THE impact on the Scottish economy of oil revenues, a centrepiece of the coming independence referendum debate, prompted a fresh spat yesterday.
Scottish Secretary Michael Moore produced an analysis showing that even with North Sea revenues, Scotland would have run a £41 billion deficit over the past 30 years.
However, a spokesman for John Swinney, the Finance Secretary, pointed out that yesterday’s claims were almost identical to those produced by Labour 18 months ago which the Scottish Government had been able to brush aside by simply pointing to the greater scale of the UK deficit.
Responding to Mr Moore’s attack, the Scottish Government repeated its argument from when Labour’s Jim Murphy made the same claim on Burns Night 2010 – that if Scotland had a deficit of £41bn between 1980 and 2010 then on that reckoning over the same 30-year period the UK deficit was more than £715bn, of which Scotland’s pro rata share would have been more than £60bn.
“Michael Moore’s figure of £41.4bn for Scotland is thus £19bn less than Scotland’s per capita share,” said the ministerial spokesman.
“Thanks to Mr Moore’s boomerang statement, it is now the official UK Government position Scotland is in a financially much stronger position than the UK as a whole, which is an extremely welcome admission by the Westminster Coalition.”
The Scottish Secretary had argued: “It is time for straightforward answers on the Scottish budget and oil and gas revenues. We have seen a raft of claims about those figures recently but the people of Scotland deserve to have the numbers at their disposal and an understanding of what independence would mean for Scotland’s budget.”
The exchange came as Alex Salmond spoke at the launch of The Official History of North Sea Oil and Gas, by Professor Alex Kemp of Aberdeen University. His work looks at West-minster policies of privatisation, planning and taxation.
The First Minister said: “Using unreleased Westminster records, Professor Alex Kemp reveals why the Treasury opposed devolution for Scotland in the 1970s and casts doubt on whether the UK Government understood the purpose and operation of an oil fund.
“Scotland’s oil has already provided more than £300bn in tax to successive UK Governments, with revenues to the Treasury set to rise by more than one-third over the next five years compared with the last five.”
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