Scotland Bill

Debate between Lord Forsyth of Drumlean and Lord Wallace of Tankerness

Monday 29th February 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

My Lords, I shall speak to the amendment in this group in the name of my noble friend Lord Stephen and myself. I am sure the House is grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, for raising this important debate on the fiscal framework. It is long awaited. Although we had a very good debate in Committee, it was a bit like “Hamlet” without the Prince of Denmark; it was about the fiscal framework without the actual fiscal framework agreement. At least we can now have a debate on this important part of the architecture of Scottish governance following the Smith commission’s proposals in the light of the agreement which was published at the end of last week.

The amendment which my noble friend and I have tabled is to address the mechanism for the review of the fiscal framework. The Smith commission said that it was important that there was a review, and in Committee we moved an amendment to establish a review. We have tried to revise that amendment in the light of the agreement as we now see it.

When the Minister replies, it would be helpful if he could give us some indication of how the Government understand the review and the mechanisms. The Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Mr Greg Hands, was right to point out that there is a distinction between the review and dispute resolution. I am rather intrigued by the fact that in the agreement the review is referred to in paragraphs 20 to 23 and again in paragraphs 111 to 113, some of which appears repetitious and almost as if there is something uncertain about it. It is as if the more often you say it, it might just happen. Perhaps the Minister will tell us if there is anything we should read into the fact that it was felt necessary to repeat some of the proposals with regard to the review at a later stage.

The First Minister of Scotland in her Statement to the Scottish Parliament last week seemed to indicate—I sat and listened to it—that there could be a veto over the Scottish Government accepting anything which was not to their advantage following the review. Indeed, paragraph 112 states:

“It will be open to either government to propose changes to the fiscal framework from”,

the point of the review or the end of 2021, and:

“The fiscal framework does not include or assume the method for adjusting the block grant beyond the transitional period”.

The Chief Secretary seemed to say today that it was “our model”, which I assume to mean Her Majesty’s Treasury’s model, whereas the transition period was the Scottish Government’s transition period. So—this is a question which the noble Lord, Lord McConnell of Glenscorrodale, asked last week when the noble Lord repeated the Statement—what is the default position? Is the default position the Treasury model, or is there in fact a veto? What happens if there is not agreement following a review? One was left with the impression that it is a bit, “it’ll be all right on the night”. Those of us who have seen the negotiations with the Scottish Government know that it will not necessarily be all right on the night. They may well take things up to the brink.

Under Section 64 of the Scotland Act 1998, the Scottish Consolidated Fund is established, and subsection (2) states that the Secretary of State shall pay sums into the Consolidated Fund, but the sums are not predicated by any agreement or formula, and certainly are not predicated by the statute. I imagine that if all else failed, the ball would be at the feet of the Secretary of State, who has to pay money into the Scottish Consolidated Fund. Perhaps the Minister could indicate how, in the event of impasse and of no agreement being reached, the UK Government, particularly Her Majesty’s Treasury, see that sum to be paid into the Scottish Consolidated Fund being arrived at, given that it is actually the Secretary of State’s decision and, according to statute, is not in any way fettered. It is important that we get some clarity about what should happen.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

Is it not clear throughout? Paragraph 52, regarding a dispute over the no-detriment principle, says:

“Without a joint agreement, no transfer or decision will be made”,

while paragraph 103, on dispute resolution, says:

“If no agreement can be reached”,

between the Governments,

“then the dispute falls—there would be no specific outcome from the dispute and so no fiscal transfer between the Governments”.

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

My Lords, I noted earlier, with regard to paragraph 103, that it surely cannot be conceivable that the funding would dry up. The House is therefore owed an explanation as to precisely what lies behind paragraphs 52 and 103 of this agreement.

The proposal that my noble friend and I have tabled is that there should be a review, which should be informed by a commission. The commission should be three persons from the Office for Budget Responsibility advisory panel, to be appointed by the OBR’s chairman, therefore taking it even more than arm’s length away from the Government, and there also should be membership of a Scottish professional body—it could be the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland or CIPFA—to be agreed by Her Majesty’s Treasury and Scottish Ministers, whose members should be appointed by the senior office-bearer of that body. Again, that is an attempt to put it at one remove from the Scottish Government. It would be a genuinely independent body that would inform the review about how the fiscal framework had worked.

