24/01/2013 Newsnight Scotland

living. Is that a good enough new normal?

Tonight on Newsnight Scotland, by 2014 families will be feeling the

impact of the coalition government's welfare reforms. How

much will it influence the way they vote in the independence

referendum? Whatever happens, should welfare be devolved. From

April the UK Government will begin the main elements of their welfare

reforms. All of the changes are expected to take four years to

complete but halfway to the process is the Scottish independence

referendum and by that time it is expected that the bulk of changes

will be well under way. Could the welfare reforms have a significant

influence on how people will vote in 2014?

We would just get your pump now, give you your milk. 18 months ago I

interviewed Claire for this programme. She and her partner

Derek have twin girls, now aged six. One of them, Katie, has complex

disabilities and requires 24 hour care. Derek works and Clare is a --

a home carer. They describe themselves as the working poor and

they say the changes will hit them hard. The benefits cap introduced

last week will have an impact on us for the next three years. With tax

credits etc, with inflation and the cost of living, they will be rising.

With regard to our source of income, that will not obviously be

increasing with the cost of living over the next three years. Claire

helps to campaign for the carers in Scotland. When it comes to the 2014

referendum, she says what people like her are looking for is detail.

In an independent Scotland, with regard to reform, would he U-turn

on what the Tories have brought in just now? Would he stop a bedroom

tax, which will be coming into place in April? There are a lot of

carers who are dependent on housing benefit who are going to be

suffering with this tax. The entire UK well-cut -- welfare system is in

a spin and it is unclear how many people will be affected north of

the border but critics say it could be as many as one in three

households, taking �2.5 billion out of the Scottish economy. All across

Scotland it is not just people who are on health and unemployment

related benefits, it will affect the working poor. People on low

wages to store get help with the Brent. One parent earning more than

�50,000 a year could lose all or part of their child benefit. To

what extent should either part of the Independent's campaign target

disaffected voters on welfare? income communities and households

tend to vote less, even though they may have more of a stake in the

outcome of an election. One exception is pensioners. Older

people tend to have higher turnouts and vote on issues of pensions and

benefits much more directly. It may be true that the poorer you are the

less likely you are to vote, but this could -- could this be a

motivating factor to drive people to vote? It will partly depend on

people's evaluation of what the long-term consequences will be in

terms of their position. Undoubtedly one aspect of that, for

those people primarily on benefits, will be a judgment about whether or

not in the long run they are likely to be better off under the policies

of the UK Government or better off on the policies pursued by the

Scottish government. I suspect at the moment most people will say, in

truth I am not sure. Setting out a clear case would help. The SNP says

that an independent Scotland would have a fairer welfare system. But

how would they pay for it? In Europe governments are cutting

their welfare bills. And that was before the euro crisis. Scotland is

one of the richer countries in Europe and we would do well to do a

system based on universality and equity, and we are not seen that

with the cuts come from Westminster and those threatened by other

parties here in Scotland, like the Labour Party. Four those who can

should, those who can't we will always help. Four -- of those who

can. People Macey independence as a chance to punish a perceived

unsympathetic Welt -- Westminster government. -- people may see.

think it would be a mistake to make these simplistic arguments a

central part of the Independent's campaign because I think be better

to go the campaign will benefit from it in the long term. The full

impact of the cumulative cuts introduced since 2010 have not been

experienced yet. When that does it will be an issue that comes more to

the fore of political debate in the UK and in the referendum campaign.

The yes/no campaign will need to take that into account, but at that

I made it is an incomplete picture. I am joined by the chairman of

report it -- of reform Scotland, the policy director for the centre

Rolph public policy and one of the co-founders of Women for

Independence. -- director for the Centre for Scottish Public Policy.

Leaving aside the details of the welfare reforms from Iain Duncan

Smith, do you think it is reasonable to do what he is trying

to do? I think certain aspects of it make a lot of sense. But I don't

think that was the issue that we were discussing here. The issue is

whether or not to welfare is important enough to be done at a

Scottish level and whether it will influence the vote in 2014. At

$:/STARTFEED. If it is necessary to tackle the welfare system, it

doesn't matter if you have more devolution or if you keep the same

system or whether you have an independent Scotland, the issues

Iain Duncan Smith is trying to tackle would have to be tackled.

They would and some of the universal credit proposals make a

lot of sense. I still get back to saying, the key thing and, and what

the Social Attitudes Survey shows that almost two thirds of Scots

want Holyrood to be involved in making the key decisions about

welfare created in the way that's right for Scotland. Is that

possible for that to happen? Without getting rid of the other

aspect of welfare, which is that it's, what the economists call part

of the automatic stabilisers. It just happens, if one part of the UK

is doing badly, automatically money through the welfare system goes to

that area, so we all help out. It could be Scotland, could be

Cornwall or any other area. Could you devolve benefits to Scotland or

indeed other areas of the UK and keep that? It's entirely possible

to put that mechanism in place, as in many other parts of the world. I

would go further in Scotland. We were sitting here in this city of

Glasgow and the city authorities have no say over welfare payment.

In order to tackle some of the social problems in Glasgow, surely

you have to put them together with housing, with education and with

the rest of the powers in the City Council. Right. What about, you're

pro-independence, but what's your answer to this basic point about

the automatic stabilisers, if people in Cornwall are doing badly,

then automatically, not because of any decisions, effectively wealth

is thrown from Scotland to Cornwall. If Scotland is doing badly it flows

from Cornwall to Scotland. I'd have to agree with Ross actually.

