Select Committee on Scottish Affairs Minutes of Evidence


Examination of Witnesses (Questions 40-59)

RT HON DOUGLAS ALEXANDER MP, DAVID CAIRNS MP AND DR JIM WILDGOOSE

4 JULY 2006

  Q40  Mr McGovern: Annex 9 of the Annual Report deals with staffing levels and the figures tell us that year on year, certainly since 2002, the actual numbers of staff employed are less than the complement required. Try as I might, I have not found a way to blame that on the Liberal Democrats. Seriously, even as recently as last year they were below complement by nine. Is there a reason for this?

  Mr Alexander: I can assure you that that decline in no way compares with the number of staff who would lose their job in the Department of Trade and Industry if another party's proposals to abolish the DTI were implemented. In all seriousness, this was a matter I looked at in anticipation of my appearance before you today. I shall ask Jim Wildgoose to say a word in a moment as the Head of the Office. The assurance I should simply give to the Committee is that unlike the staff changes which took place post 2003, when my predecessor, Alistair Darling, was appointed, where there was a conscious decision to reduce the staff numbers to reflect the changed role of the Scottish Secretary, these reflect management decisions rather than any policy decisions which were being exercised. In fact, for reasons Jim will explain, they do not reflect any change in the activities of the Scotland Office.

  Dr Wildgoose: I have to say the blame lies with the Head of the Scotland Office for these changes. In many ways the complement figure is a notional figure. It is a start-of-year figure and in fact the difference between the average employment over the year, which is the actual figure, and the opening figure over the several years has been about the same over the years. The complement figure really is somewhat notional. When I took over in May of last year I looked very carefully at this and it was not helpful to have figures which were so different. The difference between actual and complement in many instances was that we were not planning to fill vacancies anyway in terms of the work. So we took a management decision to reduce the complement down to 54, which you will see is the starting figure in 2006-07. That reduction actually occurred quite quickly after May. The 60 is in fact the opening figure for the year; the opening figure. We actually reduced the complement in three areas. There was some duplication in the management of finance, in the management process there and that involved two staff reductions, a senior person and a secretary. We felt there was duplication with that. We also reduced the press office from three to two and we felt that level of resource was reasonable and we had one reduction in the election set-up in finance in the services division in election accounting work. Then we amalgamated the two private offices that we previously had and in fact that change has been very effective in terms of taking forward the work of the two ministers in the Office. These decisions were taken by the Management Board, they were not decisions which I took myself. They looked very carefully at the work of the Office and what the requirements were, so we are confident that it has not had any effect on the actual level of output and the quality of the output that we have.

  Q41  Mr McGovern: That has possibly pre-empted my second question. In my previous job as a trade union official we always viewed what we called non-foreigner vacancies quite cynically. We regarded it as fewer people doing the same amount of work. Could you confirm what you have just said, that it has had no effect on the quality of the service provided by the Scotland Office?

  Dr Wildgoose: That is certainly our management judgment. This is not simply me looking at this, this is the view of the management team that we have. We look at these issues regularly every six weeks; we have a Management Board meeting and we look at the staffing levels each meeting we have to assess the position. Sometimes we look at increases, sometimes we look at decreases, sometimes we fill jobs quickly, sometimes we look at whether we need to fill a job immediately. There is actually a continuous process in terms of assessing what staffing levels we require. I can safely say that my own view and the view of the board is that we have not adversely influenced the work of the Office through these changes. I might say that really the only operational effect previously of the complement figure was to do with budgeting and we have moved away from that process. In terms of the 2006-07 budget we are moving to an average actual staffing level for the budgeting which we feel is a better measure, a better way of projecting and forecasting budgets. These sorts of issues are in fact very much to the fore in general governance arrangements of departments within the UK Government.

  Q42  Mr McGovern: Last September the Scotland Office told us that it regularly reviews its complement and a review would be taking place later that year, 2005. Is what you have just outlined the result of that review?

  Dr Wildgoose: More or less. We looked at it fairly quickly after the election in May last year and we do a continuous process. Effectively that was the review. We do look at this regularly through time.

  Q43  Mr McGovern: So the review which was referred to last September has taken place and this is the outcome.

  Dr Wildgoose: Yes, it has.

  Q44  Mr MacDougall: The Annual Report mentions a programme of regular meetings with business interests and industry representative bodies across Scotland. Have you found these meetings to be productive? What are the preoccupations of Scottish business when you have such meetings?

