Call for Scottish Secretary's job to be axed

It also said that savings could be made by reducing the number of ministerial salaries.

Among its recommendations is a suggestion that a Ministry of the Nations should be created to replace current Scotland, Welsh and Northern Ireland offices.

If this was taken up it would end more than 300 years of history since the first Scottish secretary, the Earl of Mar, was appointed in 1707, making it one of the oldest offices of state in the UK.

The report noted: "Merging together these departments would not involve a major re-organisation given the relatively small size of the three respective offices."

Yesterday, one of the committee members, Welsh Labour MP Paul Flynn, insisted that with most of the traditional powers taken away through devolution, positions such as the Scottish Secretary should go.

He said: "I think the days of the Welsh Secretary and the Scottish Secretary are numbered. The case is an unanswerable one. It follows from the increasing power of the Welsh Assembly and the Scottish Parliament."

Conservative committee chair-man Bernard Jenkin added: "The government has to cut its cloth. While we are not saying that the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish secretaries should definitely be merged into a Secretary of the Nations it needs to be considered as an option."

He also said the changes to the constitution had brought a possible need for a review.

"It has to be said that with the progress of devolution it was inevitable that these positions would come under scrutiny," he said. "It is also worth noting that under the old Stormont arrangements there was no Northern Irish secretary and it worked perfectly well."

The proposal was welcomed by the SNP, which called the Scotland Office a waste of money.

Western Isles SNP MP Angus MacNeil said: "The committee is right to say no money should be wasted on Whitehall when cuts are being made to frontline services. Ditching the useless Scotland Office is a good place to start. In 1999, the department's budget was 3.7 million - by 2010 this had soared to 8.7m."

In the general election the Liberal Democrats called for the abolition of the Scotland Office and supported the idea of a Secretary for the Nations.

However, a spokesman for the Cabinet Office, headed by Liberal Democrat Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, yesterday said: "The secretaries of state and ministers for Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales are prime ministerial appointments. They do an important job representing their countries' interests at UK government level and UK government interests in the devolved administrations. There are no plans to change this."

Changing role

BEFORE devolution the Scottish secretary had a wide-ranging brief, running most services in Scotland with a team of ministers.

But devolution saw responsibility in areas such as health, justice and education transferred to the Scottish Parliament.

Now the role of the Scottish Secretary, Michael Moore is to represent the UK government in Scotland and Scotland around the Cabinet table. He is also currently responsible for Scottish constitutional legislation, with the Scotland Bill now being debated by MPs.