The Scottish people must have their say on what additional devolved powers we choose from - not just to take or leave a package deal cut by big parties - Smith Commission on Additional Devolved Powers Submission

Thank You

First I’d like to thank you for giving the people of Scotland this opportunity to have a say on what additional devolved powers Scotland needs.

 

Need for additional devolved powers decisions not to be just a deal between party leaders
that the Scottish people can only take or leave

While I was a Yes campaigner, I recognise that the Scottish Social Attitudes Survey 2014 showed the majority of people in Scotland wanted additional devolution or “devo max” as an option in the vote, and always thought this should have been an option people could have voted for (1).

As Lord Ashcroft’s post referendum poll found 25% of No voters said they had voted No primarily because Scotland would get additional devolved powers, and assuming the vast majority of Yes voters will back additional powers too, a majority of Scottish voters of somewhere around 58% want more devolved powers (25% of the 55% who voted No would be 13.75% of all voters. The 45% of voters who voted Yes plus 13.75% would be 58.75%) (2).

While the various Scottish and British political parties, pro and anti-independence,  each have their own positions on what the additional powers should be, and clearly have to have input into the final decision, the Scottish people must also get a major part in making this decision.

It should not be reduced to just being given a Yes or No vote on  a package the parties agree among themselves to offer us. It should include the wider public getting to decide which options the whole country will choose from. Additional devolved powers are a more complicated issue than independence and cannot be reduced to a Yes or No without taking much of the say from the public.

Another Scottish Constitutional Convention? Elected this time?

One month is a very short period for such a consultation. I’d argue that the next stage should be a longer consultation period to a new Scottish Constitutional Convention elected by Single Transferrable Vote (STV) , allowing for candidates from smaller parties, and representatives of Scottish society who don’t represent any party, to be involved in drawing up the options (3) – (4).

STV allows voters rather than party officials to rank candidates in order of preference, and ensures that no one’s vote is “wasted” by going to a candidate who is not elected. It allows voters to vote positively for the candidate or party they support most, rather than just negatively to try to keep the large party they dislike most out of power (5).

While an elected constitutional convention would take longer to put proposals for additional devolved powers together, due to the time required to elect it, those options would be more likely to reflect the views of the whole population rather than just a deal cut between the leaders of the largest political parties.

While the Electoral Reform Society and the British Labour Party propose a UK Constitutional Convention this would risk become bogged down in disputes that can’t be resolved like English Votes for English Laws; as well as whether further devolution in England should happen at all, and, for those who want it, whether it should be to an English parliament or regional ones (6) – (8).

There is no reason why additional devolved or federated powers for Scotland should not be decided separately to ensure they are not delayed indefinitely.

 

How the Scottish people , rather than just political parties, can be given a real say on further devolved powers even if there isn’t another Scottish constitutional convention

Even if another Scottish Constitutional Convention is not formed though, the Scottish people’s views can still be taken into account. First through public consultations like this one. Second by looking at opinion poll results on what powers people in Scotland think should be devolved (though bodies accepted as neutral by all parties would have to be given a remit to conduct polls, as what results polls come up with depend on what questions are asked and how they’re phrased).

Finally by making the final referendum on the proposed additional powers a multi-question one with voters able to approve or reject each major additional power or group of them, rather than just a single Yes or No question to approve or reject all of them.

Opinion polls since the referendum already show majority support for devolution of welfare policy and budget to the Scottish parliament and government, as well as pensions, corporation tax and VAT (9).

These polls show that the public want far more powers devolved than the main two UK parties plan. Other polls during the referendum campaign showed that two-thirds of voters did not know what additional powers these parties were offering in the event of a No vote (10).

If the actual powers delivered are a disappointment to the majority of people in Scotland another independence referendum is likely within 5 to 6 years (or sooner if the UK leaves the EU).

Labour politicians have raised reasonable concerns about this leading to competitive reductions in corporation tax across the UK, reducing tax revenues. While such competition does already take place between countries, it is arguably unhelpful (11).

There is no reason, though, why the UK government could not continue to set the rates for these taxes, while the  majority of revenues from them went directly to the Scottish government, assuming the majority of domestic governmental powers were devolved to the Scottish government.

 

Each devolved power must include full control of the budget for that policy area – and devolving the politically sensitive income tax alone would be merely party political manoeuvring and unacceptable

All devolved powers must include power over the budget for that power, or else the power has been devolved in name but not in reality.

It also has to be emphasised that the plans for limited additional devolution amounting to little more than powers over income tax plus a “proportionate” cut in the devolved Scottish budget by the Labour and Conservative party leaderships are dubious and may well be motivated by an attempt to gain party political advantage over the SNP (12) - (14).

Income tax is the tax most reported on by the media, most noticed by the electorate and so most politically sensitive. As a result UK governments have for decades avoided any rise in the basic rate of income tax. A devolved budget cut plus income tax powers would seem to be a trap set for the Scottish government, forcing it either to raise the most unpopular of taxes or cut services.

(I’d add that I’m not an SNP member and have stood (and lost my deposit repeatedly) as an independent candidate in more than one election).

 

Why many No voters will have expected full federalism based on Brown’s statements.
Why full federalism is practical for Scotland in the UK.

Gordon Brown MP, the former UK Chancellor and Prime Minister, greatly influenced the result of the referendum and the establishment of your own commission. However his opinions should not over-ride the views of the majority of the people of Scotland any more than any other politician’s. The terms he used are also likely to have given most people the impression that he and the UK party leaders were offering considerably more devolution than he or those party leaders actually plan to.

During the referendum campaign Mr Brown claimed that a No vote would result in “as close to a federal state as you can be in a country where one nation is 85 per cent of the population” and “nothing less than a modern form of Scottish Home Rule” (15) – (16).

