THE Scottish Greens have been accused of trying to bury bad news about independence after it emerged they commissioned but never published a damning report on currency.
The Scottish Greens this week published a widely-mocked pamphlet on independence which said nothing about the currency options for an independent Scotland.
The party has previously said they want a new Scottish currency as soon as possible after a Yes vote.
But the position of the Scottish Government, in which they are the junior partner, is that Scotland should informally use the pound - an arrangement known as sterlingisation - for an undefined period of years.
Only when a series of economic conditions had been met would it move to a new currency.
The Daily Record today reported that after the 2014 vote, the Scottish Greens commissioned Glasgow University economist Professor Ronald MacDonald to write a report on currency, and he handed it over to the party in early 2016.
It was scathing about sterlingisation, calling it “disastrous” and a recipe for “severe austerity”.
He wrote: “We give some estimates of the costs of getting the exchange rate regime wrong in an independent Scotland and particularly sticking with a form of fixed exchange rate such as some form of sterlingisation.
“And these range from £25billion to £100bn with ongoing knock on effects that would have produced economic stagnation for a prolonged period.”
He said the “only feasible option” would ultimately be for an independent Scotland to have a new currency with a separate central bank.
Prof MacDonald told the Record: “I just told it the way it was. I presume they didn’t like the conclusions.”
Labour MSP Daniel Johnson said: “This shows what we have known all along - the Scottish Greens refuse to face the truth about the consequences of their obsession with division regardless of the price working people would pay for it.
“Rather than address the issues with sterlingisation they have elected to bury this report criticising it and steam on regardless. More proof that the Greens are willing to gamble with the future of our country to break up the UK.”
Tory MSP Donald Cameron said: “The Greens should explain why they buried this report, having asked specifically for it to be produced.
“It seems the conclusions of the report weaken the argument for independence and, as such, the Greens don’t feel the public deserve to know about them.
“This sinister secrecy is typical of nationalists, who should come clean on the economic impacts of their disastrous and ill thought-through plans.”
Scottish Liberal Democrat MSP Willie Rennie added: “Now we know why the Greens had no detail in the independence plan they published this week.
“They did ask the experts but didn’t like the answers, so they shredded them. The Greens are no longer an environmental party, they are now a fully-fledged nationalist outfit.”
A spokesperson for the Scottish Greens said: “We are very grateful for the work Professor MacDonald did for us in the period between the last independence referendum and the Brexit vote, which has informed the development of our own currency and monetary policies.
“Like a number of other pieces of policy advice which we have commissioned, the paper was not intended for publication itself, but rather to be used internally to support our own policy-making processes.
“The UK’s financial situation has changed dramatically since Brexit and after the chaos of a further six years of Tory governments. The situation that we are in now underlines exactly why Scotland needs full control over its own finances.”
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