argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Scotland Bill — House of Commons, 2015-06-15
Topic: International Affairs
Edward Julian Egerton Leigh (Conservative, Centre-right): Again, that is a very fair point. I do not mind having conventions, but we, as politicians, have to decide what we want. We should decide the principles and then, once we have decided, by all means employ distinguished people such as Lord Smith, accountants, tax lawyers and so on to work out how it is done, but let us not just push this into the long grass and have a convention of the great and good lasting for years with wall to wall lawyers. Let us, in this House, decide what we want. This is an historic opportunity to cut through the negativity of the £7 billion black hole doomsayers. Give Scotland control of its oil revenues and taxes and let it decide its own priorities on encouraging exploration and how to tax it as the oil runs out. Then we will be one Union, based on solidarity and need. The UK subsidises Northern Ireland to preserve peace. Why should we not, on the basis of need, subsidise Scotland? I am very happy with that. Are we not brothers and sisters in this Union? Should we not help each other, if needed? Our principles should not be the politics of fear, but the statesmanship of hope New clause 3 delivers what I think Scotland wants: power to run her own affairs, but with the consolation of knowing that there is a secure foundation stone against catastrophic shocks, such as those in 1929 and 2008. I wish for there to be solidarity on pension liability and national debt, and for it to be shared. We should not be saying "This is your bit of debt." We should say that it is our debt. To ensure peace and security, we should share a single defence and foreign policy; not a division based on the auld alliance of the times before James I and VI rode south, but the Union that has given us 400 years of shared identity and prosperity. Those who want slowly to leak this power and that function are setting a trajectory, however slowly, towards independence.
Scotland Bill — House of Commons, 2015-06-15
Topic: Government Operations
Edward Julian Egerton Leigh (Conservative, Centre-right): I took advice from the Clerks. All right, I will surrender treason if they want, particularly to the right hon. Member for Gordon (Alex Salmond). [Laughter.] The Smith commission itself admits: "A challenge facing both Parliaments is the relatively weak understanding of the current devolution settlement." What a glorious understatement "This is not surprising"— its report further concedes— "given what is a complex balance of powers." A complex balance of powers has been created and I do not think there is a single Member of Parliament who actually understands what is going to happen under Smith. We need to move to a more federal arrangement whereby the four nations have broadly equal powers. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland should have devolved legislatures, with the English MPs at Westminster deciding the same for England, then acting as a pan-European Parliament alongside MPs elected from the devolved countries as well The Prime Minister promised Scotland "the strongest devolved Government anywhere in the world" and the Scottish people rejected full independence. I suspect that they want full home rule. But will those who have argued for full fiscal autonomy now vote for it, or will they vote for further delay or deeper fudge? Will they go on blaming the United Kingdom Government for what goes wrong, or have the courage to grasp what they say they want? Full fiscal autonomy is inevitable.
Scotland Bill — House of Commons, 2015-06-15
Topic: International Affairs
John Alan Redwood (Conservative, Centre-right): I have always been a Unionist, but my idea of my country, the United Kingdom, is that it must be a democracy at peace with itself, and can only proceed as a happy and successful democracy if it has the consent of most of the people most of the time to the Union institutions and the powers of those institutions I am pleased that, because we proceed democratically and understand the need for consent, this Parliament listened to Scotland and, quite recently, granted a referendum to establish whether it was the settled will of the Scottish people to leave the United Kingdom altogether and set up their own arrangements. We discovered two things as a result of that democratic exercise. We discovered that the Scottish National party itself was not arguing for full independence: it wanted to remain part of the currency union, for example. I do not see how it is conceivably possible for an independent country to be part of a currency union.