While ‘devo max’ has never been clearly defined and ‘Home Rule’ similarly has no universally accepted definition, it’s likely that most people would see these phrases as meaning the same as federalism - the devolution of almost all domestic policy – full control of the budget and policy making for domestic policy – i.e everything except foreign and defence policy. While the degree of devolution of powers in existing federal systems like the US, Germany and Switzerland varies, it is high in every case.

“As close to a federal state as you can be in a country where one nation has 85% of the population” would imply the maximum level of devolution as in Germany and Switzerland. While there are some grey areas on what is foreign policy and what is domestic policy (international trade policy etc) which would be matters for negotiation, the majority is easy to define.

Mr Brown has implied that as Scotland has less than 10% of the population of the UK this precludes full federalism as “majority rule” must be maintained.

Earlier this month he stated that “You see, in the United Kingdom, England is about 84% of the United Kingdom. Scotland’s 8%, Wales is 5%, Northern Ireland’s 3%. And you’ve got to find a fair distribution of power that recognises the majority rule but also recognises the minorities and that they have special needs that have to be met.” (17).

This concern with maintaining “majority rule” is doubtful for two reasons. First existing federal systems include states with massively different populations, of far greater orders of magnitude than the differences between Scotland and England.

In 2010 Perlis, the smallest state in Indonesia, has a population of under 250,000 people, while Selangor, the largest, has a population of over 5 million – a ratio of about 20 to 1 between the largest and smallest states, double the roughly 10 to 1 between England and Scotland (This does not include the smaller federal territories which are not states) (18).

Bremen, the smallest state in Germany has a population of around 660,000 compared to over 17 million for North-Rhine Westphalia, a ratio of 25 to 1  (19).

Eight states of the U.S had an estimated population of under 1 million in 2013 and another two populations of only just over 1 million, while California has a population of 38 million, a ratio of over 38 to 1 between smallest and largest (20).

In any case it is likely that if the UK became a federal state England would be split into several regions with populations of a similar size to Scotland’s, as Gordon Brown himself has suggested, making the relative populations of the different nations in the UK irrelevant, as the devolution would probably not be only on the basis of nations, but regions of England (21).

 

Why “majority rule” does not exist in the UK,
Would not be particularly democratic if it did,
And is not a barrier to full federalism

Second “majority rule” is a doubtful definition of democracy in the UK . First, due to the unrepresentative First-Past-The-Post voting system for UK General Elections, most UK governments have not had a majority of the votes cast. Most have had large majorities of seats in the UK parliament, sometimes even over 60% of the seats, while getting only 39 to 48 per cent of the vote (22) – (26).

The current Coalition government is the only one in the last 66 years which was elected by a majority of voters, but it has also failed to represent the majority of voters in many ways (e.g by Nick Clegg MP breaking his main election pledge on tuition fees and in letting private companies run more NHS services despite public opposition – and by e.g the fact that many Lib Dem voters would have preferred them to form a coalition with Labour, or leave the Conservatives to run a minority government by not forming any coalition).

So majority rule is the exception rather than the rule in UK politics. It is usually largest minority rule, but with that minority behaving as if it had a huge majority of the votes cast for every policy it implements, when in fact it has the support only of the largest minority, and on some policies, which were not brought up in the party’s election campaign or its manifesto, not even that.

Second defining democracy as “majority rule” would lead to many undemocratic implications. In Northern Ireland “majority rule” under “Home Rule” led at one point to the Protestant, Unionist majority being given free reign implement policies that disadvantaged the Catholic minority.

Third “majority rule” is a dubious definition of democracy. Is it democratic if a small majority completely over-rule the wishes of a large minority, or even if, as more often happens in UK politics, the largest minority completely over-ride the wishes of the majority?

Surely real democracy involves everyone having an equal say, not winners and losers?

Finally defining “majority rule” as the defining democratic principle of the UK would mean that on every important matter the opinions, wishes and interests of the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish minorities would remain irrelevant. On every issue the majority in England would over-rule them. Scotland has just 59 MPs out of 650 in the UK parliament. Frequently a majority of Scottish MPs will vote the opposite way to the majority of English MPs on an issue. As the Reverend Stuart Campbell has shown on his ‘Wings Over Scotland’ blog, MPs elected in Scotland have only changed the results of UK elections four times since 1945, and in each case only marginally (27).

The House of Commons Library blog has largely confirmed Campbell’s analysis, finding that the overall result of all but four of the 18 UK General elections since 1945 would have been the same with or without MPs elected in Scotland (28).

 

Need for the power to regulate banks and other financial firms in Scotland

Scotland desperately needs the powers to regulate banks, hedge firms and other financial sector firms operating here in order to avoid another financial crisis and recession. We also need to stop banks foreclosing mortgages on the homes of taxpayers who bailed them out, and letting viable businesses collapse through refusal to even provide bridging loans.

If the British government was willing to effectively regulate the financial sector this would not be a problem, but UK governments of all parties have failed to even institute any law banning high street savings banks from also being involved in dubious “investment” banking (often effectively high risk bets like the trading in futures). Even the US had such a law, the Glass Steagall Act, gradually repealed in the 1980s and 1990s, with disastrous results more recently (29).

The Conservative party gets more than half its funding from banks and hedge funds. Predictably Chancellor George Osborne has not instituted a full legal separation on the types of banking, instead referring to ‘Chinese walls’,  ‘firewalls’ and ‘ring fences’ between the two arms of the same bank, which amount to the lack of a legal ban that would prevent another crisis (30) – (32).

 

Need for power to establish a nationalised national bank for Scotland
and local ones for local authorities

For similar reasons Scotland needs the power to set up a nationalised bank to provide secure savings for savers and low interest loans and grants to small and medium sized businesses, as well as the power for local councils to set up local government banks similar to the regional and local ones in Germany. The UK Labour party has said that it intends to establish something similar, but is not guaranteed to get a majority in the UK parliament for this after the next election.

