Meeting of the Parliament 18 June 2014
I very much welcome this Labour debate. Johann Lamont said that a key question in the debate is whether yes or no is best for our public services. I very much agree.
The debate is very timely coming as it comes on the very same day that another senior Labour figure, the vice convener of Unison in Scotland, has declared for yes. Stephen Smellie’s backing for independence comes hard on the heels of that of Pat Kelly, senior Labour activist and former president of the Scottish Trades Union Congress, of Jamie Kerr, vice chair of Renfrewshire South Labour Party, and of Anum Quasar, the general secretary of Muslim friends of Labour Scotland.
All those people, together with people such as Alex Mosson, Charles Gray, Carol Fox and Bob Thomson, understand that independence is the best route to a fairer Scotland, and—who knows?—independence might also be the best route to a reinvigorated Labour Party. On the evidence of today, the Labour Party in Scotland badly needs to be reinvigorated.
All in all, Johann Lamont could not have picked a better moment to demonstrate how increasingly out of touch she is with her supporters, but the real reason why I welcome the debate is that it gives me—against the backdrop of building momentum for yes—a perfect opportunity to set out again the positive case for Scotland becoming an independent country.
First, I will set out the evidence that says that we can more than afford to be a successful, independent country. Johann Lamont’s speech was characterised by doom and gloom and woe, but let us just remind ourselves of the facts. An independent Scotland would be the 14th richest country of those in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and would sit four places above the UK, so instead of being worse off as the depressing Labour motion says that it would be, Scotland would be better off. We generate more output per head than Japan, France and the UK. For every one of the past 33 years we have generated more tax per person than the UK as a whole has done, and over the past five years our public finances have been stronger than the UK’s to the tune of £8.3 billion.