argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Scotland Bill — House of Commons, 2015-06-30
Topic: Social Welfare
Julian Carlton Knight (Conservative, Centre-right): I find the hon. Lady’s speech very illuminating, particularly on carers, an issue close to my heart and that of my constituents. However, a thought occurs to me: is not the real agenda to turn back the clock on benefit reform, effectively ending accountability for those claiming benefits and allowing a return to rampant welfarism, which destroys communities and keeps people trapped in dependency?
Scotland Bill — House of Commons, 2015-06-30
Topic: Labor
Oliver Heald (Conservative, Centre-right): I welcome the huge transfer of welfare and tax powers set out in the Bill, but I want to make one point about conditionality. Over the past 15 years or so one of the insights that has struck in the field of work and pensions and welfare is the idea that tackling poverty is not just about benefits; it is also about helping people into work, education and skills and removing barriers to work. Conditionality is part of that process, and it was introduced by Labour. It says to the taxpayer and benefit recipients, "Look, if we pay huge amounts of money to train a cadre of people in the jobcentres, if we hire expert companies to advise jobseekers and if we involve the disability groups in the process, as taxpayers we are making a big investment in trying to help people into work and end the dependency culture." Therefore, is it really right for somebody who has been offered an opportunity to go to the jobcentre for an advice session or training not to attend and not to explain why? When they are sanctioned, is it really right for us to say, "Oh, that doesn’t matter, because the taxpayer can just pay the bill and there will be no consequences at all"? That would be the effect of the two amendments that would take out the guts of clauses 22 and 23 and remove conditionality.
Scotland Bill — House of Commons, 2015-06-30
Topic: Labor
Oliver Heald (Conservative, Centre-right): As the hon. Gentleman knows, I served on the Select Committee for many years. I accept that the sanctions regime needs to be reviewed and that it needs to work properly, but that is not the same as scrapping it. The amendments would undermine the regime so severely that it would be fatally damaged. I am not saying that there should not be a wide transfer of powers; I am simply asking Opposition Members to think about their taxpayers, about those people who are investing in services for jobseekers and all that help. Is it really right that there should be no conditionality?
Scotland Bill — House of Commons, 2015-06-30
Topic: Macroeconomics
Oliver Heald (Conservative, Centre-right): The Select Committee visited Scotland on occasion—[Interruption.] No, it is a UK-wide Committee, so we visited all parts of the United Kingdom. We found some excellent services. The hon. Gentleman might have a bad example, but overall across the United Kingdom, including Scotland, there are some excellent services that taxpayers are paying for. I think that these amendments would undermine the conditionality that is important to that.
Scotland Bill — House of Commons, 2015-06-30
Topic: Social Welfare
Priti Sushil Patel (Conservative, Centre-right): This has been a full debate on a range of important issues in which there is a great deal of interest from Members of this House, Members of the Scottish Parliament and people throughout Scotland. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland has made clear on many occasions during the Bill’s passage, the Government are committed to implementing the Smith commission agreement in full, and we believe the provisions of the Bill meet the spirit and substance of the agreement I will explain the Government’s approach as I respond to the proposed amendments in turn. Before I do so, however, I want to reflect on the fact that the Bill will give the Scottish Parliament very extensive new powers on welfare. Benefits for which powers are being devolved accounted for £2.5 billion of spending last year, which is about a quarter of all welfare spending in Scotland outside the state pension The clauses on welfare provide tremendous opportunities for the Scottish Government and Scottish Parliament to design, implement and structure welfare in Scotland. Such a huge change should not be underestimated. If the Scottish Government and Scottish National party want to spend more on welfare, they will of course be able to do so. The consequence of the Smith agreement is that the UK and Scottish Governments will in future work together to provide welfare systems for people in Scotland, and we need to co-operate in doing that. Scotland’s two Governments already work together well and achieve a great deal, and I am confident that that will continue as we seek to implement the devolution of these significant welfare powers.
