Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1-19)
RT HON
ALISTAIR DARLING,
MR DAVID
CAIRNS AND
DR JIM
WILDGOOSE
19 OCTOBER 2005
Chairman: Before we start today's proceedings,
can I pay tribute to my predecessor Baroness Irene Adams for her
hard work and commitment as the Chair of the Scottish Affairs
Select Committee and if everybody agrees then we can minute it
and write a letter to Baroness Irene Adams thanking her for her
services to the Scottish Affairs Select Committee. Is everybody
happy with this?
Mr Davidson: Can we look forward to seeing
Baron Sarwar one day?
Q1 Chairman: Ian, I expected it from
you! Secretary of State, Minister and Dr Wildgoose, welcome. I
would like to thank you for the Scotland Office response to the
written questions dealing with expenditure matters. Before we
start on the detailed questions, does any one of you wish to make
an opening statement?
Mr Darling: If I may, firstly
I wholeheartedly endorse what you said about Irene Adams, who
did a very good job as Chair of this Select Committee. Perhaps
I could introduce my colleagues. David Cairns has been the Parliamentary
Under-Secretary at the Department since the General Election and
Jim Wildgoose has been head of the Scotland Office since just
before the General Election, having come to us from the Scottish
Executive, and is responsible for the Civil Service side of the
Scotland Office. You have got the report. We have tried to answer
the questions you put to us and I think the best thing is to answer
whatever questions you want to put our way. I have nothing I want
to say in general terms.
Q2 Chairman: Can I start then with
the first one? Secretary of State for Scotland and Transport,
does wearing two hats hinder or help you resolve issues where
conflict exists between the objectives of the two departments?
Mr Darling: I have never found
it a problem myself. As I said, I think, on the two previous occasions
I have been before the Select Committee, it is obviously going
to be for the Prime Minister of the day to decide which Secretaries
of State he or she appoints and to allocate their jobs in whatever
way is appropriate. I remain convinced of what I said on each
of the last two occasions: that I think there is not sufficient
work to justify someone solely holding the job of Secretary of
State for Scotland. The job can be done in association with other
duties. What I am equally convinced about is that it is essential,
in my view, at the present time and certainly for the foreseeable
future that the Secretary of State for Scotland should be a Member
of the Cabinet because as a Member of the Cabinet you have direct
and easy access to the Prime Minister and Chancellor, and indeed
to other senior colleagues, and now that we are encouraging the
Scottish Executive to deal direct with its Whitehall counterparts
a lot of the work we do is actually brokering things or if something
goes wrong, sorting it out. As a Member of the Cabinet, you can
do that in a way which frankly as a Junior Minister you cannot.
So I think the way in which it has been structured works. Increasingly
the Scottish Executive and Whitehall departments deal with each
other direct, which is only sensible. There is no point in having
a middle man. Indeed, you will have noticed that one of the reasons
we brought the staffing down in the Scotland Office (I think there
are about 50 people in posts at the moment) is because the range
of duties we have is different. To answer your question, no, there
has not been a conflict. Yes, the two jobs fit well together and
in particular Transport. I have found that whenever I am Secretary
of State for Scotland I find myself in complete agreement with
the Secretary of State for Transport and vice versa. So
there has not been a problem as far as that is concerned, and
generally I think the system works quite well. That is not to
say that at some point in the future Prime Ministers will not
take a different view, but at the moment it seems to work.
Q3 Chairman: If a conflict arises,
how do you determine whether the Scotland Office or the Department
of Transport objective should take priority?
Mr Darling: The problem has never
arisen. Let me give you one example where I do not think putting
the two jobs together would work. If you were the Chief Secretary
and Secretary of State for Scotland there would be a clear conflict
of interest. One person might want money and the other one's basic
job as Chief Secretary is not to pay out money. But again, the
problem has not arisen. Again I can give you an example. The Committee
will be aware that in January 2004 as Secretary of State for Transport
I announced a review of the way in which the railways were run
in this country because I took the view that the structure which
had essentially been created at privatisation was not going to
work. As part of those discussions, I decided right from the outset
that we needed to devolve more powers to the Scottish Executive.
They had the responsibility for the train operating company, ScotRail,
but they now have substantial responsibility for the track. There
was never any conflict as far as that is concerned. I thought
it was the right thing to do. I discussed it with the First Minister
and then subsequently with the then Transport Minister in Scotland.
