Cold reality for OAPS could mean hardship

Sir, – Stephen Windsor’s claim that Westminster would still pay Scottish pensions in the event of a split (February 8) is based on a fallacy for it ignores the fact that obligations and assets would get divided between the remainder of the UK (RUK) and Scotland.

As there is no vast pension fund to pay state pensions out of, these would continue to be paid out of general taxation (and government borrowing). On separation, the liability to pay these would be divided up according in the first instance to which country each of us becames a citizen of.

Most of us living in Scotland would become Scottish citizens, but not citizens of the RUK, and vice versa for people living in the RUK. Any legal obligation would fall on our own country but not the other.

A fortunate sub-category of Scots who had worked in the RUK and were settled there at the split would probably qualify for RUK pensions on the same basis as other foreigners settled there. For the rest of us, we would only have claims on Holyrood.

And the cold reality is that on losing English subsidies of our deficit, the tax base in Scotland would not be sufficient to support pensions and other public spending at the current levels. SNP claims that the RUK would continue to pay Scottish pensions implicitly acknowledge that.

Put another way, the SNP position is effectively that people in the RUK would be taxed to pay the pensions of the citizens of a foreign country resident in that foreign country, and that is clearly absurd.

Otto Inglis. Ansonhill, Crossgates.