THE offer of joint trade missions involving the UK and Scottish Government ministers has been made by David Cameron in an unexpected move.
The Prime Minister put the proposal on the table during yesterday's meeting of the Joint Ministerial Committee (JMC) in Downing Street, involving UK Government ministers and those from the devolved administrations, including First Minister Alex Salmond.
A Whitehall source said: "The PM suggested there was a case for more joint overseas missions with the UK Government and the devolved administrations; it seemed to go down well."
The insider made clear there were no firm plans in the pipeline but there was a case for having joint missions to emerging markets like Brazil and India.
"Sometimes it might make sense to go as two governments working as one," he added.
While there are no details yet of any planned joint trade missions, it does throw up the prospect that in the future Mr Cameron and Mr Salmond could be on the same plane, selling Britain and Scotland.
In the past, Scottish ministers have only accompanied UK ministers on specific issues such as fishing at EU meetings in Brussels.
In 2009, Labour's Jim Murphy, the then Scottish Secretary, and Mr Salmond went on consecutive trade trips to China just two weeks apart.
The JMC was said to be "very helpful, positive and constructive", according to Alistair Carmichael, the Scottish Secretary, although he said differences were aired on the Coalition's so-called "bedroom tax".
The FM described it as the "probably overwhelming current social issue in Scotland".
He told reporters: "This is a tax that is causing great social misery without any benefit I can foresee.
"It's impacting on families but is not giving any public expenditure gains that can be quantified.
"It's probably going to cost more money than it's saving."
Mr Salmond raised the issue of the top-up discretionary housing payments and was told by Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister, that the level of next year's top-up would be made known in December.
"I expressed the view something should be done much quicker than that, because people have to plan for next year's budgets as they get an ever increasing number of families coming for help," he added, describing the bedroom tax as an "extraordinary, incredible and quite unjust imposition".
Later, Labour's Margaret Curran hit out, saying: "There is this conspiracy of silence from both sides where they are not talking about the big ticket issues; they are not talking about the cost of living, have people got enough hours to work, prices rising faster than wages or energy prices. But they are talking about how much money was taken during the Olympics.
"This was a missed opportunity that should have served Scots better."
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