Can I make a general comment? It is really a word of caution about the intergovernmental relations industry. We know from experience around the world that, increasingly, in federal and devolved systems, powers are shared rather than clearly divided. You cannot have a watertight division of competences. We know that, and that there is a great deal of interdependency. However, in many countries, people feel that that has gone too far and that the division of powers is not sufficiently clear to allow Governments to make policies on their own within the constraints that are imposed by all kinds of economic and political factors. A great deal of policy making has disappeared into that intergovernmental world, which is non transparent and unaccountable. As a result, there has been a tendency to try to clarify competences a bit better.
We are in danger of going in the opposite direction. Following the Smith commission recommendations, the system is becoming too complicated, as there is an attempt to specify powers in far too much detail. Instead of just having reserved powers with everything else going to Scotland, we have exemptions to reserved powers and exceptions to exceptions to reservations. That is creating—or could create—a great deal of unnecessary difficulty.
The other point is that intergovernmental relations is essentially a political matter. We have to recognise that many things will not be taken into formal institutions but will be resolved politically. I suspect that that will become more the case as we get into multi-party politics at Westminster, which will include territorial parties from various parts of the United Kingdom. If we do not recognise that, we will set up an apparatus that will not work. There has already been a bit of that. We set up formal committees with a legal structure and they do not do anything because the real business is conducted elsewhere.
Finally, and related to that point, it is a great mistake to set up committees and institutions that do not have anything to do—that do not have a clear purpose of resolving specific problems. Talking shops do not survive. People stop coming to them.
I would restrict the concern about reforming intergovernmental relations to the areas where that really matters. I would cut down on the formal institutions, intergovernmental committees and various kinds of apparatus that are being talked about and restrict them to a few areas. I have identified three of those. One of them is Europe, where there is an intergovernmental apparatus. It is one of the few areas where there is a joint ministerial committee that really works because we have to make policy jointly in Europe as there is only one UK presence in Europe. It involves the devolved Governments but it is the single presence in the Council of Ministers.
The second area is finance. It is very important that we have some kind of machinery that at least produces a common data set for all the arguments that we are going to have about finance when the new powers come in. It will not come up with the answers, but it will provide a common factual basis upon which politicians can negotiate. As a result, it must be independent of the Treasury and the Scottish Government—indeed, of both Governments.
The third area is welfare, where we are going to get a lot of complications and interdependencies. Frankly, I think that the Smith proposals on welfare are too complex and messy, but however we organise welfare, new challenges, new definitions and new problems are coming up that might require a lot of intergovernmental working.
Beyond that, I would focus on trying to get the competences clear and establish what people do instead of putting too much emphasis on joint working that is beyond public knowledge, that is not transparent and which raises all kinds of accountability problems.