It’s time for the Scottish Parliament to show its mettle.
Tomorrow, Holyrood will debate welfare reform. Hopefully, the Scottish Government will lay its delayed Legislative Consent Motion (LCM) before the Parliament and everyone will agree to the highly unusual step of appointing three scrutiny committees for the process, one lead and two secondary ones. This will enable evidence to be laid and heard from the widest possible range of contributors and allow Holyrood to determine whether and how it allows Westminster to legislate on devolved matters contained in the legislation.
Such is the potential impact to Scotland and her people from the measures in the UK government’s welfare reform bill that nothing less will do. If ever the SNP wanted to pick a fight with Westminster, if ever Labour wanted to return to the hallowed ground of class politics, if ever the Liberal Democrats wanted to point up differences with their English brethren, if ever the Scottish Greens wanted to champion the cause of inequality, if ever the Scottish Conservatives wanted to show that leopards can change their spots, then this issue is it.
I blogged at the ither place that “the scale of change heading down the tracks from the ConDems’ systematic dismantling of the welfare state is almost overwhelming”. I don’t think I was over-stating the case. For if the ConDems get their way, nary a household nor family in Scotland will be unaffected by some aspect of the bill. And not for the good.
Everything is up for grabs and for months, voluntary organisations have been trying and largely failing to influence the process at Westminster. The old labyrinth of benefits will go, to be replaced by a universal credit. No bad thing in itself, for everyone has been crying out for fairness, transparency and simplicity in the benefits systems for years. But it is the application of conditionality, time limits and sanctions for not taking up work or work-related activity – with no exception allowed – and the cutting of income and raising of threshholds making benefits harder to access that will cause increased complexity and real problems for claimants. Though these measures will, of course, slake the thirst of the right wing media which has helped pave the way for public acceptance of these changes with its damaging, inaccurate and misleading denunciations of people on benefits as workshy fraudsters. But anyone losing their job – and over two hundred thousand people in Scotland have in recent months – will be affected.
Families with disabled children will be particularly hard hit from changes, as will cancer sufferers and those with complex and longterm mental health problems. Housing benefit changes appear to benefit no-one. Lone parents, kinship carers, unemployed young people, people unemployed for more than a year, people seriously injured in an accident, young carers, children, women reaching retirement age, people with multiple and complex disabilities, people with mild and moderate learning disabilities, homeless people, war veterans with health problems, large families, separated parents, families with a young baby and low income families in work – all might find themselves worse off.
This matters because if tens (hundreds?) of thousands of Scots are made poorer and more vulnerable as a result of benefit changes, the pressure on services like health, social work, education, housing – and on charities that work with vulnerable people – will rise, at a time when funding for such services is being stretched and cut. Real hardship could result.
Moreover, the bill cuts across whole swathes of devolved issues and even interferes with the independence of Scots family law, through the child maintenance reforms. The devolution of certain parts of the welfare state, including council tax benefit, parts of the social fund and the new benefit Personal Independence Payments for disabled people, will create additional work for the Scottish Government and potentially add new burdens to the public and voluntary sector, without, of course, Westminster providing appropriate funding to help smooth the way.
And everything that involves a concession or a benefit-related discount or access, such as fuel poverty measures, or is in fact, a devolved benefit, as free school meals and clothing grant vouchers are, will require to be reformed, again creating additional work for the Scottish Government and where new regulations are required, for the Scottish Parliament too.
To date, the Conservatives have not been listening: concerns about the impact of measures and attempts to amend provisions have been ignored. The shape of the bill has changed little since its introduction in the Spring, with the Conservatives aided and abetted in their selective deafness by the Liberal Democrats. At committee stage in the House of Commons, scarcely a murmur never mind a protest could be heard from Lib Dem members: that will be the civilising influence at work again, then.
And the political point is this: Scotland did not vote for this UK Government. These changes are being imposed with missionary zeal on a population which did not ask for them, and would not want them if it had a choice.
Changing the shape and impact of the bill’s measures is proving impossible through the front door, so it’s time to try the back. Holyrood can do something here. It can do its best to change the worst aspects of the bill in which it has a devolved interest. If it was feeling particularly brave, it could try to stop the bill in its tracks and refuse to consent to allow Westminster to legislate on the matters that properly belong to its jurisdiction.
Wednesday signals the start of the process that might end in an unprecedented denouement and a constitutional crisis: already many voluntary sector organisations are calling on MSPs to refuse the LCM. No one knows what might happen if Holyrood said no thank you, not this time. But that is for the end of the process. In the meantime, the Scottish Parliament must devote all its available energes and resources to poring over every aspect of this bill, so it can make an informed decision. Time is short – the bill is now at its Lords stages, which the UK Government has also gerrymandered by creating a grand committee which makes it harder to amend the bill, and will be done and dusted by Christmas – and minds must focus.
It’s time for Holyrood to show the Scottish people what it is made of. It’s time for the parties to lay aside childish things and act in concert, in the public good. It’s time to abandon tribal loyalties and politics. Work together, create a consensus, speak up and speak out. Then stand together and stand up for Scotland.
Holyrood, your country needs you:Â this could be your finest hour.