Gordon Brown: the Vow is not being delivered

Gordon Brown has warned that the Vow will not be delivered if David Cameron does not make urgent changes to the Scotland Bill within the next two weeks.

Brown believes David Cameron was “simply wrong” to claim the vow is being delivered in full and that the current offering from the UK Government represents an “explosive cocktail of measures that could blow the Union apart”.

Speaking in Glasgow, the former Prime Minister will warn that the Scottish Parliament needs new powers to mitigate welfare cuts and combat rising levels of child poverty.

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Brown has written to David Cameron, demanding he amends the Scotland bill to remove any suggestion the Scottish Parliament could be vetoed from topping up welfare.

He will say: “With these changes we propose, we can say the Smith Committee's recommendations on this are being met and the spirit of last September’s Vow is being upheld.

Brown will say: “Without the changes that give the Parliamentary welfare top-up powers to Scotland, we face a perfect storm - an explosive cocktail of measures that could blow the Union apart - the Conservative Government defying the Smith proposals on welfare, the very issue where their controversial imposition of cuts hits Scotland hard.

“The government should avoid what would be seen as a double betrayal - breaking their promises to the poor and breaking their promise to deliver the Smith recommendations in full on the very powers that are needed to counteract welfare cuts and the austerity they bring.

“The Prime Minister was simply wrong to claim in the Commons in September that Smith has been delivered “in full”.”

Brown is also expected to warn that English Votes for English Laws will stoke English nationalism and put the future of the UK at risk.

He will say: “The ball is now in the Conservative Government’s court. It is for them to agree to implement the Smith Commission in full, or end up being accused of failing to deliver the report's recommendations.

“But there can be no half-baked compromises on this and the wording of any changes will be scrutinised in the fine print to see whether Iain Duncan Smith and the DWP is still trying to ensure a blanket imposition of their welfare cuts across the whole country, irrespective of devolution.

“Before last year’s referendum, a package of powers for the Scottish Parliament was set out to ensure the right balance between the autonomy we desire and the sharing we need and to bring Scotland as near to a federal arrangement in the UK as you can be in a country where one nation is 85 per cent of the population.

“With the full powers Ian Murray, I and others propose, it is clear that the Scottish Parliament will have more powers than most states in federal regimes.”