Scotland Bill — House of Commons, 2015-06-30
Topic: Social Welfare
Priti Sushil Patel (Conservative, Centre-right): I am talking about the definition of a disability benefit, which we want to ensure provides ample flexibility for the Scottish Parliament to legislate for a range of outcomes for people who would not otherwise meet the requirements Amendment 48 relates to carers’ benefits. As with disability benefits, our approach has been to describe the key features of the existing carer’s allowance, but clause 19 will not restrict the Scottish Parliament to following all the detailed features of that allowance. For example, it will not be restricted to making a benefit payment to only one carer in respect of each disabled person. Taken together with existing devolved powers in areas such as social care, the clause will ensure that the Scottish Parliament has powers to set out how support for carers is provided, including the rate at which it is paid and whether it is paid as a benefit or provided in some other way There is also a broad definition of a disabled person in respect of whom a carer’s benefit can be paid. Amendment 48 would extend the Scottish Parliament’s legislative competence still further, allowing it to provide a carer’s benefit to children under 16, people in full-time education or those who are gainfully employed. I will take each category in turn and explain why we do not consider that there is a case for that expansion of competence It is a long-standing principle of the social security system that those under 16 are normally supported not by the benefits system but by guardians, local authorities or parents. With regard to those not gainfully employed, carer’s allowance is designed to recognise those whose opportunities to work are limited because of the time that they dedicate to caring duties. There needs to be a threshold so that we can judge whether a claimant is in employment. The reference to gainful employment provides that threshold Those in full-time education are normally supported not by the benefits system but by the education maintenance system of loans and grants. Clause 19 will allow the Scottish Parliament to decide on the details of who carers’ benefits are paid to, how much is paid and what the eligibility criteria should be. The parameters of the definition of "relevant carer" are appropriate and reflect long-standing principles about the purpose of carers’ benefits.
Scotland Bill — House of Commons, 2015-06-30
Topic: Social Welfare
Priti Sushil Patel (Conservative, Centre-right): As I have said, the clause will allow the Scottish Parliament to decide on the details of who carers’ benefits are paid to. I want to make progress now, because I need to come to many other points that have been made.
Scotland Bill — House of Commons, 2015-06-30
Topic: Social Welfare
John Alan Redwood (Conservative, Centre-right): I am grateful to the Minister; I think there is some problem with Ministers getting to the House How will the block grant be adjusted to take into account both the extra welfare responsibilities and the extra revenues? That is a rather important point if we are to understand the significance of the clauses on benefits.
Scotland Bill — House of Commons, 2015-06-30
Topic: Social Welfare
Priti Sushil Patel (Conservative, Centre-right): I will not give way, because we are running out of time Members mentioned clause 23, on discretionary payments. I assure the Committee that the clause will not limit the Scottish Parliament’s existing competence and will not prevent the making of discretionary payments to people in families under exceptional pressure Finally, I turn to new clause 31, which would insert a new exception into the social security reservation in the Scotland Act 1998, giving the Scottish Parliament the power to create new benefits. As set out on Second Reading and in our discussions with the Scottish Government, the Government agree with the principle in the Smith commission agreement that the Scottish Parliament should be able to create new benefits.
Scotland Bill — House of Commons, 2015-06-30
Topic: Social Welfare
Priti Sushil Patel (Conservative, Centre-right): For the record, let me say that we have other groups of amendments to discuss this afternoon. I will happily have that discussion and I will come on to some of those other points in later discussions. There is no excuse Perhaps I may continue. We believe that the Scottish Parliament can already create new benefits under either existing powers or those devolved by the Bill. The Smith commission was clear about which welfare powers were to be devolved to the Scottish Parliament, and the Bill delivers those powers in a way that allows that Parliament to replace the benefits and payments for which powers are being devolved On areas of devolved responsibility outside welfare, we believe that the Scottish Parliament has the powers to provide financial assistance to people in devolved areas—it currently does so in some areas already. We do not consider that the social security reservation prevents the Scottish Parliament from providing such financial assistance. The proposed new exception would give the Scottish Parliament competence to legislate to create new benefits in any area other than those where reserved powers existed on 28 May 2015—the date on which the Bill was introduced. That would flip the social security reservation on its head. As such, that would not provide a new power to create benefits in areas of devolved responsibility; rather, it would devolve further areas of responsibility to the Scottish Parliament, which is not what the Smith commission agreement called for Undermining the social security reservation in that way would simply limit the freedom of the UK Parliament when introducing new welfare benefits, or making changes to existing reserved benefits in the future. We will discuss many other clauses and groups of amendments this afternoon, and I will happily cover some of those points in those discussions. At this stage, however, I urge hon. Members to withdraw their amendments.
Scotland Bill — House of Commons, 2015-06-30
Topic: Macroeconomics
Simon James Hoare (Conservative, Centre-right): I am paying close attention to the hon. Lady’s remarks. If, as the previous Government did, we start to rein back tax credits, which were effectively a sop to employers allowing them to pay lower wages and thereby depressed the wage market, employers would be forced in the court of public opinion to pay more. In that way, could we not solve the problem, but on the employers’ side of the argument rather than the taxpayers’?
Scotland Bill — House of Commons, 2015-06-30
Topic: Social Welfare
John Alan Redwood (Conservative, Centre-right): If the Scottish Government did have wider-ranging powers on welfare, as the hon. Lady would like, by how much would they need to put up benefits compared with UK levels to tackle the problems she has identified?