We go further than that by saying that no person appointed to the commission should have been a member of any political party for five years prior to accepting membership. Consistent with the fiscal framework, the report should be laid no later than 30 November 2021 and submitted to both Houses of this Parliament, the Scottish Parliament, the Chancellor of the Exchequer and Scottish Ministers.

All that we find out in the fiscal framework agreement is that the arrangements for review, including how independent they will be, should be left to the Joint Exchequer Committee. We may feel that in order to be reassured, it is not unreasonable for Parliament to set some parameters for how the independence of that review body will be established. The amendment is therefore intended to probe just what Ministers have in mind with regard to the working out of that review, and indeed to answer some of the questions about what happens in the event of a failure to reach agreement on the review. There are important questions to be answered, and I look forward to the response of the Minister.

I am sorry, is the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, waiting to intervene or to ask a question?

Scotland Bill

Debate between Lord Forsyth of Drumlean and Lord Wallace of Tankerness

Wednesday 24th February 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

My Lords, paragraph 67 of the Smith commission report states:

“The functions of the British Transport Police in Scotland will be a devolved matter”.

That is a simple and straightforward sentence, but what lies behind it is actually very profound. My concern is that what is being proposed by the Government does not safeguard the functions of the British Transport Police if they are devolved. I respect and generally support the way it is being done in terms of exceptions to the general reservation under Part 2 of Schedule 5 to the Scotland Act 1998, but what we have heard is that the Scottish Government intend to put the British Transport Police under the ambit of Police Scotland.

I will not go into the woes of Police Scotland with the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, and the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, who have both mentioned them, but even at its best one can readily imagine that once the BTP comes under the auspices of Police Scotland, if you are the chief constable and you have problems and challenges with regard to resources, you might well think, “Well, why do we have a specific police presence in Waverley station? Surely it can be covered by the police we have got who would otherwise be monitoring Princes Street?”. It would not be proper for politicians to interfere in the operational decisions of the chief constable. For operational reasons the functions of the British Transport Police under a different guise could be whittled away bit by bit.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

Of course there is also the complicating factor that part of the budget of the British Transport Police is actually paid for by the transport operators.

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

The noble Lord is absolutely right, and we aired these concerns when this was debated in Committee.

It is interesting to note in the submission made by the British Transport Police Federation to the Scottish Parliament Devolution (Further Powers) Committee that:

“In 2001, the government response to the DfT consultation which led to the BTPA’s creation … stated that: ‘The Government therefore considers that the national railway network is best protected by a unified police force providing a dedicated, specialist service and able to give proper priority to the policing of the railways’”.

The memorandum to the committee of the Scottish Parliament goes on to quote the Transport Select Committee of the other place in 2004, which,

“looked at the reforms to the BTP’s governance arrangements … It concluded that: ‘The British Transport Police is not a Home Office Force, and nothing we have heard suggests that it should become one. The railways are a specialised environment, with specialised needs, and need a specialised Force’. They continued: ‘The steady reduction of resources allocated to traffic policing leads us to agree with Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary that unless there is a national force dedicated to policing the rail network, the task will not be given the priority it needs’”.

Our concern is that if, having devolved and lost control of this area and the Scottish Government exercise the devolved powers that they have to bring it under the direction of Police Scotland, the very concerns that were expressed by the BTPF and others will be borne out. The specialist services which the British Transport Police currently deliver could be lost over time, and therefore what the Smith commission argues is that the functions possibly could no longer be exercised.

Noble Lords have referred to a number of those functions, in particular tackling terrorism on our transport network. One I particularly note is that:

“The British Transport Police has created specialist teams with responsibility for the management of multi-agency support for local and national suicide prevention, mental health interventions and vulnerable persons encounters. An ongoing force-wide operation (Operation Avert) has so far achieved a 30% reduction in suicide attempts compared to the same period the year before”.

These are very profound specialist functions that the British Transport Police provide.

