Health and Social Care Workforce

John Redwood Excerpts

Thursday 13th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

I am alarmed, as my hon. Friend is, about the 9.1% annual loss of staff, which is a high loss rate by any standard and implies that something is wrong with the jobs or leadership. Do he and the Committee think that a lot more work needs to be done on job descriptions, job feasibility and support for people in their roles so that these jobs are perceived to be of greater value by people and they do not want to leave? Otherwise, we have the extra costs of training somebody new.

[Steve Brine]

Yes. There is a part of the workforce plan, which the Select Committee discussed a little yesterday, which talks about how, every year, every member of staff should have a conversation with their employers about their pension arrangements and mental health and wellbeing. That is fantastic. I am sceptical as to how it is remotely possible in an organisation of this size. That does not mean that I do not think the ambition is right—I think that it is right—but it would be helpful to the House if the Minister touched on that in her wind-up.

The other point I make to my right hon. Friend, which I will also make later in my speech, is that we must remember that there are NHS employers, and ultimately the Government are the employer in the widest possible sense, but the direct employer when it comes to hospitals is the trusts, and they have a big role to play in retention and in workforce health and wellbeing. We sometimes duck away from saying that, but I say that here in the House as well as privately to the chief executive of my trust.

I am encouraged by the emphasis that the workforce plan places on prevention, which everybody knows is one of my great passions in life and politics. That will clearly be crucial, given the supply and demand challenges facing the health service at the moment. Prevention is, as colleagues know, a subject dear and close to the work of the Select Committee: we have launched a major inquiry into the prevention of ill health, with 10 work- streams. We have already done the vaccination workstream and have moved on to the healthy places—home and work—workstream. Details of that are available on the Health and Social Care Committee’s website.

Let me turn to some of the specifics in the Committee’s report and what action the Government have taken. One of our key recommendations was that

“the number of medical school places in the UK should be increased by 5,000 from around 9,500 per year to 14,500.”

The plan does that: it doubles medical school training places in England to 15,000 by 2031-32, which is extremely welcome. As I said to the Prime Minister last week at the Liaison Committee, I hope it is possible to make some of those new places available before September 2025, as it says in the plan. However, with a UCAS deadline of mid-October for a September 2024 start, that looks extremely challenging. We discussed that yesterday at the Select Committee. An update from the Minister on that would be welcome.

[Steve Brine]

I thank the Chair of the Education Committee for being a guest at yesterday’s session with the medical director of NHS England in our workforce special. He is right. The Prime Minister told me at the Liaison Committee, and the medical director said yesterday, that it will take time to scale up. Yesterday, the GMC chief executive talked about training capacity in scaling up the medical places. That is right and needs to be done. However, where the medical schools are ready—even with fairly modest numbers—for September ’24, it would be an incredibly good signal of intent from the Government to allow them to start then. The money is front-loaded, so the fiscal cycle should allow that to happen. Knowing my hon. Friend, he will not let this one go. I thank him for raising it.

[John Redwood]

I see why there may be difficulties speeding up between 2022 and 2025, although, like the other contributors, I urge the Government to do all that they can. It is also the case that much faster progress is expected between 2028 and 2031 than between 2025 and 2028. I would have thought it possible to bring some of that forward, which would be welcome for future managers of the NHS.

[Steve Brine]

I see no reason why not. I am always open to argument from Government Members, but in so many parts of our workforce economy, there is a shortage of people wanting to do certain roles. That is not the case for people wanting to go to medical school. I am constantly contacted by people from around the country, and certainly in my area of Winchester and Chandler’s Ford. Many children—often those of serving medics—who are straight A students want to go to medical school but cannot because there are no places. We have made the mental leap to put the places there, and bringing them forward must be possible. The Minister knows that we are on the case, and I place that challenge before her.

On medical degrees, the plan also talks about NHS England working with the GMC. We heard from its chief executive Charlie Massey yesterday about consulting on the introduction of four-year medical degrees. The Committee explored the idea of shortening training periods in its original report; principally that was in the context of postgraduate training, but I fully support it. We currently take international graduates from all over the world where there are much shorter undergraduate training programmes than in the UK. As long as the GMC standards are met, I am very supportive of shortening the medical degree. I have spoken directly and on the record to the chief executive of the GMC about it. Obviously, quality and safety must be paramount, but as long as it is satisfied with the medical licensing certificates that it will issue, we should embrace that, and I am pleased to see it in the report.

I am also encouraged by the emphasis that the plan places on apprenticeships, with a commitment to providing 22% of all training for clinical staff through apprenticeship routes by 2031-32. That is up from just 7% today. In our related report on the future of general practice—because everything comes back to workforce—we called for the Government to provide the funding necessary to create 1,000 additional GP training places each year. The plan pledges to increase the number GP training places by 50%, to 6,000, by 2031-32. Box ticked, win—thank you.

Our workforce report called for reforms to the NHS pension scheme to prevent senior staff from reducing their hours and retiring early—again, a win. The Government have listened to the Committee. Obviously, that was announced in the spring Budget this year and is incredibly welcome. It was the No. 1 ask of the British Medical Association and we responded—something I hope it will remember over the coming days. I also hope the Opposition will come around to supporting it as well. Maybe when the Opposition spokesman has her say today she might reflect on the changes to pensions in the Budget, because they have been welcomed across the health sector.

The plan makes it clear that NHS England will work with the Government to deliver actions to modernise the NHS pension scheme—there is a specific section on that—and that the Department will introduce reforms to the legacy pension scheme, so that staff can partially retire or return to work more easily. That will make a big difference to some staff, including the consultant reconstructive surgeon who gave evidence to our original inquiry. He described his retirement happening “almost against his will” as a result of pension taxes. He said the NHS was “haemorrhaging senior staff” over pension concerns. I am therefore really pleased that the issue is being addressed.

I meet two or three times a year with the presidents of all the royal colleges in my role as Chair of the Select Committee. I wondered whether it might take a while for the announcement in the spring Budget to feed through, but within weeks of the announcement being made, a number of them were reporting to me—I had asked them directly about this—that it had already moved the dial in terms of people making different decisions about leaving the service, so I think that is a good one.

I think the training bit of the plan is incredibly strong—I have given some examples—but on retention, I think the report is “could do better”, as it said in my school reports. We recommended that there should be a review of flexible working arrangements in all trusts, with a view to ensuring that all NHS staff have similar flexibilities in their working arrangements to those employed as locum or agency staff. The plan talks about a renewed focus on retention with improved flexible working options. Although there is clearly a lot of detail still to come, I was pleased to see that on this point, the Government are listening to the Committee. However, we still need more detail on that and on how it ties in with the childcare changes, for instance, that were announced recently in the Budget.

--- Later in debate ---

[John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

Like others, I warmly welcome the workforce plan. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester (Steve Brine) and his Committee for producing a detailed and interesting report that highlights many of the things we need to study.

I suspect most of us in this Chamber, of whatever political party, accept the broad principles that we need to train more medical staff in this country and that we need to expect to recruit more people to deal with the rising workloads and rising population in the years ahead and to clear the current backlogs. And who would not want progress on better working conditions and decent levels of remuneration, so that many more people are proud to remain in these jobs?

It is not as if we have not had these issues before, and it is not as if the workforce has not been expanding. As the report reveals, the number of full-time equivalent staff in NHS England has expanded by 263,000 since 2010, which is a very substantial increase. It is rather more than 263,000 people, because it includes part-time arrangements too. Of those, some 55,000 are nurses and 42,000 are doctors, which means that more than 160,000 are not in those two leading medical professions. NHS managers, who have increased substantially in number during that time, need to demonstrate that they are recruiting the right kinds of support staff, administrative back-up and IT help so that medical professionals are better able to concentrate on treating people and doing a good job.

In the past, I have led a couple of large industrial groups, and in the days before we had an elected Assembly to run the Government of Wales, I was responsible for the very substantial public sector workforce in Wales, including the NHS workforce, as Secretary of State, so I have some experience of the complexities and difficulties of helping to supervise or run large workforces. I freely confess that none of those workforces was on the scale of NHS England, which is another degree larger, with a workforce of 1.5 million. None the less, whether it was tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands, I understand the complexities of dealing with large workforces.

I have reflected on what worked and on my experiences. My first reflection reinforces the point we have heard from the Committee. If I had experienced a 9.1% rate of turnover each year, I would have been quite alarmed. Had that been added to by a 6% or 7% absence rate, as is reported in some professions and areas of NHS England, I would have been even more alarmed. Although I had lesser problems with absence and loss of talent, I regarded them as a challenge that the leadership and management teams had to take on. To deal with the frictions, there were nearly always things that could be done to improve conditions of employment and to improve the understanding between management and those trying to execute policy.

The frictions were not always about pay. Of course, increasing pay is greatly helpful, and I welcome the results of the independent review—I was one of the many voices saying the independent review had to be implemented—but we now need something for something. We need to complement pay by making good decisions so that people feel they have a worthwhile, feasible job.

The one thing on which I disagree with my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester is his point that, with an organisation this big, it might be rather difficult to do the right kind of mentoring and individual treatment. The NHS is a series of small organisations under a general umbrella. There have been endless arguments, not particularly on party lines, about how much should be decided by experts and well-paid people at the centre and how much should be decided in the hospitals and surgeries—about how much delegated power there should be.

There is certainly management at all levels. As my hon. Friend reminded us, there are chief executives and other senior staff in hospitals, and there are practice managers and others in GP surgeries. Quite a lot of the mentoring, understanding, and evolution of a person’s role or job must occur in those local places, where one of the local management’s main tasks must surely be ensuring that their staff are looked after and well motivated. This service is a great example of a people-led service. It has millions of potential patients and a million and a half staff, and it is the interaction between them that matters. The quality of service is almost entirely dependent upon the skills, attitudes and approach of the medical professionals and their support workers in delivering a good quality of service to those who turn up as patients.

We need to say to the 36,000 managers of the NHS England system that they have an important task; that surely they know their staff and what some of their staff’s problems are; and that it is in their hands, not in the hands of Ministers, how the jobs are described and made into realistic jobs, with tasks that people want to do and can do. It is for those managers to work out how staff are rostered and how people become eligible for a promotion. Good staff management is about managing all those things.

[Steve Brine]

Let me further the debate on this. We talked to the trust chief executive about this yesterday. She said that she does good exit interviews with people who leave her trust. They leave for varying reasons, but often it is because they have got a different job in a different part of the country, and their family circumstances have changed—they are not always off to Sydney. So this comes down to leadership. The Secretary of State would talk about the Messenger review—I assume the Minister would concur—which talks about leadership in trusts and integrated care systems. That is not as good everywhere as it might be.

[John Redwood]

That is right. I hasten to add that there are many examples of good practice in the NHS. In the hundreds of trusts, units and management commands in the NHS, there are some very fine examples. In a large organisation such as this, part of the skill lies in spreading the best practice from the places that know how to do things and are doing them well to those that need help or support. They may not be aware of what is feasible, given the resource to which they are committed. I have found whenever I have been involved with something that was not working well that bad management have often made a mistake and appointed some good people but not in the positions of influence and power where they can really make things happen. Where someone is trying to recover something that is not running well, it is often about identifying the people who are good but who may be sidelined, frustrated or not being used properly, and then transferring them into different roles, to give the idea to the others that the organisation can be a good one.

