Scottish minister Stephen Flynn has pledged to “take and run with” any of the Prime Minister’s “good ideas” on public service reform.
Andy Burnham will head north on Friday to make a speech in North Lanarkshire, where he will urge the Scottish Government to work with Whitehall to push powers to local communities.
Open to working with UK counterparts
Speaking to the Press Association on the second day of his party’s conference in Aberdeen, Scottish Economy Secretary Stephen Flynn said his Government was open to working with their UK counterparts as it advances its wide-ranging reorganisation of the public sector.
“I am very keen to hear the Prime Minister’s ideas in relation to public sector reform,” Mr Flynn said.
“If he has some good ones, then we will certainly take them and run with them.”
Devolution and independence referendum
But Mr Flynn dropped his conciliatory tone quickly, saying there was a “shortcut to be had” to devolve more power to Scotland.
“Mr Burnham wants power pushed out of Westminster – so do we,” he said.
“But let’s make sure that power and that decision making is taken by the Scottish people and they have the opportunity to do so in an independence referendum.”
Since taking office in the summer, Andy Burnham has repeatedly ruled out holding an independence referendum, but appeared to soften his position on the issue, telling the House of Commons another vote could be held when the Scottish people desire.
While the Prime Minister was quick to walk back from his comments, the SNP latched onto them as proof the former Manchester mayor was shifting his position.
Mr Flynn pointed to the Prime Minister’s re-examining relations with the EU – with a summit due to take place in November – while rejecting calls for another independence referendum.
“That hypocrisy is there for all to see and I think the Scottish electorate will take a pretty dim view of it.”
Genuine offer to empower regions
Speaking on BBC Radio Scotland on Friday, Scottish Secretary Douglas Alexander said the Prime Minister was coming to Scotland to make a “substantive and genuine offer to the Scottish Government to empower regions across Scotland”.
“In Andy Burnham, we have a Prime Minister who’s not just an advocate of devolution, he’s actually been a practitioner of it as the Manchester mayor,” the minister said.
“So, in that sense, we recognise and respect the devolution settlement, and that’s why we’ve said let’s work together – Scottish local government, the Scottish Government, and the UK Government, to the betterment of Scotland’s regions.
“In that sense, it’s a genuine offer. We want to work with the Scottish Government.
“I made a speech in Cosla last year, calling out what I called the grinding centralisation that we’d seen during the period of devolution.
“I welcomed the fact that just a few weeks after that, John Swinney made a speech saying he wanted to put what are called regional economic partnerships on a statutory footing in Scotland.
“So I think if we work together, there is common ground that we can find, and actually move forward. We all know that there’s lots on which we disagree. Just because we disagree on some things doesn’t mean that we can’t find ways of working together on other things.”
