crown Estate, and gives pocket money—albeit a tremendously large amount of pocket money—to the monarch.
Mr Rees-Mogg
I find the concept of sovereignty coming from the people very attractive. I do not dispute the concept of sovereignty rising from the people to this Parliament, with our sovereign Lady the epitome of it, the symbol of it, the very pinnacle of our society and of our nation. Within that concept, however, all subjects, and Her Majesty herself, have rights of property, and those rights should not be arbitrarily taken away. It worries me that clause 31 is going in that direction in deciding that Parliament can allocate a property right without having established that that property right belongs to Parliament, and that it is for Parliament to dispose of it in the first place.
Mr MacNeil
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way again. He is being very generous, as are you, Mr Crausby.
The hon. Gentleman speaks of the personality of the sovereign. He says that the sovereign cannot choose to whom to give the estate, and that it will go to the next sovereign. The important difference between England and Scotland is that in Scotland the people are sovereign. As the hon. Gentleman knows from his history books, there was Mary Queen of Scots and there was Elizabeth of England. There were the people, there was the country, and there were two different nations.
Mr Rees-Mogg
I am well aware of the difference of terminology in relation to Mary Queen of Scots and Elizabeth I, the “English Queen”.
Mr Rees-Mogg
The Queen of England. The two were different, in a sense, and there is a conception of popular sovereignty in Scotland that may differ from that in England—although it is perfectly possible that the reference to “Mary Queen of Scots” may have been due to concern about having a woman as monarch, and to the fact that in earlier times people were happier to have a King of Scotland than to have a King of the Scots. I am not entirely sure that the hon. Gentleman might not be more in tune with the late John Knox and his “blast of the trumpet”. I myself am not sure that I want that particular trumpet to be blown, because I think that it is a trumpet that sounds a rather wrong note. For once I am sounding more modern than the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar! I think that the issue of property rights is fundamental, and I also think that the Crown is indivisible.
George Kerevan (East Lothian) (SNP)
I am surprised that such an ardent and professional monarchist as the hon. Gentleman is unaware that the Crown Estate is divided by jurisdiction, and there are other jurisdictions within the Commonwealth in which Crown property is managed separately. For instance, there is a receiver general for the Crown properties in Jersey. If the Scottish people wished to continue with the monarchy, it would be perfectly sensible for the Crown Estate to be managed separately rather than property being divided, as the hon. Gentleman has suggested.
Mr Rees-Mogg
The hon. Gentleman has been more helpful to me than he may have realised. I think that the symbolic importance of this division is that it is symbolic of independence for Scotland rather than further devolution. I think that the indivisibility of the Crown in one nation is such that the Crown Estate ought not to be divided.
Mr Dominic Grieve (Beaconsfield) (Con)
My hon. Friend is clearly right. The Act of Union created the Crown of the United Kingdom of Great Britain, and therefore, in so far as the Crown Estate is concerned—
Mr Grieve
The Union of the Crowns happened 100 years before, but in my view it is clear that the constitutional union came about as a result of the Act of Union, and that therefore the Crown Estate is indeed indivisible. The fact that it may be subject to a different jurisdictional framework in Scotland is neither here nor there, and to that extent the example of Canada or Jersey is not relevant to the debate.
Mr Rees-Mogg
I am grateful to my right hon. and learned Friend, who I think is absolutely spot on. The indivisibility of the Crown within the United Kingdom is central to the Unionist case, and I think that if a Unionist Government are willing to divide the Crown, that is a very dangerous step. I would rather give the Scottish Parliament other powers—some of which are the subject of other amendments—than give it this very important power relating to the Crown, which, as has already been pointed out, has been indivisible for longer than the Parliaments have been united. It brought the two countries together, and that was then established firmly in law.
Mr MacNeil
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his incredible generosity. He said that the Crown property was indivisible, but of course the United Kingdom itself was not indivisible, given that it was divided in 1922. Although most people do not realise it, the United Kingdom is not yet 100 years old. I think that Doris Day is older than the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. However, the question that is puzzling me is not that of Doris Day’s age, but what happened to the Crown properties that were once held and are now in the Republic of Ireland.