My hon. Friend was hinting at where someone wants to get to if they are leading any organisation. They want success, because success breeds success; people want to work for a successful and happy organisation. If morale is allowed to sink, performance starts to get poorer. If performance sinks, really good people perhaps do not want to be associated with it or they are frustrated that they are not given the power to sort it out. The organisation could then get into a downward spiral, which it needs to avoid.

Let me move on to a slightly tougher message and spoil the party. I take as my text the work that the Chancellor of the Exchequer and his team have been doing and his recent big speech at the Guildhall on productivity. His research revealed that productivity in crucial public services, particularly the NHS, is considerably below its 2019 levels. We are all sympathetic to the fact that there was a major disruption of the NHS’s work for the period 2020-21, and probably we would also expect there to have been difficulties in in 2022 after the impact of a major diversion of effort and activity into tackling the pandemic. We are all very grateful to those brave and talented staff who did what they needed to do to see people through. However, over that period a large additional amount of money was provided, not just for the pandemic, but now on a continuing basis, along with some additional staff, as we have been commenting on, yet we are still not back to the productivity levels we were at in 2019.

As the managers of the NHS go about creating a more contented and happier workforce, in the way I have been describing, they need to say to people, “You are going to be better paid, but we can also look at your promotion, grading and job specifications,” because the good ones should be able to get additional pay and go up the scale into more important jobs. There has to be something for something. The managers have to help the staff to deliver more treatments, consultations and diagnoses, which must be possible because we are not even at the levels we were at in 2019.

[Daisy Cooper]

I have met scores of people working in the NHS at different levels; I am sure the right hon. Gentleman has too. When I talk to them about the productivity gap, they give me two or three clear examples of why there is a productivity problem. One is that there are more sick days because of burnout and exhaustion. It is unfortunate that the Government are cutting funding for mental health hubs, which have been a huge source of help for staff, particularly in hospital settings.

The NHS workers I have spoken to also talk about scanners that are way past their use-by dates and take far too long to get going, and about IT systems that do not speak to each other. They have to use eight or nine different IT systems between wards, or even on one ward, and old computers take too long to set up in the morning. It is that kind of tiresome daily grind. We sometimes know about that here in Parliament, when computers do not start in the morning and things do not work, and people end up getting frustrated.

Does the right hon. Member recognise that the productivity problem is not just about rotas, but about investing in technology, IT and scanners that work, making sure that water is not coming through the ceilings and giving mental health support?

[John Redwood]

I agree with all that. I have been very careful not to criticise the staff; I am talking about a management problem. If there are too many agency staff, then time has to be spent explaining to them how that particular hospital or department works, which would not be necessary if the regular staff had turned up. If there are gaps because of staff absences or people having resigned, that puts more strain on people and the system does not work efficiently.

All my remarks are made in the context of what I said at the beginning about trying to make these jobs more worthwhile and feasible. We need to look at how that can be done, and managers have to answer questions about whether some of them are imposing too many requirements on people that are not directly related to them performing their tasks better. There have to be limits on how much other general management information or other management themes they want to pursue, when the main task is to clear the backlogs and to treat the patients. The patients should come first, second and third, and that is not always possible if managers are making many other demands. So that is where the management teams need to take the organisations.

I was coming to the other good point that the hon. Member for St Albans (Daisy Cooper) makes, which is also well made the workforce plan. We are living through an extremely exciting digital revolution. It may even be speeding up with the developments in artificial intelligence, which could be dramatically helpful. There is a continuing task in the NHS, which sometimes thwarts those attempting it, to make sure technology is applied in the right way and is understood and friendly to use, so that hard-pressed and busy medics can find it a support, rather than a tribulation or a barrier.

Given the NHS’s huge range of data and experience, artificial intelligence should be an extremely valuable support, aiding diagnosis and decisions on treatment. I am not one of those who think that computers can do these things on their own or are about to take over the world. In the model we are talking about, the computer is an extremely important assistant that can do research and produce first drafts—that kind of thing—in a way that speeds up the work and effectiveness of the professional. However, it has to be controlled and guided by the medical professionals, who have the judgment, wider experience and expertise. The quality and speed of what they do could be greatly enhanced with the right kind of AI backup. For example, if they are facing a condition they do not know much about because it is rare, the computer would be able to give them immediate access, one assumes, to the details of what has happened in similar cases, what it looks like and how it might be treated.

[Steve Brine]

We have the time, so let us explore that briefly. My right hon. Friend is right to talk about technology and AI in particular. We produced a report a couple of weeks ago on digital NHS. We are struggling with first base on digital. Medics talk to us about having to log in to multiple systems in order to do one very simple task. I worry that, while we are talking about 21st or 22nd century technology on assistive AI, we are struggling with first base. We were at the Crick Institute yesterday. Teams there were talking to us about the challenges of bringing together all the datasets that exist across the NHS to assist in their research, and they cannot even do that. This should be an assistive help to the workforce, but we have a long way to go on that. I know the Secretary of State is very seized of this opportunity, but my right hon. Friend knows that there are problems.

[John Redwood]

Yes, indeed. Wishing to be optimistic, I was pointing out, as many will do, that there is huge opportunity in this area. None the less, my hon. Friend is quite right that there are all sorts of issues and questions, such as: what the existing technology delivers; whether the systems talk to each other sufficiently; and whether it has data in a format that can easily be transferred to a more common and modern system. We are obviously back into arguments on—I do not have a strong view on this, but experts should—how much has to be laid down centrally, so that there is an England-wide, or NHS-wide, system that is freely interoperable, and how much is best determined by local units, which know their own needs and will be organising the training and will want things that their own staff find helpful to them and fit into the sometimes differentiated approach that an individual hospital or a GP surgery may have.

It is good news that we are taking future manpower requirements seriously. It is good news that we are having an informed conversation about what might be possible. It is good news that most people, I think, agree that technology is part of the answer. Having better motivated and happier staff is clearly fundamental to the answer. I hope that, when the Minister sums up, she will have a few thoughts for me on what actions the senior management of the NHS and its various trusts are taking so that they can get those absence rates down, so that they can get the loss of staff substantially reduced, so that they have fewer staff saying, “This is not feasible,” or, “I am burned out,” and more staff saying, “I am really proud to work here,” or, “This is going extremely well; we cut our backlog last week,” and, “Did you know that many people are now getting over this condition because of our treatments?”

That is clearly what we want. We want high-morale organisations. That takes money and the right number of staff. It also requires great leadership, but it is not just leadership from the political top; it must be, above all, leadership from the very senior managers at the top of NHS England percolating down to the very important senior managers that we have in every trust and every major health institution under the framework of NHS England.

Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

John Redwood Excerpts

Wednesday 15th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

Madam Deputy Speaker, I have declared my business interests in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

I strongly welcome all the measures in the Budget to try to help more people into work. The Government are absolutely right that we want to move away from the model of always inviting in many hundreds of thousands of people from abroad to take low-paid jobs here. We need to work away at having more worthwhile and better-paid jobs here, with the right supporting investment and training.

I look forward to seeing the benefits in my constituency of Wokingham: more and cheaper childcare of a decent standard, better help for the disabled, improvements in the tax and benefits system so that it is even more worthwhile to go into work, and any supporting training packages or confidence-building activities that may be needed so that those people can get into jobs. Those benefits are very welcome, and they will make an important contribution, not just to our economy and its prospects, but to our wider society.

Where I take issue with the Chancellor and the Government is over their correctly specified need to boost investment and to get a lot more company activity in growing what we do here in Britain. I welcome the aim, and I of course appreciate that the 100% first-year allowance will be helpful. However, we need to remember that it is a replacement for an even more generous allowance, and that it is coming in at the same time that the Government propose a 31% increase in the rate of business taxation on profits.

On a couple of occasions in the past, I led industrial international companies, and as I have no more interests in those areas, I can draw some conclusions from my experiences. When we were making decisions about where to put the new product or the new investment, where to expand the workforce or where we might need a new factory, the headline rate of taxation in any country on our longlist was, of course, a relevant consideration. When we got down to a shortlist—countries with high rates did not tend to get on to that shortlist, unless we were already there—we then did detailed analyses of the project. Any first-year allowance or initial allowance would make a positive difference, but if over the 20 or 25-year life of the factory or project under consideration we would be paying 31% more profits tax, it would clearly not look nearly as good as it does this year in the United Kingdom, when we have one of the lower tax rates in the world.

The Government need to understand that at exactly the time that they are putting the rate up, our competitors are going the other way, particularly the United States of America. Although the Government say that its headline rate is slightly higher than ours, the details of the Inflation Reduction Act make it very clear that there will be all sorts of tax breaks, incentives and subsidies for a wide range of industries, including some of the industries that the Government wish to target here, such as digital and green. That will be a very important counter-magnet for the investment that we could otherwise get. The United States is, like us, an English-speaking country with common-law principles and so forth; it has many advantages, and we need to have a better offer to counter those.

Even closer to home, we have proof that lower corporation tax rates work for businesses and for the society that uses them, in the Republic of Ireland. The Republic of Ireland has the lowest tax rate of the main advanced countries competing for investment. A relatively small country, it has achieved giant steps in attracting large amounts of investment—much of which would, I think, have otherwise come to the United Kingdom—by having a much better rate of corporation tax. The proof that lower rates produce more revenue and help growth is that GDP per head is much higher in Ireland than in the United Kingdom, and business tax raised per head is much higher in Ireland—four times higher, I think—than here at home in the United Kingdom. As such, I ask the Government to look again at that issue.

The final point that I can fit in is that the Government need to look at this issue on a sector-by-sector basis. The energy sector is capital intensive. It is one of the areas where we could get a lot of big investment quite quickly with a lot of very well-paid jobs. We could improve our national energy security, cut the import bill and gain an awful lot of future tax revenue, because we tax energy at a much higher rate than other things. However, because we now have this incredibly complicated system with price controls on domestic energy, windfall taxes and carbon taxes—as well as subsidies to the industry itself because we realised the difficulties that those high tax rates were creating—we are causing complications. More importantly, we are putting off many big potential investors who would otherwise get more oil and gas out of our reserves, produce more deliverable renewable power and help to expand the grid, which will need to happen if we are going to carry on with those developments.

If we take heavy industry—ceramics, steel and so forth, which are big energy users—I think we have the highest carbon taxes of any major country. We have some of the highest energy prices on top of those very high carbon taxes, which means that we are not competitive in areas such as steel and ceramics. The Government then have to provide taxpayers’ money to those businesses, giving back some of the tax revenues in the form of subsidies, but that is often too little, too late, and we end up losing capacity. As such, I say to the Government, “Stop this subsidy, windfall tax, high-tax model. It is not working for the businesses, it is not working for our country, and it is not raising additional revenue to spend on other things.”

I am conscious that colleagues wish to get in, so all my other analysis and comments will be put on my website in the usual way.