 

Going beyond devolution to the Scottish parliament – the principle of subsidiarity

Some have pointed to the sizeable minority vote for the Conservatives in the 2010 General election (16% of the vote) and the election of a UKIP MEP in Scotland in the last European Parliament elections as signs that unionism and conservatism are stronger in Scotland than has been assumed.

This may be true, but they remain a minority. The Eurosceptics and pro-Europeans share one principle though – the idea of subsidiarity, that decisions should be taken at the lowest level possible for that kind of decision (33).

This would imply that if they wish to have more decisions taken by the UK government rather than the EU, they would have to approve the maximum devolution of powers from the UK government to the Scottish government, from it to local councils, and from local councils to community councils, too, based on the same principle (34).

If they want to do the first but none of the rest then they are clearly basing their decision not on democracy or subsidiarity, but blind nationalism, merely blind British nationalism rather than blind Scottish nationalism – and that is not a principle worth upholding, it’s not a principle at all.

The SNP’s tendency to want to centralise all the powers devolved to Scotland in the Scottish parliament equally needs to be challenged by the principle of subsidiarity, with both more powers transferred from the UK parliament to the Scottish parliament, from it to local councils and from them to community councils. This should include budgets and revenue raising powers.

 

Power to decide electoral system for the Scottish parliament – need to avoid changes made purely to maintain position of dominant parties

While the principle of devolving the power to decide the electoral system for the Scottish parliament to the Scottish parliament is a good one, care has to be taken that it does not give the two largest parties in Scotland – Labour and the SNP – the power to change it to a purely First-Past-The-Post system that would benefit them but be as poor in terms of democracy as the Westminster voting system. Several Labour MSPs have suggested in the past that the Holyrood voting system be changed to the supposedly “fairer” FPTP and referred to SNP list MSPs as having been “defeated” and as “sneaking into the Scottish parliament through the back door”. There has to be some suspicion that the Labour party proposals to devolve this power might be about party political advantage.

While the SNP has not made similar suggestions on changing the voting system to FPTP for Scottish parliament elections so far, it’s possible that, if they win most seats in Scotland in the 2015 General Election under FPTP, as polls suggest they could, they might be tempted to do so.

The current voting system , designed by Labour to prevent the SNP ever getting a majority, failed to do so. So it will not prevent Labour or the SNP from pushing through changes to the voting system made purely for party political advantage either.

One way to reduce this risk would to require a 66% majority in the Scottish parliament, followed by a referendum, to make any change in the voting system. The referendum could be held on the same day as the subsequent Scottish parliament elections to avoid voter fatigue or low turnout, and to reduce costs. Any resulting change in the voting system would not be made until the Scottish parliament elections after those.

On the other hand some senior Scottish Labour and Lib Dem figures have in the past suggested changing the voting system to Single Transferrable Vote, which could be a step forward from the current Additional Member System, so a balance has to be struck between making electoral reform possible, and blocking backwards steps taken for party political advantage (35) – (36).

However when the Single Transferable Vote was used for council elections in Scotland in 2012 and Labour lost seats to the SNP, some Labour MSPs, and the largely pro-Labour Daily Record, began to criticise the voting system as “too complicated” and claiming that the “over complicated” voting system had resulted in a reduced voter turnout, despite the turnout actually having been higher than in the previous council elections, and higher than in the 2012 council elections in England (37) – (38).

 This underlines the risk of big parties given the power to change the electoral system using it to change it to their advantage even if this reduces choice for voters.

 

Need for written constitution and constitutional court to define the division of powers between the Scottish and British governments – but section relating to Scotland does not need to wait on other nations and/or regions

Almost every federal system in the world has a written constitution defining what powers are held by the different levels of government, and a constitutional court to adjudicate disputed and grey areas.

This would be beneficial for a Scotland with devolved federal powers, but the complications and earlier stages of devolution to the rest of the UK do not need to delay Scotland getting additional powers.

The section of a written constitution relating to Scotland could be written separately and before those relating to other nations and/or regions of the UK.

Federalism rather than Devolution?

Devolution in the UK has involved asymmetric division of powers in which some policy areas are Reserved, with only the UK government able to legislate or make decisions on them, while others are Devolved to the Scottish, Welsh, Northern Irish and London parliaments or Assemblies. The UK government however retains the power to legislate or make decisions even on devolved matters, with the limit that it only do so with the consent of the devolved parliaments being a “convention” rather than an absolute restriction. So far the UK government has not broken this convention, but most people in the devolved areas do not realise that it retains the power to do so (39).

In a Federal system the central government would not retain this power, with the division between regional/national and central government powers being absolute and symmetrical (i.e neither could encroach into the other’s specified policy area), other than for a few grey areas of joint responsibility.

I would argue that Scotland’s devolved powers should become policy areas in which the UK government cannot act or legislate without a majority vote in the Scottish parliament permitting them to do so on a specific issue, and similarly for devolved or federally divided powers in other regional/national parliaments and assemblies.