Scotland Bill — House of Commons, 2015-06-15
Topic: Macroeconomics
John Alan Redwood (Conservative, Centre-right): That is exactly the problem: Germany is not an independent nation. No member of the eurozone is an independent nation, and that is why those countries are experiencing such trouble. The trouble is not just for Greece, which is very visibly not independent, because it is being told how to conduct its economic policy. Germany is not independent either. Germany did not wish to lend Greece huge sums of money, but the European Central Bank, acting in the name of Germany, has advanced huge sums of money, which it will find very difficult to get back, but which Germany has to stand behind.
Scotland Bill — House of Commons, 2015-06-15
Topic: Macroeconomics
John Alan Redwood (Conservative, Centre-right): If Scotland wishes to impose higher taxes, the Union has less of a problem with that—unless it chooses to impose higher tax rates which collect less revenue, because those could be a problem for the Union as a whole—but it would be a problem for Scotland if it had to collect higher tax levels and it did not get all the money back; I would have thought it would want to get all the extra money back that it was collecting. Full fiscal autonomy means it would take responsibility for both raising the money and spending it. If Scotland wishes to spend more under fiscal autonomy, she can do so if she has a magic way of getting more money off people through either higher or lower tax rates, whichever work in the particular fiscal circumstances We need to have working papers on how full fiscal devolution might work and whether it is truly full fiscal devolution, because if we are going to full fiscal devolution, England will want guarantees that we are no longer acting as a buffer or subsiding the Scottish settlement, just as Scotland will want guarantees that she has got a fair deal and is capturing the benefits of her fiscal independence. If we go for a mixed system, which is where we currently are with the real debate between the Smith commission, the pro-Union parties and the SNP, there is a lot to be worked out, and I hope that at some point those on the Treasury Bench will share some of their thinking with the Committee.
Scotland Bill — House of Commons, 2015-06-15
Topic: International Affairs
John Alan Redwood (Conservative, Centre-right): I start from the point of view of democracy. A democratic state has to have the full range of powers, including fiscal autonomy and its own currency. That is different from asking: what is your state? I would still rather have the United Kingdom as my state, but I have just explained that if it is the will of the Scottish people that the UK is no longer their preferred state, they must leave—of course they must.
Scotland Bill — House of Commons, 2015-06-15
Topic: International Affairs
John Alan Redwood (Conservative, Centre-right): I am making an even more urgent point than that. I am saying that that discussion is going on in parallel with our debates on this Bill. I hope that its content will be shared with Members at some point, because it is a matter of great importance to the United Kingdom, to England, to Scotland and so forth. As I understand it, those taking part in the negotiations are up against these very issues. If, for example, too much independence is given to Scotland on spending patterns, would there be a Union guarantee to pay for it all? How would it be fair to other parts of the Union if Scotland could increase her spending without having to take responsibility for raising the money for it? If Scotland starts to raise more of her own money, how do we adjust the block grant? In the current negotiations, nobody is suggesting getting rid of the block grant and saying that Scotland can have all her own money and just spend her own money. I am not even sure that is what the SNP wants. Negotiation is going on about how far—[Interruption.] If the SNP genuinely wants all that, that is fine. We then have to have a serious discussion, before it could be agreed to, over the borrowing. I will call it "borrowing"; I do not think "black hole" is a terribly useful term.
Scotland Bill — House of Commons, 2015-06-15
Topic: Macroeconomics
John Alan Redwood (Conservative, Centre-right): That is because all the time that it is a subsidiary Parliament of the Union, and part of our public expenditure and borrowing plans, it has to abide by the remit. The hon. Lady is right in that it has been given a tougher remit than the Union gives itself, but it is not fair to say that that is of no interest or benefit to Scotland, because of course much of the Union expenditure is also being committed proportionately in Scotland and so it is Scotland’s share of the debt as well. I am making a factual statement; I am not trying to make party political points, wind up the SNP, rerun the referendum or anything like that. I am just trying to get this Committee to understand that grave and big issues are being hammered out elsewhere, we are not hearing about them and they impinge very much on this crucial debate that we are now having I have intervened in the debate because I want an opportunity to talk about this financial settlement, which matters to England as well as to Scotland. The proposal put forward by my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough brings things centre stage. If we went down his route and had full fiscal autonomy, I would want to know what that meant; how much responsibility Scotland would take, for example, for pensions as well as welfare; and what the borrowing settlement would be. The residual is the borrowing, and unless we know what the answer is on that, we still will not have a happy Union or stable expenditure.
