LEADING business figure Rupert Soames says people must know about "arrangements for the continued employment" of about 40,000 public sector employees in Scotland who administer English and Welsh government policy before they can vote on independence.
Mr Soames, who as chief executive of Glasgow-based temporary power group Aggreko heads one of Scotland's biggest and most global companies, also believes that politicians must set out details of how liabilities arising from the financial crisis would be shared, how national debt would be split, and how payment of renewable energy subsidies would be handled.
Bank of Scotland owner HBOS and Royal Bank of Scotland both required huge taxpayer bail-outs when they came close to collapse in autumn 2008, running into tens of billions of pounds in total. And the Scottish Government is pursuing ambitious renewable energy targets.
Mr Soames, grandson of wartime leader Winston Churchill, reels off a list of questions he believes must be answered "convincingly" ahead of a vote on independence in an article in industry body Scottish Engineering's latest quarterly review.
He writes: "Frequently, I am asked if I think this (independence) would be – in the words of 1066 and All That – a good thing, or not. I have to reply that I cannot make a reasoned judgment because I don't have enough information about how things would work in a post-independence world."
Mr Soames asks: "How would the national debt be apportioned? How would the liabilities for the financial services crisis be shared? What would happen to the currency? What would be the arrangements for the continued employment of the 40,000 or so public sector employees in Scotland administering English and Welsh government policy? What would the arrangements be for paying the subsidies required if Scotland's energy is to come mainly from renewable sources?"
He adds: "It strikes me that these and other important questions need to be answered, convincingly, before reasonable people can make a reasonable judgment."
Mr Soames draws a parallel with the UK's consideration of entering the euro, and the then Labour Government's formulation in 1997 of five key tests on which to base a decision.
He writes: "With the resources and information that only government has, a huge amount of diligent and fact-based work was undertaken, with the result that the economic balance of advantage was not to enter the euro at that time.
"That there was a proper examination of the facts before making such an enormous change, allowed the people of the United Kingdom to avoid what would have been a huge error with grave implications for their welfare."
While acknowledging the existence of "aspirational arguments" for independence, Mr Soames highlights evidence that economics will weigh heavily on the independence debate, ahead of the planned referendum in autumn 2014.
He writes: "So my position on the independence debate is that everybody should have an interest in defining, at least in broad terms, what the consequences of economic independence are likely to be in a non-bipartisan and cool-headed way, and have access to all the various sources of information that only governments have, to be able at least to lay before the people of Scotland how government and the economy would work following independence."
Mr Soames adds: "This is not to minimise the constitutional and aspirational arguments for independence: clearly some will believe that, whatever the economic price, independence is something worth having. But, survey after survey suggests that economics weigh heavily in this debate."
He concludes that it makes sense "to set up a process whereby the major issues can be defined".
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