Scotland Bill Returns

Next week sees the return of the Scotland Bill for days 2 and 3 of 4 on the floor of the Commons.

Monday will be dedicated to Part 2 of the Bill which is about taxation devolution.

Tuesday will be taken up with Part 3 of the Bill which is about welfare devolution.

For the avoidance of doubt here is a marshalled list of all the amendments currently submitted to the Bill.•

Days 2 and 3 are dedicated to Clauses 12-30 for ease of reference.• Any amendment referring to 31+ is for the last day on 6 July.

I thought I’d publish this information to prevent the likely game playing on Monday and Tuesday that we have come to expect from certain Members.

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/bills/cbill/2015-2016/0003/amend/pbc032506a.pdf

As a summary I will be leading on Labour amendments on Monday that would, if agreed:

1. Set-up a Scottish Office for Budget Responsibility to independently assess and report on the Scottish Governments financial position (very much based on the successful and respected UK OBR).
2. Set-up an Independent Commission to assess the impact Full Fiscal Autonomy would have on Scotland.
3. Deal with the mess the Scottish Government has left Police Scotland and the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service in by ignoring warnings that they would lose their VAT exemption status when set-up.• The UK Government must also get this sorted out.
4. Demand a report into the progress of implementing both the Scotland Act 2012 and this Bill in terms of identifying who “Scottish Taxpayers” are in advance of the Scottish Government setting Scottish Rates of Income Tax in October this year.

We have more amendments of a technical nature.

In Part 3 – the main changes in welfare are:

1. Devolution of Housing benefit.
2. Removing all actual and perceived “vetos”.
3. Ability for the Scottish Government to create new benefits in any devolved area.
4. Ability for the Scottish Government to top-up any reserved benefit.
5. A wider definition of carer.
6. Removing the need for any top-ups or new benefits to be “short-term”.
7. Devolution and then double devolution of the work programmes, work choice programmes for the disabled and access to work scheme.
8. Power for the Scottish Government to vary the child element of Universal Credit.

And lots of other smaller amendments.• The irony being that we may get the Government to agree some of these and the SNP have signed many of our welfare amendments as a sensible way forward.

Glad to be “Standing up for Scotland” in getting the very most and best out of this opportunity.

Thanks to all the charities, experts and constitutional gurus who have assisted in developing our amendments etc.

The entirety of all the Scotland Bill documents are here if you have been interested enough to read this far and you have trouble sleeping.

http://services.parliament.uk/bills/2015-16/scotland/documents.html

UPDATE

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