LONDON — Scotland could gain a say over how people out of work are helped back into jobs, if John Swinney accepts an offer Andy Burnham made on Friday in Motherwell, on the ground where the Ravenscraig steelworks once stood.
The Prime Minister called it “an offer of DWP devolution”: a model of localised employment support, similar to England’s, shaped by Holyrood rather than Whitehall. The wider plan asks the Scottish Government to work with the UK Government through the Scotland Office and Number 10 North, his Manchester-based regional hub. Burnham spoke while Swinney’s Scottish National Party was holding its annual conference in Aberdeen, where the First Minister is due to give his keynote speech on Saturday.
Anadolu Agency reported that Swinney said beforehand he wanted to work constructively with the UK Government and favoured giving the Scottish Parliament as many powers as possible. He has been less warm before. When Burnham launched Number 10 North in July, Swinney told him “rhetoric alone will not cut it.” This time the Prime Minister arrived with a named power rather than a slogan.
In the speech transcript published on GOV.UK, Burnham said there is a risk that Scottish towns and cities “become underpowered” while northern England gains authority, and that devolved power “was never supposed to stop at the doors of the Scottish Parliament.” The offer sits alongside the call-in planning powers English mayors have been promised over large housing schemes, as TEH reported in August.
Some of the evidence was rough. Burnham said around one in 20 shops stands empty in Edinburgh and “more likely one in five” in Dundee, but the transcript credits no source for either figure and gives no date for the count.
The speech never mentions independence or the SNP. Anadolu said that when Burnham was asked whether regional devolution could affect support for Scottish independence, he urged both governments to focus on practical solutions rather than constitutional disputes, and called for an end to “tribal politics.” TEH reported in July on plans for a UK breakup in Scotland and Wales should Reform UK win Westminster.
The transcript attaches no price, funding source or start date to the DWP offer. The nearest timing concerns the wider plan: a new model of regional economic empowerment to be designed “in the immediate months ahead,” and a National Economic Council meeting with the first ministers of Scotland and Wales “in a couple of weeks.” No Scottish Government answer to the offer itself was available in any source reviewed for this article.
