Scotland’s budget will have to be slashed regardless of whether it stays in the UK or the EU, according to a former top adviser to the Scottish Government.
Alex Bell, who served as one of Alex Salmond’s closest aides in the SNP Government, said the spending levels that Scots have become used to are “no longer affordable”.
That will be the case whatever constitutional position Scotland finds itself in after the EU negotiations, he told The Courier’s Brexit Briefing yesterday.
“We have irresistible pressures upon Scotland which will change us fundamentally whichever way we go constitutionally,” Mr Bell said.
“Those are that if we stay in the UK, I do not see our financial settlement staying as it is and therefore Scotland will have less money to spend.
“If we leave the UK, our economy is in such a state that we will have less money to spend.
“If we leave the UK and get into the EU, then we might have a bit less than less, but still we will have less money to spend.
“And what that means is that the way we govern in Scotland is no longer affordable.”
Mr Bell, who is a columnist for The Courier, said that is a message the SNP and the political class in general “will dearly like you not to hear”.
He added the SNP will do everything it can to avoid the “last resort” of raising taxes by exhausting every other revenue option going.
Mr Bell was speaking at an event hosted by The Courier and Dundee University at the Apex City Quay Hotel called Brexit Briefing: What Happens Next?
The other members of the panel, who took questions from the audience, were Professor Sir Pete Downes, principal and vice-chancellor of Dundee University; Matt Qvortrup, professor of applied political science and international relations at Coventry University; Kieran Andrews, political editor of The Courier; and Graham Huband, The Courier’s business editor.
The briefing was held as Nicola Sturgeon insisted it will be business as usual for the Scottish Government despite the Brexit fall-out.
Writing for the Holyrood magazine, she said her priority will be to “do everything we can to protect Scotland’s relationship with the EU”.
She said a second independence referendum “may well be the only way” to maintain its status in the bloc.
But she said the “business of government and parliament will go on” despite the fresh focus on the constitution.
Ms Sturgeon said: “The priorities that we laid out in our manifesto are unchanged: raising educational attainment, a transformational increase in childcare provision, reforming healthcare provision to meet the challenges of the future, supporting our businesses in creating jobs and making work fair, reforming taxation to make it more progressive and increasing investment in public services, and using the new social security powers to create a welfare system based on dignity and respect.”
