STUC welcomes communist report

Published in the Morning Star

(Monday 16 June 2008)

MALCOLM BURNS

THE Scottish TUC welcomed a new economic report by the Communist Party of Britain Scottish committee on Friday as an important contribution to the debate on enhancing democratic control of the economy.

Speaking at the launch of the report, STUC deputy general secretary Dave Moxham said: "The recommendations of this document chime accurately with the broad views of the Scottish unions."

The Scotland's Future pamphlet argues that granting the Scottish Parliament a range of new powers - including powers to borrow, increase taxes and take ownership of public assets - would contribute to the wider struggle for economic democracy.

With the Scottish government's "national conversation" and the opposition parties' Calman commission currently under way, there is a big focus on the region's constitutional questions.

"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," Mr Moxham stated.

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

Mr Moxham condemned the restrictions on the Scottish government's borrowing powers, which he said had left the region "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," he argued.

CPB Scotland vice-chairman John Foster, who co-authored the report, said that Scotland's Future offered an alternative to policies advocated by the Scottish National Party and new Labour.

"It puts the third alternative for a Scottish Parliament to enhance democratic control over the economy," he stressed.

"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."

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