Bonus balls?

THE £1000-a-scalp “independence bonus” touted by the Yes camp is under fresh scrutiny today.
It was calculated on the basis that by year 15 of independence, Scottish tax revenue would have risen by £5bn, or roughly £1000 per person.
Leaving aside the fact that that’s your money going to the government not the other way round, the bonus is predicated on a steady rise in workplace productivity.
A 0.3% annual rise for 15 years should yield £2.4bn, or almost half the bonus pot, according to the Scottish Government.
But the First Minister’s Council of Economic Advisers has just reported that productivity trends are “an area of uncertainty”.
So should Alex Salmond be so confident of a productivity rise?
The Scottish Government says only short-term productivity is uncertain and that independence would produce permanent long-term change.
But if it’s not possible to forecast short-term productivity change with certainty, how much reliance can you put on 15-year forecast, especially as long-term forecasts are notoriously harder to get right than short-term ones?
The opposition parties say something's amiss.
Here’s a longer version of the story in today’s Herald

EXCLUSIVE
Tom Gordon

THE workplace productivity behind Alex Salmond’s promise of a £1000 independence bonus for every Scot remains “an area of uncertainty”, his own economic experts have warned.

The assessment is contained in the latest annual report by the chair of the First Minister’s Council of Economic Advisers (CEA).

The Government last night said only short-term productivity was uncertain, whereas independence could produce permanent change, but opposition parties said Mr Salmond had been caught peddling “fantasy”. 

The First Minister said last week that higher productivity, higher employment and higher immigration after a Yes vote would result in an extra £5billion in tax revenues after 15 years, an “independence bonus” worth £1000 per person.
Almost half the £5bn increase was attributed to a 0.3% rise in annual productivity growth.
The SNP government stated: “A 0.3 percentage point increase in our long run productivity growth rate, which will narrow some of the gap with our competitors, could see tax revenues increase by £2.4bn a year by 2029-30.”
The government suggested productivity could be raised using “an industrial strategy to rebalance the economy and diversify Scotland’s industrial base”, better infrastructure, and a more efficient tax regime which helped Scottish businesses invest and innovate.
However the CEA chair’s report indicated productivity trends could not be taken for granted.
It said: “Looking ahead, in the short term, even as the recovery develops at an aggregate
level, specific or localised issues may still appear. Moreover, the outlook for the labour market and earnings, both in Scotland and the UK, depends on future productivity trends, which remain an area of uncertainty.”

From p43 of the CEA chair's second annual report

However it added the economic outlook was stronger than in early 2013, and the Scottish economy was expected to move beyond 2008 pre-recession levels of output during 2014.
The prospect of greater productivity was also cited defensively by SNP ministers this week when the Institute for Fiscal Studies said costly policies on childcare and pensions would require tax hikes or cuts under independence.
Labour finance spokesman Iain Gray said: “The SNP’s prospectus for a separate Scotland depends on a sudden, magical, and inexplicable increase in productivity following a yes vote.
“Every day we see independent analysts telling us these figures do not add up. Now even the First Minister’s own advisers are telling him a sudden leap in productivity is just fantasy.
“This report shows the scale of the challenge a separate Scotland would face in helping to bridge the gulf between SNP spending promises and revenue.
“There is no plan, no strategy, no vision and no idea about how to close the productivity gap.”
Conservative finance spokesman Gavin Brown added: “This is yet more evidence that the Scottish Government’s fiscal paper last week was based on extremely optimistic assumptions, vain hope and the crossing of fingers.
“What is particularly damaging about this conclusion is that it comes from the Scottish Government’s own trusted advisers.
“There can be no claims of a conspiracy here - when even they are telling the SNP to be more cautious, it’s time for the Yes camp to listen.”
A Scottish Government spokeswoman said: “The two references to productivity are different. The text quoted from the Chair’s Report relates to short-term changes in the Scottish and UK labour markets and its links to how productivity is adjusting in the light of the recession and recovery. The First Minister was referring to permanent improvements in Scotland’s productivity growth rate, which can be supported by access to the economic levers available under independence.
“With independence we will be able to take control of economic levers and have the powers to grow our own economy, including supporting increases in productivity rates. With the powers of independence we could generate over £5 billion a year of extra revenues within 15 years, without increasing taxes.”

Trust me, I'm a perjurer

Disgraced former MSP Tommy Sheridan is back on the road again, advocating a Yes to independence.

He's still got the power to whip up a crowd, but the official Yes camp is far from happy at being linked to a convicted perjury.