Mr Rees-Mogg
My assumption is that they were devolved to the Government of the Republic of Ireland, which is a perfectly reasonable thing to do when one is abolishing the monarchy. If SNP Members were, in fact, closet republicans—which, given the other arguments that we have heard recently, I do not think they are—it would be perfectly rational for them to argue that the estate should be confiscated from the Crown and should go to an independent Scotland. However, that is not the argument that we are having today. Today, there seems to be broad acceptance in the House that the monarchy should remain part of the Scottish settlement—as well as the settlement for the rest of the United Kingdom—come what may, even if Scotland were to become independent.
Mr MacNeil
I think that the hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. What today’s debate is about is whether the monarch’s estate—the Crown Estate—should be controlled by Her Majesty’s Government here, or by Her Majesty’s Government in Scotland. My colleagues and I are suggesting that Her Majesty’s Government in Scotland would be a far better Government to control Her Majesty’s estate.
Mr Rees-Mogg
I do not think that the hon. Gentleman —I was about to say “my hon. Friend”—is bold enough. What he should say, and what I, in logic, would be bound to accept, is that if that is to be determined by one Government, it could be argued that it should be determined only by the Scottish Government in relation to the whole Crown Estate. However, that would not be my argument.
Alex Salmond
I am able to help the hon. Gentleman with a precedent. It turns out that in 1923 the Crown Estate was given to the Irish Free State Government to be collected. The pertinent point is that in 1923 southern Ireland was under the Crown, as the hon. Gentleman will recall, so we now have an exact precedent for doing what he says is impossible to do.
Mr Rees-Mogg
I am terribly sorry to say that we do not have an exact precedent. We have exactly the wrong precedent, and the right hon. Gentleman is making my argument: we should be very nervous of doing this because it would lead inexorably to a division between the state—we divide the Crown, and we divide the state. There we are: I am finding a good deal of agreement between my position and that of SNP Members, but neither of us is in perfect harmony with those on the Treasury Bench, who seem to want to put this forward with the view that it does not risk a fundamental division in the Crown. That is what worries me; it is why I think it is a mistake, and why I have tabled a number of amendments that I hope will meet with universal approbation. Indeed, I am very surprised that many SNP Members, after all their protestations of loyalty to the Crown following the suggestion that the sovereign grant might lose a bit of money, did not add their names to my amendments. I was hoping for that, but I hoped in vain.
I would like to explain my amendments in reverse order, because amendment 127 is perhaps the key one. It states
“The scheme must not include any permanent alienation of the rights of the Crown.”
Roger Mullin (Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath) (SNP)
The hon. Gentleman will be aware that his amendment is completely at odds with section 1(2) of the Crown Estate Act 1961, which gives unfettered management to the Crown Estate. This amendment would remove that.
Mr Rees-Mogg
No, all my amendment is seeking to do is ensure that at the beginning of a new reign the Crown Estates are returned entire. It is about a
“permanent alienation of the rights of the Crown.”
That does not mean that one property may not be sold for another property; it means that the assets must be retained within a single pool and that they must not be disposed of without receiving counter-value in return. It is a permanent alienation of the rights, not of specific properties, which is why I phrased it this way, rather than relating it to specific properties or the seashore or any of the other elements of the Crown Estate. It is about preserving entire that which does not belong to this House to give away. It would be wrong of this House to exceed its authority and risk giving away something that is not its.
I accept that it is highly unlikely that a future sovereign will exercise his right to have the Crown Estates returned to him, but the fact that it is unlikely does not mean that we should abandon property rights lightly.
Amendment 126 addresses the pro rata payments under the Sovereign Grant Act 2011. I was delighted that the First Minister of Scotland was clear that she did not wish to see any reduction in the Sovereign Grant Act. The Crown estates are 3.9% funded from Scotland; that is the percentage of income that comes from the Scottish Crown estates. That feeds through to the 15% that is received by the sovereign to pay their expenses. This would merely provide a protection for that.
Drew Hendry (Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey) (SNP)
The Crown Estate is public land and its commissioners are a statutory corporation, and the Crown Estate revenues are paid directly to the UK Government Treasury. It has no direct role in paying for the Queen or the royal household. Does the hon. Gentleman not agree that that is contrary to the position he is trying to put forward?
