There is no reluctance for Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) ministers to appear before the Scottish Parliament, despite 11 requests to go to Holyrood being refused, MPs have been told.
Employment minister Priti Patel gave members of Westminster’s Scottish Affairs Committee an “absolute assurance there is no reluctance” for senior figures from the UK Government department to attend in Edinburgh.
MSPs on Holyrood’s Welfare Reform Committee have previously expressed their “disappointment” after Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith and other ministers in his department turned down such requests.
Ms Patel told MPs: “We are making plans, I think after the parliament elections, to go and meet the committee.”
Pete Wishart, chair of the Scottish Affairs Committee, said letters from the Holyrood committee to the DWP and Mr Duncan Smith did seem to suggest “there was a general reluctance on the part of DWP ministers to attend meetings in the Scottish Parliament”.
The Conservative minister told him: “I can give an absolute assurance there is no reluctance, that’s point one. And every opportunity where I can engage and go, I will certainly seek to do so.”
The SNP MP pressed her again, saying: “I went through some of the correspondence, there has been 11 requests, all of them refused.
“I don’t know if you know that, 11 requests in the last few years to DWP ministers and there has been no attendance from DWP ministers at all.
“That’s what we’re dealing with and that’s why there is a real frustration among Scottish parliamentarians about the availability of UK ministers.
“This has to change, it has to particularly change with the Department for Work and Pensions.”
Ms Patel told him: “I hear you, I recognise the point you are making, but I would like to state to the committee that there is no reluctance in terms of engagement.”
She told the MPs she had piloted welfare reform legislation through the UK Parliament, saying as a result of this “obviously there have been pressures on my diary” .
Richard Cornish, the DWP devolution director, said some of the requests were made prior to devolution reforms which transfer some power over welfare and benefits to Holyrood.
He told MPs: “I think a number of the invitations pre-date Smith, and as the minister alluded to we’re into a different phase now of the relationship.”
Hugh Henry MSP, convener of the Scottish Parliament’s Welfare Reform Committee,said: “I welcome Priti Patel’s commitment to engage more positively with theScottish Parliament in the future, however the fact remains that UK ministershave declined to appear before the Welfare
Reform Committee on 11 occasions,since the committee was created in 2011.
“The committee has heard first-hand evidence from individuals and organisations on the frontline of welfare reform over the last five years.
“Iain Duncan Smith has, for whatever reason, chosen not to engage with us at all and, although we’ve had several informal meetings with ministers, it is unacceptable that MSPs have not had the opportunity to question UK ministers in public session.”