Scotland Bill

Part of Oral Answers to Questions — Defence – in the House of Commons at 5:08 pm on 8 June 2015.

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Photo of Ian Murray Ian Murray Shadow Secretary of State for Scotland 5:08, 8 June 2015

If the right hon. Gentleman wishes me to make some progress, I will come on to those very issues. Let me remind him that the devolution settlement was agreed to by all five parties on the Smith commission.

The Bill that is in front of us is to ensure that the Smith agreement is put forward in full, and we want to ensure that it is put forward in full both in spirit and in substance, as I have said twice already.

[Interruption.]

I hear someone chuntering, “It doesn’t” from a sedentary position. Well, we are going through this parliamentary process and will seek to amend the Bill precisely because we want to ensure that it does fulfil everything in the Smith agreement, but we also want to go further.

We will seek to amend the Bill to go beyond the Smith agreement without compromising on the pooling and sharing of resources across the UK that guarantees the Barnett formula and the UK pension system for Scots. On welfare, we will ensure that the final say on benefit levels remains in Scotland by giving the Scottish Parliament a wider power to top up all reserve benefits. We will ensure that the Scottish Parliament can introduce new benefits in devolved areas funded from Scotland to meet Scottish circumstances; bring employment and welfare policy together with a positive vision for tackling the low skills, numeracy and literacy problems that hold back adults trapped in long-term unemployment; fully devolve housing benefit; and ensure double devolution by devolving job creation powers to local communities, providing real opportunities, as my private Member’s Bill demonstrated at the tail end of the previous Parliament.