Caring contest?

Robert Scott (Letters, 22 April) fails to appreciate that England couldn’t cope with the global coronavirus crisis without getting essential PPE from Turkey or fruit pickers from Romania. Whether it’s on testing, PPE provision or the number of fatalities, Scotland’s NHS is performing much better than in England. Scottish taxpayers will be paying their share for the UK Treasury bail out and an independent Scotland would have the ability to recover just like Denmark, Ireland, Norway or any other normal country.

When the price of oil crashed in 2015, Scotland’s economy did not enter into a recession as our onshore economy grew by 1.6 per cent, partly due to falling oil prices. Also, since then the cost of extracting North Sea oil has fallen to $15 a barrel. Contrast that with the collapse of the financial markets in 2008, upon which the UK economy was twice as dependent as Scotland was on oil. This led to a recession and ten years of Westminster imposed austerity.

Since oil and gas was discovered in the North Sea, Norway has generated £386bn more than the UK government in tax revenues. With similar levels of extraction, that is no union dividend for Scotland with ninety per cent of the UK output.

MARY THOMAS Watson Crescent, Edinburgh

Robert Scott is right to highlight the fact that without UK Government support Scotland could not survive the economic effects of the coronovirus pandemic.

It’s not just the billions of pounds in support that Chancellor Rishi Sunak has furnished to support the Scottish economy now. It is the support that will be needed at the end of the lockdown to prevent the Scottish economy crashing in what is the worst economic crisis since the Second World War.

As Caroline Elsom of the Centre for Policy Studies has written, “the line between survival and disaster will rest on the bond markets’ trust in the British Government and on the reputation of the Bank of England”. Just as the Bank of England prevented the Royal Bank of Scotland disintegrating during the financial crash, so the Treasury and the Bank are all that stands between a solvent Scotland and a poverty-stricken land.

WILLIAM LONESKIE

Justice Park, Oxton Lauder, Scottish Borders