THE Treasury paper, intended to sing the praises of the UK economic support, sounds more like siren voices beckoning Scotland on to the rocks of increasing financial dependence on Westminster.

("Treasury is accused over 'bogus' figures", The Herald, May 28). Unfortunately, the report was designed to protect the status quo of the Union rather than analyse Scotland's needs for change. The gross inadequacy of the Westminster analysis can be illustrated with reference to our demographics and future funding and staffing require­ments for our health and care services.

Within social services in Scotland, more than 100,000 workers support older people in care homes, home care and other support services, and a large proportion of Scotland's 158,000 NHS staff deliver health care and treatment to older people. The huge increase in the population aged 75 and over in the next 25 years will require a doubling in the number of social care staff, and a substantial growth in health staffing, involving major additional funding.

This need for more than 130,000 additional health and care workers must be set alongside the current projections of a reducing overall working age population in Scotland, and the resulting lower income tax revenue. The Treasury has stated that "all of this challenge is simply smoothed away within the Union and borne across the population as a whole".

This is nonsense. Or is the Treasury suggesting that the extra 130,000-plus health and care workers we will need by 2040 will be commuting daily into Scotland from south of the Border, and also paying their income tax in Scotland?

Since 1950, the population of England has grown by 37% against a population growth of only 3% in Scotland. For the next two decades, the working age population in the rest of the UK is projected to grow by 17%, whilst falling in Scotland by 4%. The Treasury paper warns the people of Scotland about any attempt to grow the Scottish population by 10% over the next 20 years, but that was the rate of population growth in England over the last 20 years. Scotland has been standing still for 100 years, even with the vast wealth of North Sea oil, and Westminster's ambition is that we should now move backwards into increasing economic dependence on London and the south-east.

But, what if we don't want to become the UK subsidy junkie, that we are already wrongly portrayed as being? The Treasury paper has no answer to that question. The Westminster political establishment does not even recognise that there is a problem. It has no ambition and no positive proposals for growing Scotland's working population to increase our tax base through the development of tourism, renewable energy, agriculture and food production, reindustrialisation, and to staff our health and care services. Independence is needed to bring about a new Scotland, which is open to business and is also open to incomers.

Andrew Reid.

Armadale,

Shore Road,

Cove, Argyll.

DANNY Alexander, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, has stated that Scots will be £1,400 a year better off in the UK and that Scotland's budget will not be cut.

Given that only a few months ago the UK Treasury stated more austerity cuts were required, is Danny Alexander really claiming more money for Scotland while big cuts are made in the rest of the UK?

That is just not tenable.

Jim Dear ,

82 Marketgate,

Arbroath.

IN response to Ronald J Sandford (Letters, May 28), there is no need for the First Minister to deride the Treasury's paper, the Union Dividend. The expert who provided the facts for it has already done so.

Patrick Dunleavy, professor at the London School of Economics whose analysis was used by the Treasury, claims his calculations have been manipulated to make the one-off expense look as much as 10 times larger than it actually would be.

In an interview with a respected financial journal Mr Dunleavy said: "The Treasury's figures are bizarrely inaccurate. I don't see why the Scottish Government couldn't do this for a very small amount of money." The infrastructure of most of the departments of an independent Scottish Government is already in place, as Prof Dunleavy goes on to point out, and I don't understand how the Unionist campaign imagines it benefits from continually treating intelligent Scottish electors as gullible or stupid.

Dave McEwan Hill,

1 Tom Nan Ragh,

Dalinlongart,

Sandbank, Argyll.

IF a reliable independent report were to demonstrate that the English would be significantly better off were Scotland to secede, I bet a good number of the more fervid separatists would very quickly change their voting intentions.

Michael Otter,

Smithy House,

Oldshoremore,

Kinlochbervie.

MAY I assure Peter A Russell (Letters, May 28) that the Scottish Socialist Party is certainly not extinct. I recently attended a public meeting in Stirling organised by the SSP, and the hall was packed. As for Mr Russell's comments regarding the SNP, they were the party of government, who have now been in power in Scotland for seven years, which topped the poll at the European elections, not the party of protest, while the Labour Party had to make do with second place in both Scotland and the UK, the Tories got a drubbing and the LibDems were almost exterminated.

Ruth Marr,

99 Grampian Road,

Stirling.

THERE is an issue which largely goes without comment in all the analysis of the European elections - the small percentage of the electorate who turn out to vote. When you are in a situation of between 30% and 45% of the voters coming to the ballot box, this surely has to be a matter of great concern in any country that claims to be democratic. It is a matter for all political parties and for every government.

The issues are very complex and cannot be lazily dismissed as voter apathy, as some commentators like to suggest.

The recent period in the UK when politicians of all the major parties were involved in the expenses scandal and the uncontrolled bad behaviour of the bankers brought disillusionment to many voters, particularly when the electorate had been told by the Westminster Government that we must accept austerity.

We cannot afford to have widespread distrust of the political process. The presence of a political vacuum allows parties of the far Right to fill the space.

If national politics become rigidified into an orthodoxy that appears to care little for the needs of the majority, you can understand why some working people might feel that the electoral system does not much matter to them. If a country is to draw in all sections of the population, there have to be systems and policies that visibly include them. The public have the right to expect some listening on the part of the Government. We need mechanisms which allow the possibility of recalling members of Parliament who do not respond to the concerns of their constituents. Ultimately, whatever our political views, we will all pay the price of failure.

Maggie Chetty,

36 Woodend Drive,

Glasgow.

YOU can prove or disprove anything with statistics, as both sides of the independence referendum debate have demonstrated. Fraser Grant Letters, May 28) argues that the political gap between England and Scotland has grown because the Scottish Ukip vote grew from 5.2% to 10.5%, whereas the UK share rose from 16.5% to 27.5%. I calculate that this means Ukip increased its support in Scotland by 102% (rounded to the nearest whole number), whereas in the UK the increase was by only 67% (again rounded to the nearest whole number). This means that the Ukip vote is growing faster in Scotland than it is in the UK as a whole. This sounds like the gap narrowing rather than growing.

Carey Philpott,

31 Adelaide Street, Helensburgh.