I have never come across the situation where there was actually
a conflict in the two roles. As I say, a lot of what goes on now
between the Scottish Executive and Westminster is done direct
and it does not need me or David, or any official, to be standing
in the way of things. So those problems have not arisen and if
they ever were to, it would be perfectly easy to get around that
problem by getting somebody else to make a particular decision,
if there were such a conflict.
Q4 David Mundell: Secretary of State,
I am pleased to hear that relations between the Scottish Executive
and Westminster are good, but would you not accept that one of
the potential difficulties for the future if we did have administrations
of different political hue in Scotland and here in Westminster
is that the procedures and processes for the relationship between
the Scottish Executive and the UK Government are not set down,
and indeed as a House of Lords committee has concluded they are
actually purely based on goodwill? Is not the failure to address
getting those procedures in place simply storing up problems for
the future?
Mr Darling: No. As all of us are
well aware, we have an unwritten constitution in this country
and it has served us quite well. As a lawyer, I would be loathe
to start drawing up all sorts of rules and regulations which you
would probably find, if there was such a tension, probably would
not work. Of course, it is up to the electorate of the United
Kingdom and Scotland which administrations they return, but I
think the general public, having made that decision, would expect
the administrations to work together. Obviously, if you have got,
for example, an administration in Scotland (and Select Committees
are not the place where you would wish to make trivial political
points), if you had an administration there that was electing
a platform of ending relations between Scotland and the rest of
the United Kingdom I could see tensions might arise, but equally
we might take the view, "Well, if that's what's happened,
that's what's happened," but I do not actually think we need
a whole host of rules and regulations to deal with it. My view
is that the administrations will work together. There are tensions
which arise now. There are sometimes things that the Scottish
Executive would like to do and we say, "No, you are not going
to do that because it is not appropriate." I may say that
nothing major of that kind has ever arisen, but I think it is
best in these things to deal with situations when they arise.
You could spend a lifetime drawing up rules and regulations for
something that may never ever arise and I think the unwritten
constitution and our ability to be flexible on these things will
serve us well. If things change in the future, either in this
Parliament or the Scottish Parliament, then ministers of the day
will have to adapt to that way of working.
Q5 Mr Wallace: Secretary of State,
I am interested in your point on the appropriateness of perhaps
what the Scottish Executive might choose to do or want to do.
I have noticed recently more and more that the First Minister
of Scotland has found it in his view a wise spending of the Scottish
block to take himself off to Malawi, for example. I know recently
he was in Canada and the USA. Do you think it is appropriate that
the Scottish block is being used by the First Minister to represent
Scotland more and more abroad? I cannot see, from my time in the
Scottish Parliament, why Jack McConnell should be going to Malawi.
We have a perfectly competent colleague of yours as the International
Development Minister and I wonder what your view is on that?
Mr Darling: I think it is for
the First Minister, who is answerable to the Scottish Parliament,
not here, to decide how best to spend his time and what duties
to undertake. He rightly is answerable to the Scottish Parliament
and if it takes a different view, it can do that. It is not for
any one of us here in this Parliament to say that he can or cannot
do anything, provided it is within the competence of the Scottish
Parliament, and that competence is established with the Scotland
Act 1998, and all expenditure, of course, in Scotland is subject
to the normal controls and the normal proprietary(?). So there
is actually an issue of principle here. When this Parliament devolved
power to the Scottish Parliament it devolved also the responsibility
to that Scottish Parliament to hold ministers to account. They
are not held to account by us here in Westminster, they are held
to account in the Scottish Parliament.
Q6 Mr Wallace: Secretary of State,
to be fair, the spending of this Scottish block within the devolution
settlement is our responsibility. The boundaries to which you
hand over, the Scotland Office is responsible for that administration
or sending it north. In the Scotland Act foreign affairs was not
devolved, nor was international development, so I cannot see why
the Scotland Office should shirk that responsibility. It is not
the Scottish Parliament's role, it is our role here, who hand
over the Scottish block to the Scottish Executive to spend within
the limits of the Scotland Act.
Mr Darling: That is true and if
you or anybody else thinks that the money is being inappropriately
spent there are avenues open to you. What happens is that this
Parliament votes money to the Scotland Office. The Scotland Office,
having subtracted the costs of its own administration (which are
pretty small in the scheme of things) and the administrative costs
of the Scottish Parliament, the rest of it is passed over to the
Scottish Parliament. The Scottish Parliament, you are right, is
constrained by the powers conferred on it by the 1998 Act and
there is nothing in the 1998 Act, so far as I am aware, which
prevents the First Minister (or indeed any other minister) visiting
different parts of the world if he thinks that is appropriate
and provided it is within his duties. As I say, on the accountability
for the spending of that money within the constraints of the 1998
Act or the conduct of ministers within that Parliament, they are
answerable to the Scottish Parliament. That is how the constitutional
settlement was envisaged, that is how it was settled in 1998 and
that is how it is being practised at the moment.