Scotland Bill — House of Commons, 2015-06-15
Topic: Macroeconomics
John Alan Redwood (Conservative, Centre-right): Then I think we need to have another debate, on another day, which looks at what is going on in these important financial discussions. Although my constituents are interested in what powers Scotland gets, they are far more interested in how the money works between the different parts of the Union. We have no papers before us today to elucidate that.
Scotland Bill — House of Commons, 2015-06-15
Topic: Macroeconomics
John Alan Redwood (Conservative, Centre-right): We are where we are. Promises were made, I thought in good faith, by the three Front-Bench teams. They were not my chosen promises; they were made on behalf of the three Unionist parties. They did the job for the referendum, but they then did not do much of a job for the Unionist parties at the general election. However, we cannot now be seen to be delaying for any great length. There needs to be proper work—and I am sure that proper work is going on in the Government at the moment as they try to work out a financial settlement in parallel to this Bill. I am just suggesting that perhaps this Parliament needs to have some of that thinking shared with it Today is the first opportunity, within the clear parameters of new clause 3, to try to expose a bit of the thinking on how a limited amount of fiscal autonomy will work, and on how many of these taxes Scotland will not only collect, but be responsible for and have knocked off the block grant. As I remember it, when the leaders came up with this promise, Gordon Brown was a big voice—obviously, he was not one of the leaders at the time—for rather less fiscal autonomy. He was trying to stop Scotland controlling her own income tax revenues, so I do not entirely share the interpretation of the Labour Front-Bench team of what Mr Brown was trying to do at that point I will bring my remarks to a close with the simple conclusion that the world has moved on because of the general election result. The debate on money is taking place elsewhere, but we currently have a short debate about money here. I hope that the Front-Bench team will share some of its thoughts on money. Fiscal devolution seems to be attractive to many people in Scotland, but we need to know where it ends and how we sort out all those crucial issues about debt and borrowing as well as about shared policies such as pensions.
Scotland Bill — House of Commons, 2015-06-15
Topic: Government Operations
Stewart Jackson (Conservative, Centre-right): I declare an interest as an adjunct associate professor of British politics. I pay tribute to the fantastic work that the hon. Gentleman did in the previous Parliament. The point that SNP Members are missing is that the progress that has been made since the Scotland Act 1998 was as a result of the sovereignty of this Parliament. May I also respectfully correct the hon. Gentleman? We are not a federal Parliament, because that presupposes a codified written constitution setting out the powers, duties and responsibilities of the centre and the constituent parts of a sovereign nation.
Scotland Bill — House of Commons, 2015-06-15
Topic: Macroeconomics
John Alan Redwood (Conservative, Centre-right): An important part of our Union is that there has been a transfer as well as a fiscal Union, so the richer parts pay in more, relatively, and the poorer parts draw out more. Does the hon. Gentleman feel that that could be sustained with full fiscal autonomy, or is that a problem?
Scotland Bill — House of Commons, 2015-06-15
Topic: Macroeconomics
Jacob William Rees-Mogg (Conservative, Centre-right): The hon. Gentleman said that Government Members are not in favour of tax competition, but I am thoroughly in favour of tax competition. It would be an excellent idea for both Scotland and Northern Ireland to have control of their corporation tax, because I think they would suddenly discover the virtues of the Laffer curve and reduce taxes quite sharply.
Scotland Bill — House of Commons, 2015-06-15
Topic: Macroeconomics
Alberto Castrenze Costa (Conservative, Centre-right): How many times in the past eight years have the SNP Scottish Government exercised their powers to increase or decrease income tax? The hon. Gentleman keeps complaining that this place is restricting them from using powers, so could he please remind Scottish people and this Committee how many times they have used their existing powers?
