 Y ffrindwyr yng Nghymru, the rest of Todos of the United States Senate, yw y Llywodraeth Ieachol, yw Llywodraeth Erdwyr, yw Llywodraeth Cymru, mewn amgen amdanoch, a'u mewn amgen i'w cyflin. Mae'r amgeneithi Richard Scothorn yn gwichdd a phobl yn y cychwyn amdanoch, a'i gyrsloed o'r cychwyn ymgwrdd. I'm going to set out the ground rules for our discussion, but I would like to allow the political nominees and their opportunity to introduce themselves to representatives of Seevic Scotty. My name is Linda Fabiani and I'm one of the SNP nominees to the commission along with Jon Sweeney. My name is Michael Moore, a Liberal Democrat representative on the commission. I was reflecting with Linda earlier on that upstairs the last time I was in that room she was cross-examining me about the Scotland bill, so we're glad to be on the same side at least at the moment. Robert Smith and I'm chairing the commission. I'm Ian Gray, MSP, and I'm one of the Labour nominees. I'm Maggie Chapman, one of the green nominees with Patrick Harvey, who's upstairs. Good morning. I'm Adam Tomkins, one of the Conservative nominees along with Annabelle Goldie, who's also, I think, upstairs. Okay, thank you very much. Now, ground rules for discussions today are fairly straightforward. We've got submissions setting out what you would like to see devolved or not devolved from many of you. So what we don't want to do is to spend time on setting out those again. What we do want to focus on, as Lord Smith said in his introduction, is the why's and the how's. It's an opportunity for the political nominees to explore what lies behind the proposals that you've made. So the why's, why powers will strengthen the Scottish Parliament within the UK, and the how's, how they will meet the principles established by the commission and any practical issues that may arise from this. So that is what I would like us to focus on, and that's what I'll ask you to focus on. Now, I'm very conscious that time is tight, both in the overall agenda and certainly today, and there's a lot that I would like to cover. There's a lot in your submissions that I'm sure the political nominees will want to explore with you. So I'm keen to, don't get drawn into the discussion in detail, and I spend time on a particular issue, so I will move the discussion on to make sure we can cover as many points as possible. We also need to focus on powers rather than policy, in other words, really understanding what issue the powers are tackling and the opportunities that powers will create for Scotland. But clearly in terms of if we are identifying policy issues for Scotland that require changes of powers, that is also very relevant to our discussion today. We're going to chunk the discussion into three pieces this morning. First of all, on governance, how to create a lasting, responsive democratic settlement for Scotland, strengthen the financial accountability of the Parliament, and then tackling issues around prosperity, jobs and social justice. I'd like to spend more time on that final one on the rest, because there is a lot to cover everything from working welfare and employability through to broadcasting, so I'm going to try and manage the time, so we have the biggest chunk at the end. Is that all clear? Thank you very much. At the beginning of each section, I'm going to ask an initial question just to get the discussion going, and then I'll pass across to the political nominees to follow up with their own questions. On the first one, I wonder if I could ask Margaret Lynch of Citizen Advice Scotland, Margaret. You've talked a lot in your submission about the relationship between the two Parliaments and the quality of that relationship and the structures needed to build on that and ensure there's a reasonable Scottish voice within that. I wonder if you could take us a bit through the reasons behind that and the opportunities that you think there are to do that better? Yes, and thank you for inviting us to contribute to the Smith commission and to today's discussion. Our experience as Citizens Advice, because we deal with issues and problems that people bring to us that are legislated for by the UK Parliament and by the Scottish Parliament, gives us an insight into how well the Parliaments and the Governments work together and the level of engagement that there is with Scottish stakeholders particularly on reserved matters. The observation that we would make, and to some degree it's an anecdotal one, is that in 1999, when this Parliament was set up, there was a kind of gear shift that happened in Westminster, both in relation to the Parliament but also in relation to the civil service. You did not get the level of stakeholder engagement with Scottish voices on reserved matters that there had been prior to the establishment of this Parliament. To a degree, we were also delighted that this Parliament was here. We probably didn't pick up on it because there were lots of issues that we wanted to engage with here. What we are now finding is that organisations such as the Financial Conduct Authority stand out because they engage with Scottish stakeholders, they come up to Edinburgh, they have consultation meetings here and they are behaving in a way that is radically different from other parts of Government. A lot of this is probably to do with the fact that it is easier to engage with stakeholders that have London offices that are more easily accessible. We have a sister organisation in England in Wales called Citizens Advice. I presume that it is easier for Government and civil servants to talk to them because they are around the corner. I think that that has a deleterious impact on not just the making of Government policy but the implementation of it because the context in Scotland can often be different. The way in which policies impact on people in Scotland can be different from the way that they do down south. We can give you examples of where failure to consult with Scottish stakeholders has actually defeated what the Government has been trying to do. I appreciate that you do not want to get into the detail here but that has happened and that is of concern to us. We also are acutely aware that most of the problems that people bring to our door require joined-up action between the Governments. Child poverty, I presume, is not something that only one section of the population or one political party wants to attend to, whilst there might be differences of approach and opinion. One of the things that we would really like to see is a conversation at a ministerial level, some joint strategies being developed by the UK Government, the Scottish Government and, crucially, by local government as well that align behind reducing child poverty, reducing inequality and generally improving people's wellbeing. We do not see those kind of interactions taking place at the moment. Adam Tomkins, I wonder if I could ask you for any questions on this particular area of governance and constitution. That is extremely helpful. The two issues that you raise are stakeholder engagement and consultation on the one hand and co-operation between the Governments on the other. Those are obviously quite distinguishable issues. Each of them is important. I do not want to ask too formalist a question. Of course, my background is as a constitutional lawyer, but how could we legislate for either of these to be made better? Is it your view that there is something that we could do in terms of lawmaking that would ensure either greater consultation or more effective consultation or more effective co-operation between the Governments? Or is it a matter of practice? Is it something that needs to emerge through the culture of civic engagement? If it is the latter, I do not mean this defensively, but what can we do about it? What can we, the Smith Commission, recommend that the United Kingdom Parliament does about it in terms of what goes into the next Scotland bill? I think that your question is germane. I do not think that it requires legislation to sort this out. What it requires is common sense and a degree of, maybe, a more collaborative approach to tackling some of the big issues of the day. I would imagine the way that you would organise around about this issue would be to have some kind of framework agreement between the UK and Scottish Governments, which would set out the modalities of how those issues are tackled. My expectation of the Smith Commission is to identify areas where legislation is required, where more powers are required, but, frankly, also to call out deficiencies in where the current system is not being used or the flex in the current system is not being used in the way that it could be because of perhaps an adversarial approach to politics that universally does not help anybody. Is it your sense, then, that it is not so much the problem that the system is defective currently, but that the current system is not being effectively used by the various parties? I think that both are true. If you look at the other parts of our submission, we argue that there are areas where legislation is required and further powers need to be devolved to Scotland. With respect to that particular area, we think that you could go a fair distance by improving the way that the two Governments relate to each other and the way that, crucially, the civil services relate to each other and the way that they relate to Scottish stakeholder organisations across the board. Can we focus on the bits of the piece where you think that it is the system that is broken rather than—well, the system is not good enough—rather than that the operator is not using the system effectively enough? What are the systemic changes that you would like us to—? I would like there to be a requirement on all Governments and, crucially, civil services as well to frankly get their backsides up to Scotland and engage with people up here. I think that we need to beef up the role of the Scotland office, but there should be no new policy that the Government is discussing that has not been consulted upon in Scotland. I will give you an example. A consumer bill went through Westminster, and there was no consultation with any Scottish stakeholders. Although we would get allowed to put in submissions, there was no ability for anybody in Scotland to engage with that process and that policymaking process. Similarly, if you look at welfare reform from an implementation point of view, there needs to be more consultation in Scotland so that people and organisations are able to engage. I would go for a statutory requirement to consult with Scottish stakeholders and in Scotland. The other thing is that there are funding mechanisms that are used that disadvantage Scottish stakeholders. For example, the funding that comes to the Citizens Advice Service across the board for engaging with the Westminster Parliament goes exclusively to Citizens Advice England in Wales who do not speak for Scotland and there is no funding mechanism that comes to us in Scotland. We cannot have the resource to send people down to Westminster or