These SNP porkies on pensions mean we supporters of the Union should welcome a new referendum

For the Queen, there is not much that matters more than the perpetuation of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Thus she made a unique intervention towards the end of the 2014 Scottish Independence referendum campaign, when the then Prime Minister, David Cameron, panicking after a single poll suggested defeat for the Unionist cause, asked her to ‘raise an eyebrow’ at the prospect of secession.

The Queen obliged, telling a well-wisher outside church near her Scottish home of Balmoral, that voters should ‘think very carefully about the future’.

It seems unlikely that this was responsible for the eventual outcome — the margin of victory, in the end, was more than ten per cent. But the polls now show, more often than not, a lead for those supporting independence. So it may not be possible, indefinitely, to fend off calls for a second referendum.

Boris Johnson has ruled it out, which is understandable from his point of view. He doesn’t want to be the man to risk breaking the Queen’s heart in what remains of her reign.

But the more we hear from the Scottish National Party of their independence campaign strategy, the more it seems to me that Unionists should welcome a final, second, battle over the issue.

Bizarre

For in recent weeks, the SNP have made such a wildly dishonest claim, about a matter of the deepest public concern, that a contest would be like shooting fish in a barrel for supporters of the Union.

It relates to the state pension. Specifically, the leader of the SNP in Westminster, Ian Blackford, has insisted that, even if Scotland became independent, ‘absolutely nothing [would change]... That commitment to continue to pay pensions rests with the UK Government’.

This bizarre assertion is entirely counter to what the SNP properly declared at the outset of the 2014 referendum: ‘For those people living in Scotland in receipt of the UK state pension at the time of independence, the responsibility for the payment of that pension will transfer to the Scottish Government.’

But SNP representatives have, in recent months, been spreading the line that the ‘remaining UK’ would continue to fund an independent Scotland’s state pension for around 50 years, on the basis of allegedly ‘accrued entitlements’.

This has been backed up in television interviews by Blackford, who, in turn, was defended by his party leader, Scotland’s First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon.

They have been forensically taken apart by Kevin Hague, the founder of the Scotland-based Unionist think-tank, These Islands.

Mr Hague quotes from the official HMRC document on the much-misunderstood link between National Insurance payments and the state pension: ‘The National Insurance Scheme is financed on a pay-as-you-go basis with contribution rates set out at a level broadly necessary to meet the expected benefits and expenditures in that year.’

In other words, there are no ‘accrued entitlements’ beyond a horizon of months; certainly not half a century.

When the Conservative MSP Murdo Fraser asked Sturgeon at First Minister’s Questions earlier this month: ‘Is it really now the SNP position that pensions in an independent Scotland would be paid by taxpayers in England?’, she responded that ‘UK liabilities and assets including those related to pensions will be subject to negotiation’. What would be Scotland’s lever in such ‘negotiations’?

The only thing Sturgeon could, in this context, threaten to withhold would be payments of the state pension to pensioners in an independent Scotland. Thus her negotiating position would be, in the literal sense of the word, incredible.

Still less credibly, if that is possible, Blackford claims, in defence of his proposition: ‘If you or I as UK citizens go and live in another European country, then our right to that UK pension remains.’

Hilariously, this almost lifelong advocate of Scottish independence appears not to notice that the whole point of it is Scotland would be leaving the UK — and if Scotland’s tax base leaves, it takes with it the obligation to fund the pensions that tax base supports.

It is remarkable that he and Sturgeon should imagine the English — or indeed the Welsh — would agree to continue to fund a pension for Scots who would (obviously) no longer be paying a single penny in taxes to the Exchequer in Westminster.

Optimistic

Indeed, as the Scots receive about nine per cent more in public expenditure than they pay as tax, many English voters in particular might rather welcome a state of affairs in which Scotland was entirely responsible for its own finances.

At the time of the 2014 referendum, the SNP made great claims for future prosperity, based on full ownership of the North Sea oilfields in ‘Scottish waters’.

Those estimates were wildly optimistic at the time: they spoke of annual Scottish North Sea revenues of up to £8billion, whereas by 2020 the actual figure was a mere £725 million.

And now the SNP, in part because they are in coalition with the ferociously antioil Scottish Greens, actually oppose all new production in the North Sea. Last November, Sturgeon came out against the development of the Cambo oil field, where drilling could have started this year and continued for a quarter of a century.

In such a context, it’s no wonder that Sturgeon and Blackford would like the English and Welsh to fund the state pension of an independent Scotland.

Sorry; but if you’re out, you’re out.