The Prime Minister appears to have lost control of his cabinet as they give contradictory signals on M562. The motion, written by /u/Tommy2Boys, asks the government to rule out devolving anything against the will of the Scottish parliament.
The Prime Minister motelbinds was quick to say he made it clear he would not devolve powers to the parliament with KalvinLokan backing him up,questioning if the motion was necessary.
However a few hours later the DEFRA minister spoke on the motion and contradicted the Prime Minister’s stance saying he would not support the motion. He argued that “The Scottish government does not represent the will of the Scottish people on this particular issue as much as a direct referendum in which they said they wanted their government to have control over welfare. We also have to consider the will of the Scottish people within this parliament. The fact is, the majority voted for Solidarity. And we promised that we would fight for welfare devolution. It would be disingenuous for us to go against that promise.” and told the House that he would not his approval to the motion which urges the government to not devolve welfare which he labelled a “violation”.
It is clear that the DEFRA Secretary has a different stance to that of the Prime Minister and it is still unclear as to how the government will whip the vote on the motion. This is another moment which dents the government’s credibility given a breach of CCR so early on. It will be interesting to see if the DEFRA Secretary resigns and the PM loses his first cabinet member of if they will be brought back in line.
*Press Persona
