Giving ourselves a fighting chance for the future

Published: 18 August, 2006
John O'Groat Journal and Caithness Courier

AT the very time the Caithness Socio-Economic Strategy Group has been consulting on the way ahead for the county’s economy, my party has been consulting on its proposals called Let Scotland Flourish. Both are sustainable growth strategies – one for the Dounreay travel-to-work area and the SNP ideas for every part of Scotland.

Comparing the goals I also find similarities. The SNP highlights three key words: solidarity, cohesion and sustainability. Firstly, we need to raise the overall national wealth but in particular to increase the wealth of the lowest-paid quarter of our people. Secondly, the SNP aims to increase the wealth of every region of Scotland, reducing the disparity from richest to poorest by 10 per cent in five years. Thirdly, we would commit to continue cutting CO2 emissions far beyond 2012 at an equivalent two per cent annual reduction. In summary, the SNP suggests getting more people into work, making sure there’s a home for every family, and meeting our environmental duties. These go hand in hand to give every part of Scotland a fighting chance to share in future prosperity.

The Caithness proposals centre on developing existing businesses, attracting new ones, and adding government decentralisation to create new administrative jobs in the Far North. Secondly, they seek enhanced public services that will attract new workers and businesses as well as meet existing local needs. Thirdly, it intends to make sure the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority conducts the Dounreay transformation in a way that transfers staff into new work of similar status and quality and helps fund new developments.

We can see that ambition and ideas are needed both locally and nationally to make headway. Communications, resources and actions are the identified means to achieve the Caithness transformation.

The SNP national plan is to reduce the burdens on small and medium-sized businesses and focus on our strengths, which include industries well represented in Caithness. Farming, fishing and tourism, but most all the knowledge economy, can be successful wherever there are the skills and broadband links and renewable energy sources.

Big questions require bold answers. Can we really believe that devolution under Labour and the Lib Dems will meet our needs, be they in Caithness or for the nation as a whole? We have the resources like Norway, Ireland and Iceland but are frustrated by not having our hands on them.

Should we allow Gordon Brown’s tax policies to leave us as producers of wealth but with the highest fuel costs and highest loss of young people on the mainland UK to the benefit of others?

I look forward to making a submission to the Strategy for Caithness and North Sutherland. You can find copies at www.hie.co.uk/cns-consultation.pdf and the closing date is August 20.

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TALKING of ambition, I note the new estimates of a £5 billion surplus for Scots tax contributions to the London Treasury this year. That means, as the world price of oil rises to around £80 a barrel, we contribute £1039 extra per head for every man, woman and child in Scotland this year. Remember the doom-laden prophesies that oil would be running out very soon? Well, the Blair Government’s recent energy review suggests there are still 25 billion barrels of oil recoverable from the Scottish sector of the North Sea. So it will remain a strong revenue earner for decades to come.

That also suggests that a more competitive Scotland can become a reality if we change out of second gear that is devolution and move to the full tax and economy powers that our neighbours have. Long-term sustainability for every part of Scotland is at stake. That makes the Scottish Parliament and local council elections next May the tipping point. People across the land see the possibility of Labour losing power in Scotland for the first time in fifty years.

As MSPs prepare for the last session of this Parliament, the need for a new lead party in the next coalition should put the SNP’s ideas to the test and try them out in the driving seat; after all, a fresh start can bring out the best in every part of Scotland.

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THROUGHOUT my summer travels through Caithness, Sutherland, Ross-shire, Lewis and Skye the same theme comes up. When will Parliament cut down the civil service to size? When will red tape be top of the agenda?

Since better communications are cited as key to new prospects and prosperity, I suggest that the civil servants be set to work to free up as many parts of Scottish life as possible. Ministers should be tasked by our parliamentary committees to run a programme to take service after service and cut out reams of paperwork. One person suggested a single transferable form, with standard details of applicants followed by standard questions on reasons for applications, etc.

For my part I’ll be taking the advice of farmers and crofters I met at various agricultural shows. I’ll be seeking simplification of the cattle and sheep movement documents with the help of our Environment and Rural Development Committee. But all applicants for economic support or regulatory returns deserve a break. A few less civil servants checking we cross our t’s and dot our i’s could free up bureaucrats to be more creative. Or is that a contradiction in terms?

I hope not, for if communications are to lead to action for the economic well-being of the Dounreay travel-to-work area then civil servants will have to be relocated here – say, a major division of SEERAD from Pentland House to the shores of the Pentland Firth.

Also proper road and rail communications funded realistically are needed to include us in the mainstream of Scottish life. In addition, Government commitments must offer satellite broadband for every household in this digital age if landlines are too weak and exchanges too distant.

Getting a grudging Government to serve us and not the other way round would be a culture change of monumental proportions. But voting for change is much more straightforward by comparison.