 

Sources

(1) = Scotsman 18 Feb 2014 ‘Scottish independence: Most Scots back ‘devo max’’, http://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/top-stories/scottish-independence-most-scots-back-devo-max-1-3310342

(2) = theguardian.com 20 Sep 2014 ‘Scottish independence: poll reveals who voted, how and why’, http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/sep/20/scottish-independence-lord-ashcroft-poll?CMP=fb_gu

(3) = Wikipedia - Constitutional convention (political meeting) , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitutional_convention_%28political_meeting%29

(4) = Wikipedia – Single Transferable Vote, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_transferable_vote

(5) = Electoral Reform Society – Single Transferable Vote,
http://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/single-transferable-vote/

(6) = Electoral Reform Society Briefing 19 Sep 2014 ‘Time for a Constitutional Convention’, http://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/images/dynamicImages/file/Briefing%20on%20a%20Constitutional%20Convention,%2019th%20Sep.pdf

(7) = Guardian 19/20 Sep (website/print edition)  ‘Labour proposes devolution settlement to 'shape own futures'’, http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/sep/19/labour-ed-miliband-constitutional-convention

(8) = BBC 14 Oct 2014 ‘Hague and Brown clash over 'English votes for English laws'’, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-29606220

(9) = STV 21 Sep 2014 ‘SNP on course to win third Holyrood term, according to new poll’, http://news.stv.tv/scotland/292917-snp-on-course-to-win-third-consecutive-holyrood-term-says-new-poll/ , (see 2nd last paragraph ‘A total of 80% of people questioned supported Scotland having control over welfare, with 62% saying it should be in charge of pensions. Almost three quarters (71%) of people back the devolution of income tax while 62% want to see Scotland get control of corporation tax and 61% say Holyrood should be in charge of VAT.’)

(10) = Sky News 17 Sep 2014 ‘Sky Poll: Scots Unclear Over No Vote Powers’,
http://news.sky.com/story/1337107/sky-poll-scots-unclear-over-no-vote-powers

(11) = Scottish Labour Devolution Commission March 2014 ,  all of it, but especially page 6, http://b.3cdn.net/scotlab/26e0eb4bdf4c775d14_ram6b81bk.pdf

(12) = See (11) above

(13) = Scottish Labour’s Devolution Commission Final Report March 2014 ‘Powers for a Purpose :

Strengthening Accountability and Empowering People’, http://b.3cdn.net/scotlab/277fe5eb9b114b9a3c_1pm6iir9r.pdf

(14) = BBC News 9 Sep 2014 ‘Scottish independence: What new powers might Scotland get?’, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-25626977

(15) = Scotsman 15 Aug 2014 ‘Gordon Brown backs federalism in event of No vote’,
http://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/top-stories/gordon-brown-backs-federalism-in-event-of-no-vote-1-3511291

(16) = Telegraph 08 Sep 2014 ‘Gordon Brown unveils cross-party deal on Scottish powers’,
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/scottish-independence/11082930/Gordon-Brown-unveils-cross-party-deal-on-Scottish-powers.html

(17) = Guardian 12 / 13 October ‘David Cameron ‘playing fast and loose’ with constitution, says Gordon Brown’, http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/oct/12/david-cameron-fast-and-loose-constitution-gordon-brown

(18) = Wikipedia - States and federal territories of Malaysia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/States_and_federal_territories_of_Malaysia#The_states_and_federal_territories , (Wikipedia states source as "Laporan Kiraan Permulaan 2010". Jabatan Perangkaan Malaysia. p. iv. Retrieved 24 January 2011.)

(19) = Wikipedia - States of Germany,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/States_of_Germany#States

(20) = Wikipedia - List of U.S. states and territories by population
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_population#States_and_territories , based on US Census Bureau reports and statistics,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_population#References

(21) = Scotsman 15 Aug 2014 ‘Gordon Brown backs federalism in event of No vote’,
http://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/top-stories/gordon-brown-backs-federalism-in-event-of-no-vote-1-3511291

(22) = Electoral Reform Society – First Past the Post, http://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/first-past-the-post/

(23) = Political Science Resources – ‘British Governments and Elections since 1945’, http://www.politicsresources.net/area/uk/uktable.htm

(24) = House of Commons Briefing Paper SN/SG/2632 (2010) ‘General Election results 1979 - 2010’, http://www. parliament.uk/briefing-papers/SN02632.pdf

(25) = David Butler (1989) ‘British General Elections since 1945’ Blackwell, Institute of Contemporary British History, London, 1989 ; Appendix I Election Results 1945 – 1987, pages 121 to 123

(26) = David Butler and Dennis Kavanagh ‘The British General Election of 1997’ MacMillan Press, London , 1997,  Appendix I The Voting Statistics, pages 254 to 255 (includes 1992 and 1997 election results)

(27) = Wings Over Scotland 10 Jan 2012 ‘Why Labour doesn’t need Scotland’ by Rev Stuart Campbell,
http://wingsoverscotland.com/why-labour-doesnt-need-scotland/

(28) = Second Reading - House Of Commons Library Blog 19 Jan 2014 ‘General Elections without Scotland, Part 1: 1945-2010’, http://commonslibraryblog.com/2014/01/30/general-elections-without-scotland-part-1-1945-2010/

(29) = Wikipedia – Glass Steagall Legislation, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass%E2%80%93Steagall_Legislation

(30) = Bureau of Investigative Journalism 08 Feb 2011 ‘Tory Party funding from City doubles under Cameron’, http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/2011/02/08/city-financing-of-the-conservative-party-doubles-under-cameron/

(31) = BBC 15 Jun 2011 ‘Banks must ring-fence retail operations, Osborne to say’, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-13770746

(32) = Telegraph 21 Nov 2012 ‘Big banks are good for society, says George Osborne’, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfinance/9694634/Big-banks-are-good-for-society-says-George-Osborne.html

(33) = Wikipedia – Subsidiarity, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsidiarity

(34) = The Scottish Government – Community Councils, http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Government/PublicServiceReform/CommunityCouncils

(35) = BBC News 27 Aug 2003 ‘Voting system change mooted’, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/3183401.stm

(36) = Electoral Reform Society – Additional Member System, http://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/additional-member-system/

(37) = Daily Record 05 May 2012 ‘Local council elections 2012: Fears over turnout as numbers system puts off voters’, http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/politics/local-council-elections-2012-fears-877195

(38) = Dr Alastair Clark, LSE Blog, 2012 ‘Scottish local elections in 2012 show that voters have understood the STV system and are not put-off by it’, http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/stv-scottish-local-elections-2012-clark/

(39) = The Scottish Parliament - Devolved and Reserved Matters, http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/visitandlearn/Education/18642.aspx

Salmond and Unionist politicians both talk as though theirs is the risk free option that will eliminate uncertainty about the future for Scots. Risks and uncertainty can only be reduced by recognising we can’t know for certain what the outcome of any choice will be and making plans for various possible outcomes

The SNP leadership and unionist politicians both talk as though if we just adopt the option they favour, Scots will face no uncertainties about the future and no risks. Salmond and Osborne are both stubbornly sticking with their own plan, with no plans on what to do if it doesn’t lead to the results they expect.

