Peter Jones: SNP playing the financial long game

DOES the SNP really want control of the purse strings knowing that it would be the worst deal for Scotland, asks Peter Jones

Scottish Nationalists, legions of them, are on the march to Westminster. Amidst the hubbub and excitement, you can hear the battle cry: “What do we want? Full financial responsibility! When do we want it? In a number of years!”

Eh? Puzzled onlookers demand to know: “Why not now?” The marchers, quoting yesterday’s SNP manifesto, shout back: “As implementation of the Calman Commission proposals and the Scotland Act 2012 have demonstrated, the transition to full fiscal responsibility – and agreement of the detailed fiscal framework that would require to underpin it – would take a number of years to complete. SNP MPs will work with the Scottish Government to secure the best deal for Scotland in these negotiations.”

So there we are. Independence – negotiating with the UK government, the EU, Nato, the UN, the World Trade Organisation, and probably a lot more besides – takes only 18 months.

But just negotiating with the UK government just to take control of taxes and welfare spending, well, that would take “a number of years”, at least six years, to take the manifesto’s Calman Commission example.

I don’t get it. As far as the tax and welfare system goes, exactly the same negotiations and processes have to be gone through for independence as for full financial responsibility, the new name for full fiscal autonomy. Systems need to be set up to identify and collect from Scottish taxpayers – individuals, businesses, and VAT-payers. A new bureaucracy is also needed – a Scottish HMRC, Treasury, and oversight body.

So where’s the difference? Either we were being sold a pup with independence, or we are now being offered a pig in a poke with full financial responsibility.

Regular readers will know that I have argued using the Scottish Government’s own statistics that full financial responsibility is indeed a big austerity pig in a poke. And I just wonder whether this “number of years” flim-flam is actually recognition of that by Nicola Sturgeon.

I wonder, since the shortfall of taxes raised (£54 billion) on public spending (£66.4bn) in 2013-14 of £12.4bn is a deficit which is only going to get worse because of collapsed oil prices, whether Ms Sturgeon is actually saying that she knows full financial responsibility would be the worst deal for Scotland and that therefore she doesn’t actually want it.

She is right that negotiating such a deal would take a “number of years”, not just because of the complexities already noted. There is the problem of the UK national debt, of which Scotland would have to pay a due share.