BBC Local Radio

John Redwood Excerpts

Thursday 8th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

I entirely agree with that passionate defence of localism by the hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell). Local must mean local and we do not want people in the BBC in London imposing on us their views on how our local radio should be conducted and how big our locality should be. I see behind the centralised planning at the BBC a distorted version of what our constitution should look like within the United Kingdom, and a wish to impose that—against the clear majority wishes of people, whenever they have been asked about these subjects in referendums and elections.

It is not just that the BBC wishes to create phony regional groupings instead of truly local radio, but that it has a very distorted view of devolution. The BBC seems to be an enthusiast for devolution to Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, but it does not even know England exists. It always wants lopsided devolution. One of the four important constituent parts of the United Kingdom is scarcely ever mentioned; it is never suggested it should have any powers or right to self-government and there is no engagement with English issues on BBC radio in the way that there is a clear engagement with Scottish, Welsh or Northern Ireland issues. That causes enormous resentment.

In my own case, local radio is organised at the county level, at Radio Berkshire. That makes sense, because it is an area that we can recognise and there is some loyalty to our royal and ancient county. Many people now do not know that it had its borders artificially compressed in a local government reorganisation some 50 years ago, under a Conservative Government that I think made some mistakes, but the county retains an enormous amount of goodwill and residual loyalty, and people are very happy for our local radio to be organised at that scale. If people had real choice, however, I think Wokingham would rather have a different radio from Reading, and I think we would probably rather have a different radio from Windsor, because we have a different set of issues. But we accept that there have to be some compromises because talented people need to be appointed and paid wages, and that cannot be done to a sensible budget at very local levels.

I urge the BBC to look in the mirror and understand why, in many respects, it is getting so out of touch with its audiences. It has a very narrow range of views and issues that it will allow people to discuss, and it has a particularly warped perspective on how we feel about our areas and what our loyalties belong to. I am allowed to express views from time to time on BBC Radio Berkshire. It does not put me through the ordeal of a pre-interview to find out whether my views are acceptable and fit its caricature of a Conservative in the way that nearly always happens if national radio is thinking of interviewing me. Then, I always have the double interview, and I quite often fail the first interview test because my views are clearly too interesting or unacceptable, or do not fit the caricature that the radio wishes to put into its particular drama, so people are spared my voice on radio and I have more free time, which is perhaps a wonderful outcome from those events.

I do not find that my local radio quite plots the drama as strongly as national BBC radio and television. I am very grateful for that because I think that good, independent broadcasting of the kind that the BBC says it believes in should allow people of decent views—not extremists who want to break the law, or racists—to conduct civilised conversations and debates through the medium of the BBC. But all too often, that is truncated or impossible because of the way in which the editors operate and their pre-conceived set of views, about which they wish to create some kind of drama.

Colleagues have made extremely good points, which I will emphasise, about the treatment of staff and the way these kinds of proposals are planned. If the BBC wishes to run truly local services, it must listen to us—the local people and the local people’s representatives—and treat its staff well, and be aware that they have given good service in the past and should be taken on a journey of change that makes sense for them as well as for the BBC. This all looks rather top-down, abrupt and unpleasant. Successful organisations understand that their own journeys, evolving as institutions, are best conducted if, at the same time, they allow good journeys for the staff who give them loyal service. That does not seem to be happening in this case.

I will spare you a bit of time, Madam Deputy Speaker—I have made the main points that I wished to make. The BBC needs to be more open to a wider range of views. If it wants to be local, it has to ask us what local means.

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[Mr Robin Walker (Worcester) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to speak in a debate with so much cross-party agreement. I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead (Sir Mike Penning) on securing it and the Backbench Business Committee on granting it. I was very happy to put my name to the petition to the Committee calling for this debate, because this issue matters in all our constituencies.

I began today talking to Andrew Easton on the breakfast show on BBC Hereford and Worcester about a national issue, as it happens, but one with relevance in my constituency. All of us, as politicians, need to engage with local radio. I recently ended a career on the Front Bench and returned to the Back Benches, and one of the pleasures of doing that is being able to pick up some of the causes I championed previously. I remember in a debate in 2011, along with the right hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), championing the case for local BBC and making some of these same arguments. In that case, we did win some of the argument, and the BBC changed its mind about some of the proposed cuts and kept our local radio stronger. I hope that this debate will mean we can do that again.

As a Minister, I experienced the value of BBC local radio scrutiny in every part of the country, not just my constituency. I had to do so-called regional rounds and speak to the local BBC in different parts of the country where different issues would come up with an extremely well-informed approach. I remember being really tested by BBC Cumbria about issues of rural remoteness, and I remember challenging interviews with BBC Three Counties Radio. Having to think, as a Minister, about all the different populations that we are serving and that the BBC is serving is immensely important. That genuine localism, which the hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) spoke so passionately about, is vital.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (John Redwood) mentioned certain local government reorganisations that the Conservative party tried back in the 1970s. It is a running joke in my family, because my late father was the Minister responsible for implementing some of those. They were deeply unpopular and controversial, and most of them have unravelled over time, because people’s genuine local identities overcame the centralising instincts of Government. The BBC should listen to the lived experience of what happened with those great reforms of the 1970s and the fact that we have returned to a more local approach and the devolution that the hon. Member for York Central spoke about.

For my constituents in Worcester, that is vital, because we have seen with various regional initiatives over the years the understandable dominance of the population centre in Birmingham up the road of the west midlands. I do not necessarily begrudge that, because it is where the most people are, but the priorities of the conurbation are not the priorities of someone from Worcestershire or Herefordshire. That is similar to Durham—I remember being dispatched on a Department for Education visit where my briefing told me that I was going to Newcastle upon Tyne, which I queried and said, “Are you sure about that?”. It turned out that the school I was going to was actually in County Durham, a rural area where people would not have been happy to be told that they were part of Newcastle upon Tyne.

That sense of proper local identity really matters and BBC local radio does it well. We have voices on the radio that sound like the voices of our constituents—the voices that people know—so I thank the team at BBC Hereford & Worcester for the incredibly valuable public service that they provide. It should be about public service. The right hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington quoted the line about it being one of the “crown jewels” of public service broadcasting and I feel passionately that only the local BBC can do that within the service.

When we have these debates about priorities, I wonder whether television drama is a good use of a huge proportion of the BBC’s budget in terms of public service, given that it is an increasingly competitive space. My right hon. Friend the Member for Maldon (Sir John Whittingdale) made the point about the importance of the BBC providing unique opportunities and I am not sure that it should be putting such a huge part of its budget into an increasingly competitive landscape. I would rather that the small fraction of its budget that it puts into local radio was protected and, preferably, enhanced.

Several hon. Members have mentioned the covid crisis, and we all know the enormous value of BBC local radio during that time. In my patch, we have frequently faced debilitating floods; Worcester falls victim to floods too often. During periods of huge disruption, BBC local radio is vital to many local people. My right hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead made the point about school closures, which is one issue that we have faced as a result of floods over the years. People will not be able to get that vital local knowledge and local input—the scale and the level of detail that tells them when a primary school has been affected by floods and needs to close early—on a regional level.

That local knowledge does not stop being vital at 2 pm, so the idea that we can have local radio just for the morning is for the birds. It is about democratic scrutiny: we as Members of Parliament will all have been asked to go on the breakfast show and on drivetime to follow up the news bulletins. Although the local news bulletins are being protected, we follow them up with detailed discussions about local issues on drivetime, so to lose those programmes would be a huge mistake.

[John Redwood]

Is it not important that local radio journalists go to the council meetings, which are not normally before 2 pm?

[Mr Walker]

My right hon. Friend makes a crucial point. Of course, our local councils are a vital part of local democracy. Without local radio journalists covering and attending those meetings into the evening, we will not have the quality of democratic debate and discourse that we can and should have in this country.

I was struck by the point of the right hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington about the BBC chasing a younger audience with its move to digital. We have to ask why, because that younger audience is much more savvy and focused on a wide range of media, and does not necessarily rely on local radio in the same way that the older audience does. It is not just about the older audience, however—although we have heard from many hon. Members on both sides of the House about the importance of local radio to the elderly and isolated, which is right—people who drive for a living also value what local radio does. It gives detailed information about road closures that it would not be possible to get at regional level and that commercial stations can rarely provide. Reaching the audience that local radio reaches—the millions of people up and down the country who benefit from and rely on it—is important.

A good thing about the BBC’s proposals is that they talk about investing in investigative journalism, which all hon. Members would support. If that investigative journalism is taking place at a local level, however, it needs an outlet and regular opportunities to report and feed into programmes.

Migration and Scotland

John Redwood Excerpts

Tuesday 11th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Harper]

I do. I did not want to labour the point about all the areas in which the SNP-run Scottish Government are failing the people of Scotland—I simply focused on economic growth—but if I were pushed, I could focus on their underperformance on health and on education, as Scotland falls down—[Interruption.] I do not think that the Scottish Government missing all their targets for the performance of the health service is a laughing matter. The SNP ought to take that a little more seriously.

I have three more points to make before I conclude. The first is on enforcement. I challenged the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East on this and drew attention to the fact that, in the Scottish Government’s proposals, there is no sponsorship role for employers—that enforcement mechanism would not be there—and no salary threshold. He pushed back and said that, if a person chose to work elsewhere in the United Kingdom, that is where we would catch them out, but he is forgetting something.

Many people wish to come here from many parts of the world—I do not blame them, because the United Kingdom is a very attractive country to come to—and we stop them coming here by not issuing them with a visa. Once they are in the country, it becomes quite difficult and very costly to remove them when they have no right to be here. They often work under the radar, illegally. They are often exploited by rogue landlords, and they may make an argument that they are claiming asylum, which means that we have to go through a long and complicated process to demonstrate that they do not have entitlement to be here before having to remove them. By not having sponsorship, or that mechanism for employers with a record of proven success in employing staff from overseas, the hon. Gentleman is throwing away that significant enforcement mechanism. We would open up that risk not just in Scotland but in the whole United Kingdom, which is one reason why I do not find his proposals acceptable.

[John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that we should make the point to business that, if it invites in people at the low end of the income scale, there may be large set-up capital costs such as extra social housing, school provision, health provision and in-work benefits, which is a charge on the taxpayer and ultimately a charge on British employers?

[Mr Harper]

My right hon. Friend is exactly right.

To make my penultimate point, in the documents there are a number of references, as I have said, to Canada and Australia. Canada and Australia both allow free movement around their countries. The point is made in the Scottish Government’s own document that there are significant problems in retaining staff who have come in on the regional visas in the areas where they were supposed to stay, largely driven by the more attractive economic offers in other parts of the country. That is a real challenge, given that the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East accepted that the present system is that there are more attractive economic opportunities for migrants in other parts of the United Kingdom than in Scotland—that was his own argument—and I do not see anything in the document that suggests that the Scottish Government would be able to retain those migrants in Scotland.