After the financial crisis, the Iraq war and the floods, continuing with no plans for different possible outcomes and just sticking to old assumptions will not do fine.

Eliminating risk and uncertainty is impossible, but by having plans prepared for various possibilities we can reduce both.

Scotland and the pound – Or the Euro?
Or its own currency?
Or staying in the UK? Every option brings risks

It’s true that the UK government couldn’t stop an independent Scotland using the pound, but that’s only half the truth. An independent Scotland would inherit its share of the UK’s assets and liabilities. That means it would inherit a share of the UK’s national debt – i.e an independent Scotland would be in debt. True, it would be at most no higher a debt as a percentage of GDP than the UK has.

However the UK has its own currency. If an independent, indebted Scotland didn’t have its own currency it would risk being in the same position as Ireland and Greece were after the financial crisis – forced to beg other governments or the IMF to provide them with pounds.  We might face the same harsh terms imposed on Ireland and Greece. If it joined the Euro it might have exactly the same problem.

Scotland could issue its own currency, but if it issued its own currency immediately on independence it would increase the risk of being targeted by currency speculators. There are other options though.

First, keeping using the pound for a few years after independence, before issuing our own currency. We could issue our own currency once the recession caused by the financial crisis has ended, and after uncertainty among businesses and investors over how independence would affect them has become less intense.

Ireland kept using the British pound for many years after independence before issuing its own Irish pound.

Of course lacking our own currency for several years while in debt would restrict what the Scottish government could do until it issued its own currency.

Another option would be to issue our own currency (e.g Scottish Pound) pegged in value to equal to the British pound. We could ban international currency trading of it and large transfers of it outside the country for the first 5 years.

During the Asian financial crisis in the late 90s the IMF advised Asian countries to keep their currency markets open, continue deregulated markets etcetera. The result was disaster for most of them.

Malaysia managed to make the crisis much less bad for it by pegging its currency to the dollar, banning all international currency trading of it and imposing limits on the amount of currency Malaysians could take abroad to stop the run on its currency which was fuelled by speculators.

As with the US and European financial crises the cause was deregulation empowering fraud and speculation.

Some might ask, so why not stick with the pound and stay in the UK to avoid these risks? The pound is no guarantee for economic stability for Scotland or even England though. We had the pound and were in the union and suffered the banking crisis and the recession since it.

In the 1980s an economic boom in the city of London financial sector led the UK government to increase interest rates to double figures during a recession in Scotland and the North of England, whose economies were devastated as a result.

With a government led by a party which gets more than half its donations from banks and hedge funds, UK economic policy continues to be made for the benefit of the banks and hedge funds, not the whole country. So the status quo carries its own risks. Another crisis as bad as the banking crisis could happen at any time.

Independence would provide a chance of regulating Scotland’s financial sector properly, which would be an example UK governments would find it difficult to ignore.

A country’s size doesn’t make it safer from economic crises
Regulation and having its own currency do
So staying in theUK doesn’t guarantee our economic future

Unionists politicians often claim Scotland couldn’t have survived the financial crisis as an independent country, pointing to Iceland, Greece and Ireland as supposed evidence that small countries can’t make it.

This is confusing the causes of the crisis, which was nothing to do with the size of the countries and everything to do with deregulation and in Greece and Ireland’s cases with not having their own currencies.

Norway, which has a population of 5 million – similar to Ireland’s and less than Scotland’s – regulated its banks properly and has its own currency. As a result it didn’t suffer the financial crisis suffered by the UK with over 10 times its population or the US with over 40 times its population, nor did it suffer any recession as a result.

Safe and secure with small government, welfare cuts,
personal debt crises and deregulation?

Welfare cuts and public sector job cuts by successive UK governments of both parties have eroded the welfare state on the false assumption that the market, left to its own devices, will provide employment to all who want it.

The  Conservatives in the Coalition government have gone far further than Labour did with this, but most of the “reforms” being carried out under the Conservatives were already being planned under Brown and Blair, even if they might not have taken them to the same extremes.

As a result the number of people reliant on food banks has increased by a factor of 10 in the first 3 years of the Coalition government, many genuinely disabled people are denied enough money to survive. Is that certainty, security and lack of risk?

Neither unionist parties nor the SNP have put forward any plan to deal with the personal debt crisis facing millions of people in the Scotland and the UK, which could also lead to an economic crisis affecting even those who are not in debt as millions go bankrupt and default on their debts.

Neither have either side put forward any serious plan to reverse the growing inequality which, if it’s not changed, will make any economic growth irrelevant as only a tiny minority will benefit from it.

So the unionist claims that staying part of the UK automatically makes Scotland (or any of the rest of the UK’s population) safe and secure is ridiculous.

To even significantly reduce the risks and uncertainties most people live with we need several things. Proper regulation of the financial sector. An end to allowing banks and hedge funds to buy political influence through donations to political parties. Enforcement of anti-monopoly and oligopoly laws. A guaranteed comprehensive welfare state.