  Mr Alexander: It would be rather presumptuous of me on the basis of about six weeks in office to offer you a definitive view. Suffice to say that in the meetings I have already undertaken with SCDI, with Alexander's the bus manufacturers in Falkirk and a range of other businesses which I have visited even in recent weeks, it is clear to me that businesses, while always of course looking at how their offering to the market can be improved and looking to Government to provide a framework in which they can be supported, set great store by macroeconomic stability. The kinds of recent reports published by OECD and others have complimented us but that is certainly something I hear echoed in my discussions with Scottish business. There is an awareness that on the foundation of macroeconomic stability which has been developed over recent years there has been an ability to make investment decisions with a degree of certainty which was not previously available to Scottish business. Perhaps I could let David say a word, given that for the whole of the year he is in discussion in terms of the Annual Report and meeting a range of business organisations and individual companies.

  David Cairns: That is absolutely right. There is also absolutely no clamour on their part to abolish the Department of Trade and Industry. I have not detected that among Scottish business figures. In the last year we have chosen in the context of the energy review to have a great many discussions with people involved in the energy sector. Offshore I went to visit an oil rig, into nuclear power stations and I am going to Cockenzie on Friday. We have been very much engaged in that particular sector, which obviously has had challenges to do with the global increase in oil prices and energy prices in general, which has been a challenge not just in Scotland but right round the world. That has been an issue we have raised there. Of course the strength of the economy and the economic activity levels also bring challenges for business as well, because there are fewer unemployed people and that brings challenges too. The North Sea oil sector particularly has seen its most successful year in decades in terms of new licences so that has brought out a lot of pressures in terms of the supply chain and in terms of the availability of skilled labour. There are certain pressures around in the energy sector as well. To come back to the point Mr Banks made, you do occasionally get frustration from business about the length of time it can take to get planning; not remotely unique to Scotland of course. It is an issue you hear elsewhere. These are the general concerns that we hear from business, but on the whole—and I would say this would I not?—the general economic climate in Scotland at the moment is very positive. There is a great deal of business optimism out there and that is not just reflected in our comments, it is reflected in all of the surveys of business undertaken by the Bank of Scotland, by the various institutions, the mechanical engineers and so on, who take monthly surveys, all of them reporting a great deal of optimism in Scottish business.

  Mr Alexander: I would just echo the point David made about the energy sector. I do not know whether you have had the opportunity to familiarise yourself with the Press and Journal today, a prestigious Scottish publication, under the headline "Jobs galore" there is an announcement by Shell of a major £600 million contract with Subsea 7 to design, build and operate two vessels for Shell. The vessels will be used respectively to support undersea work on oil and gas facilities and by remotely operated vessels and also by divers. Those vessels are going to be used in the North Sea and elsewhere and evidence exactly the kind of opportunities which are being grasped by Scottish businesses as David was describing.

  Q45  Mr McGovern: Is there a general feeling with businesses that whilst there will always be challenges for business under any environment, the long-term stability we have enjoyed in terms of the economic climate, being able to invest with some certainty et cetera, has been a key issue, enabling them to plan more longer term and with greater confidence?

  Mr Alexander: Certainly I should say that is an accurate reflection. It is also one which in recent days the academic community has echoed. I do not know whether you have had a chance to see the study which received significant publicity in the Glasgow Herald yesterday, but it again made clear that in the kind of global open markets of the 21st century a sustained period of instability would be deeply prejudicial to the interests of the Scottish economy and investment in the Scottish economy. That is why the Government are determined to resist those who would argue that the break-up of Britain should take precedence over the sustained economic growth we have seen over the last eight years.

  Q46  Gordon Banks: Coming to this place from private business before May last year, I should like to support what the Secretary of State said there about the stability of the economy. My sector is the construction sector; that is where I came from. I appreciate that the Secretary of State has only been in the job for six weeks, but maybe the Minister has experience he can outline for us. Have you had any particular discussions with the construction sector on the skills shortage in the construction sector in Scotland which has seen a lot of Eastern European labour coming in because there is a lack of Scottish indigenous tradesmen?

