Oral Answers to Questions — Scotland – in the House of Commons at 11:30 am on 26 June 2013.
Pete Wishart
Shadow SNP Spokesperson (Culture and Sport), Shadow SNP Spokesperson (Constitution)
11:30,
26 June 2013
What discussions he has had with the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions on the allocation of additional funds to local authorities in Scotland for discretionary housing payments.
David Mundell
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland
Earlier this month my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland and I met the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions and Lord Freud, the Minister for welfare reform, to discuss information received from local authorities in Scotland on this matter.
Pete Wishart
Shadow SNP Spokesperson (Culture and Sport), Shadow SNP Spokesperson (Constitution)
The Minister will of course know that some 80% of affected households in Scotland contain a disabled adult, yet they get only a paltry 6.5% of the total budget. Instead of concentrating on his pathetic scaremongering “project fear”, will he concentrate on the real fears of real Scots under this Tory-led Government?
David Mundell
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland
What I am concentrating on is the real concerns of local authorities in Scotland. That is why the Secretary of State and I have met every single local authority in Scotland to discuss the specific concerns they have in relation to welfare reform, and we will meet the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities at the end of July to discuss the outcome of those discussions.
Secretary of State was originally the title given to the two officials who conducted the Royal Correspondence under Elizabeth I. Now it is the title held by some of the more important Government Ministers, for example the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.
Ministers make up the Government and almost all are members of the House of Lords or the House of Commons. There are three main types of Minister. Departmental Ministers are in charge of Government Departments. The Government is divided into different Departments which have responsibilities for different areas. For example the Treasury is in charge of Government spending. Departmental Ministers in the Cabinet are generally called 'Secretary of State' but some have special titles such as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Ministers of State and Junior Ministers assist the ministers in charge of the department. They normally have responsibility for a particular area within the department and are sometimes given a title that reflects this - for example Minister of Transport.
The political party system in the English-speaking world evolved in the 17th century, during the fight over the ascension of James the Second to the Throne. James was a Catholic and a Stuart. Those who argued for Parliamentary supremacy were called Whigs, after a Scottish word whiggamore, meaning "horse-driver," applied to Protestant rebels. It was meant as an insult.
They were opposed by Tories, from the Irish word toraidhe (literally, "pursuer," but commonly applied to highwaymen and cow thieves). It was used — obviously derisively — to refer to those who supported the Crown.
By the mid 1700s, the words Tory and Whig were commonly used to describe two political groupings. Tories supported the Church of England, the Crown, and the country gentry, while Whigs supported the rights of religious dissent and the rising industrial bourgeoisie. In the 19th century, Whigs became Liberals; Tories became Conservatives.
