Who would pay pensions in independent Scotland?

Sir, – Your correspondent Stephen Windsor launches an ugly personal attack on me. No matter, I am more concerned with the misinformation he spreads about pensions.

1. Mr Windsor’s claim that “it matters not if pensioners live in an independent Scotland, France, Spain or any other country’” all are entitled to UK pensions. He neglects to mention that pensioners abroad who receive the state pension are expatriates of the UK. The whole point of the separatist campaign is to take Scotland out of the UK. Scots would be foreigners, not British national expatriates.

2. Mr Windsor is very keen to quote Steve Webb, former pensions minister, when it suits him but not when it doesn’t. In a written submission in 2014, subsequent to his oral comments, Mr Webb said: “I would think the Scottish people would expect their government to take on full responsibility for paying pensions to people in Scotland including where liabilities had arisen before independence.

“Similarly, people in the rest of the UK would not be expecting to guarantee or underwrite the pensions of those living in what would then have become a foreign country. The security and sustainability of pensions being paid to people in Scotland would, therefore, depend on the ability of Scottish taxpayers to fund them”.

The Courier’s Derek Healey, referred on February 7 to Steve Webb’s amended statement in “Is the SNP ‘misleading voters over pensions in an independent Scotland?’”.

3. The current pensions minister, Guy Opperman, said on Sunday, “if Scotland chooses to become a foreign country, then working English, Welsh and Northern Irish taxpayers should not pay for a foreign country’s pension liabilities. That has been the settled position of the UK Government since before the 2014 referendum”.

He added, “Nicola Sturgeon and Ian Blackford are, once again, misleading Scots”. He is right.

4. Perhaps Mr Windsor could explain to us why the SNP has changed its position on pensions. In 2013, their prospectus for the 2014 referendum, the White Paper, stated categorically on p144 that the Scottish Government would assume responsibility for paying Scottish pensions. Why have Sturgeon and Blackford changed their position?

The UK Government has not.

5. Another question – why do SNP conferences vote for an increased (even doubled) state pension if they do not think that the Scottish Government would be paying it? Why does Sturgeon tell us that a separate Scotland would have better pensions than we have at present if she would not control pension payments?

6. I am afraid that the SNP’S 11 civil servants who are working on a new referendum prospectus must have delivered to the SNP leadership bad news about pensions – that, as John Swinney confidentially informed them in 2013, “the nation’s finances – and its ability to afford pensions and public service – would be imperilled by fluctuating oil prices and the cost of an ageing population” (The Independent, March 7 2013).

The SNP knows that it would have difficulty in honouring the commitment to paying the state pension at the current rate (let alone a higher rate) if Scotland left the UK.

Mr Windsor talks about people like me “panicking”. The panic is all on the SNP’S side when faced with the reality of fulfilling their promises. I trust that the civil servants working on their referendum prospectus will not think of including the lies that the SNP leadership has been telling about pensions.