Here's the story.

EXCLUSIVE

Tom Gordon

Paul Hutcheon

TENSIONS have erupted inside the pro-independence campaign over Tommy Sheridan, after it emerged the convicted perjurer spoke at a meeting under the offical Yes banner.

The former jailbird shared a stage last week with SNP MSP Christina McKelvie at an event organised by Yes Hamilton, a semi-autonomous offshoot of the Yes Scotland movement.

Yes Scotland board member Colin Fox, whose testimony helped send Sheridan to prison for lying on oath, reacted furiously to the news.

He said: “The guy is a convicted perjurer. He’s a liability to Yes. We don’t want him.”

Sheridan, who was jailed for three years in 2011 for perjury during his 2006 defamation action against the News of the World, recently embarked on a one-man speaking tour to promote a Yes vote called “Hope over Fear”, but has been shunned by the official Yes camp.

In 2012, SNP Finance Secretary John Swinney said the disgraced former Glasgow MSP was “a man who has no political credibility whatsoever – none whatsoever. Not even political credibility, no credibility in terms of the judgments made by the courts of the land.”

Organisers of the Yes Scotland group in Glasgow later cold-shouldered Sheridan when he tried to become part of the organisation.

Despite the clear signal from Swinney, McKelvie, convener of Holyrood’s European and External Affairs committee, spoke along with the former leader of the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP) at a miner’s welfare club in Hamilton on Tuesday before an audience of around 200.

Despite repeated calls and emails to her publicly-funded media adviser, McKelvie, the MSP for Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse, did not respond to requests for comment.

Christina McKelvie MSP and Tommy Sheridan last Tuesday

Sheridan, 50, was a list MSP from 1999 to 2007 and a one-time convener of the SSP before forming the breakaway Solidarity Party in 2006. 

He launched Solidarity a few weeks after winning a £200,000 defamation action against the now-defunct News of the World, which had claimed he was an adulterer and a swinger who had visited Cupid’s sex club in Manchester.

During the civil case, Sheridan accused some of his old colleagues in the Scottish Socialists of conspiring against him and said they had engineered “the mother of all stitch-ups”.

Conflicting testimony during the case prompted a police investigation into possible perjury.

In 2010, Sheridan was found guilty of lying under oath and sentenced to three years.

The flyer for Tuesday's event

He was released after a year in prison.

Colin Fox, a Yes Scotland board member, a current SSP co-convener and one of those who testified against Sheridan at his trial, said: “I don’t want anything to do with him.

“I think he helps the No campaign.

“Last time last year he was leader of the anti-bedroom tax campaign. This year he wants to be part of the yes campaign. He’s got an addiction to limelight.”

The pro-Union Better Together campaign seized on Sheridan’s appearance under the Yes banner.

A spokesman said: “With Tommy Sheridan now joining the official Yes campaign, we can expect to see a swing to us.”

Yes Scotland stressed Sheridan was not part of its operation, and said local groups were free to arrange their own speakers.

A spokesman said: “Any individual’s involvement in Yes Scotland community activities is entirely a matter for the local groups.”

Sheridan could not be contacted for comment.

Ambulance for Neil?

THE controversy over Health Secretary Alex Neil intervening in the shake-up of mental health services at his local health board has been a slow-burn one.
The Sunday Herald broke the story as far back as November 2012.
Since then, the First Minister and the Permament Secretary have said Neil did nothing wrong in upending his predecessor's decision to remove acute beds from Monklands Hospital in his Airdrie & Shotts seat.
But last week the story came back to bite Neil after new FoI material obtained by Labour proved he ordered the U-turn before stepping back from the issue to avoid a conflict of interest.
Compounding Neil's offence in Labour eyes is the way he later said he'd delegated the matter to a junior minister because Monklands was in his constituency, when he had already taken the crucial decision himself.
That, Johann Lamont claimed, was deceiving parliament.
The FM has refused to sack Neil, but Labour smell blood and won't let go.
The Sunday Herald has now obtained a new email suggesting Neil's primary motivation was his own political backyard, rather the wider health board concerns cited by Alex Salmond at FMQs.
Here's a longer version of today's story.

EXCLUSIVE

Tom Gordon

Scottish Political Editor

 

ALEX Neil was last night under growing pressure to resign after an email emerged showing his ferocious opposition to a health shake-up in his constituency that he controverisally reversed within days of becoming Health Secretary.  

 

The email, obtained by the Sunday Herald despite an attempt to censor its contents, shows Neil was vehemently against removing acute mental health services from Monklands Hospital because of the impact on his Airdrie & Shotts seat.