Scotland Bill

Debate between Lord Forsyth of Drumlean and Lord Wallace of Tankerness

Monday 22nd February 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

The noble and learned Lord makes a very important and perceptive point, and I am glad it is not me who has to reply to it from the Dispatch Box. I certainly see his point that it is a very stark, simple Long Title. To actually extend the ambit of the Bill to Measures or Acts of the National Assembly for Wales or legislation of the Northern Ireland Assembly does seem a bit of a stretch. No doubt the Minister can enlighten us when he comes to reply.

The important point is that we do take seriously the report from the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee. At the heart of it, these are extremely wide powers and, in some respects, exceptional powers. With the one exception relating to Part 3, no explanation or justification has been provided by the Government for taking these wide powers.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

Could the noble and learned Lord, with his considerable experience, give me some legal advice? I wonder whether, if a clause like this had been included in the previous Scotland Bill, it would have been necessary to have this Bill at all.

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

That is a good point. As the noble Lord was making it I was wondering whether the phrase,

“any other instrument or document”,

could apply to the fiscal framework—but perhaps that is stretching things a bit too far. Actually, “any document” could include the fiscal framework, so perhaps the Minister can tell us more.

Scotland Bill

Debate between Lord Forsyth of Drumlean and Lord Wallace of Tankerness

Tuesday 19th January 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

I entirely agree with the noble Lord. He is absolutely right. In my old constituency of Stirling, we used to have a police station in my own village; we had them in Balfron and elsewhere, but they have all disappeared. We now have two wildlife policemen who are going around trying to find someone to prosecute for something—without much success, I am told, and at vast expense. All of this is absolutely in the face of what local people say they want, which is local policing and local involvement. One of the great ironies of this whole devolution project is that it was supposed to be about returning power to local people, but the Scottish Parliament seems to have been absolutely concerned to centralise everything and to take a very authoritarian view.

This proposal to break up the British Transport Police —I am now on the amendment—is an absolute classic example of the failure of thinking which has brought such disaster to Scotland’s police force. British Transport Police has been there certainly since the 1850s, when it was realised that a railway would enable criminals to move around the country and that it was necessary to have a police force on the trains with the authority to act wherever its officers were. That system has worked brilliantly; it is one of the great success stories.

The truth of the matter is that the reason that the nationalists do not want to have the British Transport Police is because of the “B” in British Transport Police. Perhaps we could just call it something else—perhaps we could call it the “National Transport Police” —and then we could get agreement that it makes sense to have a cross-border force run on a cross-border basis. It has done the most brilliant work, not all of it publicised for obvious reasons, on drugs hauls that have been taken from trains at Glasgow that have come from the south, on the movement of terrorists and others who threaten us, and on the integration of the Glasgow underground with the London Underground and the whole of the transport system. The BTP is a group of people organised in four divisions—there is a Scottish division—who understand and have the expertise to deal with the intricacies of policing a transport system. That is a success, and for it to be smashed up would be crazy.

I know that the Minister will say that the amendment is unnecessary and the clause does not actually provide for the breaking up of the British Transport Police, but we know that that is what the Scottish Government intend to do. In doing so, they will undermine not just the security of people in Scotland, as the noble Lord, Lord Empey, said, but the security and enforcement of law in the United Kingdom as a whole. This is not a matter which should be subject to devolution; this is a matter of national, United Kingdom interest. I very much hope that the Government will drop it from the Bill. The rather throw-away line that we got from the Smith commission, which showed no understanding of what the British Transport Police has been doing, is, to say the least, a disappointment.

The fact that the Justice Minister in Scotland should announce that he wanted to get rid of the British Transport Police and integrate it into the Scottish police with no consultation whatsoever, and in the face of strong opposition from former commanders in Scotland, who actually did the job, but who are ignored, is unacceptable. I very much hope that the Government will feel able to accept the noble Lord’s amendment or, even better, drop the whole thing altogether.

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Stephen and I tabled clause stand part debates on Clauses 42 and 43 because it is important that the Government should justify to the Committee why they are taking this step, not least given the remarks of the noble Lords, Lord Empey and Lord Forsyth. After all, I am told that the British Transport Police has reduced crime on Scotland’s rail network by 56% since 2005, compared to an overall reduction of crime in Scotland of 38%, so it is clearly doing something right.