Scotland Bill — House of Commons, 2015-06-30
Topic: Government Operations
David Gordon Mundell (Conservative, Centre-right): I am familiar with the hon. Lady’s point on this issue, but even the First Minister acknowledges that the point from which a request was made to increase the cap, to the legislation reaching the Privy Council, was achieved at a record rate—and it was achieved by the two Governments working very closely together, which can be done on so many occasions.
Scotland Bill — House of Commons, 2015-06-30
Topic: Social Welfare
John Alan Redwood (Conservative, Centre-right): I think that the Committee wants to implement the spirit and the letter of Smith, and I look forward to hearing the Secretary of State’s response to the detailed arguments advanced by the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Dr Whiteford). I think, however, that when we are dealing with a matter as potentially wide-ranging as universal credit, we also need to think about the money, and about how far it is possible to operate a very different welfare system in different parts of a country such as the United Kingdom. What we have seen in the unfolding and dreadful Greek crisis is that, if a country belongs to a currency union but has not brought its benefits system into line, and if there is no proper system of sharing revenues and expenditures throughout the eurozone, that becomes extremely damaging, as it has for the poor Greeks.
Scotland Bill — House of Commons, 2015-06-30
Topic: Macroeconomics
John Alan Redwood (Conservative, Centre-right): I think that welfare has quite a lot to do with austerity, and I think that we agree. I think that the policies that have been forced on Greece have been too austere. It is quite wrong to make the Greeks cut public spending when they cannot expand their money supply, expand credit or expand the private sector to create the jobs that they clearly need to create in order to make some success out of the cuts imposed on the public sector When, after 2010, we conducted policy as a coalition to bring about recovery in Britain—including Scotland—it worked very well, and it was private sector led. We were able to do that because we had a full range of powers over interest rates, money creation, credit and banking, which a nation that has joined a currency union does not have. That is the Greek tragedy. The Greeks are able to carry out only the public sector part of the EU fix, which is the bit that is austere. They are not able to carry out the private sector-led recovery Of course, we are not here to talk about Greece; we are here to talk about our currency union. However, I wanted to make that point because, whereas Greece is having to move away from a position in which it shared only currency and is now discovering that it needs to share a great many other policies with the European Union in order to achieve success, in Scotland things are going in the opposite direction We have a currency union—a perfectly good currency union, which is supported on all sides. I believe that Members of the SNP are great fans of the currency union and do not wish Scotland to have an independent currency, but they need to consider this: if they do not want proper independence in the sense of having their own currency, and if the currency is to work in the way in which it has worked in the past, there will have to be some basic standards of welfare that are common across the country, and there will have to be agreed systems of transferring money from rich areas to poor ones. There are rich towns and cities in both Scotland and in England. The rule of our system is that those in areas of high income or relative success pay more tax, and those in, say, towns or counties with a lot of poverty benefit from big transfers.
Scotland Bill — House of Commons, 2015-06-30
Topic: Social Welfare
John Alan Redwood (Conservative, Centre-right): I am not prepared to go that far. I think that there can be problems in the euro currency zone between Germany and the Netherlands, because they do not have the full range of common policies that they may need. At present, it appears that the Dutch and German economies are sufficiently synchronised for the arrangement not to cause problems in the Netherlands, but that is clearly not true of Portugal, Spain, Ireland or Greece. The fact that there are more countries that it does not fit than countries that it does fit implies that there is something wrong with the fundamental architecture of the euro. That is why I am anxious for us to bear it in mind, when we are debating the issue of how much welfare discretion there should be, that a common welfare system is normally one of the characteristics of successful currency unions Yes, I do believe in redistribution. We all believe in redistribution. We believe that, in a civilised country such as ours, we should tax the rich more and give money to those who need support. We have arguments about how much the amounts should be and about the conditions, but we all believe in transfers, and we all believe that the balance must be right When I asked the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan to say how much more an enlightened Scottish Government would like to give, by means of welfare payments, to tackle immediate problems of low income or poverty, she was not able to tell me. That was a pity, because I took it that her intention, and the purpose of the amendments, was to give the Scottish Executive power to increase benefit levels in comparison with the levels, or the range, of benefits currently on offer in the Union. I did not think that SNP Members were seeking these powers in order to be meaner than the Union Government are proposing to be, and I see them consenting to that. I feel that this debate would be richer and fuller if they shared with us the amount of extra money that they would like to spend.