 

He later ordered NHS Lanarkshire to rewrite its plans and retain beds at Monklands, despite official warnings it would mean a “less than optimal service” in “inferior accommodation” at the hospital, where asbestos is officially described as “ubiquitous”.

 

Despite his critical intervention, Neil subsequently told the Scottish Parliament he had delegated decisions on Monklands to a deputy minister “because it lies in my constituency”.

 

The Ministerial Code says ministers must avoid conflicts of interests when taking decisions affecting their constituencies.

From NHS Lanarkshire Property Strategy April 2009 to March 2013

 

Labour claim Neil “deceived” the parliament and have urged Alex Salmond to sack him.

The First Minister, who previously cleared Neil of breaching the Ministerial Code over the affair, last week refused to dismiss him, and said the Monklands decision was part of wider changes affecting the whole health board.

“To define it purely as a constitutency issue ignores the fact that the health service affects and serves all of the population,” he said.

However an email written by Neil to NHS Lanarkshire on 9 August 2012 suggests that constituency issues were paramount to the future Health Secretary.

At the time, the then Health Secretary Nicola Sturgeon had just agreed to concentrate mental health beds at Wishaw and Hairmyres, outside Neil’s seat, and remove them from Monklands.

With NHS Lanarkshire due to finalise the plan on 23 August, Neil was asked if he would endorse the board’s decision in a press release.

Neil's unredacted email of 9-8-12

 Although NHS Lanarkshire blacked out Neil’s reply, the Sunday Herald has seen the contents.  After asking the board to delay a decision until after his holiday, Neil declined to contribute.

“While I support the overall strategic approach, I don’t agree with your recommendations in relation to not locating one of the new units in Monklands, which covers a much more deprived catchment area than East Kilbride,” he said.

“The proposals are not consistent with an anti-poverty strategy.

“My reading of the analysis of why Monkalnds shouldn’t retain a mental health unit is that it is essentially prejudiced on the economics of the PFIs [private finance initiatives] at both Wishaw and Hairmyres.”

He said it would be “extremely rash” to announce the change without laying on free hospital transport for patients’ friends and families.

“Given the level of poverty and deprivation in Airdrie this will just not be possible if people on low incomes have to pay to get to Wishaw or Hairmyres. I strongly suggest that this release includes the details of planned investment at Monklands Hospital, otherwise local people will be even further incensed yet again by the actions of NHS Lanarkshire.”

Neil's email after NHS Lanarkshire's redactions

To allow Neil to stay involved, the board agreed to delay its decision until 26 September.

However on 5 September, a reshuffle saw Neil promoted to the position of Health Secretary.

Within days he undertook a “review” of the mental health plans, and on 26 September his private secretary told fellow government officials Neil’s “clear view” was to keep beds at Monklands and NHS Lanarkshire was to be asked to “reconfigure their plans accordingly”.

It was not until later that day that Neil stepped aside because of “a perception of a conflict of interest” and passed responsibility for mental health services at Monklands to public health minister Michael Matheson.

Labour argue that by then Neil had already taken the key decision on Monklands, leaving Matheson to merely rubberstamp the board’s revised plan.

Labour health spokesman Neil Findlay said: “This is another deeply damaging revelation. It makes clear that Alex Neil was going to oppose the decision, approved by Nicola Sturgeon, to close mental health beds at Monklands, because of the impact it would have on his constituency. 

“Alex Neil said he wouldn’t handle the decision because it was a constituency matter.

“Alex Salmond this week said it wasn’t a constituency matter. The SNP’s defence is all over the place as they scrabble to defend a minister interfering in NHS decisions. Alex Neil’s position is untenable. He must resign.”

Neil campaigning about Monklands services before the 2011 election, when he took Airdrie & Shotts from Labour

A Scottish Government spokeswoman said: “On his appointment as Health Secretary, Mr Neil wished to review a number of key decisions, including the proposals about to be put forward by the board of NHS Lanarkshire on mental health services. With over 500,000 people resident in NHS Lanarkshire’s area, Mr Neil addressed his concerns on the service change to the region as a whole. He was clear in his view that acute mental health facilities would be best retained at Wishaw General Hospital, Monklands Hospital, and with a unit at Hairmyres Hospital.”

Regarding asbestos at Monklands, the government added: “Asbestos is only dangerous when disturbed. NHS boards have a responsibility to ensure asbestos is safely managed and contained. It should not be removed unnecessarily.”