  Mr Alexander: I cannot claim yet to have had the opportunity to meet with major construction sector employers, but from my own experience as a constituency MP, which may well be echoed around the room, one of the distinctive features of the labour market we have developed in recent years in Scotland is the fact that those people who happen to find themselves unemployed as a result of the two recessions visited upon Scotland in 18 years by the Conservative Party have largely now secured employment. Certainly in terms of my own constituency I now find a situation where, contained within the residual pool of people who find themselves unemployed are people who do need support, perhaps because they are not job ready in terms of numeracy problems, literacy problems or drug dependency issues. That is why I think it would be exactly the wrong approach to abolish something like the New Deal, which is targeted directly at providing exactly the kind of support those individuals need in order to be job ready, to be able to make a contribution to the Scottish economy. That being said, I also think it would not be appropriate to deny the reality that the kind of workers which Danny Alexander and you referred to are already making a significant contribution to the Scottish economy, not just in rural Scotland but also in urban Scotland. It is in part because of their capacity to contribute to the strength of the Scottish economy, not, as many people according to the newspaper feared, arriving to claim benefits but instead arriving to pay taxes, to work, to contribute and then return to their home countries, that there is a very dynamic labour market within Scotland. That is not to say there are not continuing pressures, but I believe the right way to address that is to have a coherent strategy for the labour market which asks what the modern skills are that we shall need in exactly the kind of vocational trades that you describe. How do we equip Scottish workers to have those skills? That is why it is essential that we see sustained investment, not just in the university sector but also in the FE sector, to make sure that in colleges like the one in Paisley we are producing exactly the kind of skilled tradesmen which are required and why it would be deeply damaging to see the kind of cuts which in the past have been visited on those sectors at exactly the point at which Scotland is not just making its way but prospering within the global economy.

  Q47  Mr Walker: What cuts are you alluding to? You alluded to damaging cuts.

  Mr Alexander: The third fiscal rule which the Conservative Party are proposing which would see year on year a reduction in terms of public expenditure for what is claimed to be a sharing of the proceeds of growth.

  Q48  Gordon Banks: You mentioned vocational skills. In your discussions with the First Minister or with other ministers are you encouraging them to develop a situation where schools and FE colleges are working much more closely together to give vocational skills to the people who maybe do not want to follow an academic route and give them these skills at 14, 15 and 16 rather than just keeping them in school?

  Mr Alexander: Absolutely. There is a recognition within the Scottish Executive, although it would be for them to answer your question directly, that there are pupils, in terms of our strengthening economic position in the future, whom we have a considerable interest in keeping in education, who would not wish to pursue the academic route in terms of further education. If one thinks, for example, of somewhere like John Wheatley College in Easterhouse, that is an exemplar of the kind of transformation we have seen in the FE sector, which I feel, certainly looking back over decades, has not received the support it rightly deserved in terms of its significance to developing the kind of Scottish economy all of us would wish to see. I do therefore welcome the fact that there has been sustained investment in further education in Scotland over a number of years now which reflects the reality that we shall certainly have a higher proportion of the jobs created in the Scottish economy in the future being graduate jobs, but nonetheless there is a vital and enduring need to make sure we equip Scottish young people and Scottish workers more generally with appropriate skills for the full range of skills which will be required for a modern economy.

  Q49  Mr MacNeil: For business and jobs can you think of anything which might put Scotland in the company of Norway, Ireland and Iceland, who are third, fourth, fifth in the OECD in terms of wealth per head, as opposed to being an underperforming part of the nation in 13th place?

  Mr Alexander: I can trade OECD statistics with you if you would like in terms of recent reports which have been published about the strength of the Scottish economy. In terms of the examples you cite, I have to say that my reading not just of Scotland's economic history but my understanding of economic policy stretches back long enough to make me rather wary of the idea that there is a single transferable answer to the challenges of modern economic success in the globalised marketplace. If we had been having this conversation in the 1970s, one of the features might have been German industrial banking. There might be an article asking why Japan was in a position where we have the Ministry of International Trade. Then you would have moved onto a discussion about the distinctive attributes of Silicon Valley. The truth is that all countries, the United Kingdom included and Scotland therein, have to work hard to make sure they have the essential elements of modern economic success in place. I believe, if you look at the trend rate of growth, if you look at the levels of employment being enjoyed in Scotland at the moment, if you look at the stability in terms of the housing market, there are grounds not just for pride in terms of what has been achieved in recent years compared with other advanced economies, but also real grounds for optimism. The idea that there is, for example, as your party advocates, a long-term strategy for Scotland based on a commodity such as oil, which as we all know is highly volatile, seems to me to be naive when the real challenges are, as I have just described, to make sure that they are a foundation of economic stability. We then have the right economic responses to make Scotland's place in the future. That involves sustained investment in education—success in the boardroom begins in the classroom—that means that post school education has to be valued and it means that we have to drive up not just standards in terms of vocational education but also make sure that our graduates are equipped for modern economic success. I believe those building blocks are in place which account for the success that Scotland has enjoyed and which explains why every major survey which has been produced in recent months in relation to the Scottish economy by credible independent forecasters recognises not just the success we have enjoyed but is optimistic about the prospects for Scotland's future.

