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The Calman commission (or the Commission on Scottish Devolution) published its long awaited final report yesterday (15th June 2009) into Scottish devolution.
The report puts forward a series of recommendations that includes the scraping of the Barnett formula and that some of the smaller taxes set by the Treasury in London e.g. Stamp Duty should be devolved to Scotland. However, the most significant proposal in the report is that Scotland should take charge of half the income tax raised in Scotland, which could make Scotland higher or lower taxed than the rest of the UK. Other recommendations include giving Scotland the power to control national speed limits, drink-driving laws and airgun legislation.
A steering group, made up of the three main unionist parties - Labour, Liberal Democrats and Conservatives - has now been set up to determine how to push these recommendations forward. Following the publication of the report all three parties said that a referendum in Scotland was now unlikely, but First Minister Alex Salmond said yesterday that he didn't think the changes tin the commission "amounted to much" and challenged the unionist parties to include the changes in a referendum vote on independence to see what the people want. It was originally thought that the SNP would initially welcome any constitutional recommendations made by the Calmann commission, but with the SNP 7% up on Labour since April 2009, according to a recent YouGov poll, the First Minister must be feeling confident that his party and government can still comfortably wait for the big prize.
The commission was set up in December 2007 by Labour, Liberal Democrats and Conservatives, in direct reaction to the SNP's `National Conversation', which was set up in the August of the same year. The remit of the commission was to look at how the devolution settlement in Scotland could be improved, but at the same time keeping the country firmly within the UK. The commission therefore excluded any discussion on independence and was consequently rejected by the Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP) government. Unlike the National Conversation though, the Calman commission was supported by a majority of Members of the Scottish Parliament (MSPs) in a vote in the Scottish Parliament and got the backing from the UK government.
It remains to be seen what the SNP will do next, but one thing for sure is that the Party needs to wrestle back the constitutional debate from the unionists and produce some reports of their own.
YouGov poll:
(Report compiled for Celtic News by Rhisiart Tal-e-bot)
J B Moffatt Director of Information Celtic League
17/06/09
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