Finally, to turn to the motion, I think that the hon. Gentleman and the SNP have got it the wrong way round. They have published a document and called on the Home Secretary to engage with them on their proposals. Given that the Government have not yet set out their proposals in detail and they have not been agreed by the Cabinet, a more sensible approach, now that we have left the European Union—that battle is over for now; given the SNP’s position on Brexit, it was challenging for it to accept that it was happening— would be for the SNP to engage with the Government. I am pleased that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary, who opened the debate and who I am pleased to see in his place, made it clear that his door was open. The SNP should engage with both the Home Office and the Scotland Office to look at how the measures that will be set out in our points-based system—I have set out one or two of them—could best engage with Scotland’s needs.

We are keen that we have an immigration system that works for the whole of the United Kingdom, to make every part of our country more dynamic, and to increase pay and opportunities for people across the United Kingdom. That is the best way of proceeding, so I suggest that the House, when the time comes later today, reject the motion. I urge the SNP to engage seriously with the Government. If it does so, it will find a listening ear and a willingness to engage on that basis, which is the best way for us all to move forward.

[Tommy Sheppard (Edinburgh East) (SNP)]

I fear that sometimes in politics people oppose propositions for the wrong reasons. I do not regard myself as immune from that tendency by the way, but quite often, people are in a political bunker, and they have predetermined attitudes about the meaning of a proposition. Before someone expresses even a single word in support of that proposition, their mind is made up on the basis of who is making the argument.

I fear that this is one of those occasions. No matter how convincing the arguments from SNP Members, the Government will not listen to them—those arguments will fall on deaf ears. I am saddened by that, because it is not a good way to approach such a serious subject. There are probably Government Members—I do not know whether I would include the Under-Secretary—who simply reject any proposition on visa controls or anything else from the SNP, because they would regard giving in or moving towards that position as being the thin end of the wedge of Scottish independence, so no quarter must be given.

Let me be clear, SNP Members very much want Scotland to become an independent country with full and absolute control over all matters to do with nationality and the movement of people into and out of the country. I very much look forward to the day—I hope it will not be too long ahead—when we can establish an immigration system in Scotland that gives people Scottish citizenship with a very generous attitude and encourages people to come and make their homes in our country from all corners of the globe: a country made up of first-class citizens rather than there being different attitudes to different people depending on where they come from. But that is not where we are, and it is not what is being proposed in this debate.

What is being proposed is a simple policy to have a work visa in one part of the United Kingdom because of very clear, overwhelming arguments in favour of it. I might almost suggest that a Unionist-minded politician could support many of the propositions contained in this motion, because the purpose behind it is to try and make up for and deal with the consequences of Scotland being part of a centralised single state where economic planning, and strategic economic planning in particular, is very much done from the centre and where the Scottish economy risks becoming a peripheral regional economy in a much larger entity.

We all know the economic pressures that that creates. I moved to this city in the 1980s for work, as did many other people I know. It is still happening today—this gravitational pull that draws people in and overheats the south-east of England. That is precisely why a one-size-fits-all policy is not the answer to anything.

For the last 20 years or so the Scottish population has been growing slightly, but only as a result of immigration; had it not been for that, the population would have been in decline. For that period up until the end of this year, we have been blessed in many ways by having access to the free movement of people across this continent, which has allowed many people from other European countries to come and make their home and live and work in Scotland. But now that that is at threat of disappearing, it is all the more important that we address what sort of immigration system we have in the United Kingdom and whether Scotland, as part of that, is going to have its needs satisfied. And I would say that with the current proposals on offer—

[John Redwood]

rose—

[Tommy Sheppard]

Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman can enlighten me, but from what I know of the current proposals on offer, that is most definitely not the case.

[John Redwood]

Part of centralising Scotland and England and the rest of the Union in a single economic policy is, of course, sharing a currency, so does the hon. Gentleman now think that Scotland should leave the pound in order to have an independent policy, because otherwise it would obviously be very dependent?

[Tommy Sheppard]

I am not sure of the relevance of that question to the current debate, but let me answer. It will not be too many years until Scotland is a strong and prosperous economy with its own currency, its own central bank and punching well above its weight compared with today.

Various arguments have already been made against this proposal by those on the Government Benches, but they do not hold water, because they are not, in essence, arguments against what is being proposed—

Scotland Bill

John Redwood Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd March 2016 Commons Chamber

[David Mundell]

This is a truly significant day for Scotland. If this Bill completes its parliamentary progress, it will add to the already extensive responsibilities of the Scottish Parliament a range of important new powers. It provides even greater opportunities for the Scottish Government to tailor and deliver Scottish solutions to Scottish issues. The Scottish Parliament that returns in May will be a powerhouse Parliament that has come of age. Crucially, it will be much more accountable to the people who elect it, which is the hallmark of a mature democratic institution.

I am pleased to say that Lord Smith of Kelvin has confirmed that the Bill puts into law the agreement that the five main political parties in Scotland reached, and that the fiscal framework that was agreed means that the recommendations of his commission have been delivered in full.

Last week, the Scottish Parliament debated the motion on whether to grant legislative consent to the Bill before us today, and the agreement was unanimous. Deputy First Minister John Swinney remarked:

“The Smith process delivered an agreement for additional powers that—if they are used in the right way—can benefit the people of Scotland.”—[Scottish Parliament Official Report, 16 March 2016; c. 3.]

I agree with him wholeheartedly on that.

The debate last week demonstrated the consensus among all parties in Scotland that these new powers present a tremendous opportunity for Scotland. That was clear in their unanimous vote to grant legislative consent to this Bill. This process goes to show that both of Scotland’s Governments and both of Scotland’s Parliaments can work effectively together in the interest of the people in Scotland and right across our United Kingdom.

No individual or party held a monopoly of wisdom on how the Smith agreement might best be translated into legislation. Many people, both inside and outside this Chamber, have contributed to the Bill as it stands before us today. I thank hon. Members and noble Lords for their contributions as the Bill passed through this House and the other place.

[John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

I am grateful to the Secretary of State for giving way. When this important work was being done, there were obvious and big consequences for England. Which Minister or Ministers spoke for England during the negotiations?

[David Mundell]

My right hon. Friend has asked that question before. This legislation has been debated on the Floor of this House and on the Floor of the other place. Extensive scrutiny of the Bill has taken place. Indeed, there has been the opportunity to scrutinise the fiscal framework as well, so extensive scrutiny has been delivered in relation to this legislation for the people of England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland.

The Bill has been strengthened by the scrutiny it has received, and I am pleased that the amendments that I will cover shortly are a positive and constructive culmination of that process.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Speaker]

The hon. Gentleman has registered that point, although, as he will know, I am not responsible for the ministerial code. Others are, however, bound by it, and therefore have a responsibility to it. That point is on the record.

[John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker. I wonder whether it would be sufficient for Ministers to report orally to the House on how they propose to amend the figures, which are clearly wrong.

[Mr Speaker]

It is entirely open to Ministers to do that in the course of the debate. I have no desire to steer the debate as that would be very wrong, but I have a hunch that if the Minister does not provide satisfaction on that front, he might be peppered with attempted interventions from either the hon. Member for Stone (Sir William Cash) or the right hon. Member for Wokingham (John Redwood). We will leave it there for now.

Scotland’s Fiscal Framework

John Redwood Excerpts

Wednesday 24th February 2016 Commons Chamber

[David Mundell]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for welcoming the parts of the agreement that he did. This has been a negotiation, and this is the point arrived at in the agreement; it is not possible for the Treasury or the UK Government to have engineered an agreement, as what was needed was the agreement of the Scottish Government, and that is what has been achieved. The two parties have been able to reach an agreement on a fiscal framework that is both fair to Scotland and fair to the people of Scotland.

I can reassure the right hon. Gentleman that the review will go ahead on an independent basis, without prejudice or a predetermined outcome, and it will be concluded by the end of 2021. There will be no imposition of any formula at the end of that period, and what happens will be by way of agreement. As I said in my previous comments, when I quoted what Lord Smith said, I believe that this process, through some of the most difficult types of negotiation, gives us confidence that in a maturing relationship the UK Government and the Scottish Government will be able to reach such an agreement.

[John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

Extrapolating recent population trends, what is the additional cost to England, Wales and Northern Ireland of the transitional arrangements on population?

[David Mundell]

There will be no additional cost to England, Wales and Northern Ireland from the powers being transferred compared with if we were not proceeding with this devolution settlement, because the sum being delivered to the Scottish Government is exactly the same as would have been delivered under the Barnett formula.

Public Finances: Scotland

John Redwood Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Ian Murray (Edinburgh South) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House notes the ongoing negotiations between the Scottish and UK Governments in the Joint Exchequer Committee on a revised fiscal framework to accompany the Scotland Bill; regrets that, despite both Governments repeatedly stating that the negotiation of a revised fiscal framework would be concluded by autumn last year, no agreement has been reached; further regrets the complete lack of transparency with which negotiations have been conducted; notes that, until agreement is reached, the measures in the Scotland Bill will not be implemented and the substantial new powers it contains will not be deployed for the benefit of the Scottish people; believes that both the UK and Scottish Governments have a duty to ensure that the negotiation of a revised fiscal framework which is fair to Scotland is completed in time for the Scotland Bill to be approved by the Scottish Parliament prior to its dissolution, so that it can use its current and future powers for the benefit of the people of Scotland; and calls on the UK Government to publish all minutes and papers from the Joint Exchequer Committee negotiations, and to assure the House that every effort is being made to ensure that agreement on a revised fiscal framework is reached, and the Scotland Bill is passed, prior to the Scottish Parliament elections.

I am sorry that you do not want an oratorical flourish, Madam Deputy Speaker, because that is what I was preparing to give—but never mind; we will continue with the debate. I appreciate that this debate has been curtailed because of the previous debate, which was on an incredibly important issue, and because of the Prime Minister’s statement. We have to accept how the House works in such circumstances.

It is a pleasure to open this debate for the Opposition. At its core, this debate is about the transfer of new powers to Scotland under the Scotland Bill, which completed its passage through the House in November and is currently in the other place. It is worth briefly reflecting on the Bill, to put this debate about Scotland’s public finances and the fiscal framework into context. The Bill had its genesis in the vow and the Smith commission, the recommendations of which were agreed by all five major Scottish political parties. When passed, the Bill will transform the Scottish Parliament into one of the most powerful devolved Parliaments in the world.

Scotland will have control over all income tax, apart from non-savings and non-dividends income, which generated almost £11 billion in revenues in 2013-14. The Scottish Parliament will have the power to vary the rates and bands of income tax, to increase or decrease those revenues. This greatly enhances the powers devolved under the Scotland Act 2012, under which the Scottish Parliament controls just 10p in the pound. On that note, the Scottish Labour leader, Kezia Dugdale, announced yesterday that, faced with a choice of cutting into Scotland’s future or using the powers of the Scottish Parliament, we would use the latter to set the Scottish rate of income tax at 11p, rather than the 10p in the SNP Budget, to invest in that very future for Scotland and to protect the low-paid. We made that point in the debate in the Scottish Parliament today.

These new revenue-raising powers are accompanied by new spending powers, such as control over £2.5 billion of welfare spending. The Scottish Parliament will be able to top up existing UK benefits and, thanks to concerted pressure from Labour and our amendments, will have total autonomy to create new benefits in devolved areas. When these new powers are enacted, the Scottish Parliament will be able to make different choices to create a better Scotland.