Mr Rees-Mogg
No, I do not agree. I enjoyed participating in the Sovereign Grant Act debates, when I thought Her Majesty ought to get rather more than the measly 15% that was being proposed. It is based on the income of the Crown Estates and it is conceivable that if the Crown Estates were managed in a less than efficient way, the total amount raised would be reduced and therefore the grant from the Consolidated Fund would be reduced in a pro rata manner. This amendment is putting in a protection.
Drew Hendry
Does the hon. Gentleman not agree, however, that, as the Chancellor himself has said, there are other mechanisms for paying? The Crown Estate just happens to be one such mechanism.
Mr Rees-Mogg
The Crown Estate was a brilliant way of settling the issue. It is of course just one way, and we have tried other methods, but the civil list, for instance, ended up failing as a method of paying for the Crown because of inflation. It had historically been set for the lifetime of a sovereign and was done once in a reign, but inflation bit into that and the amount granted to the Queen in 1952 became so small 20 years into her reign that it needed to be increased. The great advantage of the Sovereign Grant Act is that it took the detailed petty politics out of ensuring we have a monarchy that is funded to do what we want our monarchy to do.
Dr Philippa Whitford (Central Ayrshire) (SNP)
Is it not the case that the reduction in subsidies to onshore wind and other renewable energies is likely to have a bigger impact on the setting of the sovereign grant than anything we are likely to do in Holyrood?
Mr Rees-Mogg
Hon. Members may have got the impression that I am a monarchist; I think there are few things more important in this nation than the monarchical system that we have. None the less I am consistent in my capitalist views; I do not want even my sovereign to benefit from subsidies that are paid by the Government and fall on the backs of hard-pressed people in North East Somerset who cannot afford their energy bills. I am not that much of a monarchist.
Mr MacNeil
I certainly am, it would seem, and I can hear the timbers in Buckingham palace quivering as we speak: we have now found limits to the hon. Gentleman’s loyalty. We are talking here about the Queen and everyone else in the country getting the benefits of onshore wind. If the monarch still had the power to shout, “Off with his head,” I would fear for the hon. Gentleman tomorrow morning.
Mr Rees-Mogg
One has to be careful of onshore wind turbines if one is at risk of losing one’s head; I believe the heads of bats get regularly cut off by the turbines.
Subsidies are a different point, but I would certainly not want the sovereign grant to benefit from state subsidies. I think that is a very bad method of funding almost anything. The Government picking winners tends not to work and tends to increase costs.
Amendment 126 would merely ensure that the pro rata amount would remain the same, and amendment 125 would mean the scheme agreed by the Treasury and the Scottish Parliament could not be altered to the disadvantage of the Sovereign Grant Act.
As I have said, the Sovereign Grant Act is an extraordinarily good way of funding the monarchy. It means Her Majesty is the highest marginal tax rate payer in the country. The Queen pays a tax rate of 85% whereas nobody else pays more than 45%. The Crown Estates are taken from the Queen at the beginning of the reign and the revenue is then taken to the Government. So the Queen subsidises her own Government throughout her reign. That is not an unreasonable situation, but the Sovereign Grant Act returns it, and that should be protected in any development of devolution.
Mr MacNeil
Everybody subsidises the Government through their taxes, and we in Scotland particularly subsidise the Government having paid more tax per capita every year for the last 31 years.
Incidentally, the hon. Gentleman might be pleased to know that Doris Day’s birthday is 3 April 1922; I thank the ever-vigilant SNP press officer Stuart Easton for that piece of information.
Mr Rees-Mogg
I wish Doris Day many happy returns, albeit somewhat belatedly, but the hon. Gentleman is not right that all these Scottish taxpayers have paid more tax for 31 years, because some—very distinguished—SNP Members of Parliament are not 31 years old, so certainly have not been paying tax for that long.
Sir Edward Leigh
My hon. Friend is giving a very fine Tory speech, not one from the Whiggish camp as we have been hearing from others, but I wonder whether in the deepest recesses of his soul he is a Jacobite, and thinks that if there had been a different settlement we may not have had this problem. The serious point, however, is that we must allow the Public Accounts Committees of both Parliaments to look at the royal finances properly, which they cannot do at the moment.