The floods in England again show how the minimal government neo-liberal theory backfires. Man-made climate change, cuts to the Environment Agency’s budget and relaxing of planning processes (especially on building on flood plains) led to disaster for thousands - and a government left impotent by its own small government agenda.

Acknowledging Uncertainty,
Planning for various possibilities

Yes and No campaigns, unionists and nationalists, alike, need to start acknowledging that they can’t be certain what the results of the choices they advocate would be - and providing a set of various plans to deal with each major possibility.

Politicians are frequently successful by telling people what they want to hear – and we all often convince ourselves that what we want to believe is the truth. But that often backfires with severe consequences for everyone. Better to face up to the facts, including the fact that there are many questions which we can’t be 100% certain of the answers to – and that it’s better to have planned various options to deal with various possible outcomes.

The price of NATO membership for an independent Scotland would be being involved in unwinnable wars like Afghanistan ; and continuing to pay for Trident nuclear weapons and upgrades which we wouldn't need any more than Norway does ‏‏

First Minister Alex Salmond, writing in the Sunday Herald (‘Why we can ban nuclear weapons and stay in Nato’ Sunday Herald 14^th October) gives welcome assurances that an independent Scotland in NATO wouldn’t take military action without UN authorisation and a Scottish parliament vote, mentioning Iraq (1). He doesn’t mention NATO’s UN backed war in Afghanistan though. NATO membership could draw an independent Scotland into similar unwinnable wars, fought for dubious motives and with dubious methods, in future.

Nor does he explain how we could persuade the UK government, let alone the US, the most influential member of NATO, to allow us full membership while costing the UK a fortune to move it’s submarine bases, especially when Trident contracts are going to English and US based firms with (excessively) close links to the British and American governments.

Even UK Ministry of Defence base maintenance and submarine refit contract work on Trident submarines has gone to a British subsidiary of the US Defence firm Lockheed Martin, the English based company Babcock and AWE plc (based in Reading, England and two-thirds owned by US based Lockheed Martin and Jacobs Engineering, with the rest owned by the UK government and English based firm Serco (2) – (3).  The first £350 million of Trident upgrade contracts went to Lockheed Martin, English based Rolls-Royce and English based firm BAE, which also has a large arm in the US (4).  BAE is expected to get most of the rest of the upgrade contracts too (5).

The Campaign Against the Arms Trade in the UK has also shown dozens of instances of the revolving door between these arms manufacturers and the MoD, the British government and senior positions in the British military (6).

According to the MoD building another base suitable for the UK’s nuclear submarine fleet in England, Wales or Northern Ireland could take up to a decade (7).

So why would the remaining UK government support NATO membership for an Independent Scotland except on the condition that we allowed it to keep its nuclear submarine fleet and it’s only base capable of repairing, maintaining and refitting that fleet in Scotland?

A nuclear free independent Scotland might even result in the UK dropping it’s Trident upgrade altogether and going for a joint nuclear deterrent, or at the least temporary base sharing, with France, preliminary negotiations on which took place both under the last Labour government and under the current Conservative-Lib Dem Coalition (though the French government seems keener than the British) (8) – (9).

That would mean the UK’s military co-operation with France would become closer, reducing US influence with the UK. US firms would be likely to lose out even if this didn’t happen. Either way the US government would not be happy.

So a nuclear free Independent Scotland and NATO membership are simply not compatible with each other. We need to choose one or the other ; and if we want to avoid paying for maintenance , running costs and upgrades of the UK nuclear deterrent, we need to choose being nuclear weapons free.

Why NATO or Partnership for Peace membership could draw an Independent Scotland into more wars like Afghanistan
– and why the war is as ineffective in achieving it’s stated aims as it is morally dubious and unwinnable

Nor does the First Minister offer any guarantee of a referendum on any decision to go to war that would give the Scottish people the final decision on an issue of many lives and deaths ; nor any guarantee that backbenchers or the opposition in an independent Scottish parliament could  initiate a vote (or a vote to have a referendum) on withdrawing our troops from a war they had previously voted to approve sending troops to.

The Afghanistan war has pulled in the UK as a NATO member; and even those members of NATO (e.g Canada and Poland and even Norway which sent special forces to the initial US led invasion and then over 500 troops to the ISAF force which are only now leaving) and its joint-training associated arm Partnership for Peace (e.g Ukraine), ended up sending significant numbers of troops either to the initial invasion or as part of the UN approved but NATO (and effectively US) led ISAF force, or both.

Hundreds of British troops, including Scots, have been killed in the war, which has lasted over 11 years and counting, twice as long as World War One, coming up twice as long as World War Two; and over half way to being as long as the Vietnam war (10).

It has also involved not only the notorious killings and suicide bombing attacks on civilians by the Taliban, but also torture of Afghans by US, NATO and Afghan government forces, including civilians with no involvement in terrorism, sometimes to death; and many thousands of civilians killed by air strikes under Bush, as well as by air strikes and night raids (often targeting teenagers who turn out to be innocent) under Obama. Civilian deaths from US air strikes actually increased under Obama compared to under Bush and torture has continued at secret ‘black sites’ in Afghanistan under Obama (11) – (19).  

US intelligence estimate 90% of Afghan insurgents are neither Taliban nor motivated by religion, but by opposing foreign military presence, or revenge for the injury or deaths of members of their family, village or tribe by NATO forces (20). So this is not primarily a war against the Taliban at all, but one which turns the majority of Afghans against NATO countries and the Afghan government.

NATO says Pakistan’s military intelligence continue aiding the Afghan Taliban , despite now being at war with the Pakistani Taliban (21). Yet the US continues to provide financial aid to Pakistan, some of which will be passed on to the Taliban, because the shortest supply route for NATO forces in Afghanistan is through Pakistan (22) – (24). So NATO has to indirectly fund the Taliban in order to supply it’s troops in Afghanistan – a hopeless situation.