[John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

Who in the hon. Gentleman’s party speaks for England to make sure that the settlement is fair to England as well as to Scotland?

[Ian Murray]

The settlement has to be fair to the rest of the UK as well, including England, but I will come to that later.

--- Later in debate ---

[David Mundell]

I am sure that the hon. Lady could find a lot more detail if she studied the Scottish press and looked through the various debates that have been conducted on the issue. We will report what happened in full. I do not recall important negotiations being reported in detail and on a daily basis in the House of Commons or elsewhere when Labour were in government. We do not intend to do that. We intend to reach an agreement that is fair for Scotland and fair for the rest of the United Kingdom. That is where our efforts are focused.

I remain an optimist. We are making progress, and I believe that we will reach an agreement. A deal can and will be reached if both sides want it. I know that the UK Government want a deal, and I believe the Scottish Government when they say that they want one too. The two Governments have agreed to speak again in the coming days. Although there are still some difficult issues to resolve, we remain confident that a deal can be reached that is fair to Scotland and fair to the rest of the UK, now and in the future.

[John Redwood]

I am grateful to the Secretary of State, who is doing a difficult task with great skill. Has a recent model been produced for how the income tax might work, because we have seen in previous debates that the forecasts for oil revenue were grossly exaggerated, and there is an unfortunate danger that with the collapse of the oil price will come the collapse of oil-related incomes in Scotland, which would have a bad impact on income tax receipts?

[David Mundell]

My right hon. Friend makes an important point, which speaks against those who argued just a few short months ago for full fiscal autonomy. It is quite interesting to look back at the amendment launched by the SNP in November to bring about full fiscal autonomy, which the Institute for Fiscal Studies predicted would create a £10 billion gap in Scotland’s finances. When the SNP asked for that full fiscal autonomy, it did not ask for what they now claim are the levers it needs to grow the Scottish population and offset the risk it is being asked to take on in relation to the Smith commission proposals.

The Government have been as open and transparent as possible in these negotiations, and each meeting has been notified to the House. Just this afternoon, the Chief Secretary appeared before the Scottish Affairs Committee. Last month, we responded in detail to the Economic Affairs Committee in the other place on fiscal devolution, having previously submitted written evidence to that Committee.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stewart Hosie]

Not at the moment.

What is remarkable is that the motion does not talk about public finances or the impact of getting the fiscal agreement wrong. It is almost exclusively focused on the process of negotiating a formula—a formula that, of course, must deliver no detriment, which was one of the key principles identified by Lord Smith. Although fairness for Scotland is recognised in the motion, many other drivers of Scotland’s public finances are not.

[John Redwood]

rose—

[Stewart Hosie]

Not at the moment.

There was a cursory passing reference to Labour’s plan, which was announced yesterday, to make Scotland the highest-tax part of the UK. That has a bearing on the public finances. It is a Labour plan to add to the tax burden of half a million Scottish pensioners. It is a plan to add to the tax burden of 2.2 million taxpayers. In essence, it is a plan to change the public finances by taxing Scots more to pay for Tory cuts. That is the weakness in Labour’s plan.

[David Mowat]

rose—

[John Redwood]

rose—

[Stewart Hosie]

No, I am conscious of time and it would not be fair to give way.

It is absolutely right that the negotiations are done privately. Imagine if there was a running commentary and slight snippets of information, out of context, became the fodder for a new “project fear” campaign run by Labour. We do not want that. We want a Labour party that, instead of sniping from the sidelines, is determined to support fair play, and a fair settlement that delivers on the principle of “no detriment”. Instead, we have this thin motion, combined with Labour MSPs who last week backed the Tories and refused to back the per capita index deduction block grant adjustment mechanism, which would deliver the “no detriment” principles that Labour signed up to in the Smith agreement.

In my view, that is economic and political madness from Labour, but it is not a surprise. After all, in advance of the fiscal agreement, before agreement is reached on an LCM, and before powers are transferred, the Labour party has spent many times over the modest cost of a reduction in air passenger duty—a policy that will create 4,000 jobs and put £200 million of economic activity into the economy—by committing to spend £650 million of Scotland’s public finances from a pot that does not yet even exist. No wonder Labour Members are more interested in talking about process than policy.

As the First Minister has said, the Scottish Government are negotiating the fiscal agreement in good faith, but they will not sign up to a deal that systematically cuts Scotland’s budget, regardless of anything that they, or any future Scottish Government, might do. That message has been reiterated many times by the Deputy First Minister, who said a few moments ago that the reason why we do not have a fiscal agreement right now is that there is no basis to be agreed that is consistent with the Smith commission, and we will not sign up to any document that is not consistent with the Smith commission report.

Let me conclude by being even clearer on behalf of my party: we will not agree to a fiscal agreement that abandons the principle of “no detriment” and embeds unfairness into the Scotland Bill. We will not support Labour tonight. This is a silly motion about publishing minutes that does not address the core substance of the fiscal agreement. We have tabled an amendment to that motion, and I commend it to the House.

--- Later in debate ---

[John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

I wish to speak for England. The current settlement between Scotland and England, as the constituents of many of my right hon. and hon. Friends know, is not fair. It is very important that the Government take full account of the needs of England, as well as being scrupulously careful to meet the promises they and the other leading parties made to each other during the Scottish referendum. Please do not make the settlement even less fair to England as a result of the changes going through with the transfer of tax revenues, particularly income tax, to the Scottish Parliament and Government.

It is extremely difficult to know what factors lie behind an increase or a diminution in revenues. Some of us study it and we feel we get somewhere near the truth by looking at historical patterns, but it is clear that sometimes when the tax rate is put up we receive less, rather than more, revenue. Models have to reflect those perverse effects, particularly on higher levels of tax. Sometimes a tax increase may in itself, if it is one of the lower tax rates, produce some increase in revenue, but then something else happens that actually reduces the revenue. Conversely, there can be windfall effects through no particular action by the Government.

Scotland has had a very good windfall effect, not just from oil revenues proper, but from income tax revenues as a result of the very high price of oil in recent years and the way that drove up a large number of incomes in the oil and oil service sector. Unfortunately, from Scotland’s point of view, that may now be reversing. The model we use to assess what the revenues are now and what they are likely to be in the future has to be able to capture that complexity. I fear that a lot of the models used in the past by both Governments have not captured that because there are rather extreme effects when there is a big change in the price of oil. That needs to be used to inform the debate about how the grant should adjust to the changes in tax revenue.

It appears from what the Scottish nationalists have been saying that, while they want the power to vary income tax, there are absolutely no circumstances in which they would ever do so. They would always wish to keep the income tax rate in Scotland absolutely in line with England’s. That seems to be their very clear position. We have not been able to draw out of them any circumstances in which they would do so, but that makes the modelling a bit easier, because many of the changes in revenue are not going to come from changes in tax rates—as I say, they do not want to do that. They will come from the economic effects of their other policies.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

This is an important debate not just because it proposes a fiscal framework for Scotland, but because of the huge impact on my electors in North Durham.

The Secretary of State said that he wanted no detriment to Scotland and a fair deal for the rest of the United Kingdom, but we do not know that there will be a fair deal for the rest of the United Kingdom. The Secretary of State said, strangely, that the negotiations required “a degree of privacy”, but what we actually have is secrecy. He then used what I considered to be new terminology, although it has clearly been well practised by this Government: he said that one of the roles of the press was to leak. At the end of the day, however, my constituents and I have no way of influencing or scrutinising what happens in the negotiations.

[John Redwood]

Does the hon. Gentleman think that the current distribution of grant and other money between England and Scotland is fair?

[Mr Jones]

No, I do not. Scottish Members were crying over Barnett, but my constituents would welcome the levels of expenditure that we see in Scotland. The main point is this, though. How can I, a Member of the House of Commons, scrutinise this deal if it is done behind closed doors, in a way that is clearly intended to satisfy the Scottish national party—[Interruption.] The point is that I will not have any opportunity to scrutinise that process.

The hon. Member for Dundee East (Stewart Hosie) trotted out, again, the argument about how badly Scotland had been treated. Let me gently say to him that he needs to look at the percentage of expenditure that the north-east of England has lost. The north-east is not a wealthy region; indeed, it is the poorest region in the United Kingdom, with the highest levels of unemployment, and its views should not be ignored.

The hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) asked who spoke for England, or the United Kingdom, in the negotiations. If the answer is the Conservatives, I have to say that they have been no friends of the north-east for many years, and we will get a very bad deal. The real test, however, relates to the powers that will be given to the Scottish Government. They already have the alternative of raising revenue, but they do not use it. Instead, they are aping the Conservatives with notions such as the freezing of council tax, which is not at all progressive in terms of redistribution.

The House should have the ability to look at how the deal will affect constituents in the rest of the UK. That said, I do not think we will need to bother, because it is quite clear what the Scottish nationalist party will do. It is going to string it out until May, cry foul and then use its victim mentality, which it has turned into an art form, to persuade the Scottish people that they are getting a raw deal from the rest of us. I do not think, therefore, that we will find ourselves in that position, which is sad, because it means we are not going to have a debate this May in Scotland about the use of the powers; instead, we are going to have the victim mentality. The SNP will blame the rest of us in the UK for the poor deal it has got, when, frankly, it does not give a damn about my constituents or any others in the UK.

Scotland Bill

John Redwood Excerpts

Monday 15th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that there will not now be the automatic application of the Barnett formula to solve all the many money issues between Scotland and the rest of the United Kingdom, but there has to be a fundamental renegotiation of the block grant and an attribution to Scotland of revenues by some formula? In practice, the whole financial settlement is in the melting pot anyway, so it will be very interesting to see how the SNP respond to his proposed further development.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

Absolutely; we are a united kingdom. For instance, Lincolnshire gets more money in its educational grant because of the sparsity factor. All these things can be worked out in a constructive manner between the United Kingdom Government and the Scottish Government so that there is a fair support mechanism based on need that takes account of issues such as declining oil revenues, the sparsity factor that I mentioned, declining heavy industries, or an ageing population. The grant should be determined by these matters, not by some ageing formula based on what the United Kingdom spends.

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[Sir Edward Leigh]

I will make a bit more progress, because I want to get to my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg). He has been very patient, and I will get to him eventually.

Like then, everything is different now. What will happen if Smith stays? Can we sustain a permanent settlement that prevents Scotland from setting the initial threshold for income tax or from changing universal credit? What will happen when the Scottish Conservative party promises in its election manifesto to cut taxation? How credible will that be if it affects the block grant available from the United Kingdom? All these issues have to be discussed.

Under the Smith proposals, universal credit will remain a reserved matter. Holyrood will be able to vary the frequency of payments and the way it is paid, while the power to vary the remaining elements of universal credit remain reserved, but I would ask why. I have read the Smith commission. Why?

[John Redwood]

Universal credit has been reserved because if Scotland decided to make it more generous, the issue would arise of how it would pay for that. What we find with fiscal independence is that we have to delegate both sides of the equation—the raising of the money and the spending of it—and then it can decide how much it wants to spend.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

Full fiscal autonomy results in full responsibility. That is what real Parliaments do.