Paragraph 67 of the Smith commission report states:

“The functions of the British Transport Police in Scotland will be a devolved matter”.

That is a slightly different thing from saying that the British Transport Police shall be devolved. We really ought to have an explanation from the Government as to why they have chosen this form of devolution. It is complex. No doubt the Minister will give a fuller explanation, but until legislative competence has been devolved, which is what I understand Clause 42 is intended to do, the Scottish Parliament cannot make provision for what will happen and the British Transport Police will continue as a cross-border public authority under Section 88 of the Scotland Act 1998. The Minister may want to indicate what that means in practice. Does it mean more than that UK Ministers are obliged to consult about appointments and the like and that reports must be laid before both the UK Parliament and the Scottish Parliament?

The Scotland Office briefing note that was given to noble Lords at a very worthwhile briefing way back in November said that this was a first step. We want to know what the next step and subsequent steps will be. Considerable concern has been expressed about this provision.

It is no secret that I am a pretty strong home ruler, but I cannot say that the devolution of the British Transport Police was ever near the top of my agenda of things that needed to be devolved. One wonders where it came from. Perhaps the secret is in what the Scottish Justice Minister said, in what sounds very much like empire-building, whether on his part or that of Police Scotland, to try to subsume the British Transport Police. That is the concern: that the British Transport Police is to be subsumed into Police Scotland. As the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, indicated, Police Scotland seems to have enough on its plate at present, although I agree with him that the new chief constable must be given the opportunity to try to restore both morale in his force and confidence in the public.

The speech of the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, was very passionate, raising the constitutional issues of having a single national police force. I just wish that he had spoken to the Conservative Party in the Scottish Parliament—and that the Labour Party in the Scottish Parliament had taken cognizance—because the Liberal Democrats were the only party in the Scottish Parliament that stood against the creation of a national police force.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

I did, but, for extraordinary reasons, it decided not to take my advice.

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

I am uncomfortable about the arguments about what might happen when devolution takes place—that is an argument for a different forum—but clearly, devolution is not the same as abolition. As I said, the Smith commission said that it should be the functions of the British Transport Police that are devolved. The British Transport Police Federation made a submission to the Scottish Parliament’s Devolution (Further Powers) Committee in which it set out a number of options.

One option consisted of proposals of a legislative administrative nature, which would devolve policing and embody in statute arrangements by which the Scottish Government could give direction to the BTPA and specify direction of railway policing, but the model would provide that the chief constable of the British Transport Police would engage with Scottish institutions in the same way as the chief constable of Police Scotland does at the moment. Responsibility for pensions, employment contracts and defraying the cost of policing to the rail industry would remain with the British Transport Police Authority, although the Scottish Police Authority would have great involvement at strategic and planning level. Another option was to achieve devolution by administrative rather than legislative means, maintaining the responsibility on the BTPA to pass on the cost of the force to the rail industry, as well as responsibility over employment matters and pensions.

The Government owe the Committee an explanation of why they adopted this particular form of devolution, given that it was the functions of the British Transport Police rather than the police themselves that the Smith commission recommended be devolved.

We should not lose sight of what the British Transport Police is and what it brings to the service. Interestingly enough, it is not responsible to the Home Office; its sponsoring ministry is the Department for Transport. That is important. It means that it has particular training and skills which are different from the rest of the police force. Can we be assured that in any scheme for transfer, particular provision will be made to maintain those skills—for example, dealing with level crossing incidents and trespass? We have heard about drugs and terrorism—although I know that those who work within Police Scotland in liaison with the Metropolitan Police and others are very important. The noble Lord, Lord Empey, mentioned investigations of suicides—the tragedies that happen on our rail network.

The briefing made available to the Scottish Parliament committee stated that under Operation Avert, which is being promoted by the British Transport Police at the moment, there has been a 30% reduction in suicide attempts over the past year. That is very valuable, and we need reassurance from the Minister that it will not be lost.

What engagement has there been with staff? I understand that there are about 50 civilian posts and 230 police officers with the British Transport Police in Scotland. They are not tied to the police pension scheme; there is a separate, private pension for British Transport Police officers. Will the provisions safeguard the employment and pension rights of serving officers? What are the financial implications?