Scotland Bill — House of Commons, 2015-06-15
Topic: Macroeconomics
Kenneth Clarke (Conservative, Centre-right): The hon. Gentleman’s desire for independence of taxation seems to be to lower taxation, while he contemplates raising expenditure and he is fairly indifferent to deficits. Does he contemplate any kind of fiscal discipline? Our neighbours across the channel started a single currency, and they—as we would—have a single currency and a single central bank. Had they stuck to their rules on fiscal discipline, the Maastricht criteria, and to their no bail-out clause, they might have done rather better. What fiscal discipline does he propose, or does he think the English will pick up the bill whatever decisions the Scottish Government make
Scotland Bill — House of Commons, 2015-06-15
Topic: Macroeconomics
Chris Ian Brian Mynott Philp (Conservative, Centre-right): The hon. Gentleman mentioned that tax receipts in Scotland are on average 3% higher per head than in the rest of the UK. Public spending in Scotland, however, is more than 10% higher. The reason, of course, is the Barnett formula. Will he confirm that under his proposals the Barnett formula would be done away with, and will he explain where the extra money would be found? Would it be tax increases or spending cuts? If so, where from?
Scotland Bill — House of Commons, 2015-06-15
Topic: Macroeconomics
Geoffrey Robert Clifton-Brown (Conservative, Centre-right): The hon. Gentleman said that he will increase the deficit to spend to invest—where have I heard that phrase before?—but while Scotland is a member of the sterling area, would he expect the Bank of England to guarantee whatever sterling debt his party incurs?
Scotland Bill — House of Commons, 2015-06-15
Topic: International Affairs
David Gordon Mundell (Conservative, Centre-right): Today is the first of four days in Committee on the Scotland Bill. I assure the hon. Member for Edinburgh East (Tommy Sheppard), whose contribution I enjoyed, that I will be listening and reflecting. Contrary to the suggestion made by the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart), this is not the only opportunity for changes to be made to the Bill. I will be meeting the Devolution (Further Powers) Committee of the Scottish Parliament next week to discuss points that it has raised in its report I would not normally begin a contribution by suggesting that anyone read one of Gordon Brown’s books, but tonight I will do so. Gordon Brown has been misquoted a number of times in the Chamber today, and it is important to put on the record the fact that in his book "My Scotland, Our Britain: A Future Worth Sharing", he states that neither his proposals nor those of any of the pro-UK parties involved a federal solution. Although they came close to the idea of home rule, they were not home rule. Therefore, it is a myth, which has been perpetuated this evening, that Gordon Brown has called for either federalism or home rule.
Scotland Bill — House of Commons, 2015-06-15
Topic: Government Operations
David Gordon Mundell (Conservative, Centre-right): Not at this stage. The result of the general election represented a call from the people of Scotland for the delivery of the powers in the Smith commission recommendations. The Scottish National party set itself up as the voice of the people of Scotland to ensure that those powers were delivered, and they will be delivered in the Scotland Bill.
Scotland Bill — House of Commons, 2015-06-15
Topic: International Affairs
David Gordon Mundell (Conservative, Centre-right): Not at the moment. I have heard a number of small speeches from the hon. Gentleman, and I know the point that he wants to make I disagree with some of my right hon. and hon. Friends on the idea that conflict and division are inevitable when Governments work together. Despite what we regularly read in the media, see on television or hear in this Chamber, the Government work very closely with the Scottish Government on a range of important matters for the benefit of the people of Scotland. The Government remain committed to working continually for the benefit of the people of Scotland.
