Unionist peers have accused the SNP of deliberately running Scotland’s economy into the ground to boost the case for independence.
Scots were told to “wake up and smell the coffee” about the threat to the Union from an SNP government allegedly sabotaging devolution to further the nationalist cause, in a House of Lords debate timed to coincide with the Scottish budget.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock, a Scottish Labour peer, called on the UK government to withhold money from the block grant that Scottish ministers spend on reserved matters.
He said: “The constitution is reserved. Using the civil service and publishing documents arguing the case for independence with public money is not right, it is irresponsible and should be clamped down on by the UK government. They have 26 ministers in Scotland, more than Norway, which is an independent country, and some of them are working on reserved areas like foreign affairs.
“[The] Scottish government website says they have ‘a network of eight offices worldwide who work to promote Scottish interests overseas and strengthen our relationship with countries and continents’. In fact, what they are promoting overseas is Scottish independence . . . the union is in grave danger of disintegrating and that would be an absolute disaster.”
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A spokeswoman for the SNP said Lord Foulkes has “form for ludicrous statements about the SNP” and that his most recent pronouncement was “ridiculous”. She said: “If he is confirming that Scottish Labour policy is now to demand that the Tories cut Scotland’s funding even further it will only further boost support for independence.”
Lord McNicol of West Kilbride, a former general secretary of the Labour Party, said the SNP government “are comfortable with their failure as it gives them a grievance to rail against the current devolution settlement”.
He said: “The examples of Scottish government negligence are endless . . . if the situation in Scotland was better across education, health and the economy then their argument for independence would be weaker.”
Lord Bruce of Bennachie, the former Liberal Democrat leader, agreed the SNP “do not want to make devolution work as it would undermine the case for independence”. He said: “The people of Scotland who are not sure which camp they are in must wake up and smell the coffee about what they are being led into.”
He added: “In the nationalist-Green coalition, the SNP government has joined forces with campaigners who promote the accelerated shutdown of Scotland’s oil industry. Having built the case for independence during the referendum on that oil and gas industry, the SNP are asking us to believe that we can do it just as easily without it.”
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He accused Nicola Sturgeon, the SNP leader, of sabotaging the Cambo oil field and ruining Scotland’s once “outstandingly good educational system” with “a flawed secondary school curriculum and a wholly dysfunctional exams system”.
Peers largely ignored the warning of Baroness Fraser of Craigmaddie, the Tory peer who tabled yesterday’s debate, that talking Scotland’s economy down would play into the hands of the Scottish nationalists. “This narrative leaves the impression that Scots ‘are lucky to have the UK’ . . . we must ensure the unionist cause is not simply reduced to accountancy,” she said.
Baroness Davidson of Lundin Links, the former Scottish Conservative leader, agreed that unionists “are at risk of doing the Scottish nationalists’ job for them by talking about Scotland in a way that separates us from that which we wish to remain a part of”.