to even know, for example, that there is a consumer bill that is coming on and that it will have an impact on consumers in Scotland because we are not resource to do that. The resource is applied purely in England and Wales and that is not a legislative issue. It is an issue of planning and attention to detail and political will. I would like to bring some other voices in here. First of all, Mark Ballard from Bonados and then Bill Scott, if I may, from Inclusion Scotland. Mark Ballard, thank you. I would like to thank the commission and the political party that is represented on the commission for inviting Bonados to give evidence. Bonados is a UK-wide organisation. We have policy teams not only working in Holyrood and Westminster but also in Stormont and Cardiff Bay. I echo many of Mark Ballard's concerns but something that we find happens is that because my colleagues at Westminster talk to me and colleagues in Wales and Northern Ireland, they are sometimes better informed than the civil servants that they are talking to at Westminster about particular issues in Scotland, whether matter is a reserved Westminster matter or particular Scottish contexts, where parts of the issues for discussion are devolved or wholly devolved. I think that there is an issue about the lack of formal structures that bring together all four parliaments, all four civil service institutions, so that they can learn from best practice in different nations. When one of those civil service structures, typically Westminster, has a competence that is UK-wide or Great Britain-wide, that there is a reflection on how that will interface with other responsibilities that are devolved to Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland. I think that there is a lack of formal structures there, which means that at times it is third sector bodies like Bonados that operate UK-wide that can actually advise the civil servants, so there is something about those formal structures. The other thing, though, and I do not want to stray too much into the territory of the third area, the third topic for discussion is where we have competences, where there is a very unclear borderline between the responsibilities. It exacerbates the confusion. When you have a situation where welfare funds are a local authority, Scottish Parliament responsibility, but hardship funds are a job centre plus DWP responsibility, you get from the point of view of those who are trying to access services the confusion. Addressing where we have structures in legislation, whether it is the work programme, not meshing neatly with the employability, the training and skills work of the Scottish Parliament, those create and exacerbate those confusions. A governance structure, which has more of those complicated areas where governance is in practice unclear, will create more complexity and a clearer governance structure would reduce that complexity. We will return to the whole issue of welfare and benefits later on in the discussion. Bill Scott, including Scotland, can I draw you in, please? Thank you and thanks as well from ourselves for the invitation to contribute to today's discussion. It is just really a very small point and it is really backing up what Margaret said that the DWP are obviously a UK-wide department. The Office for Disability Issues is based within the DWP. A fund was started up by the Office for Disability Issues called Disabled People's User-led Organization Fund. For the first year of its existence, it was only open to organisations in England and Wales. It was only when we raised the fact that Scottish disabled people's organisations were not being allowed to access that fund that that was actually changed. I think that that is one of the problems that remains with UK-wide departments that begin to think that their territory does not include Scotland or Northern Ireland. I do not think that it was anything deliberate in our exclusion from that fund. I think that it was an error of where their remit fell. Once they were reminded that the remit actually did include Scotland, they opened up the fund. For a year, Scottish organisations could not get access to that fund. There is a similar sort of issue around access to the elected office fund, where, again, disabled people who are trying to become political candidates, local government, Westminster are supported from that fund in England and Wales, but not in Scotland. If they are going to be a local government or Holyrood in Scotland, they are not supported. If they are going to Westminster, they are not supported. Again, there is a bit of disjunction there. I am not really sure why it is felt that Holyrood should not be included in that fund. The purpose is to get more disabled people into positions where they can influence policy. John Downey, from SCVO. In some sense, we need to take a step back here. It is easy to congratulate ourselves when they turn out in the referendum on the engagement that our democracy is in a healthy position. Frankly, it is not, because only 50 per cent of people voted in the last Scottish Parliament election. Last year, in terms of a number of by-elections at local government level, we had less than 20 per cent of people engaging in the process. There are some fundamental questions that I accept are, perhaps, with the remit of the Smith commission, which we need to be considering. That is why, in our submission, we led on governance and democracy issues as a lead-up to that. The issues that Mark and Margaret have talked about need to think about where is the appropriate level of power that should be held in Scotland. I am thinking about not just the issue of giving more powers to the Scottish Parliament, but what we are talking about in terms of local government. There is a debate about the role of local government in the future. How do we give more powers to people and communities? We can look at the figures in poverty and inequality in Scotland, and we know that part of that answer is giving people much more say over their own lives and control. How we do that, I accept, is very difficult and there is no perfect model. However, we need to take a step back and think about the governance of our country. I know that, if I take the Labour point of view, it is the double devolution. We need to think about where all the powers that we are talking about should lie best to actually do it. We can get caught up on the powers and how they work together, but, Adam, you mentioned that there is a big culture issue that we need to overcome, but how we do things as well. Ian McKay from Institute of Directors. I want you to harden up the points that Mark and Margaret were making, because, even from our side of the defence as well, most of us on this side of the horseshoe did not wish to become involved in the referendum debate on partisan grounds, but we are very keen to have our voice heard now that we are involved in this part of the discussion. It is important that some of the very welcome developments that we saw at that time are continued. For example, for the first time, the Treasury establishes an office in Scotland, surprisingly when the referendum campaign is taking place. We had Government offices, House of Lords committees and so on meeting up here. We had never met here before. We had an engagement there from them, far less from the general public that we had not seen before. We have to retain those. It is important that, at different periods since this Parliament was established, we have seen both at times when the same party was in command in both Whitehall and Holyrood, and when different parties were there, there was a reticence to work together. More of an attitude of almost fighting each other for party advantage. From our side of the defence, that is unhelpful. It is most helpful to us when, for example, in my area, if BIS is doing things that are useful for the promotion of good business practices, that should be being promoted in Scotland as much as anywhere else. Similarly, if the Scottish Government is doing something, it should seek to dovetail that with the activities that are happening in the UK, because that will be for the good of all if that takes place. I suspect that the line that Margaret was establishing about the need for the two Governments to work together is one that probably all of us on this side would share. Ever since devolution was created in the Scotland Act 1998, what we have just heard has been said. You can read the Cowman report in 2009, and there is a big chunk of the Cowman report that says that we need more joined up co-operative arrangements between the Scottish Parliament and the UK Parliament, between the Scottish Civil Service and the UK Civil Service, and between the Scottish Ministers and the UK Ministers. It is not a new problem, and it is not a newly expressed problem either. Cowman did not fix it because you are still talking about it and you are not alone. What can we practically do in terms of making our recommendations in our heads of agreement to the UK Government that will fix this, that will ensure that instead of just saying that there ought to be more co-operative arrangements between the parliaments, between the civil servants and between the ministers, that they are actually put in place more co-operative arrangements look like? What would be required in legislation to ensure that these co-operative arrangements happen? What would be the legal consequences of a failure of them to happen if they are matters that are now enshrined in statute? Would somebody be able to go to court and say that the consumer rights bill should not be allowed to proceed any further in the House of Commons because you have overlooked the statutory obligation to consult in Scotland? Is that the kind of recommendation that you are looking for? I think that the implication from colleagues is that there is not a conspiracy here that is more co-op and a lack of understanding, but one of the things that I thought was quite interesting in Margaret's opening remarks was that Margaret said that this had actually got worse because of devolution that you implied that prior to devolution perhaps it was more obvious, I do not know to UK-wide departments, that Scotland and Wales was part of what they should be taken into consideration. It is also true that even in those days some of the context in Scotland would be different depending on what sector you are in even though it was not devolved. I guess that some of how that happened properly was that in those days the Scottish office was quite a big undertaking. You mentioned in your remarks the Scotland office, which is now quite a small undertaking in which Michael has been involved and I have been involved in a different capacity in the past. I think that Adam was right, we need to focus a little bit on what are the frameworks or where is the place in the Government or the place where the two Governments or two Parliaments come together, that we can maybe change something or suggest to change something. I wonder if you think that the Scotland office has