A leading Scottish businessman has called on Holyrood to produce an in-depth analysis of how an independent Scotland’s economy would operate to allow “reasonable people to make a reasonable judgment” in the 2014 referendum.
Rupert Soames, a grandson of Sir Winston Churchill, wants the consequences of a “yes” vote in 2014 to be explained in a “non-bipartisan, cool-headed” way.
He said that such detailed information would be accessible only to the Scottish government and said it was up to Alex Salmond’s Administration to make it clear for voters.
Mr Soames, the chief executive of Aggreko, one of Scotland’s most successful companies, poses a string of questions in the latest edition of the Scottish Engineering Quarterly Review. Among them are how UK national debt would be apportioned, how liabilities for the banking crisis of 2008 would be shared, and how subsidies for Scotland’s renewable energy would work.
He also raises the issue of what would happen to the currency — an issue that has proved particularly difficult for the First Minister in the past week. Mr Salmond wants to keep sterling, entering a sterling zone with the rest of the UK, and says a separate Scotland would be represented on the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee. The Treasury has said this is not realistic, and certainly not feasible without some kind of fiscal union.
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In his column, Mr Soames, 53, highlights Westminster’s approach when considering whether to recommend entry into the euro. The Treasury was asked to examine the issue. Mr Soames writes: “That there was a proper examination of the facts before making such an enormous change, allowed the people of the United Kingdom to avoid what would have been a huge error with grave implications.
“Everybody should have an interest in defining, at least in broad terms, what the consequences of economic independence are likely to be in a non-bipartisan and cool-headed way, and have access to all the various sources of information that only governments have, to be able at least to lay before the people of Scotland how government and the economy would work.”
A Scottish government spokeswoman said that Mr Soames’s remarks underlined exactly why autumn 2014 was the right time for the referendum. “We currently have a Fiscal Commission Working Group precisely to oversee work to establish a fiscal and macro economic framework for Scotland with independence,” she said. “We will publish a White Paper setting out the structure of an independent country in November 2013, encompassing these and all other matters.”