Holyrood’s first presiding officer has said Westminster should have set up an oil fund around 35 years ago.
Lord David Steel, a former leader of the Liberal Party, said James Callaghan’s Labour Government made a “major strategic error” in not making the move he claimed to have pushed for upon the discovery of North Sea oil in 1977.
He said a separate account for oil revenue could have been used on major infrastructure projects.
Lord Steel, who formed a Lib-Lab pact in 1977, is reported to have told a magazine: “I lost out on that argument because I argued with Jim Callaghan that we should have a separate account (an oil fund) but we had no power over the government, really, because we were just there for parliamentary support and they just decided not to and I don’t think there was any push form the Conservative opposition to do anything different.”
SNP MSP Maureen Watt said: “The fact of the matter is that Westminster simply cannot be trusted to treat the North Sea oil and gas sector as anything other than a short-term cash cow to be squeezed at every opportunity to prop up the Treasury’s crumbling books.”
Norway set up an oil fund in the 1960s and it is now thought to be worth over $700 billion.