The TaxPayers' Alliance - Media Coverage

Daily Telegraph: Why we need to keep the Scotland Office

by Alan Cochrane

It is understandable that people should take pot-shots at the Scotland Office, the ill-fated and much-derided post-devolution successor to the Scottish Office.

As Alistair Carmichael, the Liberal Democrats' spokesman on Scottish affairs at the Commons, has discovered that it received only 39 letters from parliamentarians last year and put out an average of only one press release per week.

The MP for Orkney and Shetland said that for the Scotland Office to continue to employ 20 civil servants and two press officers was "indefensible" eight years after devolution, while the Taxpayers' Alliance spokesman said it was the most "pointless" of all government departments.

Both called for its abolition, with Mr Carmichael adding the refinement that it should be merged in a new Department for the Nations and Regions with the Wales and Northern Ireland offices.

I will leave residents of the principality and the province to speak for themselves but there is a pressing need for the retention of the Scotland Office, all the more so since the emergence of Alex Salmond's minority SNP administration in May.

Indeed, while I can appreciate the motives underlying his attack on this overstaffed and underworked department, I am slightly surprised that a professed Unionist such as Mr Carmichael cannot see the benefit of such an outpost as the Scotland Office.

For myself, I have always regarded its swish offices in Edinburgh's Melville Street as a sort of "British" embassy in our devolved midst and the Scotland Office is an entirely necessary reminder that while Mr Salmond's array of ministers may call themselves what they will, there is another ministry more deserving of the description of "government".

Devolution has encouraged too many people to believe that Bute House and Holyrood is all there is to running this country. The Scotland Office gives the lie to that.

In addition, while Scottish Labour appears to be languishing in a pre-leadership contest torpor, it is reassuring to know that Des Browne and David Cairns, the Scottish Secretary and minister of state, respectively, are still up for the fight.

It is true that in the recent election campaign for the Scottish Parliament, the Scotland Office in particular and Westminster-based ministers and other assorted 'experts' in general did not exactly cover themselves in glory.

Their tactics were found to be wanting and the massive confusion over the ballot papers was entirely their fault.

However, in his short period in the job, Mr Browne has shown himself determined not to be provoked unnecessarily by Wee Eck, while Mr Cairns has been at least a match for the Nats he's been pitted against.

There is undoubtedly a case for a drastic reduction in the number of staff employed - or should that be under-employed - in the department; but then the same could be said for every other department of government, or indeed for the entire public sector.

But that we need ministers, whose main job is to represent Scotland's interests at Westminster, there is no doubt whatsoever. Without them, we would be in a situation where Scotland really would take on the aspect of an independent country with its Holyrood-based ministers dealing with London like foreign envoys.

To many it might appear like window dressing, but having Scotland Office ministers as a layer between Holyrood and Westminster maintains not just the illusion but the reality of a still United Kingdom.

And for all Mr Salmond may insist in dealing with Gordon Brown directly, the Prime Minister, if he is wise, should insist that the First Minister's first port of call should always be the Scottish Secretary's office.

Furthermore, if the Scotland Office's continuation is "indefensible" then so was its inception and that of course was a direct result of the devolution settlement, so-called, of which, if memory serves, Mr Carmichael was a fervent supporter.

On a personal note, the MP has also complained about the Scotland Office's annual hospitality budget of £23,000, much of it spent at Dover House, its London HQ. As someone who was a beneficiary of that largesse, at this year's Trooping of the Colour, I can only say that it is money well spent!

Daily Politics: Matthew Elliott attacks Britain’s “fiscal apartheid”

TPA Chief Executive Matthew Elliott appeared on BBC2’s Daily Politics show to talk about the unfairness of the “Barnett Formula”, which means that people in Scotland receive £1,500 more government spending that people living in England.

“Britain is now suffering from a fiscal apartheid, where each English household gives £350 per year to Scotland for services they do not enjoy south of the border. This situation is unfair and unsustainable.”   

Birmingham Post: Letter: Schemes to fall out over

QUANGOS

Dear Editor, Would you believe it, one un-elected quango criticising the work of another.

I refer of course to the amusing report by Paul Dale (Economic masterplan is 'unclear and indecisive', Post July 23) and also your editorial on The West Midlands Regional Assembly's response to Advantage West Midlands' Regional Economic Strategy, after a year-long draft study into how this region can close a "guestimated" £10 billion productivity gap between the West Midlands and the rest of the UK.

I just loved the bit where the WMRA says the report should highlight ways of preventing villages from becoming the "domain of rich car-owning commuting people".

Are they so thick they do not realise these are the very wealth creators we so desperately need, and don't thank God that we have got so many in the region. They must accept we should be doing everything possible to keep the ones we have, not knocking them for goodness sake.

I went along to the first of AWM's consultative meetings in Wolverhampton. The room was full of quangoists, and so very few business folk. I was aghast there was such little interest from AWM's presentation in our failing transport infrastructure, without which, how on Earth vast amounts of new investment is expected I know not.

You will not find in the report any mention of the fact that these two organisations sap well over £400 million of local taxpayer's money, dreaming-up schemes they can then both fall out over.

But I can give them one suggestion, and without the need to employ an army of consultants either. Let companies like mine keep more of the hundreds of thousands of pounds that we pay each year in corporation tax; we would then provide even more new and "sustainable" jobs (to use a word that they like) than any of these bureaucrats can ever dream up.

Do you agree? Contact details are at the bottom of this page

CHRIS KELLY Executive Member of the West Midlands Taxpayers Alliance

Financial Times: Let the regions reduce tax and then watch them grow

Sir,

Graham Gudgin and Victor Hewitt ("Regions must build their case for lower tax rates", July 18) are absolutely right in their analysis. The best way to help the less prosperous regions in the north, now and in the future, is to allow them to attract new businesses by lowering their corporate tax rates. This is the strategy that has been pursued with such success in recent years by the poorer members of the European Union.

Instead our new prime minister plans to accelerate regional growth by giving extra responsibility to the regional development agencies, with an annual budget of more than £2bn, despite there being no objective measure of their success. Indeed, productivity growth has stalled since the agencies were set up.

Treasury ministers need to consider seriously the prospect that allowing regions to reduce tax rates would do their hard work for them. Such clear thinking would benefit taxpayers in all parts of the country.

Yours,

Corin Taylor

Research Director,

The TaxPayers' Alliance

London SW1H 9JA