Q7 Mr Wallace: So the Scotland Office
would be happy, according to what you have just said, if the First
Minister were to spend his time in negotiation with the government
of Azerbaijan, for example, even though that negotiation would
be a Foreign Office duty and a Foreign Office responsibility?
What you have said, Secretary of State, is that as long as the
Scottish Parliament is happy with that, then that is okay with
the Scotland Office?
Mr Darling: One of the consequences
of devolution, which most people have now accepted, is that if
you devolve power then the discharge of that power by the Scottish
Parliament, by ministers in that Scottish Parliament, is something
for them to answer to before the Scottish Parliament, not to us.
I also said that we obviously have passed that money over to them
for spending in accordance with the powers conferred upon the
Parliament. So if they acted ultra vires they could not
then act. What you are trying to get from me—not terribly
successfully, I may say—is to express a view as to whether
it is within or without the vires of that Parliament or
ministers to go abroad, to go and speak in Canada or anywhere
else. If there is a question of the vires of that Parliament
there is a number of avenues open to people if they wish to challenge
that, but what I am very clear about is that the actions of any
Scottish minister in the Scottish Executive are a matter for the
Scottish Parliament and it is for those ministers to be held to
account to that Parliament, not to us. We have to be satisfied
about the general proprieties and there are well-established measures
laid down. At the end of the day, there is Audit Scotland, which,
as you will know, is the counterpart of the NAO, which of course
can ask to see every single penny spent by the Scottish Executive
and if it says, "You have no power to do that," then
consequences will no doubt be visited upon whoever transgressed.
Q8 Mr MacNeil: I would like to just
pick up on a point you made a little earlier. You said the Scotland
Office at times tells the Scottish Executive not to do certain
things, minor things. Is there ever a point where the Scottish
Executive might tell the Scotland Office not to do certain things?
Mr Darling: No, I did not say
the Scotland Office. In any discussion between, let us say, the
Scottish Executive and any department of State, they will have
discussions like Whitehall departments do. I quite frequently
with my colleagues will discuss policies and say, "Yes, that's
a good idea," or, "No, that's a bad idea." In the
same way, the Scotland Office will have discussions across a whole
range of things with Whitehall departments, but as I said to you
earlier on, I do not recall anything ever reaching a stage where
it was not the normal course of discussions you would expect between
grown up people in grown up government.
Q9 Mr MacNeil: Have you had any discussions
at all about removing children from their homes at four or five
o'clock in the morning?
Mr Darling: I have been involved
in discussions in relation to the policy in relation to the removal
of people whose entitlement to stay in this country has expired,
but if what you are getting at is the current protocol which is
being worked on by the Scotland Office and the Home Office, no,
that is being done direct, as I would expect it to be. I may become
involved at some stage, but I hope that it will be resolved between
ministers in the Home Office and ministers in the Scottish Executive.
That is what you would expect.
Q10 Mr MacNeil: Have you found Scottish
Executive ministers to be quite pleased with the current arrangements?
Mr Darling: Yes.
Q11 Danny Alexander: I want to return
to this question, Secretary of State, about relations between
the Scotland Office and the Department of Transport and obviously
Objective 3 of the Department is to advise UK departments about
distinctive Scottish interests and act as an effective channel
of communication for Scottish opinion. There will undoubtedly
be examples of transport issues coming up where Scottish interests
or Scottish opinion may be quite different from opinion elsewhere
in the UK. A forthcoming example might be public service obligations
for flights between London and airports in Scotland. I was wondering
whether the position of wearing two hats that you outlined earlier
made it difficult for you to carry out your objectives under Objective
3 on issues like that.
