St Andrews Day article - Scotland on Sunday (2008)

SAINT Andrew’s Day is a day of national celebration that allows all Scots to commemorate our patron saint and mark our distinctive place in the world.

I am delighted that today’s St Andrews Day festivities promise to be bigger than ever. They mark the start of a trio of celebrations that bring warmth and cheer to our midwinter months.

Our national saint’s day is followed next month by Hogmanay, with the winter festivities rounded off with Burns Day towards the end of January – an occasion that this year has special resonance given that it marks the 250th anniversary of the birth of our national bard.

That landmark is also a cornerstone of 2009’s Year of Homecoming, when we invite all those around the globe with affinity for and connections to Scotland to come “home” and join us at some point in the next 12 months.

Homecoming holds the promise of beginning the New Year on an upbeat, positive note – an invaluable boost at a time when the economic slowdown is starting to hit home.

National optimism and good feeling cannot be fuelled on sentiment alone though. We need to make sure our economy is given the best chance to ride out the tough times and emerge on the other side in as robust good health as possible.

For that to happen we need a stimulus package to galvanise our economy by focussing investment where it most needed while at the same time offering targeted tax cuts. Above all, we need decisions taken in Scotland’s best interests.

The Scottish Government has already gone a long way to meeting the current challenges. Our six-point economic recovery plan includes £100million in funding that has been brought forward for much-needed spending on affordable housing. Our nationwide council tax freeze and our small business bonus have already delivered the biggest tax cut in a generation for Scots, at home and on the High Street.

Those decisive measures have put us ahead of the curve in tackling the economic slowdown and are one of the reasons that Scottish consumer spending has been holding up noticeably better than that in the rest of the UK, with higher employment levels and lower unemployment than the UK as a whole.

We are also guiding the Scottish economy in the long-term, by looking to our areas of substantial comparative advantage, such as renewable energy and biotechnology, allowing us to build the skills and opportunities for the Scotland of the future.

However, the scale of the current downturn underlines how necessary it is for the Scottish Government to have the full range of fiscal levers which any normal independent country takes for granted.

But until the people of Scotland are given the chance to claim those powers in the democratic referendum that we are offering, the country remains adversely affected by decisions taken at Westminster.

Those decisions, as borne out conclusively by Labour’s pre-budget report last week, have been made with scant regard to Scotland’s interests.

How else can we explain the move to cut half a billion pounds – roughly equivalent to half the annual universities’ budget or the entire prisons’ budget – from our finances in 2010-11?

That cut will be repeated the following year, resulting in a one billion pound double whammy to Scotland.

Labour does not even dispute that these massive cuts are coming. Their Holyrood leader Iain Gray has said Scotland “must take its share” of cutbacks.

This at a time when Scotland’s oil revenues are propping up UK finances on an unprecedented scale. A record £13.2billion is set to flow into Treasury coffers from North Sea oil this financial year, while the total over the next six years will come to a massive £55billion, compared to £41billion over the last six years.

Of course, Labour’s cuts are being proposed only because, as we now know, the Treasury needed a last-minute plan to try and balance the books after its decision not to push ahead with the plan to push up VAT to 18.5 per cent. This is no way to run public finances.

The Treasury is already hoarding £1billion of Scotland’s money – including around £120million in the fossil fuel levy – even before the looming cuts are taken into account.

And if any further proof were needed of London Labour’s indifference to Scotland’s needs then we need look no further than the debacle over the hike in whisky duties.

Alastair Darling may have recanted on his initial move to raise the tax by eight per cent, but the mere fact his original intention to penalise one of our biggest industries was pushed through on the nod lays bare Labour’s attitude to Scotland. Either it is monumental incompetence or it is monumental indifference.

Scotland is a country of vast potential, but is currently held back by its inability to take the crucial economic decisions needed in its own interests. Control of all our own resources and the ability to borrow like any normal government would give us the chance to compete on a level playing field with the other countries currently able to use these tools to best suit them and see them through the global downturn.

Unlike the UK, some small independent European nations like Finland and Norway are projected to keep on growing, with marginal growth in the Euro area as a whole, while the UK plunges into the economic mire.

The SNP Government is determined that the people of Scotland should be given the choice to put our country on that level playing field.

Our National Conversation on the country’s constitutional future, which has so far gathered around 450,000 hits on its web pages, paves the way for the independence referendum we are proposing for 2010.

We believe independence offers the best future for Scotland, but we are open to suggestions as to what other options may be on that ballot paper.

So far however, all we have had from the London parties is obfuscation. Their Calman Commission on the future of devolution has, in stark contrast to the inclusive nature of the National Conversation, deliberately excluded the option of independence. Calman is due to issue its interim report on Tuesday, but based on what we have seen so far no one should expect anything remotely matching the substantial new powers Scotland needs.

There will yet again be more questions than answers. Too often the debate on Scotland’s future lapses into the politics of fear. Nowhere was that better demonstrated than in the fallout from the global financial crisis, which saw the resurrection of the old, discredited scare stories suggesting this country is incapable of governing itself.

But, as Barack Obama’s historic triumph in this month’s US Presidential election shows, hope can triumph over fear. Our whole message as a Government is founded on hope and aspiration.

We believe Scotland should look after its own affairs not because we are intrinsically better than any other nation but because we are as good as any other.

We look forward with hope to the New Year and to the one beyond, when we offer the people of Scotland the chance to choose the independent future that our nation needs to succeed.