Sunday, 15 June 2008

Launch of Scotland's Future document

Report of meeting to launch CPB document on Scotland's Future

by Malcolm Burns
written for Morning Star
Monday 16 June 2008


Communist plan for Scotland's Future is "welcome"

A new economic report by the Communist Party of Britain Scottish Committee has been welcomed as an "important contribution to widening the debate around the current question of Scottish democracy" by a leading trade unionist.

Speaking at the launch of Scotland's Future on Friday (13 June), Dave Moxham, Deputy General Secretary of the STUC said: "The recommendations of this document chime accurately with the broad views of the Scottish unions."

With the Scottish government's National Conversation and the opposition parties' Calman Commission currently under way there is a big focus on constitutional questions. Each of these reviews is considering the powers which the Scottish Parliament should have in future.

"We need to look at the debate in terms of all the powers of the Parliament and power at all levels of government, Europe, UK, Scottish and local," Moxham stated. "The pamphlet does this very well."

The principle of subsidiarity should be used to gauge the best alignment of powers, he argued.

"What that should mean is democratic accountability, or economic democracy," Moxham said, "and the alignment of power with delivery."

Citing an example of the powers proposed Scotland's Future, Moxham argued: "Local government can do prudential borrowing now - but the Scottish government currently can't. It has been stuck with the expensive and discredited PFI method. The provision of prudential borrowing powers would give us a clear vision of public funding for public building projects."

John Foster, vice chair of CPB Scotland and one of the authors of the report, said Scotland's Future was a contribution to the current debate - but not on the terms set by either New Labour or the SNP.

"If you read the Herald or The Scotsman," Foster said, "you might think there were only two alternatives to the status quo: an independent Scotland within the EU as put forward by Alex Salmond; or a Scottish Parliament with greater fiscal accountability, as proposed by Wendy Alexander."

Scotland's Future puts the third alternative: for a Scottish Parliament to enhance democratic control over the economy.

"This has been the central vision of the Communist Party," said Foster, "the increase of democratic power of working people over their own lives and over the economy, going hand in hand with the defeat of the power of capital at British level."

Power over ownership of Scottish capital - not just by multinationals but also Scottish registered firms - is increasingly outside Scotland.

"Neither of the two establishment alternatives of Scottish independence in Europe or Scottish fiscal accountability would touch this power," Foster said.

Scotland's Future argues that a range of new powers for the Scottish Parliament would contribute to that wider struggle for economic democracy.

These include:
  • power to borrow
  • increased tax powers
  • maintaining a needs based system of allocating a block grant
  • power to regulate utilities
  • power to take into public ownership
  • power to develop strategic areas of manufacturing

"Two things are clear," Foster said in conclusion:

"First, there is an urgency here we've got to address: property and financial services won't sustain the Scottish economy in the short term, just as oil won't sustain it in the long term."

"Secondly, these powers for the Parliament will only be achieved by popular campaigning from below, by communities of working people and the trade union movement."


Scotland's Future
Published by CPB Scottish Committee
Price £2.50 from Unity Books, 72 Waterloo Street, Glasgow G2 7DA
Tel 0141 204 1611
Web www.scottishcommunists.org.uk

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