As soon as we got one answer, we were left with a huge number of questions.
The prime minister’s attempt to grab the political initiative in the immediate aftermath of the Scottish referendum result left a coalition government pushing for constitutional change at breakneck speed, to allow England, Wales and Northern Ireland to catch up with the work already done in Scotland.
The BBC's deputy political editor James Lansdale put it perfectly in a blog posted on Friday morning. Living up to the vow would mean a widespread constitutional change, with the potential to revitalise Westminster, but to get bogged down in the English question would risk a massive breach of trust with Scottish voters that further undermines the credibility of the pledge.
Devolved tax powers to the nations could give English Conservatives that lower top rate of income tax they yearn for. In the pensions arena, different levels of pensions tax relief could create an uneven playing field of retirement incentives across these isles.
Illustration by Ben Jennings
Spare a thought for the scheme administrator, payroll manager or the person responsible for designing a communication campaign for companies that operate in all three countries, explaining tax rules to these different groups.
And perhaps we should speculate on what this could mean for George Osborne’s pension reforms, which are largely changes to the tax system.
Could a Scottish or Welsh parliament in future take a different view of the amount of tax-free cash a saver can take out of their pension pot? Or whether they should in fact be able to take the rest as cash, subject to their marginal tax rate?
At the extreme, devolution could further democratise the concept of pensions saving – perhaps that is too much of a stretch.
I would argue a hurried settlement is in no one’s interest. Uncertainty costs, as we know from the week prior to the Scotland vote, which saw $1bn in foreign capital taken out of UK equity funds.
A staged devolution – with Scotland leading the way according to the promises already made – is not a clean option, but beats railroading changes to our delicate, unwritten constitution.
Ian Smith is editor of Pensions Expert. You can follow him on Twitter @iankmsmith and the team @pensions_expert.