The Scotland Office briefing states that the British Transport Police costs are met through charges for the policing services it provides. Will the secondary legislation allow for train companies to be charged? If so and there is an incorporation into Police Scotland, how can we ensure that charges made to railway companies will go to provide the services to the rail network and not just into a pot used to fund other policing services? It is important that we are given some reassurance that they will go to services relating to railways and railway properties.

The notion of cross-border institutions, which appears in the Scotland Act, is sometimes not fully understood. You can have a service and a function that literally is cross-border—that is, it operates in Scotland as well as England but is a reserved matter, not run by a cross-border authority. Here we have, as a result of Clause 43, something that is both; it will be cross-border institutionally and very literally cross-border in what it does. That point was well made by the noble Lord, Lord Empey.

Scotland Bill

Debate between Lord Forsyth of Drumlean and Lord Wallace of Tankerness

Tuesday 8th December 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness (LD)]

My Lords, as the noble Lord has just indicated, it is very clear that there are implications for the rest of the United Kingdom. It is just a great pity that the Government will not accede to the request from all sides of the House and all parts of the United Kingdom for a constitutional convention, in which many of these relationships could be properly looked at. The right reverend Prelate reminded me that we have to be careful with the wording here. To say so stridently that the Scottish Parliament and the Scottish Government are permanent will start raising doubts about whether anyone would think anything else. That is why care has to be taken here.

In the 1990s I was part of the Scottish Constitutional Convention. It came up with the blueprint for the Scottish Parliament, which, to its credit, the Labour Party, elected in 1997, faithfully put into legislative form. I remember many discussions in the constitutional convention about how to entrench the Parliament. We kept going round in circles on the issue of parliamentary sovereignty and on whether we should have a referendum. In the end, the convention decided that it could make no such proposal. The Labour Party proposed a two-question referendum. My party and I were opposed to that as it was not what the convention had agreed, but I think that I was wrong. The fact that we had a referendum in 1997 and that the Parliament was established on the basis of a very strong popular vote in Scotland meant that it found its own form of political entrenchment. We could go round in circles here having a highbrow constitutional discussion on the nature of the sovereignty of Parliament.

The noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, used the words “political reality” in moving his amendment. At the end of the day, we come back to political reality. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, that if the people of Scotland voted to abolish the Scottish Parliament, primary legislation in this Parliament would be required for that to happen, but of course if this Parliament chose to ignore what the people of Scotland said, that would bring about a constitutional crisis because political reality would kick in. That is why I also disagree with the amendment in the name of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead. He is saying that if the Parliament were removed, it would have to be done not only on the vote of the Scottish people but on the vote of the Scottish Parliament. The Scottish Parliament might well vote to get rid of the Parliament because it was not doing a particularly good job. Therefore, you do not give the veto to the people whom you want to get rid of and who have a vested interest in keeping the Parliament.

These things are hypothetical because, quite simply, I do not see them happening. That is why I think that political reality is more relevant to this debate than highbrow discussions on parliamentary sovereignty. As ever, I give way to the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

On the subject of political reality, is it not the policy of the noble and learned Lord’s party to have a constitutional convention with a view to creating a federal United Kingdom? What happens if we have a provision in law saying that the Scottish Parliament as it stands is permanent and the rest of the United Kingdom wishes to alter the structure and have a federal constitution along the lines that he suggests and that is blocked because of these provisions? Perhaps he thinks the political reality is that what he wishes for will never happen, but surely it is wrong to create inflexibility, given that he and his party accept that the present system is not a stable, lasting settlement.

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

The noble Lord makes a very good point. But under any federal system there would be a Scottish Parliament. I echo again Section 1(1) of the Scotland Act 1998: there still would be a Scottish Parliament. It may have a different form and different powers, but there still would be a Scottish Parliament. I do not think anyone is suggesting that the Scottish Parliament that we refer to in Clause 1 of this Bill is for ever frozen in aspic or that it would not inherit other powers at some time to come.

