DAVID Cameron has made clear his determination to press ahead with banning Scottish MPs from voting on parts of the British Budget as he was warned not to let his enthusiasm for English Votes for English Laws (Evel) undermine the fiscal integrity of the United Kingdom.
During his trip to Edinburgh, the Prime Minister echoed Chancellor George Osborne, who, earlier this week, caused controversy by insisting Evel would "have to apply on areas connected with the Budget" given that power over tax bands and rates on earned income in Scotland were going to be devolved to Holyrood.
Mr Cameron declared: "It wouldn't be appropriate for English constituents to have a rate of tax essentially imposed on them by Scottish MPs.
"So we're going to have to find a way through the Evel proposal to safeguard the integrity of the UK budgeting process but also to make sure that there's a fair arrangement."
He also decried First Minister Nicola Sturgeon's pronouncement that, after the General Election, SNP MPs would vote on matters affecting the English NHS, describing it as "a very big change", which was hard to explain.
He accepted overall spending decisions had, through the Barnett Formula, consequences for Scotland, but stressed it was wrong to "argue MPs from Scotland should be able to vote on the minutiae of health and education in England".
The issue of banning Scottish MPs from parts of the Budget was raised at Westminster when David Mundell, the Scotland Office Minister, made a Commons statement on the draft clauses setting out the proposed new powers for Holyrood.
Alistair Darling, the former Labour Chancellor who headed the Better Together campaign, pointed to the Smith Commission recommendation that all MPs should decide the Budget, stressing it was "entirely inconsistent" with the views of Mr Cameron and Mr Osborne.
He asked Mr Mundell: "Does the Minister accept that any future reforms will have to be fair but must not undermine the fiscal integrity of the United Kingdom? If they did so, we would end up with all the restrictions we see in the eurozone, which no one in this country, north or south of the border, wants."
The Minister did not defend the proposal to ban Scottish MPs from parts of the Budget, saying only the Chancellor had made clear "as we move forward with the different settlement in Scotland, there will be elements of the Budget that do not apply to Scotland".
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article