Mr Rees-Mogg
I think that that is a terrible Jacobean, rather than Jacobite suggestion. Although this is not immediately relevant to the debate, I do not think the Public Accounts Committee should be looking at the royal finances. Her Majesty should be allowed some privacy on that, but that is a side issue.
Alex Salmond
What my hon. Friend the Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr MacNeil) provides is the Castlebay answer to the Scottish question, to which the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve) should listen with great care. It is always put forward with the ultimate good will.
I am in a race against time because I have 3% power left in my iPad and I want to read into the record the following quotation:
“The Scottish Government agrees with the Islands Councils that marine activities in the territorial waters of Scotland adjacent to the islands can have impacts on the community as well as delivering financial benefits to the local economy. The Scottish Government committed in Scotland's Future to ensuring the island communities benefit by receiving more than 50 per cent of Crown Estate seabed leasing revenues.
The marine assets of island communities are key to their future and the wealth that is generated should be reinvested to safeguard that future. The Scottish Government will therefore ensure that 100 per cent of the net income from the islands seabed is passed to island communities.”
That is a clear statement from a document entitled “Empowering Scotland’s Island Communities”, which I launched as First Minister last year with the three island convenors from the three island authorities, and which was broadly supported, particularly because it made the point of support not just to local authorities but to island communities, and it encompassed all the island communities of Scotland.
There was a similar declaration of intent in the principles agreed in the Smith commission. The bona fides of the Scottish Government on this matter, I may say to the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael), have just been demonstrated massively in the general election in the support that was gained across these communities and in Orkney and Shetland in particular. Given these substantial bona fides, the agreement and the Smith commission, why on earth does he feel it necessary to write into the Bill what the Scottish Parliament and the Scottish Government should do with powers that are devolved?
There is nothing in the actions or performance of the Scottish Government and the Scottish Parliament, and the massive support that they have received across island communities, that should put anyone in any doubt of the intent, once the Crown Estate revenue is devolved, to make sure that our coastal communities and our island communities benefit in full measure. It is the very antithesis of devolution to write prescriptively into legislation what will be done after the powers are devolved. From someone who admitted in the Chamber today that he could not find agreement, or consensus, as he put it, when he was Secretary of State for Scotland to get the power devolved in the first place, it takes substantial brass neck to put forward the amendment that he tabled.
Speaking of brass neck, although he does it so elegantly, the hon. Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg) was found out three weeks ago by jumping to the bait of —I was going to say the tabloid press, but the tabloids were innocent in this matter; it was the disreputable press—The Daily Telegraph, the Daily Mail, The Times and so on, added to on this occasion, disgracefully, by The Guardian and Channel 4, which leapt on to the totally misleading, erroneous story that a plot was afoot to cut the Crown revenue. As has been pointed out factually, the Crown revenue does not come from the Crown Estate. It is merely used as a proxy for the level of the royal grant.
The hon. Gentleman attempted to reinterpret his mistake and his charging in to get a few column inches—I had better call them inches in his case, as opposed to centimetres—in those disreputable newspapers, by telling us that it was some elaborate ruse to tempt out the monarchist tendencies in the Scottish Government so that he could ensure that those loyalist noises would come from the Scottish Government, as they were outraged by the very suggestion that any republican sympathies had broken out. The hon. Gentleman would have done himself more credit if he had just said, “The press got it wrong and I got it wrong, and we should all look before we leap where these matters are concerned.”
Mr Rees-Mogg
The truth is that that did lead to a wonderful outpouring of monarchical fervour from Scotland. That is to be commended. I am just a bit worried that the former leader of the Scottish National party is not as supportive of the monarchy as his successor.
Alex Salmond
I was objecting not to the outpouring, but to the suggestion from the hon. Gentleman that he had planned this all along—that this was all part of some dastardly scheme he had dreamt up. That stretched our credulity rather too far.