got a role in that, because you kind of implied that you thought it did, but it was not perhaps making that work in the way that you would like. Ian McKay, I think that you are going to attempt to answer Adam and Ian's questions, and then I am going to bring in Ross Martin and then Michael Moore and then John Downey. Chair, I was certainly keen that we do not get back into throwing words at each other. We were trying to be very practical and the parties, I think, have to listen with open ears to that. What I was saying was that the Treasury office was established here during the campaign to keep the Treasury office here. The Treasury office produced a whole bunch of what some might have regarded as slightly partisan documentation and data and so on. However, it was good data and data that was useful for all of us to keep that data flow coming. Make the Scotland office a real thing, make it the gateway for a whole bunch of activities that take place in Whitehall, in my own area of work, particularly in BIS, so that those departments and those programmes that are happening there are directly accessible and are pushed in Scotland by a department that has that job to do, and the Scottish Government and that part of Scotland's office work together. I am not saying, oh, it would be nice. I am saying, do that. Those are the practical things to do. It is not a discussion, it is a suggestion that says, here are practical, ordinary things that have happened and, even better, have a wee think about whether there are other things like that that could be done. Those were good things that have been good developments and there are things that we need to see more of. Ross Martin, SDI, I think that you are keen to come in. This is a specific example of a much more generic issue in terms of what the commission is about and how it is going to put together a package that is going to find resonance out there amongst the population. A drag package of powers or power transfer is not going to cut the mustard with the population. There is going to have to be some sprinkling of magic dust in some way, and that means necessarily spending some of your time talking about relationships in people rather than just structures and systems. The solution to this particular problem is that you will find unanimity around the level of frustration at the lack of people's ability. I would not call it a conspiracy, but it is a result of chosen behaviours, which people have decided that that is how they are going to behave or not behave. The lack of integration between the two parliaments and the two Governments is a result of people actually deciding that that is what they are going to do. In answer to your earlier question about what you can do about that, you are doing it today because you are here in this building and you are integrating in a way in which UK bodies and Scottish bodies have not done in the past. One example that we highlight in our submission is that the Scottish Select Committee should meet in this building. It is ridiculous that it does not meet in this building. There should be an ability for people like us around the table to engage with that particular group and a whole range of others. There is just that magic dust about relationships in people that, somehow, you need to reflect, albeit that your focus has to be on the transfer of power. Building on Ian's observation early on, both he and I know what the modern Scotland office is like. I know from many of you around the table here and colleagues upstairs how challenging it was to represent the UK Government in Scotland with the amount of time and resource that is available to the Scotland office. On the practical steps—I was very encouraged by what everybody has said so far—Margaret put her finger on it right at the start, and Adam has tried to tease that out of it. A statutory right of consultation for representative bodies in the devolved areas of the United Kingdom begins to address, practically, the issues that you have talked about. Bill brought up in terms of funding access so that there is a presumption that all parts of the United Kingdom are appropriately considered. We will make judgments later about how well their thoughts have been taken on board, but at least they are approached and dealt with. In terms of structures of Government, my colleagues have heard me go on about this a little bit already without telling tales out of school. There is a system of committees, the joint ministerial committees, between UK and devolved administration ministers. The better bits of it work well, but vast areas of UK policy making are not represented in them other than under the derisory title of the Home Committee that will consider everything from welfare to energy to culture, media and sport when it becomes relevant. Having greater formality about that, would that help to drive the system, do you believe? It does not quite bring the human face that Ross has been mentioning just now, but it seems to me perhaps that it is in the right direction. Does that make sense? I would like to make—we are straying way beyond the SFHA submission on this terrain, but just to make a point here that I think I would echo what has been said already entirely. I think in pursuit of the magic dust argument, I want to make the point that the issues are as much cultural and ignorance and neglect. What needs to be put in place is some kind of mechanism that combats that and requires it to happen. Once the dialogue starts, I am confident that it would actually produce better understanding and more attention to the differences, but it is cultural at root, so you need structural mechanisms to start to combat some of that. I think that what I am a wee bit concerned about in this discussion is that we are talking about so far making the status quo work better. When we are looking at what we are trying to achieve here and I look at my experience in different committees with some of the same people that are here sitting around, very often it is not just about consultation and participation about what is happening, but it is back to the cultural thing that Mary was talking about—a lack of recognition of differences in Scotland. Not just the fluffy stuff about how we do things but very structural differences. I would bring in, on the back of Mary, the bedroom tax, for example, the sheer impracticality of implementing something like that because the infrastructure was not there to be allowed to implement it and there was absolutely no recognition of that at all in any participation consultation discussion with the UK Government, Scottish Government or indeed the people that are directly involved. I am just very keen to make sure that we are not just talking about structures here, we are talking about additional powers so that things that are implemented that are whatever comes out of this commission and the UK Government still the responsibility of the UK Government have a recognition that sometimes things here are very, very different. Maggie Chapman, I am going to bring you in and then John Downey from Elsevier. Thank you all for your contribution so far listened and I was going to make very much the same point that Linda has just made. It is interesting to hear your conversation and your notions of that magic dust and the need for a cultural shift. Mary, you talked about mechanisms for dealing with issues like neglect and that kind of thing. I am wondering what your views are. Generally, Mark and Margaret both mentioned the different levels of government that we have and I am wondering what you think about how speaking as a councillor, how local government and that level of governance interacts with the Scottish Parliament and therefore additionally with Westminster. If we think of the structures as quite distinct and quite finite, we are going to run into difficulties and it is going to be, as Linda says, just making what we have got or trying to make what we have got work better rather than radically changing our whole approach to understanding what governance is. I am wondering whether you could just say a little bit more about how you see some of the structural barriers between those three levels of governance that we have at the moment and how we can break some of those down and what mechanisms we might use to achieve that in legislation, in the tangible things that we can deal with as part of the commission. I think that I would like more time than we will have this morning or in the next two weeks potentially even to come back to you on the detail of that and I am sure others would chime with that and welcome the opportunity to have a further go at what the mechanisms might be. I think that you could usefully get to a point where you recognised by the end of this month that mechanisms are required. You have had some, I think, pretty much off the cuff around the table this morning. I have not read everyone's submissions for which I apologise, but I am sure that we can come up with something if there is a will to make it work. Let me go back to the bedroom tax. I think that there is an issue here, which makes the point nicely that you are driving at, where local government and housing associations were expected to, in effect, move people around the country in order to accept a cut in rents or, I do not know what exactly the intention was. Local government was meant to administer housing benefits in a framework that was determined by Westminster without co-operation from Holyrood necessarily, with some objections being made from the third sector by local government and by local government itself. I think that we need to get to a point where, if a policy is expected to work in a part of in a jurisdiction of the country, it has the opportunity to comment formally about whether it is workable in that area. The bedroom tax was egregiously an area where it was not going to work as it was set out. We said in our evidence to the Scottish Affairs Committee in July 2012 that it was a policy that was designed for London and that it was not going to work in Scotland. It has wreaked havoc and, thank goodness, that havoc has been averted by the fact that the Scottish Parliament has chosen, with cross-party agreement, to put money into mitigation. However, that is a direct impact on the Scottish Parliament's use of its own fiscal powers as a result of the failure of the UK Government to effectively listen to anything that anybody in Scotland was saying. I am conscious that we need to come to the end of this section very soon. I am just going to leave the last word with John Downey and then with Bill Scott, please. Thank you, Richard. I am picking up a couple of points that Michael made. Michael, I think that the frameworks are there in position at the moment, and they actually have not been used very effectively in terms of the point that Linda made about the respect between Governments and consideration of what works in different parts of the country. The bedroom tax is a good example. We have Wales and Northern Ireland who are having issues with Scotland