Meeting of the Parliament 18 December 2014
I am pleased to take part in this debate.
As I am a very recent arrival in the Welfare Reform Committee, my colleague Mr Johnstone will cover the reports to which he contributed as a committee member. I look forward to being on the committee and working with Mr McMahon. He may not know what to expect from me, but he might find himself pleasantly surprised. I hope that I can make a positive contribution to the committee’s work.
The committee has done and is doing very important work and is identifying important issues. One of the great roles of the committees of the Parliament is to consider, when work has been done and evidence has been produced, what can be done to use that leverage or discoveries to influence change. That is where the committee may have a very important role to play.
I want to focus on the Smith commission report, which I am a little more familiar with than I am with the work of the Welfare Reform Committee. As Mr McMahon said, that report implies substantial changes. It is three weeks to the day since it was published. In tune with the new theme of consensus in the Parliament, I have enjoyed the positive response to it, which has been obvious from all the five political parties that are represented in the chamber. I accept that the minister’s party considers that it does not go far enough, although at the same time her colleague Nicola Sturgeon has gone out of her way to say that she thinks that what has been delivered by Smith is positive.
I remember that, when I first came to the Parliament, there was a huge sense of excitement and optimism about how the Parliament would operate and would use its new powers. I detect in the Holyrood air that those same feelings are brewing now—there is a mixture of excitement, anticipation and ambition. The question that we are all asking ourselves and one another is: what can we do with the new powers to improve life in Scotland?
As we talk about the Welfare Reform Committee’s latest reports, it is timely to look at the Smith proposals and ask what the committee and the Parliament can look forward to achieving with the new powers. As we know, an element of devolution on welfare has already occurred, arising out of the Welfare Reform Act 2012. On Tuesday, the Parliament debated stage 1 of the Welfare Funds (Scotland) Bill, a debate to which my colleague Mr Johnstone contributed. It is good that the Parliament is taking the opportunity to put an interim arrangement on to a statutory footing.
I know that not everyone will agree with me—that is pretty clear from the speeches that we have heard already—but the aim of the Welfare Reform Act 2012 was to reform the benefits system and introduce a new system that is fairer, simpler and more affordable. Although I accept that not every aspect of the reforms has been well received—that is pretty clear—I have to make the important point that it would be hard to find opposition anywhere to the principle that the system needed reform. Most acknowledge that reform was necessary and overdue.
I fully acknowledge that the issues then become ones of the implementation and management of change. That is where the committee is doing important work. The whole point of the reform is to help people to get back into work, to reduce dependency on the state and, in tandem with increased personal allowances and changes to the tax system, to enable people to make individual choices about what they do with their money, rather than simply having to hand it to the taxman to be given it back in the form of prescribed benefits.
I know that the Scottish Parliament does not always see eye to eye with Westminster but, beyond the rhetoric, there is an important point. The political landscape is different here and, more importantly, our electors in Scotland have a different set of needs. I recognise that they have different preferences from those of other members of the family of nations that is the United Kingdom. Therefore, the time between now and the delivery of the Parliament’s new powers is when the hard work should start. We should debate how we can design a welfare system for Scotland within the United Kingdom, bearing in mind that, back in September, we voted to keep Scotland in the United Kingdom.
My party will contribute to that debate. I want a system that is compassionate and flexible and one that is effective in helping people into work. I want a system that measures itself not by the size of the welfare bill but by how many people are helped back to work and can then support themselves and contribute to the broader economy.
I am excited about how the Parliament will manage its new competencies. There are proposals in the Smith agreement on disability living allowance, the personal independence payment and the regulated social fund as well as on the ability to top up existing benefits and create new ones. Those are real, exciting and important choices.