I know that the acronym IPSA—the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority—is not beloved in this Chamber, and on coming back to this House I can see why. How on earth have Members managed to order their affairs and deal with goodness only knows what over the past few years? IPSA is not beloved, but IPSO—the Independent Press Standards Organisation—should be beloved. Today IPSO, the new self-regulating press arrangement, delivered a humiliating rebuff to The Daily Telegraph. Although it is printed on the front page in microscopic form, none the less there it is on the front page, a full-scale apology to the First Minister of Scotland for the totally erroneous story that was published during the general election campaign, with which some Members of the House are familiar and some are very familiar indeed, concerning her views on which UK Government she preferred.
IPSO is on a winning run and should now pursue those dreadful papers—right-wing bastions such as The Guardian, and those even further right-wing bastions such as The Daily Telegraph, The Times and the Daily Mail, which published such a dreadfully inaccurate story and tried to muddy the waters of this debate about the Crown Estate and cast aspersions on the monarchical loyalties of our First Minister of Scotland.
It is important that the reason for the overwhelming wish to see these matters devolved is a real belief in the island and coastal communities of Scotland that local management of these resources will achieve considerable benefits overall. It is a question not of reducing revenues, but of increasing economic activity. For many years I represented a fishing constituency, and I can tell Members that the Crown Estate has not been a popular institution among many of our fishing communities. Many of our small harbours in particular found the harbour dues on the foreshore extremely onerous. The only victory I can remember was in the town of Gardenstown in Banffshire, where the harbour commissioners were suffering from the imposition of a very substantial bill from the Crown Estate commission.
We were able to discover a royal deed from Charles II, from a time when he had been crowned King of Scots but was still to assert his rightful throne south of the border. He had a fantastic time one night in Gardenstown as he was gathering an army before the battle of Dunbar and as a result, in a fit of generosity, wrote an exemption from all Crown dues. We were able to produce that deed from the 17th century, and Gardenstown harbour, I can report to the House, is free from the imposition of the Crown Estate revenue, but other communities in Scotland have not been as fortunate. Members will therefore understand full well why there is a general desire to see such resources being applied to the economic benefit of local communities.
My final point applies to other clauses that we are debating and particularly to the speech that we heard from the hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey). His idea that the devolution of key aspects of labour relations and wage policy will lead to a diminution of standards does not stand up to any examination of the reality of devolution in Scotland. I pointed out to him that the no compulsory redundancy agreement which, uniquely, the civil service unions have was negotiated by the SNP Government. The pensions benefit that the Fire Brigades Union has—a small benefit in terms of the overall imposition on public sector unions, but none the less a benefit that the union values—happened because the Scottish Government were able to negotiate it. Our nursing community—nurses in the national health service—was mentioned. Nurses last year got a pay rise in Scotland because the Scottish Government followed the recommendations of the pay review, whereas the Government down here did not.
Given that experience and given the fact that the Scottish Government are an accredited living wage employer, the suggestion that people sacrifice those benefits so that the hon. Gentleman can get his uniformity, which he seems to think is crucial across the United Kingdom, would explain why there is a divergence opening up between his views and those of the Scottish Trades Union Congress on how best to achieve progressive change in Scotland.
That is a matter of great current interest, because this week we will discuss the Budget, and one of the issues of greatest importance under discussion will be the diminution of in-work benefits. Thousands of people across all our constituencies face the prospect of a substantial reduction in their standard of living as a result of the course that the Chancellor has set. He says, of course, that he wants to end the situation in which huge subsidies are going to a range of private sector employers. One approach that the Scottish Government might take, were we to have control of the minimum wage legislation, would be to increase the minimum wage quickly to the living wage, thereby reducing in-work benefits through the early increase of wages, as opposed to reducing them before any wage increases are forthcoming, which I think is the fate that is in store for workers across our constituents.
The challenge is therefore twofold. First, Members who believe that the right course of action is to increase the minimum wage towards the living wage, or to see the living wage more generally applied, would like to see that as a prerequisite before in-work benefits are cut. Secondly, with regard to the suitable amendments before the Committee, for Members representing Scottish constituents, and for those who are sympathetic to progressive politics, would it not be safer, given all the evidence to place matters in the hands of the Scottish Parliament and the Scottish Government, to achieve that and protect the living standards of Scottish workers?