  Q50  Mr MacNeil: I take that as "No hope of catching Norway, Ireland and Iceland".

  Mr Alexander: With the greatest of respect, you cite Ireland as an example. Distinctive choices were made by Ireland in an era when the European Union was essentially a fairly closed trade bloc. It would be naive, although it would be characteristic for your party to say that any relatively globalised market, which we now see, where supply chains can stretch from Falkirk, where I was visiting a bus manufacturer a week ago on Friday, to Shanghai, the logic which made sense in terms of the choices which Ireland was making for itself in the 1970s and 1980 necessarily makes sense in terms of the modern challenges we face. I believe that if you look at the framework of macroeconomic stability which has been established it is literally the envy of the world and that is why report after report, whether the Fraser of Allander Institute at home or the OECD abroad has recognised the strength of our macroeconomic stability. That stability is, however, not the end of the discussion but the starting point of the discussion. To imperil that stability, as I believe your policies would, would of course be highly irresponsible, but on that foundation of stability we do need to make sure we have the appropriate skills mix for a modern economy. I believe we are making the right choices both north and south of the border. Do not take my word for it, take the word of the OECD in their most recent report which placed great weight on the economic stability which had been achieved at a UK level and look most recently at the report produced by the Fraser of Allander Institute only this week which highlighted the very perilous dangers of throwing away that stability in pursuit of the volatile resources that your party advocates as a sustainable basis for Scotland's prosperity.

  Q51  Mr Davidson: When we met the oil industry recently they were unhappy about the Treasury and it is worth mentioning that they were very supportive of DTI whom they felt understood very well what the oil industry was about. It was a noticeable contrast in the views between the Treasury and the DTI. Why they were unhappy with the Treasury was because of the increase in corporation tax. Can you tell us the mechanism by which the Scotland Office was consulted on that matter?

  Mr Alexander: I was only appointed a number of weeks ago, but I can tell you that I understand my predecessor, Alistair Darling, had frequent and detailed conversations with the Chancellor, as you would expect of a Cabinet colleague in the days and weeks preceding the Budget. I can myself vouch for the fact that I similarly had discussions with the Chancellor immediately preceding that. There is some risk in relation to your question in presuming that the Scotland Office would regard there as being a wholly different set of fiscal policies which are appropriate for Scotland and the rest of the United Kingdom.

  Q52  Mr Davidson: It would be wrong to presume that. I was not asking that. I was simply seeking clarification on the mechanism. While I appreciate that the Chancellor and the then Secretary of State for Scotland would have met and chatted and so on, what I am still not clear about is the actual mechanism by which these dialogues are conducted. Is there a formal mechanism by which the Chancellor consulted the Secretary of State for Scotland on the change in corporation tax on the oil industry that will reassure us that there will be formal consultation on any future change?

  Mr Alexander: Ultimately these are judgments exercised, as any Budget judgment, by the Chancellor. That is informed by the discussions which are held with Cabinet colleagues. I understand that it is a matter of record that there were discussions between the then Scottish Secretary and the Chancellor of the Exchequer preceding the judgment which was reached by the Chancellor. I should not wish to leave the Committee with the impression that any other Cabinet Minister ultimately exercises that judgment. While there is consultation, as the Chancellor made clear repeatedly in his Budget statement, the Budget judgment that he makes is the basis on which the Government forms the taxation policy.

  Q53  Chairman: Your Annual Report tells us that £19.1 billion was paid to the Scottish Consolidated Fund in 2004-05. This compares to an original Estimate of £21.3 billion. Why were your forecasts so inaccurate?

  Mr Alexander: Perhaps I might ask Jim to explain because this was a question I asked him some time ago.

  Dr Wildgoose: There is a technical reason for this and it is to do with the handling of pension payments for NHS staff and teachers. A correction was required to the figures which is reflected in the outturn figure but is not reflected in the original provision figures. This change in the arrangement was discovered in fact after the final provision figure was set in the table in the year in question. This is quite a technical issue and I would be happy to write to the Committee about this if that would be helpful.

  Chairman: Yes, that would be fine.[3]

  Mr Davidson: Could it be in short words?