Q12 Mr Darling: Not at all. I correctly
predicted that you would mention PSOs at some stage during the
course of this afternoon and I may have something to say about
that, not today but in the not too distant future. The object
here is to make sure that when you are formulating policy if there
is a particular Scottish aspect, whether it is views in Scotland
or whether it is differences in the law, or anything like that,
that departments are aware of them. It is not the only thing ministers
need to consider when taking advice. As it happens, the current
Secretary of State for Transport has got a fairly good idea what
Scottish opinion is, and for various reasons he has actually got
a fairly good idea of what the opinions are in the highlands and
islands of Scotland. Like MPs, so with ministers, there is a variety
of different ways in which we get our views. You are going to
have to wait and see whether or not you agree with what I conclude
or not, but common sense tells you that if you have got a Secretary
of State for any department who proceeded completely unaware of
the consequences of the devolution, or something like that, then
it is right that the Scotland Office, or indeed anybody else would
point out that they cannot do that, but in terms of reaching a
view and reaching judgments we take into account a whole range
of things. When you see my decision, of course it will be the
right decision, you can rest assured about that. We will have
to wait and see whether or not you and other people in Inverness
take that view as well.
Q13 Danny Alexander: So the discussions
that you have with yourself often prove very productive from the
Scotland point of view?
Mr Darling: They are very fruitful!
Chairman: The future of the Scotland
Office. John MacDougall.
Q14 Mr MacDougall: Could I ask the
Secretary of State, given that devolution now has been in place
for a number of years and clearly the public's and the UK Government's
awareness of its work has grown during that period, would the
Secretary of State agree that over time it is likely that the
Scotland Office's activity in Objectives 1 and 3 should reduce?
Mr Darling: As I said earlier,
I think it would be impossible under the current constitutional
settlement for there not to be a Scotland Office. Whether or not
we change our objectives in terms of promoting the devolution
settlement, I am not sure it needs promoting now. It is more in
with the bricks and I think people accept it for what it is, but
I think there will always be a need for ensuring that there are
workable and good relations between the Scottish Executive and
Whitehall and that is something which is likely to continue. The
way things are at the moment, I expect that will continue for
some time, but it is up to the Prime Minister of the day, who
could take a different view and the situation could be different
in a few years' time. At the moment, I strongly believe in these
matters that if it is not broken then do not attempt to fix it,
and it is working.
Q15 Mr McDougall: I think you have
probably touched on the question I was going to ask here, but
there are points you can still answer on the earlier one. Would
you see a time when it might be possible for the Scotland Office
to have reduced to a level where it would be possible for its
objectives to be delivered just as effectively within one organisation,
for example the Department of Constitutional Affairs, rather than
the need for separate departments for each of the devolved authorities?
Have you any thoughts on the various options?
Mr Darling: I see the point you
are getting at. I think the problem is that we do not have symmetrical
devolutions in the United Kingdom. If you look at the settlement
under the Government of Wales Act it is different from the settlement
that we have in Scotland. Primary legislation, for example, is
a matter for this House, and indeed I think I am right in saying
that the Secretary of State for Wales can actually go and sit
on the floor of the Assembly. People might think it curious if
somebody representing a seat outside Wales would do that, although
raking up old history, I think one party did have a problem some
years ago when they had to get people from outside, but I think
there is a problem there. I think in Northern Ireland, although
there is a peace process, progress has been made, Stormont is
not sitting. That is something we hope will happen but it is not
happening yet and given, as I say, the devolution is asymmetrical
and given that the issues which arise are different, I think there
will always be a need for there to be a Scotland Office. What
I could never say is that the Secretary of State for Constitutional
Affairs could not be the Secretary of State for Constitutional
Affairs and Secretary of State for Scotland, or Secretary of State
for Wales, and so on. Indeed, if you look at it administratively,
a lot of our board and lodging staff, the admin staff, is done
by the DCA, and indeed if you look at our staffing, which you
will come on to later, I think it is roughly two-thirds from the
Scottish Executive and one-third from the DCA, which actually
is quite a good mix. To just repeat the point, I think the present
arrangement works well and I see it continuing. When circumstances
change then the arrangements may change, but just at the moment
the circumstances are not such that I see what you envisage happening.
Q16 Mr Walker: Secretary of State,
is there anything which you think could be working better, because
we never have a perfect world? Is there anything you would like
to do to improve the relationship between the Scotland Office
and your colleagues north of the border in an ideal world?
Mr Darling: I think you would
be a very stupid person to say things could not be better. Things
can always be better, but politics and government is something
where every day you come across something unexpected, something
that might be quite difficult and in retrospect you can look back
and say, "We could have dealt with that better or more efficiently,
or perhaps the problem might have been avoided in the first place."
However, life is not like that. What we try and do is to adapt
to circumstances and learn from things. I suppose in the early
days when I became Secretary of State for Scotland there was far
more coming across departments in Whitehall who were proceeding
as if there was no such thing as Scotland, and at the last minute
you then discover there is a problem, which is bad all round.
