Meeting of the Parliament 18 June 2014
I am coming to you right now.
The dismal lack of ambition in the Labour motion is almost as bad as a comment that Annabel Goldie made at a debate that I did with her and Johann Lamont on Friday night. She told the audience what reports they thought they should read if they wanted to know “just how dependent Scotland really is”. I do not believe that Scotland is dependent, but if Annabel Goldie were right and Westminster really had reduced us to a state of dependency, surely it would be time that we did something about that. No one should revel in such a state.
In the same way, we should listen to the real lesson in the studies of the experts to whom the Labour motion refers, because they show us the risks and challenges that Scotland will face if we stay as we are and continue to follow the policies of the UK. Challenges of demography, inherited debt and public finances are products of the status quo; they are not arguments for keeping things as they are, but arguments for change. They demonstrate the necessity for this country to become independent and to find our way of addressing such challenges. With independence, Scotland would be a national economy with all the tools of other independent states. We would no longer be a region of an unbalanced and unequal UK economy, just waiting for things to be done for us and to us. Independence puts responsibility into our hands.
We have published the outlook for our public finances on independence and the years ahead, and it shows that on all key fiscal measures our finances in 2016-17 will be similar to or stronger than both the UK and the G7 countries as a whole.