  Q54  David Mundell: I am very pleased that we have the chance to raise the matter of the operation of devolution. We have two members of the Scottish Parliament present in our audience today and I am sure they are very welcome and we all want to work very closely with them. I do not want to get into a discussion about whether or not there is going to be a new First Minister or indeed whether there is going to be a new Prime Minister, but I am sure you do agree with me that relationships between Westminster and Holyrood and between the Scottish Executive and the UK Government have to be robust enough and clear enough to be able to operate when we have governments of different persuasions alternately in either parliament. I am not convinced at the moment that they are and I think it would be helpful if perhaps you could talk through how these relationships actually work in practice. For example, you have alluded to discussions you have recently had with Mr McConnell. What is the formality of these discussions? How is that programmed? How does the system work? Are you convinced that system would work if it were to be Mr Salmond or another?

  Mr Alexander: I shall resist the temptation to place on record once again my disbelief at the prospect of either Mr Salmond or, I suppose from your point of view, Ms Annabel Goldie, taking office as Scotland's First Minister, because I think we should probably deal with facts. In terms of your substantive point about the degree of formality in the relationship with the First Minister, clearly that depends on the communication. I do not suppose it is sharing any kind of state secret to say that the last conversation I had with the First Minister was by text, preceding that was a telephone call and preceding that was a face-to-face meeting. The serious point I make is that your argument is, with respect, well-trodden ground. I know that it was a subject you raised with my predecessor Alistair Darling at the equivalent hearing last year. I share with Alistair the background as a lawyer before entering Parliament and his scepticism that a greater degree of rules and regulation being devised at this juncture by the Scotland Office and the Scottish Executive respectively would strengthen what I believe are settled and well-working relationships. Frankly there is a question, not least in light of the conversations we have been having about staffing levels in the Scotland Office, as to whether it would be a judicious use of time energy and finance to send over a group of civil servants to try to scenario plan in terms of different scenarios about how relationships should be established in different ways. Instead we should recognise that there are clear arrangements which I believe have served us well. The fact that to date—and I certainly hope this continues—we have a Labour-led Executive in Holyrood and we have a Labour Government at Westminster is not prejudicial to my argument. A government of whichever hue in Westminster and an administration of whatever hue in Holyrood would, I believe, because politics is ultimately about delivery, have an interest in having effective working relationships, notwithstanding the fact that the ambition of those administrations may be different from the Labour administration which presently holds office. I am afraid, with respect, I simply disagree that having a whole battery of further rules, regulations and arrangements would necessarily serve an arrangement well which is working effectively just now.

  Q55  David Mundell: Just now, without any new rules and regulations, we have a joint ministerial council which has hardly met at all. Do you regard that as being unnecessary?

  Mr Alexander: No. The Joint Ministerial Committee which you describe has met. Again I inevitably bring to this discussion my previous perspective as the Europe Minister in relation to its functional work as the Joint Ministerial Committee on Europe. The reason there have been both frequent and effective meetings of the Joint Ministerial Committee in relation to Europe is that it makes good sense for there to be an aligned British negotiating position when we go to Brussels or to Strasbourg or wherever. To have a committee which meets regularly, which brings in devolved administrations, is eminently sensible. In other areas of policy, as devolution has matured, it has emerged that the Joint Ministerial Committee process is more of a long-stop. I do not per se take that as being a criticism either of the original proposals or indeed how devolution has come to mature. The Joint Ministerial Committee is only one of the mechanisms by which effective coordination is taking place. The Scotland Office has a role in that. Increasingly, under my predecessor as well, there is very effective coordination bilaterally between Whitehall departments and the Scottish Executive and the fact that per se they are not choosing to meet on a regular basis, as some have suggested is necessary, through the mechanism of the Joint Ministerial Committee, I do not see as being to our discredit. I see it as a reflection of the fact that a great deal of important business can be done bilaterally directly between the Whitehall department, sometimes coming through the Scotland Office but dealing directly with Scottish Executive ministers. Perhaps David could add his perspective, given his regular contact with Scottish Executive ministers on exactly these kinds of questions.