Responsibility for bereavement allowance, bereavement payment, child benefit, guardian’s allowance, maternity allowance, statutory maternity pay, statutory sick pay and widowed parent’s allowance will all remain reserved and administered by the Department for Work and Pensions. Why? The Smith commission further proposes a complex system for sharing responsibility for income tax. Why? That is all affected by an oscillating block grant. As I have said, how can SNP Members promise lower taxes in an election or higher spending unless they are masters of their own fate?

What are the objections to full home rule? What are the real objections to full fiscal autonomy, apart from the fact that we appointed a Lord Smith—with lots of no doubt very worthy people—to produce a report, which has been overtaken by events? We are told that full fiscal autonomy will result in tax competition within the Union. What is wrong with that? That is what keeps the American states vibrant and competitive with one another and continually innovating. Do we not insist that our taxes in Britain compete with those of Europe? We are told that tax competition would create downward pressure on taxes. Well, I am sorry about that. Why should the Scottish Parliament not be able to lower or raise air passenger duty? It can do whatever it likes. I know it has had that power and it will be allowed it under Smith, but if that power is allowed, why not powers for other things?

On Second Reading, my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset said that a single currency requires fiscal and monetary union, with the implication that that is proved by the Greek experience. Surely he is not suggesting that the Scots are Greeks, or that the Scottish economy is as different from England’s as Germany’s is from Greece’s. No; Scotland can thrive with full fiscal autonomy because Scotland has the will and the skills to do so. It has universities, research, manufacturing, logistics, light manufacturing, oil and gas, food and drink and a flourishing creative sector. [Hon. Members: “Hooray!”] Vote for my new clause.

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[John Redwood]

I have always been a Unionist, but my idea of my country, the United Kingdom, is that it must be a democracy at peace with itself, and can only proceed as a happy and successful democracy if it has the consent of most of the people most of the time to the Union institutions and the powers of those institutions.

I am pleased that, because we proceed democratically and understand the need for consent, this Parliament listened to Scotland and, quite recently, granted a referendum to establish whether it was the settled will of the Scottish people to leave the United Kingdom altogether and set up their own arrangements. We discovered two things as a result of that democratic exercise. We discovered that the Scottish National party itself was not arguing for full independence: it wanted to remain part of the currency union, for example. I do not see how it is conceivably possible for an independent country to be part of a currency union.

[Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)]

Is the right hon. Gentleman seriously suggesting that Germany is not an independent nation?

[John Redwood]

That is exactly the problem: Germany is not an independent nation. No member of the eurozone is an independent nation, and that is why those countries are experiencing such trouble. The trouble is not just for Greece, which is very visibly not independent, because it is being told how to conduct its economic policy. Germany is not independent either. Germany did not wish to lend Greece huge sums of money, but the European Central Bank, acting in the name of Germany, has advanced huge sums of money, which it will find very difficult to get back, but which Germany has to stand behind.

[Patricia Gibson (North Ayrshire and Arran) (SNP)]

rose—

[John Redwood]

If SNP Members will allow me a little time, I will say things that they will like. I am not trying to make life difficult for them.

This is my analysis. In the referendum the SNP went for something more akin to home rule than what I would regard as full independence, but at that stage the Scottish people said no even to that. They seemed to say yes to the rather larger devolution of powers that the three main Unionist parties were then offering. However, we are now experiencing new circumstances.

Like my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh), who has tabled a very interesting amendment, I think that this Parliament must listen to the new voice of the Scottish people. It is clear that there has been a shift of opinion towards more home rule than the Unionist parties were offering at the time of the referendum. That is why we are here today, listening very carefully to what the SNP has to say, and that is why I think it extremely important for us to have this debate on full fiscal independence, or fiscal autonomy. It would be one way for our Parliament to respond when the Scottish people have said, “We do not want to be completely independent as a separate country, but we want much more self-government—or home rule—than was envisaged by the Unionist parties at the time of the referendum, because we can see that that was not very popular.”

The Unionist parties collectively did rather badly in Scotland come the general election. [Interruption.] Well, between them, they received just under half the vote, while the Scottish nationalist party received just over half the vote. Because the Unionist vote was split, practically no Unionist Members of Parliament were elected, but it is still the case that Scottish opinion is fairly evenly balanced. The Scottish nationalists did not get 70% or 80% of the vote. If they had done, then, as far as I am concerned, they would really be in a position to tell us the answer, but, as judged by the vote, they speak for only about half the Scottish people. However, as representatives, they speak for practically all the Scottish people because they have most of the Members in this place.

I am listening very carefully and will want to hear more about what SNP Members want, but I am also very conscious that, in parallel with this exercise on powers as set out in this Bill, in some way far more important negotiations are already under way on what the new financial settlement will be, and those are not yet being reported to this House. That is crucial not just to the SNP and its representation of the Scottish people, but to the people of England. I find the more home rule that is on offer and the more we hear the Scottish voice, the more I have to be an advocate not of the Union, but of England, because someone needs to speak for England and to say that the consequences of much enhanced Scottish devolution, and some fiscal devolution as well, are serious for England. England needs to be in the discussion just as Scotland does, as this is our joint country and a major change in its arrangements will have a fundamental impact on England.

While I am very attracted to the idea of my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough that it would be a shrewd move to, for once, get ahead of the Scottish appetite for home rule and on this occasion to grant full fiscal devolution, we need to ask how feasible that is and what the consequences will be for Scotland and England. If Scotland wishes to be part of common welfare and pension guarantees, some limitation is already imposed on the spending side of full fiscal devolution. We have to think about the position of England if cross-guarantees are being offered for some part of that welfare package. If we are going to proceed in the way the Government currently plan and the way the negotiations are currently being undertaken—as I understand it, there is an attempt to find a way of adjusting the block grant for Scotland to take into account the new Scottish responsibilities, as some items of spending will have to be added in as a result of the devolution of new functions, and there will be a reduction in the block grant to take account of those taxes that are now Scotland’s to fix and collect—therein lies an immediate problem.

[Mr MacNeil]

Would not an easier solution be for Scotland to collect its own tax, as Catalonia does, and then pay into the centre, rather than the centre paying out? The taxes should be raised by the Government of the territory paying the taxes and paid into the centre rather than giving them to the centre for it to then pay out. In that way, the centre will have to stop saying it is subsidising people when it returns their own taxes.

[John Redwood]

But if Scotland wisely decides to have lower tax rates to make itself more popular, the Union will be losing out if those lower tax rates collect less money.

[Mr MacNeil]

The right hon. Gentleman should realise that it is not lower taxes that have made the SNP more popular; it is better public services in Scotland—that has given us 50% of the vote versus his party’s 37%.

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[John Redwood]

If Scotland wishes to impose higher taxes, the Union has less of a problem with that—unless it chooses to impose higher tax rates which collect less revenue, because those could be a problem for the Union as a whole—but it would be a problem for Scotland if it had to collect higher tax levels and it did not get all the money back; I would have thought it would want to get all the extra money back that it was collecting. Full fiscal autonomy means it would take responsibility for both raising the money and spending it. If Scotland wishes to spend more under fiscal autonomy, she can do so if she has a magic way of getting more money off people through either higher or lower tax rates, whichever work in the particular fiscal circumstances.

We need to have working papers on how full fiscal devolution might work and whether it is truly full fiscal devolution, because if we are going to full fiscal devolution, England will want guarantees that we are no longer acting as a buffer or subsiding the Scottish settlement, just as Scotland will want guarantees that she has got a fair deal and is capturing the benefits of her fiscal independence. If we go for a mixed system, which is where we currently are with the real debate between the Smith commission, the pro-Union parties and the SNP, there is a lot to be worked out, and I hope that at some point those on the Treasury Bench will share some of their thinking with the Committee.

[Andrew Gwynne]

I find myself in the unusual position of agreeing with much of what the right hon. Gentleman is saying. Do not these arguments illustrate the asymmetrical nature of the devolution settlement across the four nations of the United Kingdom? Does he agree that whichever funding model we go for in relation to Scotland, there will be implications for the finances of the other three nations? Does he not think that we need a constitutional convention to put that right?

[John Redwood]

No, I do not think that we need a constitutional convention, because that would create endless delay and complications. I agree with previous comments that we are here to try to solve this problem for our respective constituents. I spent quite a lot of my time during the election speaking for England and saying that I wanted to ensure that England got a reasonable deal out of this. SNP representatives clearly did the same in relation to Scotland, and we both achieved similar levels of success in attracting lots of votes for what we were saying.

[Mr MacNeil]

The right hon. Gentleman talks about getting good deals for the various parts of the UK, but let us look at the wider British Isles. Does he think that the aggregate GDP of the British Isles would be as high as it is today without the full fiscal autonomy that the Republic of Ireland, the Isle of Man and the United Kingdom all enjoy? If the aggregate GDP of the British Isles is higher for those reasons, does he not agree that it will be higher still when Scotland achieves its full fiscal autonomy?

[John Redwood]

I start from the point of view of democracy. A democratic state has to have the full range of powers, including fiscal autonomy and its own currency. That is different from asking: what is your state? I would still rather have the United Kingdom as my state, but I have just explained that if it is the will of the Scottish people that the UK is no longer their preferred state, they must leave—of course they must.

[Mr MacNeil]

The right hon. Gentleman is being very kind in enabling our dialogue to continue. I am sure he would acknowledge that the UK functioned between 1603 and 1707, when the Parliaments were independent.

[John Redwood]

Well, it functioned after a fashion, but I would not have wanted to live through that time. The nations were clearly not nearly as rich as they are today. Labour Members sometimes try to pretend that we have gone back to an ancient age, but I am sure that none of them would willingly go back in time and live in that era, because we are obviously so much better off now.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

I do not want to divert from the subject, but was not the reason for the Scots’ enthusiasm in going forward in 1707—[Interruption.] It was not an economic blockade; it was speculation in the colonies of central America.

[John Redwood]

Yes, it was a kind of early version of the banking crash, which also reminds us that Scottish banks can sometimes get into trouble, and that the Union’s insurance can be quite helpful to them.

[George Kerevan]

May I return the discussion to the here and now? I should like to clarify something that the right hon. Gentleman said, because I think I agree with him. Is he saying that there was a clear desire in the debate that took place in Scotland post-Smith for a fuller measure of complete domestic fiscal control within the UK, but that achieving it would require serious discussions about how it would work in Scotland and how it would affect the fiscal arrangements in the rest of the UK? Does he agree that it could be done reasonably quickly, but would require transitional arrangements? It cannot be done overnight, but it is the way to go. If we do not do this, we will end up having endless piecemeal discussions, which would produce more friction than light.

[John Redwood]

I am making an even more urgent point than that. I am saying that that discussion is going on in parallel with our debates on this Bill. I hope that its content will be shared with Members at some point, because it is a matter of great importance to the United Kingdom, to England, to Scotland and so forth. As I understand it, those taking part in the negotiations are up against these very issues. If, for example, too much independence is given to Scotland on spending patterns, would there be a Union guarantee to pay for it all? How would it be fair to other parts of the Union if Scotland could increase her spending without having to take responsibility for raising the money for it? If Scotland starts to raise more of her own money, how do we adjust the block grant? In the current negotiations, nobody is suggesting getting rid of the block grant and saying that Scotland can have all her own money and just spend her own money. I am not even sure that is what the SNP wants. Negotiation is going on about how far—[Interruption.] If the SNP genuinely wants all that, that is fine. We then have to have a serious discussion, before it could be agreed to, over the borrowing. I will call it “borrowing”; I do not think “black hole” is a terribly useful term.

