18/07/2013 Newsnight Scotland

beatings. And the dead will still be debate on what an independent

Scotland might be like finally gets radical with a bold plan for a more

Good evening. A high wage, high skill, high tax economy. A full,

cradle-to-grave universal welfare system. And more parts of the

economy in public ownership. Those are bones of what the Jimmy Reid

Foundation is proposing for an independent Scotland in its Common

Weal paper. It seems a long way from the SNP's softly-softly approach

with its emphasis of what will stay the same. Yet the government has

welcomed the paper and even invited its authors to make a presentation

to MSPs at an SNP away-day next month. So is this the vision that

could persuade voters to back independence? Andrew Black reports.

Imagine a Scotland which has grown to be wealthier and fairer, with an

expanded economy and a radical new approach to delivering public

services. Is it pie in the sky? Or Trade union activist Jimmy Reid

spent much of his life fighting for equality and now the think tank

bearing his name has been seeking to bring a new Di mentioned to the

debate on Scotland 's future. -- dimension. The foundation 's project

starts with the premise that 30 years of conflict and competition in

UK public policy has driven a wage through society. So, good places

like Norway serve as the starting point for change? The country 's

higher wage, high attacks economy drives down inequality while

delivering high-quality services. Is that kind of model really achievable

here? This is definitely not an ides that micro-utopian ideal. It is a

practical method of seeing how we can have a better society. -- this

is definitely not a utopian ideal. Politicians have not had the

political will. The resisting forces have been too strong. This is a

challenge to say we are going to lay out some blueprints, do some

investigations and research to show the steps required to get towards a

society that we will call the commonweal.

You will hear that phrase used a lot in political life. In fact, the

Scottish government already has its own version. We have made a

conscious decision to provide certain core, universal services,

rights and benefits, some of which are no longer prioritised by leaders

elsewhere, such as free university tuition, free prescriptions, free

personal care for the elderly, and a guarantee of no compulsory

redundancies across the public that. We do this because we believe

that such services benefit the commonweal of Scotland.

The SNP will debate the foundation 's paper at its next conference. How

likely is it the party would back tax rises as a way to a fairer

economy? It is not about being the same as any other country, whether

it be Ireland, Finland or Switzerland. It is about the

possibilities that independence brings. We can choose a future that

has the best bits of other countries. We can invest in our

young people, protect our old people, make sure people who are

disabled and people who are living in poverty have a proper and

confident and successful future. As the independence referendum

approaches, the political parties are working on their own offer for

the future. That includes making Scotland more Nordic... Or is that

beyond the nation 's rasp? -- grasp?

I'm joined now by the director of the Jimmy Reid Foundation, Robin

McAlpine, by Ross Martin of the Centre for Scottish Public Policy,

and from Edinburgh by David Torrance, author of several

political books including a biography of Alex Salmond and an

examination of Thatcherism in Scotland.

Picking up on something Stewart Maxwell was saying, in an

independent Scotland we could pick the best of what we wanted - I am

not sure that is what you mean in your idea. It is more a package,

isn't it? We have done a package of the best ideas and approaches we can

find in a number of companies, -- countries, particularly Europe. We

are trying to say committee can generate the right kind of economy

and the right kind of jobs and wages, then the public services sort

themselves out. There are lots of different models. We're not saying

there is one blueprint. The basic structure of this is we have to get

a Labour market creating good jobs, not just any jobs. We can't keep

going with low paid jobs where people don't pay taxes. It's a

general approach and a model for doing this. We are developing a

number of different ways. Right. What do you make of this?

It is important to recognise that we need more policy debate in Scotland,

not less. Even some commentators who would consider themselves to be

right of centre have said, look, this is great. This is more

interesting than the usual nonsense we have two debate every day.

need to have debate across the spectrum. It is great to see the

foundation coming in at their particular part of the spectrum. We

operate across the whole spectrum. We need to fear in some of the

detail in those aspects on the left or right. It is great to get the

debate going, particularly as we going to mid-September.

