I want to make some more progress.
This is a cross-party committee and, as its convenor Bruce Crawford MSP said when launching the interim report in May,
“the current proposals do not yet meet the challenge of fully translating the political agreement reached in the Smith Commission into legislation.”
This is really important. If all the political parties in this House believe that this Bill should deliver on Smith, and if all our colleagues in the Scottish Parliament say it does not fully do so, the Government must listen and they must act.
The errors that those in the Scottish Parliament seek to address go to the heart of what was agreed in the Smith commission. First, on welfare, the Bill as it stands retains a UK veto over changes to universal credit, among other things. That is unacceptable. The Secretary of State denied that there is a veto right in the Bill. I do not know how many Members present have read the Bill, but I invite them to turn to clause 24(4) on page 26, which states:
“The Scottish Ministers may not exercise the function of making regulations to which this section applies unless…they have consulted the Secretary of State about the practicability of implementing the regulations”.
The veto rights are there in black and white. [Interruption.] I hear someone from the Labour Benches say, “So?” Do they think it is a problem or not? Their colleagues in the Scottish Parliament think it is.