and the north-east of England as well, so it is not particular to Scotland. Michael, one of the things that you were talking about there is your own experience in Ian with the Scotland office. The Scotland office used to be a significant department that was resourced to work in Scotland and work with the people of Scotland. In the last 10 years, that has not been the case. The Scotland office needs significant increase in resources to be able to act as a conduit in the doorway for private sector Scotland, the public sector, and the third sector to the London department, to ministers to do some of the stuff that we are talking about here. Otherwise, it is not going to work. On Maggie's point, our key debate here is that we were talking about a transfer of power from the UK to the Scottish Parliament. I hope that we need a bigger debate on it, and I think that the Smith commission will engender that as we go forward. Where should powers sit? Once the Scottish Parliament gets them, what should they be devolving to local government? What is the role? We need to break out of that. It is just all about powers coming to the Scottish Parliament, and the whole debate becomes more important because we are having more powers coming to us. Bill Scott, including Scotland. Just to address both Linda's and Maggie's points, the whole point of evolution is that different policies can be pursued in different parts of the UK. Divergence is if a natural consequence of that. The policies will begin to diverge, for example, in how social care is provided in the different parts of the UK. Over time, the divergence will become greater and greater. We are all for co-operation in those areas that remain UK, and we do not know what those are going to be yet. That is why there is a bit of unanimity that what we have has to work better whatever powers remain. However, we also have to recognise that the devolution has to go further than just down to local government level. I want to see devolution down to the level in local communities and people. The Christie commission has always said that the service users who know how services need to work for them have to be involved as well. The devolution process, as far as I am concerned and as far as our organisation is concerned, is not just about powers. It is about trying to give some of those powers taken from politicians and given to ordinary people to make decisions about how their lives are conducted. Obviously, that is a commission looking at further Scottish devolution, but, as I think Ian Gray highlighted, some of the solutions have to be UK-wide because they have to work not just for two parliaments but for all the parliaments and assemblies in the UK. The bedroom tax has been mentioned and I think that there is a really interesting case study at the moment in terms of the lack of proper formal structure in terms of the relationship between George Osborne and the Treasury and the Northern Ireland Assembly over the implementation of the bedroom tax in Northern Ireland. As Ian Gray highlighted, we do have the joint ministerial committees. They are not well known, there is no sanction, there is no media coverage of what goes on in those committees. Having visible structures would mean that at least there was a sanction that came through the public awareness of failure to cooperate, even if there could be no legal sanction. Having visible structures that allow for the kind of complexities that we have seen in Northern Ireland about the roll-out of the bedroom tax and the wholly devolved Northern Ireland welfare system would enable some of those issues to be at least known about and examined publicly rather than in fairly unknown committees. It is hard to imagine the situation in which meetings of the GMC became major events. The public mind but the colleagues around the table engage much more with the machinery of government than the general public is part of the work that they do. How much awareness amongst you is there of joint ministerial committees and what they do? No, it does not surprise me. Okay, thank you very much. Right, we are moving on to the second section now, which is about strengthening the financial accountability of the Parliament and this covers things like tax revenue and borrowing of economic institutions and block funding and so on. I wonder if I could just kick off with a question to you, Ian Mackay of the Institute of Directors, because you are making a case for the devolution of taxes that have localised improvement effects on local control and economic development, and you mentioned APD. Does that purpose create a coherent set of tax changes in your view? The main purpose that we have is perhaps to get across the message that more is not necessarily better, more effective is better, but I think that the commission should be thinking in those terms when it comes to looking at taxation in particular. People will be aware that we have already got in line, coming down the pipeline, the changes in income tax from the last Scotland bill. I think that an awful lot of SMEs in particular, when that hits, are going to be tumbling under the weight of it. Therefore, the last thing that one wants to do is to add to the complexity and the burden of varying taxation regimes over the UK, because not only from the point of view of companies that are working solely in Scotland, but particularly for companies that are doing a lot of trading furth of Scotland and across the UK as a whole. I think that there is a point in just passing, picking up a little on what Linda was saying. Generally speaking, in business, making the status quo work is a wee bit closer to the reality. Even when you make significant changes in companies and so on and turn around a slightly failing company into a doing quite well company, it is more likely that a lot of it is about realignment and about making it work better, rather than to build those factors and start again. I think that that is our experience of how one is going forward. The low-lying fruit, as you say, are things like APD, is daft. I think that a lot of Scottish businesses in particular find that because they have to hub through London, they end up paying a tax twice. There are things that we have highlighted in our submission on R&D tax credits, possibly in some of the oil-related, which again has a very significant local impact. Changes there could be very helpful to the way in which Scottish Government is able to better manage its part of the economy. The rest of us feel that there is a process of this level of governance here being accountable for the money that it spends and the money that it raises and so on. I think that that is another big message on tax. I think that the main one that we would be trying to get across is that we have to think of tax not just in what can we shift. Where is the office that we send the tax monies to? It is not that that matters. Can we make sure that taxation is actually being effective in promoting productivity, in promoting startups, in promoting the ways in which business can actually grow here in Scotland as part of that UK economy, European economy and so on? That is the main message from us. We really do not want to see any more complexity in taxation. We want to see something that is making it easier and smoother. Our private sector in Scotland is still too small. It has to be grown, and I think that that is a job for both Governments and, indeed, for local government and the rest of us who are involved in that. Ross Martin from SCDI. With all of that and make the point that it is the principle of and then the degree of subsidiarity that is built into the tax system and making sure that if there is a uniform impact of a tax across the UK, then it is appropriate that that tax is levied at that level. If there is a differentiated impact, and APD is a classic example, then that is obviously a candidate to be devolved out, because the effect of levying that tax is not necessarily understood at the UK level. The double hit that Ian mentioned in terms of APD is something that I am sure was not built into the minds of the people putting that tax in place, but the impact that it has on Scottish business and its ability to trade in international markets is disproportionately high, and so that would certainly be a candidate for devolution. If that principle and the impact and effect principle was taken throughout the system, then that would simplify the system rather than make it more complex, even though you could be bringing in layers of differentiation. Okay, thank you. I am going to open it up now for questions from the political nominees. Yeah, in relation to tax, you know, as a starting point, I think again what motivates me is the idea of not just taking powers, you know, as Ian said, for the sake of it and saying that we have power over this, but it is taking a power so that that power then has a purpose and what you can achieve with that power. For me, it ties in with everything—welfare of course, employability and all those things. I would just like a general view from those who are here about what would be really important for them in terms of entry to the employment market, the resultant effect and welfare productivity and how we could use specific power over tax, borrowing, etc. A block grant, if you like, about how the mechanisms work for that, but generally what you would like to achieve and what you think can be achieved. So, Lyn, to just be clear, and we do not get in the strain to the third area, this is about how tax can be used to promote those social goods, if you like, in terms of the point. I would say to you, Richard, that it is impossible not to look at it in the round or we are not doing our job properly, we are compartmentalising. You know, therefore, I think that there has to be a slight overlap, perhaps not the full thing. We could lay down markers for the next part of the discussion. Yes, Mike Thorne, please, from Barron Gas. My thanks. I represent the oil and gas industry. We are a very active, obviously a vector player here in Scotland. For us, it is around infrastructure, it is around skills, it is around allowing us the space to be a successful industry. Within Scotland, the vast contribution we make goes through the supply chain, the capability, which is everything from the very north of Scotland, from Wick right through to, probably even Gretin the Green, has an impact from our industry here in Scotland. So, infrastructure, the ability to access Aberdeen, not the peripheral bypass, which is great, but the ability for good trains, good air connection, good rail connection, all the things that make for a successful industry, allow us to access the resources in central belt and bring those knowledge and skills best to make sure that we have a sustainable industry, long past with producer last power award from the Royal Sea. Fraser Kelly, from Social Enterprise Scotland. Richard, thank you. I suspect that some of our concerns are about the temporal nature of where you are looking, in terms of the commission, and