Scotland Bill

Let me make one last attempt at trying to help my noble friend as to why particularly the legal challenge means that it would be foolish and unsafe to try to draft an appropriate devolution mechanism now. As he may know, a central aspect of the challenges has been allegations of tax discrimination across borders. We do not know where it will come out and what the constraints may be, but since we might be doing something where borders would be relevant, we need to understand the legal ruling before we can construct a robust, devolved approach to this. It would be a ridiculous waste of our time and would make no sense to put up something if we thought that it would be immediately knocked down and that we would have to rewrite it in a year's time.