Regardless of the outcome of independence referendum, I think

that you need to be in control of the levers of economics. In terms

of welfare, in Glasgow and other areas of Scotland - I think what

Ross is trying to say is that you could keep a British welfare system

but devolve decision making, I'm trying not to get you wrong,

devolve decisions on individual benefits to tailor to local

conditions. If you have independence you wouldn't have a

British welfare system. That's my preferred option. We have to arc a

stark choice at the moment, clearly, we're going down on austerity

measures. Year seeing a divergence between the Scottish and UK

Government. In Scotland they're trying to offset some of the

effects sts austerity. There have been discusses this week to offset

them. In Glasgow you're seeing the effects of inequality already. I'm

here to talk about inequality in women. Already, we're seeing

effects of austerity bills. If you look at the Joseph Rowntree

Foundation have done a study with the fiscal, Institute of Fiscal

Studies have done studies and women are the most affected. What are we

saying here? Are we just saying there should pbtd be any cuts to

welfare at all? We're saying it's about priorities. Government have

priorities. The priorities in the UK Government are not about looking

after the poorest in society. From my perspective, the women in

society, who are the carers, as your VT showed. I'm curious,

briefly on this points, so, if someone said to you, look, it's

perfectly right and moral for us to help people in Sheffield, as

Newsnight have just been talking about, if they're doing badly

through the welfare system. Scotland should contribute to that.

You'd say what, we shouldn't care about people in Sheffield? That's

not what I'm saying. At the moment we have an imperfect system. I

don't agree with the UK welfare reform. The unfortunate part is

that other parts of the UK have got a welfare system that they didn't

vote for. I have every sympathy, I was watching in Sheffield, and I

would, you know, at the moment, the system is such that I would

advocate that the wealth, there is universality of benefits at the

moment. I'd advocate change. A gree with Ross that there -- I agree

with Ross for centralise -- because a central system doesn't work.

would you favour keeping that,if you like, British automatic system

and devolving or just getting rid of that system? At the moment

there's a complete gudd le of welfare and taxes. So the point of

welfare, local government is responsible for Housing Benefit,

but other things to do with housing, like winter fuel, winter allowance

is done at a different level. So at the moment, there are so many

inconsistencies. It would be better if you're responsible for

alleviating poverty in a certain area that all of the tools are

given to you, including those of welfare. So those should be passed

down to the right level of Government. There are certain

things that would be done best at a Westminster level and certain

things done best at a local level. The context of this, as everyone

says, these welfare reforms are terrible, it's not entirely obvious

that's what people in Scotland think. I think there's two points -

one which arises from Ben's last point. There's an interesting

constitutional conundrum that there's nothing in the Scotland Act

which would forbid the UK Government directly devolving power

for welfare straight to Glasgow and bypassing Holyrood all together.

That's an issue which I don't think any of the parties in Scotland have

yet tackled. I don't know if it came to anything. I think there

were proposals to do something like that under the Blair Government.

never came to anything at that point. There were pilot projects.

They are in England. But there could be projects in Scotland. That

would change the terms this afternoon debate. The second point

which arises is the impact on the referendum. And the reverse of that

first point. Elections are won and lost or whether people vote

aspirationally or whether they vote in a negative way. So the coalition

across the UK was effectively put together in a negative vote against

the then Labour Government. It wasn't a positive vote for the

Tories nor the Lib Dems. It was a negative vote which forced those

two parties together. The difficulty for the Unionist parties

in the better together campaign is that welfare cuts will be seen in a

really negative light in Scotland. The easy message for the 'Yes'

campaign, for Natalie and the like, will be that you can vote against

us -- those negative cuts by voting for independence. I don't think the

better together campaign have addressed that. Do you think, your

side of the argument should come up with proposals as well? After all,

if you won the referendum vote, that's amazing opportunity because

effectively you could have a new welfare system and start from

scratch. One of the things you have, is universal credit as proposed by

Iain Duncan Smith. You wouldn't want to create a system with all

the complexities that have grown up in the British system over tens and

indeed hundreds of years. You'd say right, we'll do it simply. That's

the beautiful opportunity of independence that you have a huge

array of systems across the world and the UK that you can learn from.

Independence is an opportunity to draw a welfare system which is

reflective of the values of Scottish society, which is fairer

and more inclusive. Obviously, Ben and credit to Ben, has been in

favour of deefyo plus consistently, but talking about devolving welfare,

that option is not on the table. You have a stark contrast between

whether or not to continue down the path or choose fairness and made a

model. The other side of this Ben Thomson, the Scottish Government's

analysis of research done on this shows that families in Scotland

will suffer less from Iain Duncan Smith reforms than anywhere else in

the UK. Again, I come back to the fact that some of the things that

Iain Duncan Smith has are very good. He is trying to simplify the system.

There are something like 39 classes of benefits and he's trying to lump

six of them together. He is trying to make it simple. We can learn

from that. It comes back to the central theme that... Hang on, we

need to leave that for another time. Thank you all very much indeed. And

we will be discussing the referendum again on Monday, in a

Newsnight Scotland special debate programme. An audience will be

representing Scotland's ethnic minorities communities will

question leading politicians on some of the issues raised bit