Scotland Bill

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Thursday 15th March 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

My Lords—

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, it would be appropriate to allow the Minister to finish answering one point before the next one is made.

[Lord Sassoon]

I hope that I may finish. I merely wanted to remind noble Lords, as a background to this discussion of whether it is appropriate for this tax to be in the Bill at this time, that there is a power, which we debated extensively, that would enable air passenger duty to be devolved in due course, if appropriate. I also remind noble Lords that there are similar powers in Section 30 of the Scotland Act. Of course they are not exactly the same; they work in different ways. However, we are not going into uncharted territory. This is territory in which the Government have been requested to devolve powers—not tax powers, although they could have been requested, but powers in other important areas. The Government have consistently said no because they do not believe that the arguments for that have been made.