The big hard sell... Robin McAlpine is upfront about admitting that his

policies would need higher taxes. That's a hard sell, isn't it?

is. But there are examples of the Scottish public voting for higher

tax on occasion. If you think back to the original referendum and the

second question, it was varying tax up or down. There was a possibility

and people voted for the possibility. Businesses are being

asked to contribute more to the common good in terms of the business

environment. There are a number of other occasions where people, if

they see the benefit of changing the level of taxation or changing the

contribution they make to public services, say, they are willing to

consider that. Are we to live in assuming people

will not vote for some sort of system meaning higher taxes? It is

unlikely. I'm struck by the examples Ross came up with. They are not

terribly convincing. The best example we had in recent years was

the first election to the Scottish Parliament in 1999, when the SNP

campaign done precisely that, if the penny for Scotland. They said they

would rise the variable rate by 1p and plough it into front-line public

services. The SNP did not win the election. It is going too far to

argue that they didn't win the election because they said they

would put up tax. Never the less, it is now seared in the collective

consciousness, particularly Alex Salmond 's wrote, that going into

any election alleging taxes is political suicide. People are just

saying no. Firstly, this myth about tax being popular cannot be

sustained by evidence. The SNP did not win the first election. At the

next one, they did worse. If the penny for Scotland was the problem,

what happened when they dropped it? More to the point, what we're

talking about here isn't just raising tax rates. We have a Labour

market in Scotland where people are on �35,000 salaries, where they can

pay taxes and lead secure lives. Only one in five working Scots is in

that category. Three out of five live on under 25,000 per year. If we

had proper wages, people could pay proper tax. You talk about an

economy based on something you compare to Germany, a huge swathes

of smallish to medium-sized industries that are the backbone of

the economy. What I not clear on is if you have any ideas about how you

get there from where we are now. This is a historical tradition in

Germany. It is difficult to say, oh, we will do that. It is not going to

happen overnight. But it's not clear you had any proposals how you would

get to there. We have a major paper coming out on this. The people of

Scotland have largely not done well out of the last 20 years. The same

is true of the Scottish indigenous business base. Supermarkets, large

chains, that pay low wages, that means people have low pay. The big

scandal on corporation tax is why Scottish companies pay a higher

rate. If we load the dice for our companies, we can do that.

We are not taking, we are having a paper coming out, as an excuse! I am

sure that David Torrance and others would welcome the fact that we have

a strong manufacturing economy based on small and medium-sized

enterprises. It is getting there that is the problem. It is not a

polar issue, black and white. You cannot take a blanket view across

the economy, across the whole of public opinion. There needs to be a

much more nuanced debate about what works and what does not. There needs

to be more of a mixed bag across the economy. If more co-operatives, for

example, which is one of the aspects of the Jimmy Reid Foundation

proposals, if they are a way of slimming down the public sector in

Scotland, then let's talk about that. If more social enterprise is a

way of slimming down the public sector, let's talk about that.

the flip side of the proposal is an economy based on consumerism. You

specifically say there should be fewer retail outlets and so on and

people will not buy that either. Trying to force the issue in that

way is why it wonders and where we depart from each other. -- where it

wonders. If you want to have an entire economy based on small

enterprises and not consumerism, there are tax changes you would have

to make. The most obvious one would be imposing capital gains tax on

house price sales, because that is the one-way I can think of that you

would have a huge shift away from the economy we have had in the past.

