Jim Sillars: Resist the myth that Scotland will fail

Published on Monday 11 April 2011 15:33

What I would like to see in the "Alex Salmond for First Minister" party's manifesto when published tomorrow is this: Start with a truth, that no longer can people claim Scotland is better protected inside a big, powerful United Kingdom, falling down the G20 league table.

Our link to the UK is now a permanent liability. It is strangling Scotland with its economic weakness as we enter a decade of miserable debt-ridden austerity. Even with the cuts, the UK state will still be around 1.4 trillion in debt by 2015.

I would like the SNP to challenge Scotland's mothers, fathers, grandmas and grandpas to face up to their responsibility when picking up that ballot paper; pointing out that the fate of their children and grandchildren is in their hands. That unless they take decisive action to lift this country to a level far above devolution, and take the powers that come with independence, then we shall see an exodus of the young, who cannot find opportunities in their own country.

Of course you expect that opening from me, an unreconstructed fundamentalist. But being a Fundie doesn't make me, and others like me, wrong. It isn't this Fundie but the SNP and Labour who are afraid to tell the people, as we enter the cuts era, just how bad the economic situation is.

What's their answer to an austerity budget, down 1.3bn this year, with more sorrow to come? Spend, on every interest group they can identify. Cuts? Never heard of them. No wonder Pat Watters at Cosla is tearing his hair out, knowing that his local government members will be made to dance to the real economic music to come.

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I hope, without conviction, that the party's manifesto will put an end to the "more powers" mantra presently tripping off the lips of SNP candidates, whilst nary a word is said about the need for and what could be accomplished by independence. Only poor Iain Gray believes Alex Salmond is "obsessed" by independence, oblivious of the fact that the "I" word is on the back burner, shunted there, in the view of the leadership, by the superior tactic of gaining votes from all and sundry, including those opposed to independence (think of David Murray), in order to re-claim those seats at the ministerial desks, from which the party will, so the boast goes, gather more credibility.

One thing we need done, and what I believe the SNP will not do, is seek an unambiguous vote for an independence mandate.As the party seems to fight Westminster elections only to defend the level of the British armed forces, unless my policy line is taken, we shall have to wait and pray that the mandate will be sought in 2016, which is a long five years away.

But what about the devolution manifesto that will emerge on Thursday? Even within that severe limitation, leaving aside the lack of economic powers which deny the Scottish Government any real ability to tackle economic issues and unemployment, there are some radical things that can be done.

I would relish the SNP pinching from Margo MacDonald (to whom I am married) the idea of renegotiating the PFI/PPP contracts that, this year alone, will cost 800m. The Royal Infirmary in Edinburgh cost 176m to build. The PFI contractor will rake in 1.2bn. The Innisfree company, with ownership of PFI contracts in Scotland is, on its whole portfolio, making 71 per cent return on capital. We have been told that we are all in this mess together. Obviously, some are not in it with the rest of us.

We can, it seems, tear up or fundamentally change contracts of employment of people in both the private and public sector, with impunity, affecting not only incomes but pension benefits. There is, as any worker can tell you, nothing sacrosanct about contracts. In all circumstances they are only as good as the ability of both parties to stick to them. If one party to a contract cannot pay, or has great difficulty in paying, then renegotiation is normal.

It is manifestly the case that Scottish government circumstances have changed quite substantially since those PFI/PPP contracts were agreed to. Big cuts in the Scottish budget have come. We, the nation, cannot afford to keep paying as if nothing had changed. Considering that some of the groups involved in PFI/PPP projects are the very banks that the taxpayer saved, it would be strange to continue feeding them more large sums of money we cannot afford.

If the PFI/PPP contractors get sticky on renegotiation, they should be told that there will be no more payments on the nail. Oh, for a finance minister with the guts to tell them that instead of regular on the button payments they would sometimes have to wait a few months for the cash to come - which would, in effect, produce more money available for other things.

Then there is the equality agenda. The book, The Spirit Level, showed clearly that the more equal is a society the healthier and the more socially cohesive it is. Here, the gap between the well paid and the rest is, to be frank, far too great. A radical Scottish Government, really committed to the promotion of a better balanced society in terms of wealth earned and held, can act.

In the public sector, I would cheer an SNP pledge to abolish the bonus system. Why people at the top of the ladder in the public sector should get a bonus for doing a job for which they are well paid, is a mystery. Alex Salmond says the bonus recipients have contracts.So do the people whose wages will be frozen.

Not only should the bonus be scrapped, but over the next four years the level at which top public sector salaries are paid should be reduced to the point where they are never more than 20 times the money paid to the lowest paid worker.

I now come to that thorny issue of university funding, and tuition fees. In cutting the higher and further education budget, John Swinney has created a 200m funding gap. I find it difficult to understand that having created such a gap, there can be realistic claims to be able to bridge it without invading other areas of expenditure.

I want him to reverse the cuts, as the contribution of education at all levels will be vital to whether we can compete in the world economy.

To find the restored funding to higher education, I hope he will have the courage to alter the terms of the pensioner bus pass. It should apply only to those who are 65 and over. It should permit free travel only after the rush hours in cities and towns; and half fare required for a pensioner wishing to travel Scotland-wide outside his/her local area. That should save some 150m. He should repeal the "free prescriptions for all" policy announced on 1 April, making another 50m available.

It is a quite simple choice. The bus pass and Fred Goodwin's prescriptions or our children's education. I would hope the SNP priority is education of our children, because without it, there will be no one able to pay for our future social services and pensions. My policy combines both morality and economic sense.

Finally, for those among us who believe that Scotland is too wee and too poor to be a viable and successful economic and social entity outside the UK, let the SNP tell them straight to take their blinkers off and look at the declining power we are yoked to; and realise that they have nothing to fear except the myth of their own inadequacy.

• Jim Sillars is a former deputy leader of the Scottish Nationalist Party.

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