By Keith Aitken in Edinburgh | 25 October 2011
The UK government has dismissed a Scottish National Party claim that an independent Scotland could be the world’s sixth richest nation if it had control of North Sea oil and gas revenues.
Scottish Secretary Michael Moore argued last night that even with this income, Scotland would have run up a fiscal shortfall of more than £40bn since 1980.
Moore drew on an analysis of Government Expenditure and Revenue in Scotland figures, which showed that Scotland’s notional deficit since 1980 was £41bn, with the in-year deficit peaking at £13.4bn in 2009/10.
Moore’s figures follow claims about the potential wealth of an independent Scotland. Scottish Finance Secretary John Swinney told the SNP annual conference last weekend that Scotland was ‘subsidising the rest of the UK’ by contributing more in tax than it got back in spending.
The SNP has been encouraged by a £4.5bn BP/Shell-led investment in oilfields west of Shetland, which could guarantee production for 40 years. Swinney told delegates: ‘With a geographical share of our offshore resources, Scotland would be the sixth wealthiest country in the world, ten places ahead of the UK.’
But Moore responded this week saying: ‘If you had allocated every single penny of oil and gas revenues to Scotland over the past 30 years – a figure of £156bn – then you would still fall £41bn short of what both governments have actually invested in Scotland.’
This, in turn, was promptly dismissed by Swinney’s office. A spokesman said: ‘Over the same period, the UK’s deficit was £715.5bn. Michael Moore’s figure of £41.4bn for Scotland is thus £19bn less than Scotland’s per capita share’ of that deficit, which would have been £60bn.
‘Thanks to Mr Moore’s boomerang statement, it is now the official UK government position that Scotland is in a financially much stronger position than the UK as a whole, which is an extremely welcome admission by the Westminster coalition.’
He added that: ‘Scotland has run a current budget surplus in four of the five years to 2009/10. The UK was in current budget deficit in each of these years – and hasn’t run a current budget surplus since 2001/02.’
The pace of the latest exchanges reflects an increasingly febrile debate in Scotland in anticipation of the promised independence referendum, which will be held ahead of the next Scottish Parliament elections in 2015.