Would it be acceptable to people? is difficult to say if it would be

acceptable any time soon. A lots of what is in the commonweal proposal

is admirable and intellectually honest, because it acknowledges that

we need higher taxes. That is acknowledged in everything the SNP

and Labour say and beyond that. It is very important but as you say,

the practicality of it is something altogether different. Any tax

changes, any major revision of the tax system, however intellectually

justified, is a huge undertaking. I just don't think the political

appetite is there and specifically identikit is there in the SNP. I

hate to be cynical but I suspect what they will be will be to discuss

this at the awayday, the awayday, debated at conference, subscribe to

the general concept, but they will not bite the bullet on tax, which is

where the whole thing flounders. difficulty is that we have a need

for yes camp to articulate a proper vision for Scotland and to paint

some of the key characteristics of what Scotland might look like. But

the problem for both campaigns is saving something for the 2016

Scottish election. It is that differentiation between the

referendum on the one hand and the election on the other. It is that

period when we will see the meat coming out and people being a bit

more brave. Because they have to, because the public expenditure

profile will be at its very worst. am curious about what your

expectations and hopes are. I am utterly confident that this reflects

the democratic will of Scotland. I have no doubt that strong public

services and better jobs and better pay reflect what people want. We

live in a low pay a economy and people are not happy. The political

party that put this together in a coherent and sensible way is going

to sweep a lot of support behind it. It is a matter of time. We can't

keep going on like this, with a failing Lope economy, on the basis

that investment jobs will happen which do not put real investment

into the Scottish economy. It is going to change. It can't go on like

this. From my readings of what has been happening, there is a strong

demand for something better than this at grass roots and above. I

would not rubbish our chances of getting a rapid take-up on this

quite quickly. The other point to make in this document, arguably you

have missed what is actually happening in Scandinavia at the

moment. The big debate is not in fact how to expand public services.

All of the parties there have realised that without radical change

the welfare and social insurance system that they have built up

cannot go on. In fact there have been enormous changes in

Scandinavia, more radical than anything proposed by Iain Duncan

Smith. They have used that social consensus to do something you don't

talk about in your document at all, which is radical reform of the

public services. In Sweden and Denmark, for example, the idea of

giving to private companies sections of public services to run, still

free at the point of use, has gone further than even in the USA.

has been a sharp swing to the right in Nordic countries over the last

ten years, no doubt. It has gone that way but from a high base. They

have strong public services. And one thing that is the case, left or

right of the spectrum in Nordic countries, they do not want to go to

a Lope economy. -- low pay economy. But you have this system of social

consensus and what they can do with that because it is there is do these

radical reforms. If you propose radical reforms in the NHS in

Britain for example, you are immediately accused of dismantling

it and there is a huge fight. But there are vast swathes of hospitals

in Sweden run by the private sector on behalf of the public sector. In

Denmark, just to talk about the scale of this, you get vouchers from

the state to send your children to private school. You can top them up

with your own money. Labour laws in Denmark are freer than here. It is

easier to fire someone in Denmark than it is in the USA. There are

structural differences with those comparisons. In Denmark, for

example, 85% of the national budget is devolved at local level. That

would mean that in Scotland, the cities would take on much more

responsibility. The other side of it is that you can fire people more

easily than in America, but the flip side is the Robin McAlpine point,

the state takes care of you if you are fired and helps you get another

job. Absolutely. The way that you procure and 11 public services can

be changed in Scotland. -- prick your public services. It needs a

willingness to drive innovation through the system and turn upside

down the current arrangement where local authorities provide everything

through schools and schools are the delivery arms for local authorities.

Local authorities need to turn that around and be the mechanism for more

autonomous organisation. Is there a sense in which what Ross Martin says

may or may not be true, but it misses the debate of what is going

on in Scandinavia? We are proposing an idealised Scandinavia which last

existed in 1975. Most of the Scandinavian countries then went

into severe crisis. The royal we collectively tends to fetishise

certain Scandinavian countries. That is a fair point. They achieved

significant and lasting things in the post-war era, but then so did

the UK once upon a time. I get frustrated that we have this cherry

picking approach. We can take the best from different countries, be

like Norway, be like Australia, according to Alex Salmond. Surely

independence is doing something distinctly Scottish whatever that

means. But this comes down to the eternal optimism of the Scottish

left in assuming that these things will happen and assuming public

support with little evidence that that is the case. Thank you very

much. Quick look at the front pages. A picture of my colleague Sally

showing her frustration with technical problems that we had

earlier. And David Cameron turning up the heat on the men only row. And

the Times, BBC chiefs broke rules over golden handshakes. The scandal

of how inflated payoffs were fixed. The Guardian. May warned over police

cuts. This is police forces in England. And the Daily Telegraph,