Misleading on migration

Sir, – I recently listened to the debate on BBC Radio Scotland on the matter of the First Minister’s statement that Scotland’s population demographic was so remarkably different from the rest of UK that it needed to encourage uncontrolled immigration from the EU in order to boost its indigenous population levels and prevent economic disaster.

She also opined that leaving the EU would cost the Scottish economy £12 billion, although following the usual SNP pattern, no hard facts were provided to support this assertion.

One might question why the SNP cannot make it more attractive for people in England, Wales and Northern Ireland to move to Scotland if the population requires additions from outwith the country.

Why the continuing focus on uncontrolled immigration from the EU, if not simply to yet again make the tiresome point of opposing the UK Government at every turn?

On the BBC programme, I heard an SNP spokesman making, once again, the quite erroneous claim that ‘Scotland is in the EU’.

Scotland is not in the EU. The United Kingdom is in the EU.

Such statements betray either profound ignorance or are an attempt to mislead the Scottish people.

Holyrood – struggling with failures in education, policing and the NHS – is a glasshouse.

The First Minister should desist, therefore, from throwing verbal stones.

If our population is so under-skilled or workshy that businesses in Scotland need to bring in European labour there is no reason whatever that we cannot revert to the system pre-1974 that everyone seeking to work in the UK needed to have a work-permit together with prospective employer reasons as to why the employer cannot recruit locally.

This system is used extensively in many parts of the world, but is apparently ignored by the SNP in favour of political grandstanding.

Derek Farmer. Knightsard Farm, Anstruther.