Scotland Bill — House of Commons, 2015-06-30
Topic: International Affairs
John Alan Redwood (Conservative, Centre-right): That brings us back to an important and interesting question. At what point does the transfer of power become destabilising for the currency union and the common transfers that make up our common country? That, surely, is one of the issues that were examined in the referendum, when a majority of Scottish people felt that they wanted to remain in the United Kingdom and in the currency union. Having read and listened to what was said by those who were actively involved in the debate, I suspect that the currency union was rather central to the securing of that vote, and that it was when the parties of the Union said that Scotland should leave the currency as well as the UK, if that was the wish of the Scottish people, that the majority voted to stay in the Union.
Scotland Bill — House of Commons, 2015-06-30
Topic: Social Welfare
John Alan Redwood (Conservative, Centre-right): I do not think that it would be necessary to go that far. At present, there is clearly a disproportion between the size of Scotland and that of the rest of the United Kingdom, and, as the hon. Gentleman’s budget figures show, a lot more money is collected elsewhere than in Scotland. That, however, is not the point at issue. [Interruption.] I am not asserting anything; I am just asking a question. We are engaging in a crucial debate on how much welfare power should go to Scotland. I am one of those who agree that some welfare power should go to Scotland in accordance with Smith, but we have to ask how far it goes, and what the consequences might be. If countries have a common work area and a free movement area, and if they share a language, a labour market and a currency, that arrangement can bring benefits when it has settled down, because it is backed by political union. When we start to unpick the political union, we must ask ourselves at what point that unpicking of that union, or the welfare transfer union, will become damaging. A point will be reached when it does become damaging, because one part of the country will be too attractive, or too unattractive, compared with another part. A single currency area as big as the United Kingdom can work only if there are fair systems for raising money from the rich, wherever they may be in that big area, and giving enough to the poor, wherever they may be.
Scotland Bill — House of Commons, 2015-06-30
Topic: Social Welfare
John Alan Redwood (Conservative, Centre-right): I am afraid that that is a bad example, because it proves my case. Ireland broke from the pound, set up its own currency and then, unfortunately for Ireland, chose the euro, but that was Ireland’s decision and it has had a bumpy ride ever since The big difference we need to remind ourselves about for the purposes of this welfare debate is that there is a common currency, so there have to be some limits to the amount of freedom appropriate for welfare benefits. If the SNP wishes to be truly independent and wants an independent currency, I fully understand its position and none of these arguments makes any sense I think I have made my point and I hope that Ministers will bear it in mind that it is very difficult to come to a conclusion before we know what the financial settlement will be. It is also very important to remember that there is a common work, language and currency area, which means that there has to be some family resemblance in the benefits that are paid.
Scotland Bill — House of Commons, 2015-06-30
Topic: Social Welfare
Edward Julian Egerton Leigh (Conservative, Centre-right): I should like to speak to new clause 55. The explanatory statement tells us: "This new Clause would remove from the list of reserved matters in the 1998 Act (and so transfer to the Scottish Parliament) all social security schemes, including National Insurance and housing benefit, as well as child support, occupational and personal pensions and war pensions." These are complex matters, as I said yesterday, and I have tabled this probing amendment to elicit from those on the Government Front Bench their thoughts on this vital matter I shall start by making a controversial statement. I believe that, by dribbling out powers—that is not my own phrase, but one given to me by one of my Scottish friends; I still have one or two left—we are giving the Scottish National party a crowbar with which to blast the Union apart. This Parliament is giving the SNP just enough purchase on that crowbar by giving it just enough powers to feed a sense of grievance. If we were to give the Scottish Parliament full responsibility for social security, it would be difficult for it to feed on that grievance. It would have to be a responsible Parliament and take responsible decisions, and I am confident that it would do so My amendment would place all social security within Scotland, including pensions, in the hands of the Scottish Parliament. Scotland has a more ageing population than the UK as a whole, and immigration there is much lower—I never understand why, but apparently it is—so Scotland will need a needs-based formula to protect the pensions of Scottish people. That is precisely the argument I have been using in these debates. A needs-based formula that buttressed a Scottish Parliament with full fiscal autonomy would sustain the Union. I would therefore replace the Barnett formula with such a needs-based formula to protect the pensions of Scotland’s ageing population. That is where I am coming from We are not very far into this Parliament, yet already I feel that I might be wearying my colleagues by making the same point over and again. However, it is an important point to make. There are not a huge number of my colleagues present in the Chamber today, but I recall from reading my history books that during the debates on what was to become the Government of India Act 1935, the House of Commons debated the Bill day after day. In those debates, people such as Brendan Bracken, Harold Macmillan and Winston Churchill made the point over and again that dribbling out powers to India would destroy the connection between India and the United Kingdom. Very few people listened to them. I do not claim to be in the same league as them, but I believe that this debate is extremely important. It is important to understand that we could destroy the Union by not getting this right, and we must debate that contention.