Some honest SNP answers would serve Scotland better

s SCOTTISH voters are to be asked within the next five years whether they would like to see this nation, part of the United Kingdom for more than three centuries, move to independence, they are entitled to be given the maximum amount of information setting out what an independent Scotland would look like. Scottish Secretary Michael Moore is, therefore, right to pose a number of questions to the Scottish National Party administration about independence, as he did is a speech to the David Hume Institute in Edinburgh last night.

Having appeared to allow the SNP to make most of the running in the constitutional debate since its stunning victory in the Holyrood elections in May, it was not before time that Mr Moore and the UK coalition government of which he is part began to expose the Nationalists to some scrutiny over their plans for a separate Scottish state.

Although there are many more he could have asked, Mr Moore confined himself to six questions. What regulation would be applied to our banks and financial services and who would enforce it? Which currency would Scotland adopt and how could entry and influence be guaranteed? How would membership of international organisations – including the EU – be assured? What would be our defence posture and the configuration of our armed forces? How many billions would we inherit in pension liabilities and who would pay for future pensions? How much would independence cost: what is the bottom line?

Of these some have been partially answered in the Scottish Government’s white paper published in 2009 – for example, it has expressed a preference for being part of sterling initially on independence, before a referendum on joining the euro, though that policy in itself does beg the question of whether being part of a currency administered from London is really independence.

Although none of these questions has been answered in enough detail for voters to make a final decision on such a fundamental matter, it is the latter two which are perhaps the most important. Just what will be the pension liabilities of an independent Scotland be, given the dominance of the public sector north of the Border? And can the SNP say, when push comes to shove, what independence will cost?

Last night, in response to Mr Moore, the SNP government issued a three-paragraph statement which claimed all the questions had been answered in 2009 – an assertion many academics and experts would dispute – and launched into a political attack on the Secretary of State, claiming he had become the Liberal Democrat front-man for the Conservatives. Such an partisan, dismissive approach is simply not good enough and likely to place doubts in the minds of uncommitted voters. There is a case for independence, the SNP just has to be far more honest with the electorate about the question it raises.