Turning his back on the debacle of his Lib/Dem party in the
Euro Elections, Danny Alexander picks up another set of papers from the
Treasury and hot foots it to Edinburgh, once again to tell Scots of the doom
and gloom which awaits them if they vote for Independence - this time focusing on the start-up costs of an Independent Scotland.
Of course, as I said in an earlier article, this unflinching mouthpiece of the Tory Government has absolutely no life experience of producing financial figures. He is simply reading from a script, a mere puppet, whilst his Tory masters pull the strings.
Of course, as I said in an earlier article, this unflinching mouthpiece of the Tory Government has absolutely no life experience of producing financial figures. He is simply reading from a script, a mere puppet, whilst his Tory masters pull the strings.
Never has the falseness of his figures been so easily
exposed. Writing in the "Financial
Times" on 28 May, Professor Patrick Dunleavy (Politics Professor at the London
School of Economics) states "The Treasury figures are bizarrely
inaccurate. I can't see why the Scottish
Government couldn't do this for a very small amount of money".
His intervention overshadows what Treasury officials called
"the most serious piece of work we have done since the decision to stay
out of the Euro". Professor
Dunleavy goes on to explain how the Treasury worked out the costs. They took the cost of setting up a new UK
Whitehall Department at the 2010 figure of £15,000,000 and multiplied it by a
strange figure of 180, which they say the Scots would need – giving a figure of
£2.7 billion. He estimated the true cost
to be closer to £200 million.
For a start is it glaringly apparent that an Independent
Scotland will not be building UK size departments in the most expensive area of
London. Scotland has only 5.3 million citizens compared with 64.1 million for
the UK as a whole. Also, a lot of such well-established departments already exist, and in most cases would only need minor expansion.
Looking more closely at the numbers game, a major Whitehall
Department such as the "Department of Energy and Climate Change" or
the "Department of Work and Pensions", have each around 130 Civil
Servants. An Independent Scotland will have around a dozen.
So, where does the figure of 180 Departments come from as
the UK Government has only 24?
One can only assume that some Treasury officer picked up a
figure of 180 from the number of "public bodies" mentioned in the
Scottish Government's "White Paper", a blunder of unprecedented
consequences. Examples of "public
bodies" include organisations such as "NHS Boards",
"Scottish Water", or "Scottish Enterprise" down to very
small ones like "Quality Meat Scotland" or "Cairngorms National
Park".
So ridiculous are the figures that the Sunday Herald headed
its front page on 25 May "Project Fear Bites The Dust – Treasury Caught
Wildly Exaggerating Cost Of Independence" and accompanied its excellent
article in its centre pages, headlined "Westminster exaggerates cost of setting up indy Scotland ... by 650%", with a picture of a pocket calculator showing
"2+2=5".
It is no wonder that the First Minister immediately demanded
that the Treasury withdraw a "deeply flawed and deeply misleading"
report. Outlining how ridiculous it was,
he went on to say –
"The Treasury are either guilty of a horrendous
blunder, or it is a deliberate and deeply dishonest attempt to deceive – either
way it leaves the Treasury's analysis without a shred of capability, and either
way they should withdraw the misleading claims". A slight hint of an apology came from
Westminster in that they admitted there was a "drafting error",
whatever that may mean, but still tried to insist that the final figures were
correct.
Exposure of the falseness in the Treasury's figures will
give Scots extra confidence to challenge further Scare Stories which are sure
to emerge.
One of the most important issues in the cost of Independence
which is being ignored by the UK Government is the share of UK assets which
Scotland will inherit. Whilst subject to
negotiation, the figure is in the region of £10 billion.
See also: More blogs by John Jappy