Brown To Build On Devolution 'Vow'

Former prime minister Gordon Brown has said it is time to build on the vow of more powers made by Westminster leaders during the independence referendum.

Mr Brown, who spearheaded a timetable for further devolution in the last days of the referendum campaign, joined Scottish Labour leader Jim Murphy to pledge that the party would go further than the package set out by the Smith Commission if it wins the general election.

The commission, set up after the No vote to deliver on the vow, has said the Scottish Parliament should be given control over some benefits excluding Universal Credit, the ability to create new benefits in areas of devolved responsibility and new powers to make ''discretionary payments'' in any area of welfare.

Labour has said it will devolve a ''wider power'' to vary and top up welfare benefits, powers to create new benefits, ''fully devolve housing benefit'' and devolve welfare to local communities.

Mr Brown told an audience in Edinburgh: It's time to build on the vow. The vow was an important document in decades of discussion about devolution.

It represented our desire for change, it symbolised the need for the Scottish Parliament to have greater powers.

It also was a demand that things moved quickly, far faster than ever we could achieve things through independence, we could achieve things with new legislation for a stronger Scottish Parliament. The vow is being delivered.

It's also time to look at how the Labour Party in Scotland can build on the vow. That is a starting point but it's not the end point.

We can have weaker or stronger versions of it and today I want to join Jim in proposing changes that will make the Scottish Parliament stronger.''

The proposals will be published in a distinct Scottish manifesto'' for the May election.

Mr Brown said: The combined effect of that is that the Scottish Parliament would have a budget of more than #35 billion.

That, under Labour proposals, is nearly #7,000 for every person in Scotland that the Scottish Parliament would be able to spend.

The SNP concentrate all the time on the powers we don't have, they want to talk about how Westminster is denying them something, they want to talk about how as a result of devolution they've got what they call a talking-shop Parliament but not real powers.

Under the powers that we're talking about today, the Scottish Parliament will not be powerless to act on jobs, it will not be powerless to act on the housing crisis, it will not be powerless to act on youth unemployment, it will not be powerless to act on creating a more socially just Scotland.

No longer could the SNP practice this blame game that someone else is to blame and not them.''

Mr Murphy said the additional powers proposed by Labour could make Holyrood the most powerful devolved parliament in the world.

The Scottish party leader said the proposals would also help tackle the challenge of inter-generational disadvantage and poverty.

He said: We achieved a lot the last time we were in power - the national minimum wage, the working tax credits, investment in our NHS - all about driving life chances and changing people's lives for the better.

But we have to go much further. My sense is that there is a chain of disadvantage that stretches across families and each successive generation of that family is another link in that chain of disadvantage that's passed from one generation to the other.

Our call today is as it's always been. To look at that chain of disadvantage, not to loosen those bonds that link that disadvantage but to shatter them altogether.

The powers that we're announcing today will give us the financial freedom and the welfare and policy powers to achieve just that.''

The promise to go even further'' than the vow is the second general election pledge from Scottish Labour following a commitment to fund 1,000 extra NHS nurses in Scotland.

Mr Murphy declined to give any detail of what his party would do with the additional powers.

He said: What we're announcing today isn't the particular hikes we would have on any of the benefits.

What we're saying is that Parliament will have these really wide-ranging additional powers that they haven't had.

The detail of how you configure all of those benefits, of course, depends on the economic circumstances.

We're clear from what we're announcing today as to what will be in our manifesto as a second pledge for May is that the Parliament will have unprecedented power to make it arguably the most powerful devolved parliament on the planet and there's no longer any excuse not to get the job done.''