in terms of the way the economic base is structured. We think that you need to have a 10, 20, 30, 40-year strategy around this. The economic base is broken. It is not working as effectively as it should be. In terms of taxation, we think that there are opportunities for you to act in favour of organisations that are ethical businesses. If I use the example, which is the Starbucks situation, when we all found out that Starbucks were not paying tax, we voted with our feet and we stopped buying their product. Very quickly, they decided that they would make a contribution towards the tax take. I think that we have to understand what people's decision making was around that in terms of acting not to buy the products of a company whom they felt were not behaving ethically and shift that emphasis to buying products from companies that behave ethically. I think that there has to be something in the tax infrastructure that supports social enterprise as a business model of choice that makes it part of our future that sees the economic base structured in a different way. That is not anti-competitive in terms of the way that the business base is structured at the moment, but the social enterprise, i.e. businesses that trade goods and services and use the profits, not for shareholder value, but to redistribute that back into solving social problems and community-based activity, is a business of choice in the future that makes this a more equitable economy than we have at the moment. That is not going to happen tomorrow, but I think that the commission has to set some clear guidelines about this being a 10, 20, 30, 40-year strategy that will achieve economic growth but more socially just society. I think that taxation is one of the ways that you can actually do that. I would come back to Adam's comments at the start in terms of asking what legislation can we put in place? I would suggest coming back to Michael's comment about a constitutional statutory right to be consulted is important because, if I look at things like social investment tax relief at the moment, it is being railroaded through because there is a timetable that has to achieve it. HMRC and HM Treasury are likely to legislate on what a social enterprise is. I create a definition for it within the UK, which is not compatible with our view in Scotland of what a social enterprise looks like. Rather than saying what legislation can we transfer at the moment, I think that there is an obligation to say, let's not put in place any other legislation until we know that it has been consulted on and been agreed across the constituent elements of the UK. Michael Lennon, Mark Rutall, from Scottish Tourism Alliance. Can I make sure that we are getting some help with the specifics here, please? Linda has talked about powers for purpose. We have talked about accountability as a driver of why it is important that this Parliament has more direct responsibility for taxation. Which powers, which taxes would help to influence the policy areas that you care most about, or which would you be most allergic to us differentiating in Scotland from the rest of the United Kingdom? Is it corporation tax? Is it income tax? We have talked about APD, right, fine. We have got that message. Are we talking about capital gains tax and inheritance tax, and if so, why? Are we talking about what do you think of as the assignation of taxes sufficiently robust for you in terms of your wider concerns and policy agendas? Help us, if you would mind, to focus on the rights and wrongs of individual taxes and the ways of devolving them. Mark, can I bring you in from Scottish Tourism Alliance and then Ross Martin and then Mary Taylor, please? Thank you for having us here today. If we have got APD, we will be delighted with that as a tourism industry, particularly with the growth and the opportunity that has been highlighted in the Deloitte report, where tourism as an economy in Scotland is probably disproportionate in terms of its value and its contribution to jobs to the south. Therefore, getting more people into Scotland is essential. We would also be keen to see some favourable moves towards the reduction of tourism fat. It is a national campaign that is being driven by colleagues in the south, but there is a lot of evidence to suggest that the reduction in fat to make destinations more attractive and to allow businesses to thrive is there, as well as growing jobs too. I think that there are now just over 100 MPs who are supporting that campaign and we would encourage it very definitely to be driven through. What taxes? There has to be a tax, and it is about reinvesting in the structure. It is not about taking it itself, it is about putting it back into the infrastructure of Scotland, ring-fencing it and reinvesting it in tourism growth and the economy to create more jobs. How they are applied, I suppose, is the big question. Ross Martin, SDI. Our submission goes through that basket of taxes and makes our position clear on each of them. For example, on VAT, the assignation of VAT is about as far as we understand you can go, so we make that point. Corporation tax, keep it as it is, and maintain the integrity of the single market in that sense. It goes through a range of those different taxes. We also introduced some other ideas about specific taxes or tax incentives, which could be considered. All against a backdrop of the powers-for-the-purpose argument, Linda, in terms of where we are at with the Scottish economy and what the structural failings of the Scottish economy and what have they been over the past 30, 40, 50 years? Against a backdrop of UK centralisation, people have characterised it as the most centralised democratic state in the world. We made that point. In fact, before I was born, SDI was making that point, and we make reference to that in our submission. Looking at the key structural failings and weaknesses of the economy—lack of innovation, lack of productivity and lack of internationalisation—that is the purpose to which we want to attach those powers, because they have been structural failings of the economy throughout those decades. It is appropriate to talk about them and the impact that your report will have on those specifics. One or two of the examples that we raised in terms of oil and gas—some of our oil and gas members, and I am sure Mike was involved in these discussions—make the point that, if you look at the north-east and the economy of the north-east and the amount of tax revenue that the UK Treasury gets from the north-east, which is not insubstantial, there must be a mechanism by which you can improve the stickability of some of that money into the north-east infrastructure. In particular, if you are wanting to tackle those issues about innovation and productivity and internationalisation, then being able to use some of that money on infrastructure to move people around, supplement the jobs market and whether that is from modern apprentice level right through to graduate level and beyond, link up and widen the catchment area of the jobs market in the north-east and sweep in more of Scotland by sorting out some of the transport infrastructure. One mechanism that we have suggested is for the oil and gas sector to have tax incentives to help fund some of that infrastructure. To put in place mechanisms that would make that an attractive proposition, you can link up the national economy, which sits off the coast, and the local, the regional economy, which sits very much in the city centre in and around Aberdeen. That aspect has not been cracked. If that same approach was taken to different parts of the economy, recognising the differentiated nature of the economy across the country, then individual tax incentives or variance in tax or devolution of tax would certainly be applicable. There are two points that I would like to make. One is around welfare and the interface between welfare and taxation. We will come on to welfare, so I will leave that to the side for the moment, but the crucial issue is that there is an interface. If you want to take the social security powers, and that is the position that we have argued, then the tax powers, the income tax powers, have to come alongside it so that you can make the interface work. You can go back to the second point that I wanted to make, which is about responsibility. We arrived at this principle through a process of dialogue with our members in the course of October. It took us to the principle—I can just read it out here—that it requires the consequences of decisions to be borne by the decision makers rather than impacting on areas that are devolved or reserved to other jurisdictions. That relates to how you fund social security rather than the operational interface for people in paying tax and in receipt of benefits. Those are both reasons for us why income tax needs to be part of what is devolved to Scotland. Your hairling point is obviously about government. All levels must be fiscally accountable, but I think that picking up Mary's point about income tax on its own and just involving that will not work. That is why we have very strongly stated that we must think about a portfolio of taxis because we are talking here about the interconnected nature of powers, policies and the taxation system. That is a good example of where it hits in a whole range of different areas. That is where we need to look at. We are not placing a disproportionate burden on certain parts of the tax system or the tax base. Redistribution is more difficult in Scotland with taxes because we do not have the big differential between earnings and wages. We have looked at the figures, but, as Michael Scott said, being a bit specific, if you look at charity tax, we have a lot of information on that and we have a couple of pages in our submission. If income tax is devolved, we need to think about the consequences of that in terms of charities, for example. We need tax relief over charitable donations. As Fraser was talking about, social investment, gift aid and inheritance tax relief. There is a natural knock-on consequence if you want to have consistency. If those are devolved in Scotland, we could design a much better system of charity tax relief that would act as an incentive for charitable giving and for third sector organisations. We touched on our submission on the devolution of that relief for charities. There are some technical issues around that. That would make it much easier for organisations to claim as well. There are very technical points that are there. From John and perhaps others, when you talk about income tax being devolved, can you make the distinction of whether you mean just the right to operate the tax bans and keeping income tax in the country or whether you mean the relief allowances that then allow the point of entry to the workplace and that kind of thing? We are talking about that in the round. Just off the back of that, Mary, you mentioned some of the issues around inequality that John has picked up on processes of redistribution and how complex they might be for