The issue is indeed one of political reality. We are also duty bound to have regard to the wording of this part of the clause.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

Is the noble and learned Lord saying that when the clause heading says:

“Permanence of the Scottish Parliament”,

this is not referring to all the powers and privileges of that Parliament but just to the name, and that the powers could be changed? Is he saying that the effect would be that we could take away all its powers but, provided that there was still a building and something called the Scottish Parliament, that would be covered?

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

Let me get back to political reality. I do not believe that that would happen. But I think it is very likely that we will have some measures in the future—probably the not-too-distant future—under which more powers are given to the Scottish Parliament. Therefore, it comes back to the same thing: to the political reality. If there was a move resulting in a constitutional convention or a federal system for the United Kingdom, which my colleagues and I aspire to, the political reality of that would see it delivered.

I have much sympathy for the points made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord McCluskey, because I simply do not know what is meant by,

“with due regard to the other provisions of this Act”.

No doubt the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen, will tell us in his reply what the importance of including those words is.

I also wonder what is meant in subsection (3), which says:

“In view of that commitment it is declared that the Scottish Parliament and the Scottish Government are not to be abolished except on the basis of a decision of the people of Scotland voting in a referendum”.

I do not think that the “people of Scotland” is anywhere defined in this. Is it the people resident in Scotland, which was the qualification for the referendum in 2014? At that time, many noble Lords received many representations from expatriate Scots living abroad or living in London who consider themselves to be part of the people of Scotland. So would they be part of the referendum that is proposed by the Government with regard to the future of the Scottish Parliament? That is why I think that the wording proposed by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, in the second part of his amendment—

“a majority of those voting at the referendum”,

which has been held in Scotland—has greater clarity than the Government’s wording of this particular clause.

Just as Parliament could, technically, repeal the Statute of Westminster of 1931 but would never dream of doing it, the constitutional reality of the sovereignty of Parliament is not relevant to this. At the end of the day, what will matter is what the people actually want.

Scotland Bill

Debate between Lord Forsyth of Drumlean and Lord Wallace of Tankerness

Tuesday 24th November 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

My Lords, nothing I said takes away from what I said at the outset: that it is very desirable that we see the fiscal framework. The Government should take from all sides of the House that there has been a view to that effect. While I think it is nonsense to expect the Government to reveal their negotiating hand in this debate, it is not unreasonable to ask, perhaps, for more transparency to show that progress is being made, and for the Government to enunciate some principles as to what they wish to see in the fiscal framework.

For example, one hopes that the Government’s negotiating stance is to seek fairness on all sides—for Scotland and the rest of the United Kingdom. Their role is to take in the whole of the United Kingdom, not just the rest of the United Kingdom. The no-detriment principle should be at the point of devolution: that there is no detriment one way or the other when a particular tax is devolved. There should be a form of indexation—I do not underestimate the difficulties, but it should be one which in itself is neutral, with an automatic mechanism to avoid an annual row.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

Does not the noble and learned Lord think that there is a great irony that the Scottish nationalists are arguing that it is essential for the Scottish Parliament to be able to consider the Bill alongside the fiscal framework, in order to ensure the best interests of Scotland, when this is a Bill that will affect every part of the United Kingdom and the House of Commons has not had an opportunity to do what the nationalists are saying is essential, and quite rightly so, in a Scottish context?

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

My Lords, I am not sure what, if anything, was said in the House of Commons about the lack of the fiscal framework when the Bill was being debated there—in fairness, I am sure that it was discussed—but what I have said is that the Government should be seeking to negotiate for the whole of the United Kingdom: there should be fairness all round with regard to this.

Crucially, we should make it very clear that Scotland should bear the full fiscal consequences of its own decisions. There has been some suggestion somewhere that there has been a bit of “cake and eat it”: that somehow or other, if things go wrong, Westminster will top it up. There are those of us who believe that the important rationale for more tax powers is accountability, but that goes out the window unless—for better or worse—the Scottish Parliament accepts responsibility and accountability for the consequences of its decisions.

In conclusion, the important thing that many of us want is to get on and use the powers. From next April, there will be the Scottish rate of income tax. We look forward, once this Bill is implemented, to more than £15 billion-worth of tax powers and £3 billion-worth of welfare.