Wars are not effective against Al Qa’ida, a global terrorist organisation which can operate in any country in the world, the 9-11 hijackers having trained in the US and Germany (25) – (27). Intelligence, policing and Special Forces can be.

There are also ulterior motives for the war. The main ulterior motive was to try and get a Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan pipeline to export oil and gas from former Soviet republics like Kazakhstan (which has vast oil and gas reserves and where BP, Exxon, Halliburton have had contracts since the 1990s) , Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan (both have significant proven gas reserves). The advantage of this pipeline route would be that it would avoid passing through countries where Russia has significant influence and might be able to cut off exports at will (e.g Georgia – which is on the route of the western oil company AIOC group’s Baku-Ceyhan pipeline route – especially after the Russian-Georgian War in which Russia allowed a secessionist movement to succeed) and Iran. The pipeline route was the reason the US gave political backing to the Taliban at first and quietly approved the Saudis and Pakistanis funding, training and arming them. They couldn't get a deal between UNOCAL and the Taliban at a transit price per barrel that oil firms were willing to pay. (28) – (32)

After the invasionin 2002 the Presidents of Turkmenistan, Pakistan and Afghanistan signed a deal on the pipeline route and in 2010 a deal was made planning to extend it to India (33) – (34)

Salmond’s smooth moves to convince Scottish voters that Independence wouldn’t be a big change ignore the  high costs and risk of much of the Status Quo, including NATO membership

Would backbenchers in the Scottish parliament have the power to initiate a vote on withdrawing troops from wars parliament had previously approved by majority vote? Shouldn’t a referendum also be required before going to war to give everyone a say in a matter of life or death for thousands.

Alec Salmond is certainly making smooth moves by trying to make voters see independence as less of a big risk, by reassuring them that lots of things will remain unchanged – NATO membership, EU membership, our currency, the Queen as head of state, an open border with England etc.

However the status quo carries its own risks. In the case of continued NATO membership the risks are not only that we might be required to keep nuclear weapons on Scottish territory and continue to pay a proportion of the costs of running, maintaining, refitting and upgrading them as a condition of continued membership (despite the fact an independent Scotland would have no more need for a nuclear deterrent than Norway does), but also that we could be drawn by the alliance into more long, bloody, unwinnable wars fought mostly for the benefit of US and British oil and arms companies.

Sign the No to NATO Scotland statement and follow the campaign

You can sign an online statement opposing NATO membership for an independent Scotland on the No to NATO Scotland Coalition website on this link (scroll down the page till you see an orange button with 'Sign the Statement' on it on the right - click it, fill in details and enter them). There's also news and information, including on protests by the campaign that you can take part in, on the website.

Sources

 (1) = Sunday Herald 14^th October 2012 ‘Why we can ban nuclear weapons and stay in Nato’,
http://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/referendum-news/why-we-can-ban-nuclear-weapons-and-stay-in-nato.19134185

(2) = Ministry of Defence 27 Jul 2012 ‘MOD signs Trident support contract’,
http://www.mod.uk/DefenceInternet/DefenceNews/DefencePolicyAndBusiness/ModSignsTridentSupportContract.htm

(3) = guardian.co.uk Trident 30 Jul 2012 ‘bases to be run by private companies’,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/jul/30/trident-bases-run-private-companies

(4) = BBC News 22 May 2012 ‘Trident contracts worth £350m unveiled by MoD’,
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-18155835

(5) = CAAT Revolving Door Log, http://www.caat.org.uk/issues/influence/revolving-door.php

(6) = Independent 22 May 2012 ‘Government awards contracts worth £350m for new Trident submarines’, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/government-awards-contracts-worth-350m-for-new-trident-submarines-7778161.html

(7) = Telegraph 26 Jan 2012 ‘Nuclear subs will stay in Scotland, Royal Navy chiefs decide’,
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/defence/9043092/Nuclear-subs-will-stay-in-Scotland-Royal-Navy-chiefs-decide.html

(8) = guardian.co.uk 19 Mar 2010 ‘France offers to join forces with UK's nuclear submarine fleet’ , http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/mar/19/france-britain-shared-nuclear-deterrent

(9) = Independent 30 Sep 2010 ‘Britain and France may share nuclear deterrent’,
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/britain-and-france-may-share-nuclear-deterrent-2093539.html

(10) = BBC News 24 Sep 2012 ‘UK military deaths in Afghanistan’, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-10629358 , (433 as of 24^th September, around 24 Scottish)

(11) Human Rights Watch World Report 2006 ‘Torture and Inhumane Treatment: A Deliberate U.S. Policy’, http://www.hrw.org/legacy/wr2k6/introduction/2.htm#_Toc121910421 ; ‘the abuse at Abu Ghraib paralleled similar if not worse abuse in Afghanistan, Guantánamo, elsewhere in Iraq, and in the chain of secret detention facilities where the U.S. government holds its “high value” detainees’

(12) = Human Rights Watch 20 May 2005 - ‘Afghanistan: Killing and Torture by U.S. Predate Abu Ghraib ' - http://hrw.org/english/docs/2005/05/20/afghan10992.htm

(13) = NYT 20 May 2005 ‘In U.S. Report, Brutal Details of 2 Afghan Inmates' Deaths’,
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/20/international/asia/20abuse.html?ei=5088&en=4579c146cb14cfd6&ex=1274241600&pagewanted=all

(14) =  Wikipedia Civilian casualties in the War in Afghanistan (2001–present) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_casualties_in_the_War_in_Afghanistan_%282001%E2%80%93present%29#Aggregation_of_estimates (This provides estimates of civilian casualties caused by the various forces involved by various sources including Professor Marc Herold of the University of New Hampshire , the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan  (UNAMA) , Human Rights Watch and The Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission – whichever estimates you take, thousands have been killed by NATO forces before counting the thousands also killed by Taliban and other insurgents. The reports by the sources are also listed and linked to)

(15) = according to The Afghanistan Conflict Monitor of Simon Fraser University in Australia in 2011: “Estimates of the number of civilians killed vary widely and must be treated with caution. Systematic collection of civilian fatality data only began in 2007. The United Nations is creating a civilian casualty database, but is not publicly accessible. Periodic updates can be found in Reports of the Secretary-General on peace and security in Afghanistan. The Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) is also collecting data, but the efforts of both agencies are hampered by insecurity and a lack of resources. As a result, figures released by these agencies likely represent a substantial undercount.”

