Scotland: Smith Commission

Lord McConnell of Glenscorrodale Excerpts

Thursday 27th November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord McConnell of Glenscorrodale (Lab)]

My Lords, while the fact that there is an agreement is certainly welcome, the content of the agreement will perhaps prove that allowing 11 weeks to make decisions of this nature is not necessarily the best strategy. I think that in the longer term everybody involved may come to regret putting all the eggs in the income tax basket rather than looking at a spread of taxes.

I want to ask two specific questions of the Advocate-General today. First, given that the assignation of VAT is not the devolution of a power to vary tax, will he, or the Secretary of State, publish the calculation that leads to the claim that 50% of taxation is now devolved to the Scottish Parliament? I cannot see how that calculation has been made. Secondly—partly endorsing the points made by my noble friend Lord McAvoy—the four additional points made by the noble Lord, Lord Smith, in his introduction to the report seem to be almost as important as the actual devolution of more powers. Will the Government give an unequivocal statement of support for those four additional points and do everything they can to support the Scottish Government, the Scottish Parliament and, indeed, Scottish civic society to ensure that they are implemented alongside the new powers that are now on the way?

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

My Lords, I hope that we will be able to set out some infographics—if that is the current “in” word—showing how the tax take of the Scottish Parliament will relate to spending, bearing in mind that the spending of the Scottish Parliament is going to go up as a result of these proposals. The denominator is an important factor in that. I listened to the noble Lord, Lord Smith of Kelvin, on the TV broadcast of his announcement this morning. I hope that nobody is going to ask me to remind them what the four points were, but, like the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, I thought that they were all very pertinent. They were points that had been made by many people in your Lordships’ House and by others. The one that sticks out in my mind—because it has been a theme in a number of our debates—is the importance of decentralisation generally: that to devolve power from Westminster to Edinburgh is only part of the story. There has to be further decentralisation within Scotland because the last seven years have seen considerable centralisation within Scotland.