There is a lot less of that now. I cannot guard against there
being one official somewhere in the bowels of one department who
just proceeds as if he did not have to bother with anything else.
It happens, as it happens in Whitehall. As Secretary of State
for Transport, I sometimes come across things where a fellow department
is doing something and it would have been nice if we had known
about it. I do not think structurally at the moment I would make
any changes. I think the structure is right. As I was saying to
John MacDougall a few moments ago, if circumstances change then
we would have to adapt.
Q17 Mr Walker: I think that is why
we need a Scottish department for the very reasons you have just
said, so that things can be fixed in other departments and they
do not get lost in the shuffle.
Mr Darling: It is pretty flexible.
If you have got one Secretary of State and you have got a deputy,
and, as I say, it is a fairly small staff split between Edinburgh
and Dover House in London, I like to think that we are fairly
flexible. But if circumstances change then we can always keep
things under review. One advantage with an unwritten constitution
is that you can change things pretty quickly.
Q18 Danny Alexander: Just one matter
in this area, Secretary of State. I was wondering whether you
felt that the regular use of Sewel motions by the Scottish Parliament
was dealt with effectively at this end, and how you would value
the Scotland Office's performance in terms of making MPs from
elsewhere in the United Kingdom aware when they were actually
legislators of Scotland, though this may be in an area which is
normally devolved?
Mr Darling: Firstly, I think the
concept of a Sewel motion is a good one because the United Kingdom
is one entity, it is a fairly unitary state. Yes, we have devolved
large areas of Scottish life, but there are areas where for the
sake of consistency or for the case of better government it makes
sense to have that flexibility that Sewel has introduced. I am
bound to say I do not know about every other Member of this Committee,
but if you go into a pub or a club people tend not to go up to
you and say, "I wish you weren't using these Sewel motions,"
although to read some newspapers you would think that people talked
of nothing else. As you know, the Scottish Parliament conducted
an inquiry into Sewel motions[3]
and came up with a number of quite interesting recommendations,
which obviously we will look at, but one of the things which did
strike me as being of particular interest is that whilst it is
probably fair to say that Members of the Scottish Parliament are
very aware of there being a Sewel motion because they have debated
it, my guess is Members of this Parliament are probably not aware
either (a) that there is one, or (b) what happened to it. That
is something which is obviously outside my responsibility. It
is a matter for the House, but the House has a Procedures Committee
and it, too, will probably want to study this to see whether or
not it would be of assistance to Members generally if they knew,
firstly that there was a Sewel motion, and secondly what was happening
to it and what the considerations were. You may want to make recommendations
on that, I do not know, but that is really for the House, it is
not for the Government.
Q19 David Mundell: Can I just follow
up on that, because it comes back to the point I was raising with
you before, because it is certainly my strong feeling that a number
of the issues around Sewel motions have been capable of being
managed because effectively of a Labour-led administration in
Edinburgh and a Labour Government here and a number of the issues
around, for example, the transfer of powers, railway powers or
the Gambling Bill were capable of being managed in an environment
where you had a similar political administration. It would have
been much more difficult to have managed those processes had you
had differing administrations and whilst I take the point on board
about the flexibility that you indicate coming from an unwritten
constitution, surely there must be some basis on which there is
some protocol or process for dealing with these issues?
Mr Darling: I think there is a
protocol. To take the Railways Bill, for example, that is probably
fairly academic and I do not think any political party north of
the border would say no to it. I may be wrong, I cannot speak
for you lot. But suppose we had said, "We want to devolve
the railways," and suppose there was another administration,
Tory, nationalist or whatever, and they said, "Over our dead
bodies. We're not having it." Well, end of story. It has
been devolved. If they do not want it, they do not have to pass
it. As you know, in relation to Sewel motions, they are that;
they are motions before the Scottish Parliament. So if your party
was alleging a case where there was a different administration,
if they said, "We're not interested in this," (a) the
motion would not come before the Parliament, and (b) if it did
one way or another then they would vote it down. So the procedures
are there. Sewels are not mandatory. It is for the Scottish Parliament,
and in fact they have quite detailed scrutiny. They have committees
that look at all these things, and I think the committees have
got all-party representation, I assume they must have, and then
the thing is voted upon. So they have got quite clear procedures
for dealing with it. I think Danny Alexander's point is that we
do not. There are procedures, but it is not quite as well-known
in this House as it certainly is there. So I think the procedures
are there.
3 The Scottish Parliament Procedures Committee Report,
The Sewel Convention, SP Paper 428. Back
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