POLITICAL battlelines are being drawn ahead of the publication on Wednesday of the annual Government Expenditure and Revenue Scotland or GERS figures, which show the relationship between what Scotland earns and what it spends.
Last year, Scotland's public spending deficit stood at just under £15bn for the 2015/16 financial year amid plummeting oil revenues. This represented 9.5 per cent of GDP, more than double the UK’s four per cent deficit or £75.3bn.
The particular significance for this year’s numbers is that they will reflect what would have been the first year of Scottish independence had people voted Yes in 2014.
When the SNP Government published its White Paper on independence in November 2013, it produced forecasts for 2016/17, which were used as the starting point for tax and spending priorities such as free elderly care, increased childcare and university tuition.
Elizabeth Truss, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, said at the weekend: “Scotland has now reached a crucial stage in its devolution, where it can use the UK's broad shoulders to its advantage and, at the same time, make its own decisions on public services, tax and welfare.
“It's time for the SNP to put aside its obsession with independence and start acting like a responsible Government, focusing its efforts on securing a brighter future for Scotland's young people, building a stronger economy fit for a global future.”
Her Tory colleague, Murdo Fraser, the Scottish Tory finance spokesman, was more blunt, saying: “If the SNP had its way, Scotland would by now be a separate country and staring down the barrel of a gun financially. The crippling debts don't bear thinking about.”
But the pro-independence campaign, Business for Scotland, claimed it was “mismanagement" by the UK Government of North Sea oil wealth since the price slump two years ago, which, it claimed, had cost Scotland tens of billions of pounds.
BFS said that since the crash in oil prices in 2015 when the price of a barrel more than halved, Norway had made nearly £29.3bn in oil and gas revenues, while the UK had lost almost £22.8 million.
Gordon MacIntyre-Kemp, BFS’s Chief Executive, said: "It is deeply ironic that the UK Government's mismanagement of oil and gas taxation removes billions in revenues from Scotland's national accounts, creating a fiscal deficit which they then present as their key economic argument for maintaining the Union."
BFS added: "It is the UK Government's policies that have created Scotland's deficit and they have protected big corporations' profits and their shareholders' dividends while failing to adequately protect North Sea workers who have lost their jobs."
Meanwhile, the respected Fraser of Allander Institute predicted that this week’s GERS figures were “unlikely to make pretty reading”.
It suggested there was no sign of Scotland’s position compared to the UK’s improving in the short term.
The institute noted how the GERS figures were only a snapshot of how Scotland’s economy was doing within the UK and so could not be taken as a guide as to how it could fare under independence. But it added: “It is simply not possible to operate under independence with budget numbers like this on a consistent basis.”
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