Devolution of Welfare

Douglas Ross Excerpts

Tuesday 9th April 2019 Westminster Hall

[John Lamont]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point; I am going to expand on that a little further. Despite all the rhetoric we hear from the SNP about taking on these powers and many others, it has absolutely failed to fulfil those promises on the delivery of welfare.

By the end of February, the Scottish Government announced that they expected it to take until at least 2024 before this process would be completed. They also said they would not be taking on competence for the severe disablement allowance, instead leaving that controlled by the Department for Work and Pensions indefinitely. The issue is important for this place, because these powers were due to be devolved. It therefore now falls on the Department for Work and Pensions to step in and ensure that the people of Scotland—our constituents—receive the support they need.

All of this is perhaps understandable. Delivering a welfare system is a complex matter that we need to get right. I acknowledge that the UK Government have needed to delay the roll-out of universal credit, which is a much more complex undertaking. The SNP has spent the past decade criticising the UK Government for their welfare policies and demanding these powers, so the people of Scotland expected the Scottish Government to be keen to take them on as quickly as possible. Instead, it will take the Scottish Government nine years to build a social security system, despite one of the benefits being handed back to the Department for Work and Pensions here at Westminster. This is from a party that tried to con the voters of Scotland by saying that they could set up an entire independent country, with all the apparatus that this would have entailed, in just 18 months. This is from a party that is demanding the devolution of all welfare powers to Scotland, as well as a whole range of other powers.

There is not really any disagreement about why this has happened. I am sure the Minister will be tactful in his closing remarks, because the Department for Work and Pensions wants this process to be done properly and these powers to be devolved in a smooth way. However, the fact remains that these delays are entirely the fault of the Scottish Government and their failure to build capacity to deliver a new social security agency.

Department for Work and Pensions officials have been working hard to devolve these powers since the Scotland Act 2016 was passed. Indeed, they were working towards the 2021 timetable right up until the delay was announced by the Scottish Government. There had been warning signs long before, which should have made the Scottish Government think they had to improve progress. Last year, Audit Scotland warned that Scottish Ministers had not done their homework and had no idea how achievable the plans for Social Security Scotland were. It is already costing more than the Scottish Government thought it would, and plans for local benefits agencies are well behind schedule. It is very clear that the Scottish Government underestimated how complex and expensive it is to deliver a social security system, which is why they have caused these delays.

[Douglas Ross (Moray) (Con)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for securing this debate. I hope he agrees that it is very unfortunate that SNP Members have chosen to laugh at elements of what he is saying about an extremely serious issue, rather than focus on the debate. He mentioned the Audit Scotland report. Does he agree that it is wrong of the SNP to claim that it was prepared for this, when Audit Scotland said it had not even worked out how much a new benefits system would cost?

--- Later in debate ---

[Neil Gray]

At least let me get started.

With support from other parties and brilliant stakeholders in Scotland, we are working to build our new social security system. I welcome the fact that the hon. Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk has a newfound interest in this area. Until now, he does not appear to have had much of an interest in the work and pensions brief since arriving in this House. A quick look at his speaking record shows that he has never mentioned universal credit or employment support allowance, and has raised personal independence payments—[Interruption.] I will not be shouted down, Mr Betts. The hon. Gentleman has raised personal independence payments just once, which, given the case that I and other colleagues have in this area, I find surprising.

If other search terms are entered, however, the number of mentions made by the hon. Gentleman rockets up. “The Scottish Government” gets 242 mentions, “the Scottish National party” gets 37, “the SNP” gets 116 and “independence” gets 43. That is quite the contrast. Those speaking records perhaps speak not just to his intentions today, but more to what he regards as his purpose in this place: not so much being part of a bloc of Scottish Tories holding this shambles of a British Government to account, but trying to do the job that he left as an Opposition Member of the Scottish Parliament.

I will tackle some of what the hon. Gentleman said and highlight some of what he conveniently forgot to say. I note that he did not once mention how the Scottish Government could safely deliver the new system any faster. I think we were right, having learned from the unsafe and disastrous delivery of universal credit and the personal independence payment, to take our time, do this properly and deliver it safely for our constituents who depend on it.

[Douglas Ross]

The hon. Gentleman speaks about delivering functions in Scotland. Could he perhaps advise Westminster Hall how the SNP has done when it has tried to deliver things in Scotland—for example, paying our Scottish farmers, delivering i6, the IT system for Police Scotland, or delivering a social security system? Is it not the fact that it is failure, failure, failure under the SNP?

[Neil Gray]

I wish to put on record my congratulations to the hon. Gentleman and his wife on the safe delivery of their new born—I think this is the first chance I have had to put that on record. He has a bit of cheek when he talks about farmers, given the way that the Tory Government robbed Scottish farmers of their convergence uplift money. I do not think that is a safe area of ground for him to be campaigning on.

The hon. Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk described the timetable that the Scottish Government have come forward with as a failure, despite it being welcomed by Inclusion Scotland and the Scottish Commission for Learning Disability. I challenge him to point out the areas of contradiction with those organisations, which speak for those who depend on the safe delivery of this system.

The hon. Member for Edinburgh South (Ian Murray) was right that the Scottish Government can do something different, and we are. We are creating a system that is based on dignity and respect, which I think is something that the Scottish Government and the Labour party agree on. We are looking to do something different in Scotland, which is why we have been working together in Holyrood on so many areas, in order to deliver that system. However, the hon. Gentleman did not answer how the system could have been delivered more quickly and fairly, so I am happy to allow him to intervene and describe that.