Meeting of the Parliament 16 September 2015
I anticipated that intervention, as I saw that Stewart Hosie had lined it up for MSPs this afternoon.
The SNP will know that the tax-raising powers on VAT are restricted by the European Union. However, we believe that our amendments would give more powers to this Parliament and more control of the money that we have to spend. They include measures that would devolve all revenues from VAT, whereas the level is currently set at 50 per cent. Our amendments would also give the Scottish Parliament powers to top up welfare benefits, create new benefits and remove a UK Government veto.
Those are substantial changes, with which we can build a build a better, stronger and more progressive Scotland. I hope that when the amendments come before Parliament, they will gain the support of the SNP, the Liberals and the Conservatives.
It is clear that we must move beyond any doubt on the idea of Westminster maintaining a veto over this Parliament on welfare powers. Such a veto is unacceptable and something that we have moved to stop. The UK Government must respond more fully than it has done so far to the work of the Devolution (Further Powers) Committee and to organisations’ concerns about the bill’s effectiveness.
We must ensure that there is full transparency as we move forward, and that is as true for the Scottish Government as it is for the UK Government. We are seeing—or rather not seeing—intergovernmental discussions at the joint exchequer committee, of which the Deputy First Minister is co-chair. On 4 September, the JEC met for its second meeting, yet no minutes for either that or its first meeting have been made public and there has been no clear statement from the Scottish Government of a preferred outcome. Considering that discussions centre on the substantive elements of the fiscal framework that will underpin the financial provisions of the Scotland Bill—the very fiscal framework that the Deputy First Minister references in the motion—it is unfortunate that fuller details have not been forthcoming.
I appreciate that there will be a need for sensitivity and space for frank exchanges during certain points of JEC meetings. However, given that all members in the chamber subscribe to the notions of transparency and accountability, will the Deputy First Minister commit to publishing the meeting minutes and keep Parliament—and, most important, people—informed throughout negotiations? I see from Bruce Crawford’s letter to David Mundell this week that the Devolution (Further Powers) Committee supports those principles.
The stakes that the Scottish Government is playing for are high. The First Minister has expressed the view that she will recommend consenting to the bill only if the accompanying fiscal framework is fair to Scotland, and the Deputy First Minister has reiterated that claim in today’s debate. If the Government is prepared to risk all that can be gained, there must be greater transparency and scrutiny of the decisions.