Scotland. Margaret, if you could say a little bit about some of the issues that you have around the devolution of tax and what kinds of things taking on board what John has said about the difficulties with income tax, but how can we get to a position where we can do something about the gross inequality and poverty that we are seeing in Scotland? We might not have the range or as many people at the top end, should I say, in Scotland as the south-east, but we clearly have a significant problem around poverty and inequality. I would be interested in hearing some fleshed-out ideas from you on that. I hate to disappoint you, but we decided that tax was above our pay grade. It was horribly complex, not something that we understood and that silence sometimes is better than ignorance brooted abroad. It is out of the area of expertise and competence, and I prefer only to speak where I am. I bring in Ian Mackay from Institute of Directors. I am reminded that, often, Mr Clinton's phrase is the economy stupid. We sometimes get awfully far away from that. The point has been well made that, if you are going to have redistributive policies and so on, you have to have something to redistribute. Our current economic structure in Scotland does not lend itself to that. You have to have to give, and we do not have to. The main thrust of what we were trying to say is that, if we are going to see Scotland having more command over its own economy and key parts like taxation in its own economy, we have to, in a sense, do those things that are going to be most effective in growing towards that area. I take Michael's point that one wishes to identify particular taxes and so on. During the referendum campaign, there was lots of talk about attacks that would make jobs or not make jobs and so on. Life is rarely quite so simple as that. What we find, those of us, and I think it is the same with our third sector organisations, private sector or public sector, we have to deal with the world in the round. We have to deal with all the various things that change whether or not we are going to be successful. It is the last point of being successful, which is the one that matters. If you are asking specifics, Michael, do not devolve VAT, just leave it alone, because it is really quite complicated just now and we do not really want it becoming more complicated. Corporation tax, there has been a big debate about that. My colleagues in IOD in Ireland, north of Ireland, would argue that they would want it because they have a very specific circumstance of having to deal with the south of Ireland. Here in Scotland, we have not supported that as a view, because we do not think that a race to the bottom is particularly helpful towards business in the longer term. On the other hand, we have outlined three or four individual taxes, and I think that Ross was also alluding to the fact that they have identified taxes that we could take as the low-hanging fruit that would make an immediate impact. However, what matters is what we are using those taxes for. There is absolutely no point in pretending that by giving a tax or control over a tax that somehow or other we can move the economy forward, if, on the other hand, we are taking away the ability of people to do that. That is why, in our paper, we have stressed that the discussion on tax also has to look at things like economic development, the way in which different measures are coming together in the round on that, rather than being seen as how many things can I put in my shopping bag here, because that is not what it is about and it should not be what it is about. There is one last point, chair—two very, very small ones. It is possible to reduce taxes. Do not forget that. It should be possible for us to have the power to reduce taxes as well as increase taxes. That is an idea to work with. Most of all, simplicity. The number one thing that we get from our members—I am sure that the Federation of Small Businesses and People were here as well—would echo—indeed, I am sure that the third sector would echo—is that the red tape and the bureaucracy around taxes and allowances and so on of all kinds is the bane of ordinary small businesses and large businesses' lives. It stops good things happening, so the more that can be done in Scotland to make that a less complex system, the better. Time for two succinct comments, one from Bill Scott and the final one from Mark Thill, before we move on to the final section. I am going to echo Margaret. We are no experts on tax. What we are experts on is inequality and is massive inequality that disabled people experience and many other people on low incomes in Scotland. To address that, we need the full box of tools. We cannot, on the one hand, say that we will have welfare benefits with no means of raising additional monies at some point to supplement that spend. I could echo that. We might decide to invest that in getting people into work so that they raise their tax revenue that way. The problem is that we have managed to get a lot of people into work in the last six years since the beginning of the recession, but only one in 40 of those jobs are full-time jobs. Because the tax breaks that have been created for the low-paid, the tax revenue coming in is nowhere near what the Treasury expected, where employment revels returning in near what they were before the recession started. It is not just tax, but we need to think of it in the round. If we want to tackle wealth inequalities in this country, we need to have the full box of tools. Mike Thill, on the last comment. I would like to build on what Ian said. We sit within an industry that has a continuum north and south of the border between Scotland and England, around the UK, and we need the freedom of operation that a tax regime that works right through the UK delivers to allow us to make the best we can of those opportunities. It is not just for taxes, but for regulation as well. What we would hate to see happen is that we have artificial barriers that prevent us from delivering the best we can for the value for the Scottish economy and, yes, the UK economy on the shore from those activities offshore. A continuum offshore certainly allows us to do the best on the shore, and preferably with the least regulatory and most transparent tax regime that we can get right across the UK. Right now, the final session is on prosperity, growth and social justice, which is a huge range of things, as I said from welfare through to broadcasting. I want to kick off with a question to Paul De Paulette, please, from Ingears. Paul De Paulette, I think that Ingears did not put in their own submission, but they contributed to the one from IRSA, the Employment Related Resource Association, Service Association. Just to remind people of the two main comments made there, one was seeking the development of responsibilities for all employment support services, job centre plus and outsourced support for long-term unemployed and people with disabilities and devolution of all in-work and out-of-work welfare policies and benefits. Now, I know Ingears didn't necessarily agree with the whole of that submission, but I wonder if he could just pick up and explain to us, you know, what's the problem that those kind of things are trying to tackle? Okay, thanks Richard. Yeah, we operate in over a dozen countries around the world. We operate in many countries in Europe and in also places as diverse as Saudi Arabia and South Korea, and we work for many different levels of government. We deliver employment and skills policies and out-placement policies for national government, for regional government, for local government, and also in some countries like Switzerland, we deliver it for insurance companies who are the social protection provider in those environments. Our view would really be that the level that you deliver the policy act isn't necessarily the most important factor. It's actually what you do with those policies and how you then encourage it to achieve the aims that are expected. Some of the points that Bill has made, I think, are quite pertinent. You know, we talk about devolution, meaning divergence, and I think there's a general kind of point there that I would make that you need to be able to, unwilling to accept the level of divergence that occurs across the board in devolving policies. So if we talk about the devolving employability policies and skills policies right down to a local level, we then need to accept that what that will mean is that what people get in one place, they might not get in another. And what employers get in one place, they might not get in another. And, you know, one of the key points that was made at one of the sessions we were at last week is that it isn't employability organisations or skills providers or the third sector by and large that give significant levels of jobs to people who are out of work. It's employers, and therefore making things easy for employers is a key part. The level that you do, I think, also is important from the point of view of defining very clearly what the policy objective is. So if the policy objective is not being met, and the point that Bill made there in terms of people moving into work since the recession, but that's not necessarily impacting on the tax revenues that we're seeing, then the challenge for us going forward there is how you simply create a clear view of what the policy is there to do and then align that to what the services that are delivering that achieve. So the programme that we deliver at the moment for the UK Government, the work programme, that's essentially paid for out of the tax revenues that are generated through savings and benefits. So if we move people into work and keep them there, we're successful. If we don't, then we're not. One of the challenges for us going forward, I suppose, is how we think about how we align those policy objectives. So one of the examples we was given at the session we were at last week was that if you're talking about work and employability being a way to alleviate poverty, then how do you hardwire that into the measures and the metrics that you expect of programmes? So for instance, if a Government at any level was to decide that a living wage is a political imperative, then you hardwire that into the outcomes, you measure the success achieved in moving into jobs that achieve a living wage. Those are the things that you can actually do through sensible procurement, through aligning the expectations that you expect of the delivery of that service to what the policy intent is in the first place. If I can open that up for questions, please. I'm happy to start off. I'd like to pick up on something that Ian said about simplicity ease of use and things becoming over complicated. It strikes me as someone who deals with people going through the kind of systems that we're talking about, that in this particular subject we could do with an awful lot more simplicity and ease of use. Two quick examples. When you look at apprenticeships, job entry, you've got European Union stuff, Scottish