We now have sight of the long-awaited White Paper on Scotland’s Future. It’s mixture of a vision, framework and some policy commitments spread over 670 pages with around 170,000 words of detailed evaluation for specific sectors such as tax, connectivity and childcare. It makes clear the relative priorities and principles under which Scotland would re-emerge as a vibrant and dynamic medium-sized North European economy.

It is the visionary aspect of Scotland’s future that will engage and inform the debate going forward. Nobody can deny the range of positive opportunities highlighted, or the ambition for Scotland to be a wealthier, greener, fairer and more entrepreneurial society. It highlights an encouraging policy mix to create a more dynamic and competitive business environment: of particular interest to Business for Scotland.

Despite the timeframe for its production being clear from early in 2013, and the announcement of a specific release date, the No campaign has found itself on the back foot. After laying down the gauntlet for specific information, it now finds itself the subject of the very same request. It’s clear there is now considerably more uncertainty with a No vote than with a Yes vote.

No Campaign questions

Specific questions for the No Campaign include:

1) Will Scotland be forcibly removed from the EU as a result of the votes of London and the South East? It seems clear that all the major parties will commit to a referendum during 2017. Business leaders are unanimous that such uncertainty will limit investment, while the potential impact of a forced withdrawal against the wishes of Scots is significant.

2) What changes will be made to the Barnett formula of funding? It cannot be coincidence that a variety of senior Westminster MP’s have indicated they favour changes to cut the budget to Scotland, including Alistair Carmichael the Scottish Secretary and Carwyn Jones, the Welsh First Minister. The Holtham Commission in Wales previously indicated that scrapping the Barnett formula could see Scotland’s budget cut by £4bn in a single year.

3) What, if any, additional powers will the Scottish Parliament be granted and just as important how will those powers be used? There are no concrete proposals from the No Campaign, and anything would need to be agreed by Westminster MP’s after the independence referendum. Given that the Calman Commission was set up in 2007, with most of the devolution of further limited powers becoming effective in 2014 , we cannot assume any real and substantive commitment to further progress.

4) What economics and social vision is being offered by the No Campaign? The continuation of the current austerity regime is clear, as are ill-conceived projects such as the replacement of Trident and HS2. Based on the recent expansion of the House of Lords and the likelihood of another Tory Government, the democratic deficit to Scotland is growing larger. No positive commitments and benefits are being articulated and ironically enough, the loudest calls for leadership are from those canvassing for a No vote. Only today more splits in the No Campaign emerged as Downing Street attacked Alistair Darling in the Financial Times as “comatose” and “useless”. If they can’t maintain a unified front how can we trust them to come forward with a collective No vote proposition for Scotland’s voters?

Conclusion

The uneasy truce maintained within the No Campaign will struggle to articulate any positive vision. Ultimately, it is a campaign centred on the interests of Westminster politicians and the false premise of the status quo. It only attackes the Yes proposition and never articulates its on plan for the future. As previously explained by Business for Scotland there are a great number of barriers to reforming Westminster from within and so far the No Campaign hasn’t come anywhere near to a plan for doing things better in the future.

This matters. For the business community, success is about developing future opportunities and mitigating the risks. As the Yes Campaign continues to evaluate the opportunities and show how Scotland will overcome future challenges, it will build more of a comparative advantage over the No Campaign. In the absence of such a No vote vision, the breadth and depth of the Scotland’s Future proposals will continue to highlight the gulf in aspiration and credibility between the two campaigns.

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