Scottish Parliament Further Powers Debate

Ms Wendy Alexander (Paisley North) (Lab): I, too, welcome Fiona Hyslop to her new position, whatever it might be with respect to the constitutional question. Perhaps she will enlighten us at some stage.

As other members have said, the motion before the chamber is a wasted opportunity. Instead of a motion on the merits of the Calman plans—a definitive motion on where the Parliament stands on the totality of the Calman plans—we have an exercise in political positioning. Indeed, only the polite commentators will say “positioning”; the less-polite will call it mere point scoring. In essence, the charge that the SNP has brought to the chamber is that there is foot dragging—Robert Brown called it dithering; I will deal with that charge later in my speech. As Patrick Harvie said, much bigger issues are at stake. What is interesting about today’s debate is not what we are debating, but what we are not debating.

Ms Alexander: We have a white paper that makes it clear that we are committed to implementing Calman. I turn to this place and our responsibilities. The SNP Government, in its debating time, has brought forward not a single parliamentary statement or debate on the merits—or demerits—of the full Calman package; on its published response to Calman; on the UK Government’s white paper on Calman; or, perhaps most surprising, on its white paper on constitutional change. Instead of this place getting a debate on any of those four far-reaching and serious contributions to the constitutional debate, we get a motion about foot dragging on firearms, drink driving and air-guns. Those are important matters, but the Government has contrived to ignore the principal Calman recommendations around this place’s financial accountability. The minister raced at top speed through a prepared speech—

Fiona Hyslop: In one part of my speech, I debated the tax, finance and borrowing powers. I did so because they are the areas on which there is no consensus. If the Parliament is to be a place of consensus, what is wrong in debating the areas on which there is consensus and on which the Parliament has voted?

Ms Alexander: What is wrong is to refuse to debate the financial proposals that Calman made. Consider this: just two hours ago, the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced the tightest squeeze on public spending for many years. Calman proposed that in future this place should control billions of pounds of revenue. Bizarrely, the SNP opposes those developments. The Scottish Government is opposed to Calman’s proposals for a Scottish rate of income tax. Its formal response to proposals to pass powers over stamp duty, land tax, aggregates levy and landfill tax to this place is that they would leave Scotland largely powerless. The Scottish Government does not support powers for the Scottish Parliament to create new taxes—one thinks of today’s developments elsewhere on bonuses—because prior consultation with Westminster would be required. It has no comment to make on the proposal for a new joint ministerial committee on finance, while the SNP response to the proposal to pass borrowing powers to this place is that the matter needs further consideration. We must ask who has been foot dragging or dithering on Calman’s financial plans.

I will deal with the charge of foot dragging. I say to the Liberals in all sincerity that I respect their position. However, we can agree that the financial proposals are the main meat of Calman and that, unarguably, they require primary legislation.

What is the scope for primary legislation on the Calman package? Let us consider the only proper comparator—the Scotland Act 1998. Following the publication of the white paper, it took five months to get to a bill and 48 weeks for that bill to complete its parliamentary passage. That sort of time is simply not available in this UK parliamentary session. We might wish it to be otherwise, but we cannot change it.

Iain Smith (North East Fife) (LD): The Calman commission’s report was published in June. Why did the Government not get on with drafting a bill at that time, instead of wasting its time on drafting a white paper that was not necessary?

Ms Alexander: We can debate whether there should be white papers for major constitutional change, but I think that that is a given. In its motion, the SNP tries to grab some moral high ground on timing. It is a bit rich of the Government to accuse Labour of foot dragging when it has been foot dragging assiduously for more than three years on its referendum plans. In 2008, it declined the opportunity to include a bill in its legislative programme when it was invited to do so. By leaving its referendum plans until the fag end of this session, it is both out of time and out of luck. It is doubly ironic that the SNP spent 20 years blaming Labour for leaving the original Scottish Assembly plans until the fag end of a Westminster Parliament when it has made exactly the same error. SNP members castigate us for delay, but they delay themselves.

We have learned today that the Government is opposed to the Parliament having financial powers. Whatever the outcome of the next general election, it will fall to this place—as it did two years ago—to stand in defence of the Scottish interest and to ensure that the financial powers that Calman has proposed are implemented.