Lowly expectations
We didn't expect many positives from the Scotland Bill debate in Westminster today but it didn't even live up to those lowly expectations. As we have reported previously the turnout for the debate was truly abysmal and had it not been for the SNP MPs the chamber would have been near empty. We present the two images of the House of Commons chamber, the first taken on the first reading of the Scotland Bill (June)
and the second taken today (report stage).
The two images are so similar they are almost interchangeable. What these images demonstrate is the complete lack of interest shown by the unionist parties towards extra powers for Holyrood.
Not withstanding the low turnout from the unionist parties the initial part of the session was dominated by contributions from Tory and Labour MPs representing English constituencies who knew little about the Scotland Bill. In particular, we would draw your attention to the ill-judged contributions from the MPs Graham Allen, Edward Leigh, Alberto Costa and Ian Austin. You can view those MPs mentioned and the rest today's proceedings on parliamentlive.tv below (the Scotland Bill begins at approximately 16:40)
[We cannot offer you an embedded clip as Parliament TV do not support secure HTTPS connections]
Labour hypocrisy on Tax Credits laid bare
The most extraordinary part of the day's proceedings came when the chamber started to fill with Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat MPs fresh from Westminster's many bars and restaurants as voting time was imminent. It was at this point that the Labour Party's hypocrisy on Tax Credits was displayed for all to see. When the vote came on the SNP amendment to devolve Tax Credits to Holyrood, Labour voted with the Conservative government to defeat it. All the talk for the last few weeks from the Labour Party about mitigating the effects of the cuts in Tax Credits has been shown to be empty rhetoric. There were 56 votes to devolve Tax Credits to the Scottish Parliament and 477 against.
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