Doing the maths for a new Scotland

Your report on the set-up costs of an independent Scotland (23 June) does not go into the details of Professor Dunleavy’s calculations but presumably he took the following into account.

Many, even most, of the functions of departments such as justice, health, the Home Office and rural affairs are already carried out by the Scottish Government.

Departments such as employment, social services and HMRC, which have widespread contact with the public, already have a network of offices in Scotland.

The top brass and policy divisions are in London but the numbers required in Scotland should not be large.

There are large departments such as the Foreign Office and Ministry of Defence, which have little presence here but they would hardly be necessary on day one and could develop organically over time.

Likewise, there would seem to be no need initially to duplicate agencies such as the DVLA providing a service for a fee.

S Beck

Craigleith Drive

Edinburgh

The Ministry of Defence has a number of administrative functions in its two main locations in Glasgow. I would imagine that many of the employees there are concerned about the security of their jobs in the event of independence.

These support functions serve military personnel across the whole of the United Kingdom, not just Scotland.

A Scottish defence force, by virtue of its much smaller size compared with the armed forces for the rest of the UK, would require significantly fewer personnel to perform similar functions and so job losses would be 
inevitable.

Such a situation would not be restricted to the MoD. UK government agencies and departments with offices in Scotland such as the Department of Work and Pensions (Dundee), National Savings and Investments (Glasgow), HMRC (East Kilbride) and others would be similarly 
affected.

These departments serve the UK’s population of more than 60 million people. Similar agencies in an independent Scotland would serve a population of 5 million.

Logic would therefore suggest that fewer civil servants would be needed and so 
redundancies would most likely happen.

The SNP will assert, simplistically and naïvely, that these employees would simply be rolled over into the new Scottish government agencies and departments. It doesn’t always follow that the specific expertise and job skills are readily and easily transferable.

And would more employees in the public sector benefit Scotland when Scottish skills and talents should be harnessed in creating wealth, not bureaucracy?

With Scotland remaining in the United Kingdom 
such reorganisation and downsizing would be avoided and job holders and their families would be spared protracted uncertainties and anxieties over job security.

This is another valid, logical and common sense reason for saying No Thanks to independence.

Stuart Smith

West Lennox Drive

Helensburgh 
Why don’t we be generous and write into the SNP’s constitution (sorry, an independent Scotland’s constitution) that the cost of starting up an independent Scotland should not exceed £250 million – a generous increase of 25 per cent over the figure we are told that it will cost?

Despite the total uncertainty surrounding possible independence we are blessed with an SNP that is all-
knowing.

They should be happy to commit its wisdom to paper.

Ken Currie

Liberton Drive

Edinburgh

£200 million? I seem to remember a few years ago that it cost British Petroleum about twice this amount simply to rebrand to BP.

Ian Lewis

Mayfield Terrace

Insch