Government stuff, local authority stuff, Westminster stuff, through the DWP, through the council. It is so confusing for the client, for the employer. I've had employers in my area who say, I can't be bothered with it, it's just all too difficult, especially small and medium enterprises who could benefit very much from some of these programmes in terms of the whole community development. It also ties in with the discussion that we had earlier about interfaces between the different Governments. As an elected MSP, I am frequently given a row for interfering in reserve matters that would be helping people trying to get enough money to eat for the weekend, for example. I would like the view on how we can really boost productivity, jobs, getting young people into apprenticeships by a level of simplification and whether making the responsibility for all of that rest in Scotland and being more transparent could, in fact, make a difference. The challenge that we face is that we spend at the moment somewhere in the region of £650 million a year on areas of employability and skills in Scotland. Not all of that comes from Westminster, I think probably around about 35 to 40 per cent of that comes from Westminster-funded programmes. Much of it comes from Europe, much of it comes from the Scottish Government and its various agencies. The work programme accounts for less than 10 per cent of that. The challenge that we face, I suppose, is that at a macro level, we don't really know what we get for that. There isn't a framework there that tells us, are we getting value for money, are the various plethora of programmes that operate across the board delivering what they're intended to, do we know what good, bad and indifferent looks like? I think that that's long been recognised as a challenge. One of the cross-governmental organisations, the Scottish Employability Forum, has commissioned a piece of work to look at trying to map that out and trying to make some sense of that. Whatever level of government you're at, we need to aspire to having a clear view of what that actually is and how well it works together and identifying where the blockages are. For service users, be those clients or be those employers, it needs to be more simple, it needs to be more straightforward and people should not feel that they are too long-term unemployed to access a certain type of thing or that they can't access something because they happen to live in a long area. That's not particularly conducive to moving people forward into a better place. Michael Moore and then Mark Ballard. There are a lot of different things in the submissions and in the discussions that we've been holding so far that are grappling with the different elements of the welfare state. My sense, to stand to be corrected, is that with standing people's individual positions or party positions, there is an acceptance that pensions will probably ought to remain at a UK-wide level. It would be interesting to understand however if by that we mean pensions and pensioner benefits like winter fuel allowance and all that kind of stuff that gets added on the side. There's then that whole sphere of issues from child benefit through disability benefits and so on, which at one level you might argue could be devolved because it's reasonably predictable, it's complementary to a lot of Scottish policymaking that we already do here in this Parliament on that scale, perhaps candidates for devolution. Then you look at the working age, predominantly working age, benefits around universal credit and the big debate about that. Do you devolve the whole thing? Do you devolve none of it? Do you try and do I say girdle around in the complexities in the middle? Where do job centres fit into that? Do they come north as part of to run the UK system but to be better integrated into the work that the Scottish Government does in the skills and employment agenda, perhaps accepting that that then leads on to the work programme being devolved wherever it is? There are different models, we're all grappling with them at the moment, but it's quite interesting territory for us. It would be great to get a feel of wear on those big chunky bits if there are any no-knows or areas where you think that this is absolutely a given, we have to have this to move things on. If Michael Moore set out three options, one of which was devolve all of it in terms of working age benefits, one of which was devolve none of it, and one of which was grapple with the complexities. From the point of view of the children, young people and families that we work with, the worst outcome would be to increase the complexity. I think that there are good examples that would back up what Paul said in terms of the experience of employability, training and skills, devolution meaning mixed responsibility. We have young people who are on the work programme, who want to access things that are on the skills development Scotland employability fund, who can't shift between one kind of support and another. That makes no sense to them. It makes no sense to the Barnardo's adviser working with them. It's purely because of a disconnect between a Westminster job centre plus system and a Holyrood SDS system. That makes no sense if the policy intention is to move that young person into employment. That's the reality, so I think that the worst outcome would be to increase the complexity. We already have a very difficult situation for the young people that we work with that I described earlier, where on the one hand they can access a welfare fund, which comes from the local authority, on the other hand they can access a hardship fund that comes from job centre plus. It makes no sense again to that young person that you have two different sets of forms, two different questions, two different remits. They just need support now because they've not got any money. What we want to see is a more coherent system. We believe that this should be one of the principles that the Smith commission looks to. Where you have areas where the experience of devolution has been mixed responsibility, can we move to a simpler set of responsibilities from the point of view of the people who need to access those kinds of public support? I echo that point. It relates to housing benefit and I'll not go into the details of all of that, but I know that a lot of people around the third sector have commented on the scope for housing benefit to be devolved on its own, which would complicate matters further potentially. Northern Ireland has come up a couple of times and I'm going to refer to it again. What Northern Ireland has around social security is devolution, but it's devolution on terms that make it impossible for them to do anything with the powers that they have, or virtually nothing with the powers that they have without paying a penalty. The situation at the moment is that the assembly Government, even without taking a failure to implement better tax in Northern Ireland into account, is paying fines of £7 million a month to the UK Government for failure to make savings on what the UK Government, the Treasury, thought that the GB policies applied in Northern Ireland would produce. I think that came out the way I intended it. The point that I would put back to Michael and colleagues on the commission is what do you mean by devolution? Is it just about the administration of things where policies and powers are just—the power to decide on policy is made elsewhere? Or are you talking about the power to devolution in the form of the opportunity to define policies and systems and administer those in a way that would be appropriate to the situation that we face, with the fiscal responsibility to go with it? A couple of colleagues have talked about the relationship between the responsibilities and the fiscal responsibility to fund it, but Bill and Ian made the point that you have to have something there to redistribute in order to make the kind of shifts and interventions that we are describing. You do not think that there is a danger here, then, if we shift the responsibility, Ian made the point that redistributing Scotland is quite difficult because we are smaller and perhaps the less people at the higher end of the income range. Is the danger there not that what we actually achieve is, yes, our responsibility, yes, that capacity to act, but actually reduce the resources that we have to deliver the outcomes that we are looking for? I would not disagree that that is a danger. There is nothing safe or certain in any of this at all. I think that we are in uncharted waters. If coherence is one of the things that we are after, that is a word that has come up a lot in the dialogue that I have been involved in across the spectrum during October, while people were gathering their thoughts to put submissions to you all. Coherence is absolutely key, and what we need to end up with is something that is simple to operate, can be funded sustainably and is coherent. John Downey from the SVO and then Ian Mackay from the Institute for Justice. I strongly agree with both Mark and Mary. As about that coherence, Michael, just having the job centre plus working more closely with the Scottish Government and delivering the work programme in Scotland or the Scottish Government and doing that just won't work. We do need that integration. That is why the third sector has been saying this for the past two years. It is an easy thing for us. It is not political. It is just about integration, delivering a better service for the client. I think that Ian's point is well made. Yes, there are lots of dangers with potentially devolving more powers, but I do not think that that is a reason for stopping us doing that. That is about the choices that are made in this Parliament after the event. It is how, as Ian says, we grow the economy and making our point on the economy. The fact is that more inequality in the economy gives you a weaker economy, less inequality, you get a stronger economy. You can look at what is happening in the United States at the moment where they seem to have got this now. JP Morgan had a recent report, Standard and Poor. The price of inequality on the US economy is a drag on it. It is a drag on the Scottish economy. We need to find a way of addressing poverty and inequality at the same time exactly of growing our private sector. We can think about how we redistribute wealth and change things. It is linked very closely to us about the conversations that we had earlier about democracy and choices and what people are able to decide for themselves. We need to see this in a different picture. There is always danger, Ian, and we have had members who have said to us that we want wholesale devolution of welfare and employability, but we want to know what the system will be like. My response is, well, that is up to us to lobby the Scottish Parliament to get the system that we want in place. It is actually, as Bill said, based on the principles of Christie. That is our job after the fact that it is not a reason to stop doing something, that there might be potential