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[Patricia Gibson]

Does the right hon. Gentleman not agree that successive Westminster Governments could learn much from the economic management of the Scottish Parliament, which has balanced its budget, in a fixed budget, every year, while Westminster has run up successive debts?

[John Redwood]

That is because all the time that it is a subsidiary Parliament of the Union, and part of our public expenditure and borrowing plans, it has to abide by the remit. The hon. Lady is right in that it has been given a tougher remit than the Union gives itself, but it is not fair to say that that is of no interest or benefit to Scotland, because of course much of the Union expenditure is also being committed proportionately in Scotland and so it is Scotland’s share of the debt as well. I am making a factual statement; I am not trying to make party political points, wind up the SNP, rerun the referendum or anything like that. I am just trying to get this Committee to understand that grave and big issues are being hammered out elsewhere, we are not hearing about them and they impinge very much on this crucial debate that we are now having.

I have intervened in the debate because I want an opportunity to talk about this financial settlement, which matters to England as well as to Scotland. The proposal put forward by my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough brings things centre stage. If we went down his route and had full fiscal autonomy, I would want to know what that meant; how much responsibility Scotland would take, for example, for pensions as well as welfare; and what the borrowing settlement would be. The residual is the borrowing, and unless we know what the answer is on that, we still will not have a happy Union or stable expenditure.

[Ian Blackford]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his most gracious speech and his thoughtful remarks about the future of the constitutional arrangements between Scotland and the rest of the UK. It is perhaps worth remembering that when Gordon Brown spoke on behalf of the three Unionist parties prior to the referendum, what was offered was as close to federalism as we could get. What was talked about was home rule in the spirit of Keir Hardie. It is akin to the remarks that the right hon. Gentleman is making. It is perhaps worth remembering that the manifesto commitment the SNP stood on was delivering powers for a purpose to the Scottish Parliament. He is right: that is what the Scottish people voted for in returning 56 Members of Parliament to this Chamber.

[John Redwood]

Then I think we need to have another debate, on another day, which looks at what is going on in these important financial discussions. Although my constituents are interested in what powers Scotland gets, they are far more interested in how the money works between the different parts of the Union. We have no papers before us today to elucidate that.

[Ian Murray (Edinburgh South) (Lab)]

For the second time in five and a bit years, I agree with the right hon. Gentleman. On the complicated nature of the fiscal framework, which I believe he is trying to unpack, does he not agree that the Labour new clause, which will be debated at some point, to set up an independent commission on the costs and implications of full fiscal autonomy provides a much more reasonable and sensible approach?

[John Redwood]

We are where we are. Promises were made, I thought in good faith, by the three Front-Bench teams. They were not my chosen promises; they were made on behalf of the three Unionist parties. They did the job for the referendum, but they then did not do much of a job for the Unionist parties at the general election. However, we cannot now be seen to be delaying for any great length. There needs to be proper work—and I am sure that proper work is going on in the Government at the moment as they try to work out a financial settlement in parallel to this Bill. I am just suggesting that perhaps this Parliament needs to have some of that thinking shared with it.

Today is the first opportunity, within the clear parameters of new clause 3, to try to expose a bit of the thinking on how a limited amount of fiscal autonomy will work, and on how many of these taxes Scotland will not only collect, but be responsible for and have knocked off the block grant. As I remember it, when the leaders came up with this promise, Gordon Brown was a big voice—obviously, he was not one of the leaders at the time—for rather less fiscal autonomy. He was trying to stop Scotland controlling her own income tax revenues, so I do not entirely share the interpretation of the Labour Front-Bench team of what Mr Brown was trying to do at that point.

I will bring my remarks to a close with the simple conclusion that the world has moved on because of the general election result. The debate on money is taking place elsewhere, but we currently have a short debate about money here. I hope that the Front-Bench team will share some of its thoughts on money. Fiscal devolution seems to be attractive to many people in Scotland, but we need to know where it ends and how we sort out all those crucial issues about debt and borrowing as well as about shared policies such as pensions.

[Mr Graham Allen]

Sir David, it is a great pleasure to see you in the Chair this afternoon. Like many colleagues, I had assumed that you would be in your green tights dancing around the maypole with many other dignitaries at Runnymede. [Interruption.] Yes, the thought does bring tears to the eyes. I am talking about a serious occasion, but it is, by necessity, a backward-looking, occasion. Eight hundred years ago, in what was a great leap forward in its time, Magna Carta was sealed, if not signed. What we have been hearing about today—and this has been a really superb debate so far by all parts of the House—is the next 800 years. We are certainly looking at the foreseeable future and at our democracy. One thing we cannot do is go back to business as usual. We have a majority party in the House, and we cannot just ram stuff through the Commons. We must consider all these sorts of Bills seriously.

I mean no offence when I say that the Scotland Bill is not the property of the people of Scotland let alone of the political parties of Scotland. The Scotland Bill is about the Union. Whether we are in a transitional period or whether we have another 800 years of happy family relationships is still to be decided. As we discuss this Bill, the local government devolution Bill, and the European referendum Bill, those colleagues who are new to the House—to all parts of the House—should be excited that they have come here at this moment. It is a time of immense potential. People from all parts of this House have expressed the view that we need to look at this matter seriously. The word “statesmanlike” has been thrown around quite a bit, but it is pertinent to this debate. What we do today and over the next four Mondays will be of great importance to all of us in the Union.

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[Mr Allen]

I think that devolution is so good that it should apply to everybody in the Union. I welcome the breakthrough that has been made in Scotland and hope to see a similar settlement for England, Wales and Northern Ireland. I often say—my hon. Friend will have heard this before—that subsidiarity is the ugliest word in the political lexicon to describe the most beautiful concept.

[John Redwood]

An important part of our Union is that there has been a transfer as well as a fiscal Union, so the richer parts pay in more, relatively, and the poorer parts draw out more. Does the hon. Gentleman feel that that could be sustained with full fiscal autonomy, or is that a problem?

[Mr Allen]

As far as I am concerned, the idea of income tax assignment was applied in the Scotland Act 2012. I think that it is the basis on which devolution can move further forward in Scotland, and certainly on which it can start to move forward more seriously in England so that we have not just piecemeal breakthroughs, as we are having at the moment, but something that can apply to every local authority throughout the whole of England and Wales and, if it wishes, Northern Ireland.

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[David Mundell]

I can give that assurance. If it is to meet the various spending commitments that we hear sprayed around not only in the Chamber, but across Scotland, the Scottish National party will eventually have to tell the people of Scotland how much tax will rise to pay for all its proposed measures. The hon. Member for Dundee East (Stewart Hosie) carefully avoided any detail about tax when he set out the case for full fiscal autonomy. He criticised the proposals in the Bill for the devolution of income tax bands and rates, and he criticised the provision for a 0% rate. In fact, all he argued for was to enable the Scottish Government to reduce the personal allowance. I do not quite understand how that would benefit the less well-off in Scotland or the Scottish economy. The full range of other income tax powers worth £11 billion are coming to Scotland as part of the Bill.

[John Redwood]

When will the Secretary of State be able to share with Members the proposals to adjust the grant formula? Scotland will have higher spending and it will have tax revenues of its own, and my constituents in England are very interested in what the grant formula will look like.

[David Mundell]

I made it clear earlier that we would, in early course, bring forward details of the full fiscal framework as it is being negotiated.

I was not convinced by the arguments for full fiscal autonomy advanced by the hon. Member for Edinburgh East and others. I was not convinced by the red-blooded version that my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) set out for delivering the Scottish National party’s manifesto commitments, and I was not convinced by the SNP full fiscal-lite proposals—sometime, somewhere, somehow.

Scotland Bill

John Redwood Excerpts

Monday 8th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)]

There seems to be cross-party support in this place for legislation that would substantially implement the recommendations of the Smith commission. We have heard some interesting contributions, not least from the hon. Member for Moray (Angus Robertson). We all wait with bated breath to see what amendments will be tabled to the Bill to try to establish full fiscal autonomy for Scotland. We certainly hope that in order to fulfil that promise, the amendment will be a little stronger than the one on the Order Paper today, which is all about Scotland moving to

“a position in the medium term where the Scottish Parliament and Government are responsible for all revenue raising”.

That seems to me to be a lot of weasel words and very far away from full fiscal autonomy.

There has been a certain amount of interest in this pledge from people watching the debate in this place, and I have been asked by many where the Scots believe they will get the money needed to fill the hole—we understand it might be £7.6 billion or even £10 billion. However much it is, people in Scotland and presumably across the whole of the United Kingdom will want to know from the Scottish nationalists where that money is going to come from, if they get full fiscal autonomy. The prime opportunity comes from introducing an amendment to this Bill, and we all wait to see what it is going to say.

[John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

When the hon. Lady’s party introduced devolution at the end of the last century, it said that it would settle the kingdom once and for all, and that Scotland would then live very happily in the Union. What went wrong?

[Emily Thornberry]

The right hon. Gentleman will, I am sure, realise that we have all moved on in the last 100 years and that things change and we have become different people, but I think the majority of people in these islands identify as British. We saw that in the referendum result and the feelings expressed across the whole of this nation, and the important thing is that we remain a United Kingdom. With the devolution being introduced today, which will be a continuing devolution, we must nevertheless remain a United Kingdom. I believe I speak on behalf of the vast majority of people in Great Britain when I say that.

What concerns me about the Bill, however, is how the Sewel convention will be implemented. The Smith commission recommends that the Sewel convention be placed on a statutory footing. However, despite the Secretary of State’s contention that the Bill will implement the commission’s recommendations in full, in my view clause 2 falls short of fulfilling that promise.

In the 1998 debate on the Scotland Bill of that year, Lord Sewel said:

“However, as happened in Northern Ireland earlier in the century, we would expect a convention to be established that Westminster would not normally legislate with regard to devolved matters in Scotland without the consent of the Scottish parliament.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 21 July 1998; Vol. 592, c. 791.]

In seeking to put this convention on a statutory footing, the Bill uses identical language, stating that

“it is recognised that the Parliament of the United Kingdom will not normally legislate with regard to devolved matters without the consent of the Scottish Parliament.”

What does that mean? Does that mean we will not normally legislate with regard to devolved matters without the consent of the Scottish Parliament unless the UK Parliament does not like it? It seems rather an odd way of proceeding and it is a funny way to write the law.

In its report on the Government’s draft proposals, the House of Lords Constitution Committee described this in much more measured terms than I would. [Interruption.] It says

“the use of the word normally…is unusual in legislation and is undefined.”

[Interruption.] The Secretary of State, who is the only Scottish MP on the Government Benches, should listen: the House of Lords Constitution Committee says his legislation is nonsense, and he should listen.

