Secretary of State visits East Ren Council

The Bill will bring about big changes which will make a real difference to the lives of people in East Renfrewshire, the Secretary of State for Scotland has said.

Mr Mundell also said Scotland will have one of the most powerful devolved parliaments in the world with the Bill set to become law early next year.

Mr Mundell added that individual local authorities like East Renfrewshire will be the winners if these new powers are used well.

As a consequence, he claimed the debate was now about how the Scottish Government would use these new powers and that they should set out their plans now so voters could make an informed choice before next year’s Holyrood elections.

Jim Fletcher, leader of East Ren Council said: “We had a good exchange of views with the Minister covering a range of topics. In particular we discussed the employment opportunities for East Renfrewshire residents stemming from the “Creating a Fairer Scotland” discussion paper and the infrastructure projects included in the new City Deal initiative.

“We also discussed the new powers coming to Scotland in the 2015 Scotland Bill and stressed that all political parties represented in ERC wanted to see many of the new powers going to Holyrood to be subsequently decentralised to Local Government.

“We also discussed the impact of Welfare Reform on local residents who are in receipt of benefits, highlighting the devasting impact on a number of residents who had suffered through being unfairly sanctioned by the DWP. Our discussions also included how best to manage the change brought about by the roll out of Universal Credit to Local Government.”