Scotland Bill — House of Commons, 2015-06-15
Topic: Macroeconomics
Kenneth Clarke (Conservative, Centre-right): When pressed on the possible difficulties of fiscal autonomy, the reaction of Scottish National party Members is to point to the tremendous new levels of growth that will be achieved by the Scottish economy, and the added GDP that will flow from their enlightened measures. They are not the first politicians I have heard attribute those kinds of consequences to their economic policy. If their policy fails, they imply that any deficit would be the liability of the UK Government and the British taxpayer. Will my right hon. Friend assure me that a fiscal framework, which is still to be achieved, will include some real fiscal discipline? We cannot have an unsuccessful devolved Government running up enormous additions to the United Kingdom’s debt and deficit.
Scotland Bill — House of Commons, 2015-06-15
Topic: Macroeconomics
David Gordon Mundell (Conservative, Centre-right): I can give that assurance. If it is to meet the various spending commitments that we hear sprayed around not only in the Chamber, but across Scotland, the Scottish National party will eventually have to tell the people of Scotland how much tax will rise to pay for all its proposed measures. The hon. Member for Dundee East (Stewart Hosie) carefully avoided any detail about tax when he set out the case for full fiscal autonomy. He criticised the proposals in the Bill for the devolution of income tax bands and rates, and he criticised the provision for a 0% rate. In fact, all he argued for was to enable the Scottish Government to reduce the personal allowance. I do not quite understand how that would benefit the less well-off in Scotland or the Scottish economy. The full range of other income tax powers worth £11 billion are coming to Scotland as part of the Bill.
Scotland Bill — House of Commons, 2015-06-15
Topic: Macroeconomics
John Alan Redwood (Conservative, Centre-right): When will the Secretary of State be able to share with Members the proposals to adjust the grant formula? Scotland will have higher spending and it will have tax revenues of its own, and my constituents in England are very interested in what the grant formula will look like.
Scotland Bill — House of Commons, 2015-06-15
Topic: Macroeconomics
David Gordon Mundell (Conservative, Centre-right): I made it clear earlier that we would, in early course, bring forward details of the full fiscal framework as it is being negotiated I was not convinced by the arguments for full fiscal autonomy advanced by the hon. Member for Edinburgh East and others. I was not convinced by the red-blooded version that my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) set out for delivering the Scottish National party’s manifesto commitments, and I was not convinced by the SNP full fiscal-lite proposals—sometime, somewhere, somehow.
Scotland Bill — House of Commons, 2015-06-15
Topic: Macroeconomics
David Gordon Mundell (Conservative, Centre-right): I said at the start of my remarks that I was listening to the Scottish people. The only people who are playing games are those who threaten another referendum in Scotland every time they do not get what they say they want The principal issue raised in relation to full fiscal autonomy is that it would mean Scotland having almost £10 billion less to spend by the last year of this Parliament. That is not good for Scotland, and that is why this Government will not support it. I am afraid that the only argument we have heard in support of these proposals was that heard during the referendum campaign—basically, "It will be all right on the night: trust us." The people of Scotland decided on 18 September last year that they did not trust that argument, and I still do not trust it. Full fiscal autonomy would mean an end to the Barnett formula. It would mean that the Scottish Government had to fund all public spending in Scotland from their own resources. The Scottish Government would therefore be fully responsible for raising all the tax from Scottish taxpayers required to fund all spending in Scotland on public services, benefits and pensions.
Scotland Bill — House of Commons, 2015-06-15
Topic: Macroeconomics
David Gordon Mundell (Conservative, Centre-right): I can confirm that the Scottish National party signed up to the Smith commission agreement, this Government are committed to delivering the Smith commission agreement, and the hon. Gentleman will therefore get what he is looking for in respect of the Smith commission agreement. There is not a shadow of a doubt about that Full fiscal autonomy would mean the end of Scotland pooling resources and sharing risks with the rest of the United Kingdom, and an end to Scotland being part of the UK’s hugely successful single market, which generates jobs, growth and prosperity. To all intents and purposes, the fiscal union between Scotland and the United Kingdom would end entirely, and the lesson of the eurozone is that it is extremely difficult to have a successful currency union without fiscal union.