Meeting of the Parliament 13 June 2018
The louder they shout, the happier I am.
Paragraph C1.5 says:
“Scotland’s government would cede effective sovereignty over monetary policy”.
I warned that oil prices were volatile, falling and could not be relied on. The commission has now admitted that. The report says that oil should not be
“depended upon for recurring annual commitments.”
I warned that Scotland could lose the annual United Kingdom Barnett dividend of about £9 billion. That was angrily refuted, but the commission now agrees. Not only would that go, but an independent Scotland would pay the UK money for years after leaving. Who has heard that before? Paragraph 3.139 says:
“The Annual Solidarity Payment is modelled at around £5 billion”.
That £5 billion would be paid to the UK, so it would be goodbye to the Barnett dividend.
I warned that there would be spending cuts. That was denied in 2014, but the commission has now admitted it. Paragraph B4.32 says:
“A 6-7% fiscal deficit is not sustainable and action will be required to reduce it to more sustainable levels.”
Figure 12-2 makes it clear that, in an independent Scotland, spending would be 1 per cent less than the gross domestic product growth rate, so GDP growth of 1 per cent or less would result in real-terms spending cuts. In the past decade, Scottish onshore GDP has shown average real growth of just 0.8 per cent per annum. The latest forecast from the Government’s Scottish Fiscal Commission, which it published last month, is that GDP growth to 2023 will run at 0.9 per cent. When we look back and forward, we see that an independent Scotland would face cuts.
According to the sustainable growth commission’s report, cuts would last for 10 years.