Labour demand £19bn of cuts in Scotland 8
The desperate attempts of the Unionist parties to portray Scotland as a country too poor to survive on its own are nothing if not inventive. One might think that the publication of the latest GERS report, showing that Scotland contributes more to the UK Treasury than it receives back in public spending, would be pretty hard to turn into a plus point for the Union. But while Michael Moore’s strategy on behalf of the Con/Dem coalition has been simply to put his fingers in his ears and insist that Scotland would be poorer outside the United Kingdom in flat-out contradiction of the official facts, the Labour “opposition” are trying a rather different spin.
Scottish Labour’s finance spokesman and failed leadership contender Ken Macintosh issued a press release today in which he made the bizarre claim that the GERS figures somehow constituted a positive case for the Union:
“The GERS report published this morning demonstrates the significant benefit to Scotland of being part of the UK. The report shows that public expenditure in Scotland was last year between £11bn and £19bn higher than all the taxes generated in Scotland, including North Sea oil.”
But let’s look at that for a second, and generously gloss over the fact that Macintosh’s figures apparently have an 73% margin of error. (Is it £11bn or £19bn, Ken? That’d be a fairly important difference.) What Macintosh is actually saying is that Scotland, taken as part of the UK as a whole, ran a budget deficit in 2009/10.
Now, in itself (and leaving aside the comically wide range of Macintosh’s “figures”) that’s true. But then, almost every Western economy currently runs a budget deficit. The UK as a whole ran a vast budget deficit over the same period – just under £152bn – and has been doing so for many years, which is why we’re currently experiencing massive cuts, imposed by the Tories and Lib Dems but backed (and largely caused) by Labour. And since the Scottish Government has no borrowing powers and has to balance its own block grant, every penny of that £11bn (or £19bn) “Scottish” deficit in 2009/10 was actually run up by Labour, the Tories and the Lib Dems at Westminster.
What McIntosh is in fact saying, then, is that Scotland can’t afford to stay in the UK. The logic of his position is that he’s calling for a further £11bn (or £19bn) of public-spending cuts in Scotland – to be imposed by Westminster, as Holyrood’s budget is fixed and wasn’t responsible for the deficit – so that we’ll be living within our means.
The SNP, on the other hand, would prefer Scotland to control its own finances, make huge savings by cutting things that the Scottish people don’t want (like Trident and PFI), and take full advantage of the likely increase in oil prices over the coming years to pay down our debts and fund investment in renewable resources for the future.
We don’t think it’s hard to spot which of those is the “positive” option.