The inevitable question is what the Government mean by “normally”. Language that may be appropriately applied to a convention may well be inappropriate in statute. For instance, we might pass legislation that says, “Normally, it is illegal to steal someone’s wallet”—except when it is legal—or, “Normally, millionaires should pay their fair share of tax”, although perhaps that is a bad example. How about this example, then? Legislation might say, “Normally, it would be illegal to blow up the Houses of Parliament,” but there might be circumstances in which it was legal. This is the legislation being put before us by the Government today.

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[Kate Green]

The right hon. Gentleman and I might be able to agree that that would not be in the spirit of the discussions that we have had around the purpose of this Bill, which is to create the freedom for Scotland to operate within its devolved powers and to do so within the context of, and as an equal partner in, its relationships with the UK Government.

[John Redwood]

In order for England as well as Scotland to feel that justice is done, how would the hon. Lady recommend that the Scottish grant be adjusted for the money it will be collecting in its own right from taxation?

[Kate Green]

Clearly, the fiscal settlement will be of crucial importance to the people in Scotland, to my constituents and to the constituents of the right hon. Gentleman. That is a function of negotiation that I would expect to see as the fiscal settlement is worked out. One principle that was discussed under the Smith negotiations was the principle of no detriment. We can already see that there are issues to be ironed out here, such as those of operational costs, and the potential knock-on effects and costs of Scottish Government decisions about benefit levels, entitlements and top-ups. For example, it could be that a decision of the Scottish Government creates a passporting through to an entitlement, the cost of which falls to the UK Government. It could be that the decision of the Scottish Government in relation to crediting people into national insurance contributions creates a consequence for the national insurance fund. That is complex to disentangle, and it will be really important for this Parliament to have a mechanism for ongoing scrutiny. I hope that the Minister, in responding to this debate, will say how he thinks that scrutiny will work.

There seems to be surprise that the wording of the Bill appears to have fettered some of the scope of the Scottish Government and the Scottish Parliament to control the devolved welfare benefits. There is also surprise that only new welfare benefits can be created, and not benefits in relation to, for example, education or health. There are concerns that clause 19, which deals with disabilities, carers and industrial injuries benefits, may be worded too restrictively. It might not be possible to bring certain people into the ambit of the benefit, or people could have a question mark over their qualification for the benefit. For example, it might be that they live on one side of the border, but provide care for someone who lives on the other side of the border, and that needs to be sorted out.

There is concern over the provisions on topping up the reserved benefits and over whether there is an intention for the Scottish Parliament to take an across-the-board approach to topping up those reserved benefits, or whether it is merely a discretion to top up benefits for an individual in one individual case.

I think that we were surprised at the ambit of decisions on discretionary housing payments that will be delegated to Scotland in clause 22, which could potentially fetter the opportunity that colleagues in Scotland might wish to take completely to eliminate the harm done by the bedroom tax. There are also worries about clause 23 and the restriction of the application of short-term temporary assistance, which appears to leave out the possibility that families with children with an ongoing need for support could be excluded from the provisions of the existing legislation. These issues will need to be sorted out if the Scottish Parliament, the Scottish Government and the Scottish National party are to take advantage of the full fiscal autonomy that they have said is their medium-term ambition. We cannot wait for the medium term to resolve these issues; they must be resolved in Committee.

Important new provisions are introduced in clause 24 for the housing element of universal credit. Again, this could be a useful provision for the Scottish Government, as they would be able to reflect the characteristics of the Scottish housing and rental markets. For example—I hope that the Minister will tell me whether I am right to think this—they could vary their broad rental market agreement areas or the local housing allowance. However, there are again restrictions on the extent of the powers being devolved. They will not, as I read it, apply to those who receive housing benefit rather than the housing element of universal credit. They will not apply when people switch at pension age into receipt of pension credit. There is a gap in the legislation in ensuring that the devolution of housing benefit is sufficiently comprehensive to ensure that the Scottish Government will have the incentives and levers to use reductions in the housing benefit bill to enable them to build new homes.

I welcome the provisions on the devolution of employment programmes such as the Work programme and Work Choice. This is a sensible reflection of the different characteristics of different labour markets, although I remind SNP colleagues that the differences exist not just between England and Scotland but within Scotland. That is why Labour proposed in our election manifesto to devolve the Work programme and Work Choice to local authority or combined local authority level. I would expect to hear from Scottish parliamentarians and the SNP what their approach will be to that double devolution to reflect local labour markets.

I say to Ministers that I have read the provisions of clause 26 on “work for your benefits” on a number of occasions now and have absolutely no idea what they are getting at. I hope that there might be some clarity tonight.

Finally, there will be some significant operational questions, because the smooth delivery of benefits is as important to benefits recipients as the amounts and entitlements that the system offers them. Decisions taken in Scotland could of course affect operational workload elsewhere, such as in relation to decisions about mandatory reconsideration or changing the assessment process, which could have a significant effect on appeals workloads. I note that a fully functioning separate Scottish tribunal system will not be in place until 2023.

In conclusion, it is clear to me that we have a shared intention but a gap and a lack of specificity in providing for the intentions that we all understood to underpin Smith. They must be addressed before the Bill completes its parliamentary passage. We cannot leave issues of such grave constitutional importance in such uncertainty. It is clear that the scale of the constitutional change implied in the Bill is extensive, complex and impacts on the whole of the UK. That is why we will need to ensure that we have the mechanisms to keep its impact and effect under close and continuous scrutiny here in this House.

--- Later in debate ---

[Wayne David (Caerphilly) (Lab)]

Today we have had a very good debate. We have had no fewer than 25 speeches and 16 maiden speeches. I shall dwell for a few moments, if I may, on some of the maiden speeches from both sides of the House today.

The first maiden speech was delivered by the hon. Member for South Leicestershire (Alberto Costa), who informed us that he was a Scottish Member, though he was of Italian extraction, but that he was proudly British. We then heard from the hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Margaret Ferrier), and from the hon. Member for Eddisbury (Antoinette Sandbach), who said that she had a great parliamentary ambition—she hoped to be a member of the ladies tug-of-war team. We hope that she is successful in that. She neglected to mention that she used to be a Member of the Welsh Assembly as well. I should have thought that that was of note.

I was pleased to hear the hon. Member for North Dorset (Simon Hoare) say that he had a Welsh—or Celtic, as he called it—background. We went on to hear from the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) in a very statesmanlike speech. We heard a notable maiden speech from my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Vicky Foxcroft), who distinguished herself by reciting “The Red Flag”. I hoped she would sing it as well. We had a maiden speech also from the hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Patricia Gibson), who observed that she had characteristics similar to those of James Bond. I suggest that is because Sean Connery is an SNP supporter. We heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris), who is carrying forward the socialist tradition with great pride, if Members understand what I mean.

We then heard from the hon. Member for Aberdeen South (Callum McCaig) and from my hon. Friends the Members for Bristol South (Karin Smyth) and for Manchester, Withington (Jeff Smith), who mentioned Bruce Springsteen. That honourable and distinguished cast was reinforced with the mention of Robbie Williams by my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Ruth Smeeth). We heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Workington (Sue Hayman), the hon. Member for East Renfrewshire (Kirsten Oswald), and the hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Douglas Chapman), who recommended that hon. Members bring their wallets when they come to his constituency. I am certain they will take note of that.

The prize, if there is a prize, for the most engaging maiden speech this evening must go to my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner), who mentioned that he was successful in being elected to this House at the fifth attempt. He must have the House of Commons prize for perseverance.

Taken together, the speeches today demonstrated the geographic and cultural diversity of the House of Commons and of our country, and the political differences that exist across our nation. The debate today also demonstrated how politics in Scotland has changed over the past 12 months. In the space of less than a year Scotland has experienced two extraordinary democratic processes—the referendum and the general election. In the general election the people of Scotland decided who they wanted to represent them in the United Kingdom. At that point I expected a cheer, but SNP Members have probably run out of breath because of all the barracking they have been giving some of us today. In the referendum, after an unprecedented national debate in Scotland, the people of Scotland decided to remain part of the United Kingdom.

Many lessons can be drawn from those two events. What is clear beyond any shadow of doubt is that in the referendum the people of Scotland voted to remain part of a family. They voted to share economic risks and opportunities with the rest of the United Kingdom. They decided to pool resources. They voted for a fair distribution of tax and spending. They voted to tackle international issues on a collective basis and they voted for common domestic concerns to be tackled co-operatively.

Importantly, the Scottish people also voted for social solidarity with people from all parts of the United Kingdom, as my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South (Ian Murray) noted earlier. Today I am speaking very much as a Welshman and as someone who is proud of his identity, and indeed of his accent. I recognise that many of the concerns, hopes and aspirations of my Caerphilly constituents are shared by working people in Cowdenbeath, Carlisle, Coventry and Cornwall.

[John Redwood]

Can the hon. Gentleman sketch for us how Labour would have a fair financial settlement between Wales, England and Scotland? How would the block grant for Scotland be adjusted?

[Wayne David]

Well, we of course have an agreement—a fiscal framework—and we have a cast-iron commitment to ensuring that the Barnett formula remains in place. We have also suggested the need for a Barnett floor in Wales, in order to tackle underfunding, and I think that that principle should also be considered for the rest of the United Kingdom.

One of the key messages of the referendum campaign is that the ties that hold us together are important and real. Another lesson, however, is that there is a need for radical constitutional change. Yes, the Scottish people wish to remain part of the United Kingdom, but they also want the ability to determine their own priorities and shape their own nation’s future.

Labour, as one of the signatories to the Smith agreement, welcomes the Bill. It will make real many of the commitments made by the Smith commission, and it will take Scotland forward in a number of important respects, such as a new constitutional commitment on taxation and welfare. But the Bill also has its shortcomings. Scotland needs to have the ability to make different choices from those of a right-wing Government based here in London. That is why Labour will be putting forward amendments in Committee to strengthen the Bill. We want the Scottish Parliament to be unfettered in adding to UK benefits, and we want it to be able to create new benefits of its own. We will also seek to amend the Bill so that housing benefit is devolved in full.

My hon. Friend the Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry) made a number of pertinent references to the Sewell convention and the need for it to operate effectively. Sound references were also made to the Human Rights Act, which needs careful consideration, because aspects of the devolution settlements in Wales and Scotland, and especially in Northern Ireland, are clearly based on that Act. Any tinkering with that Act by the Conservative Government, or even its abandonment, needs careful consideration of the implications for devolution.

Smith Commission

John Redwood Excerpts

Thursday 27th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Carmichael]

That unanimity is important. I understand that that was the basis on which the agreement was made. Unfortunately, given the tone of some of what we have heard today, John Swinney, who by all accounts performed a significant role in the commission, has not been able to bring everyone in his party with him. That is to be regretted.

[Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

Does the Secretary of State agree that once Scotland is determining her own income tax rates and bands in the Scottish Parliament, it would be quite wrong for Scottish Members of this Parliament to be trying to fix those bands and rates for the English?

[Mr Carmichael]

I commend to my right hon. Friend the terms of the Smith report, which make it clear that income tax means a tax shared between the two Parliaments.