  David Cairns: Obviously at the time of devolution it was an innovation; it was not something we had had in this country before. There was an attempt at the time of the Scotland Act to put in place a suite of different arrangements which could take place in order for devolution to be maintained and stability ensue. I am aware of the allegation which you have made that it is all done on a nod and a wink through the Labour old boys' network, which I think is the phrase you have used in the past. I simply do not think that stands up to scrutiny. There is a memorandum of understanding and there are devolution guidance notes which are adhered to. The memorandum of understanding itself, which was written up and devised at the same time as devolution, actually says that most contacts should be carried out on a bilateral or multilateral basis between departments which deal on a day-to-day basis with the issues at stake. That is actually what happens day in day out, week-in week out, most recently on the decision of the Scottish Parliament to pass a legislative consent motion allowing the Barker judgment to be overturned so that mesothelioma victims could get compensation and could get justice much more quickly. If the Scottish Parliament were to legislate itself, it would have to begin a whole new round of consultations and its law would take a lot longer to reach the statute book. I do not think that if we had had to wait until the next JMC meeting—and it would only have been a couple of times a year anyway—to resolve those issues we should have done justice by the mesothelioma sufferers and the Scottish people. We need to be much more dynamic, we need to be much more fleet of foot, we need to be able to address real issues as they come along in the exemplary way which directs discussions between the Scottish Executive department and the Department for Constitutional Affairs here, between myself and between Margaret Curran so that we could actually make sure that everybody was informed what was going on. We needed that flexibility to be able to respond quickly and we have got the result everybody wants to see and the legislative consent motion went through with absolutely nobody opposing it. We need the formal structures in place such as the JMC Europe but we also need arrangements which can respond quickly to events as they unfold.

  Q56  David Mundell: Are you actually saying that nothing could be done to improve the inter-governmental parliamentary relationship and that it is as good as it could be?

  Mr Alexander: I feel a sense of deja vu in the sense that they asked the same question to my predecessor at the session last year where he replied that it would be a stupid man who says nothing can ever get better.

  Q57  David Mundell: With respect, one would hope you had brought a new perspective to the role and sometimes when somebody does come into a role with a new perspective then they can identify things which people who had previously been in the role had not necessarily seen. On that basis I am asking whether you think there is anything that needs to be done that would improve the working relationships between the two parliaments and the two governments. I am sure one thing we can agree on is that it is important that, whatever the government, either Holyrood or Westminster, they should be capable of working together and not get bogged down in relationship mechanics.

  Mr Alexander: Of course this is a matter which any incoming Secretary of State would have regard for and would look at circumstances. I do think, if your claim that this is all done on a nod and a wink was judged favourably in the past, that after the shameful sending off of Wayne Rooney on Saturday the idea of basing anything on the basis of winking would be judged rather rash. I do find myself in sympathy with my predecessor on the substantive point which is that my background as a lawyer and my practical experience, both as a departmental minister and now Secretary of State, suggest to me that the memorandum of understanding, which itself identifies effective bilateral working as the way forward has proved to be both durable and effective and in that sense I would not offer you false hope that with a new Secretary of State there is a fundamentally different view on what I believe is a successful joint partnership approach which can be taken forward in the future.

  Q58  Mr MacNeil: As a lawyer, I wonder whether you are paid by the word by any chance. Devolution has been described as a process rather than an event. What do you trust the current Scottish Executive have devolved to them next?

  Mr Alexander: I should regard the constitutional settlement which has been reached as reflecting a durable basis on which relations can be taken forward between the Scottish Executive and the United Kingdom Parliament. It is right—and again, my predecessor rehearsed these arguments when he was before this Committee last year—that there have been, at the margins, specific examples of where powers have been transferred and in a moment I shall ask David to say a word about the Sewel convention. Perhaps the railways are the most substantive example, where, my predecessor judged on coming into the post, both as Transport Secretary and then as Scottish Secretary, that it was the right view given the existence of the distinctive franchise in Scotland. I would not hold out at this prospect, notwithstanding the conversations which will appropriately take place in relation to Arbuthnott. The idea that I have in my head a range of further powers that I would wish to devolve is wrong. Rather than your position I hold to the position that we do have a durable settlement and in that sense one of the learning points that people have gained over recent years is that, unlike some of our critics, devolution has not proved to be a motorway without exits towards independence: instead it reflects, in the words of the late great John Smith, the settled will of the Scottish people.

  Q59  Mr MacNeil: Have you tested that?

  David Cairns: Very briefly, more in response to Mr Mundell's point earlier on, since last year there has been an investigation by the Scottish Parliament's own procedures committee into how the mechanics of the Sewel motion operate and you have produced a report which I believe attracted some press interest on this matter. Whilst I should not want to pre-empt the Government's response to that, I think we would be very minded to look favourably upon the improvements to the operation of Sewel that you are suggesting in your report. That would represent one way of changing the way in which the parliaments and the executives are related to one another; a perfectly sensible and moderate change to it.


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