dangers. It can be demonstrated that one facet of the system is that you will reduce the resource that is available for it. That surely is not desirable. It might not be desirable in the short term, but in the longer term, if we grow our economy, we can say with potential different changes to the tax system that we can grow the income that we have in Scotland compared to that. I do not think that there is an easy answer to that. It is a bit like some of our members who want wholesale devolution of certain things, but they do not want it to affect the Barnett consequentials, which, frankly, is probably impossible despite that. There are going to be changes to expenditure and income, but in the Scottish Parliament, I think that the debate is happening next year for us to be around health in Scotland. We have a medical model that we are throwing money at that is not working. We are not doing the transfer of resources to move to a preventive model, and the Scottish Parliament and the Scottish Government will have to grapple with that transfer of resources next year. There is a debate that is linked to this that we have to have. I am pleading Margaret Claw's clause that says that you should talk about the things that you know about. NIOD is not a benefits and welfare organisation, but I think that the areas that have come out from others, the areas that we are concerned with, are very much affected by those areas. I think that it would be helpful for the commission to be seeking to streamline or focus what is by its very nature an enormously complicated and complex thing into perhaps where that great Gorman gast of a structure can be moved towards a particular outcome. In our own case, we would point you towards things like employability and the ability to bring people into work, for example, as being something that is helpful to at least see where all of those various other things can be focused in that way. However, can I perhaps make just one very simple thing and answer also Michael's point? If we do have to think about not just do pensions move, do benefits move and so on, what happens to the add-ons, there is of course another way of doing that. Stop having the add-ons. You know, do not have allowances that add on to basic pensions, just increase the basic pensions and give people a wee bit more economic power generally instead of doing it in an overly complex way. However, the main point that I was going to make was perhaps what the commission could do is try and give all of us in the UK, including Scotland, some clarity about data. We are talking here about comparabilities and whether it is better here or better there and so on. Joe Armstrong did a piece about 10 years ago comparing the NHS in the different parts, different devolved administrations and so on. You cannot compare them because they use different data because the data is not comparable one to the other. We have the same problem in aspects of education. The whole Barnett formula remains and nobody wants to deal with it because it would require a massive needs assessment right across the whole of the UK with one agreed formulation as to how we do it and it is the lack of that data I think, which makes it very difficult. It might well be a useful outcome to this enterprise and to others that we at least agree somewhere in the UK to actually, when we are discussing apples, discuss apples and not apples and compare them with pairs and get that data sorted out because at the moment we have different regimes using different data, which actually stop us then from doing the things that we will then all fall out about and it does not give us a rational basis of discussing it. CAS deals with people who have about 350,000 problems, if you like, with welfare, walk through our doors every year and we have a very real appreciation of how both Government policy and the manner in which that policy is implemented can have devastating impacts on people's lives and it was for that reason that when a balance weighing it all up we decided to argue in the Smith commission for the devolution of all welfare benefits with the exit or social security benefits with the exception of pensions to Scotland. However, I think our concern is that when you considered that it was seven years ago that the UK Parliament legislated for the introduction of universal credit and that has not really happened in its fullest extent. It was five years ago when the PIP was introduced and not everybody of fact very few people have migrated across to that. We want to nudge the Smith commission to a reality check on just how complex a policy area this is and how devastating the consequences can be if you rush to judgment and full rush in where angels fear to tread. That is not to say that we should not have a debate about it. It probably is to say that, whilst we would absolutely not argue for an extension of the timetable that Smith has been set, what we are arguing is that Smith goes back to the Government and says, do you know what? The welfare bit of this is trickier than we had originally envisaged and we would like more time to have a more considered discussion around it. The reason that I argue that, for example, is that, although Cass has taken a position and we have, we recognise that that position is subject to challenge. If you look at the point that Ian has been making, there is a very strong argument. I would concede that disability benefits might devolve to Scotland but, given that the economy is cyclical, because we know that, because Jordanian Arcanes told us that a long time ago, that maybe the pooling and sharing of that level of risk might be better held at a UK level. We are not resiling from our position, but what we are saying is that all of that needs to be properly tested and, at the moment, there is not the time in this process to allow for that. What we are asking for is that Smith goes back to the Government and says, there is more to this than meets the eye. Can we report after the general election in 2015 on a more detailed approach to this? That is safer in policy terms and it is less likely to do harm. Mark, a very quick comment, please. I am very keen to take advantage of having Colin Anderson with us in terms of broadcasting. A couple of quick comments. The first was that, when we talk about why devolve welfare and why it would make sense to have the whole of adult working age benefits devolved, it is partly because of other things that the Scottish Parliament has done, such as the Getting It Right for Every Child programme, which started under the Labour-Lib Dem coalition, now continued by the SNP. One of the comments that I hear frequently from our staff when they talk about the successes of getting it right for every child is that it has brought so many of the agencies that are there to support vulnerable children and families together. However, there is one agency that is not there that cannot engage as fully as it should and that is Jobcentre Plus. It is the decisions that are taken at Jobcentre Plus, which have a huge effect on all the other people around the table. The second thing is just to highlight that my understanding is that welfare spending would not go through the Barnett formula because it is annually managed expenditure. I know that there are people with far more expertise on that at the other end of the table, but trying to unpick some of the complexities, as Margaret talked about, of potentially a Westminster benefit cap on AME expenditure and how that related to the ability of a devolved Parliament to influence welfare spending. These things are very difficult to grapple with, but I think that there is an important thing about remembering who the welfare system is there to support. I am very keen that the political nominees have an opportunity to hear from Colin Anderson. Colin runs a small company called, a multimedia company called Denco. I think that you have put forward some views about devolution in the area of broadcasting. I wonder if you could just take us through the opportunities that you think there may be around that, Colin. Certainly, thank you very much. Just to be clear, I work in the interactive sector, so I am not a broadcast expert. I represent TIGA, which is the independent game developers association, and the reason that broadcast has come to our attention is because it is very clear to us that these two areas are starting to significantly overlap. It is already clear from services such as BBC iPlayer and 4oD, but looking ahead, we can see that this is going to continue significantly over the coming decades. As part of that, I was invited by the Scottish Broadcast Council to report on something back in about 2010, which was the idea of a Scottish digital network. At the moment, if you are interested in any sort of broadcast media as a member of the Scottish public, you know exactly where to go. You go to the BBC and you will be guaranteed to find the best examples of broadcast media that we have to offer within our society at the moment. There is no such example of that in interactive media. Up until now, it has not really been a significant issue because interactive media has primarily been a hobbyist niche area. As we have seen with the proliferation of smartphones and tablet devices, interactive media is quickly becoming a mainstream significant event. What we reported on was the idea of a Scottish digital network that could provide that focus for interactive media in Scotland. That was reported on in 2010. It was adopted as a policy by the ministers at the time, as a great idea that we should go forward with. Five years later, it has not been implemented. That is a really good example of where a very specific idea that has been adopted can hit the buffers. There are different reasons that are given for that, depending on whom you speak to, of course, but essentially one of the key things that seems to be blocking it is the way that broadcasting is currently operated within the UK and funded. In the first instance, everyone agrees that it would be a great idea to have a system like that. The next question is, how do we get to it? Because broadcasting is the priorities for our control primarily from Westminster, we believe that that needs to be distributed across the rest of the UK, so that areas such as Scotland that have innovative ideas to offer can be part of that discussion. Similarly, for the funding as well, so that whatever is raised in the UK can also be directed, not just simply to agencies within territories but through representatives of the people in that area in order to bring that back for the benefit of those people. That is our time. Thank you very much indeed for coming along and explaining your views with the political nominees. Just to say that after January 25th, when the draft clauses are published, the UK Government will be engaging in a consultation process, so there will be an opportunity then to further contribute to the finalisation of those draft clauses. Thank you very much indeed for coming and safe journey home. Thank you.