(16) = See this blog post , scrolling down to sub-headings ‘‘Civilian and military deaths caused by both sides in the war – is it necessary or worth it?’ and ‘Night Raids and the El Salvador Option moving from Iraq to Afghanistan’ – as well as the sources listed for each section under the same headings further down the post (they include Human Rights Watch and Afghan Independent Human Rights Watch reports as well as BBC and Times newspaper reports among others ) http://inplaceoffear.blogspot.co.uk/2010/03/one-more-push-for-what-in-afghanistan.html

(17) = See this blog post ‘Have NATO airstrikes killed fewer civilians in Afghanistan under Obama? And have they fallen under McChrystal?’ which is fully sourced with mainstream sources ; http://inplaceoffear.blogspot.co.uk/2009/11/have-nato-airstrikes-killed-less.html

(18) = For more details and sources on torture by US forces in Afghanistan under Bush see the page on this link  ; for torture under both Bush and Obama in Afghanistan see the blog post on this link, scrolling down to the bolded sub-heading ‘Guantanamo to Bagram : extra-ordinary rendition  (kidnapping) and torture’

(19) = Jennifer K Harbury (2005) ‘Truth, Torture and the American Way’, Beacon Press, Boston, 2005 ; Harbury, whose Guatemalan husband Everardo was tortured and then disappeared during CIA led operations by the Guatemalan military, provides masses of evidence that torture by US intelligence and military forces has always happened, even when it was illegal under US law, casting doubt on whether Obama’s formal ban on most forms of torture (except psychological torture and sleep deprivation) will be enough to end it

(20) = Boston Globe 09 Oct 2009 ‘Taliban not main Afghan enemy’, http://www.boston.com/news/world/middleeast/articles/2009/10/09/most_insurgents_in_afghanistan_not_religiously_motivated_military_reports_say/?page=1

(21) = BBC News 01 Feb 2012 ‘Pakistan helping Afghan Taliban - Nato’,
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-16821218 , ‘The Taliban in Afghanistan are being directly assisted by Pakistani security services, according to a secret Nato report seen by the BBC… the report… exposes…the relationship between the ISI and the Taliban…. based on material from 27,000 interrogations with more than 4,000 captured Taliban, al-Qaeda and other foreign fighters and civilians.’

(22) = Reuters 22 May 2012 ‘U.S. senators vote to tie Pakistan aid to supply routes’,
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/23/us-pakistan-usa-aid-idUSBRE84M03Y20120523

(23) = CNN 04 Jul 2012 ‘Pakistan reopens NATO supply routes to Afghanistan’,
http://edition.cnn.com/2012/07/03/world/asia/us-pakistan-border-routes/index.html ,
‘Meanwhile, the U.S. military will now pay Pakistan $1.1 billion it owes as part of the deal struck to reopen the NATO supply lines …The money is part of a U.S. military program …which reimburses the Pakistani military for counterterrorism efforts.’

(24) = BBC 03 Jul 2012 ‘Pakistan to reopen supply lines to Nato Afghan forces’,
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-18691691 , ‘US officials say the existing charge of $250 (£160) per truck will not change - Washington had baulked at a Pakistani demand for $5,000 per container to let supplies flow again.’

(25) = Minneapolis Star Tribune 20 Dec 2001 ‘Eagan Flight Trainer Wouldn't Let Unease About Moussaoui Rest’, http://www.startribune.com/templates/Print_This_Story?sid=11642646

(26) = USA Today 28 May 2002 ‘Letter shifts heat to FBI’,
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/2002/05/28/letter-fbi.htm

(27) = NYT 24 Feb 2004 ‘C.I.A. Was Given Data on Hijacker Long Before 9/11’, http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/24/politics/24TERR.html?ex=1225252800&en=ce51b8f44bd6a30c&ei=5070

(28) =  Also see this page on my website and sources in it

(29) = Rashid , Ahmed(2001) Taliban Tauris, London , paperback, 2001 – p167, 173

(30) = Guardian 24 Oct 2001, ‘Route to riches’, http://www.guardian.co.uk/waronterror/story/0,1361,579401,00.html (Afghanistan has huge strategic importance for the west as a corridor to the untapped fuel reserves in central Asia, reports Andy Rowell)

(31) = U.S. INTEREST IN CENTRAL ASIA:JOHN J. MARESCA , TESTIMONY BY JOHN J. MARESCA VICE PRESIDENT, INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS UNOCAL CORPORATION TO HOUSE COMMITTEE ON INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE ON ASIA AND THE PACIFIC , FEBRUARY 12, 1998 WASHINGTON, D.C., http://commdocs.house.gov/committees/intlrel/hfa48119.000/hfa48119_0f.htm

(32) = Coll, Steve (2004) 'Ghost Wars : The secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan and Bin Laden' , Penguin paperback, London, 2004, pages 308, 313

(33) = BBC News 27 Dec 2002 , ‘Central Asia pipeline deal signed’, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/2608713.stm

(34) = BBC News 11 Dec 2010 ‘Turkmen natural gas pipeline Tapi to cross Afghanistan’ http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-11977744