By Bill Heaney
The SNP Minister for Public Finance, Planning and Community Wealth Tom Arthur told the Holyrood parliament on Thursday: ” We will publish our proposals for Scotland’s economy under independence as part of the building a new Scotland series. The proposals will set out the economic opportunities and the currency arrangements for an independent Scotland.”
Michael Marra replied: “So yet another new currency policy from the Government is on the way. The Tories’ calamitous run on the pound last week would have left an independent Scotland having to defend the madness of a currency peg.
“Professor Ronnie MacDonald of the University of Glasgow has estimated in recent days that the cost of that would be £100 billion. Where would the Scottish people find that money?”
Tom Arthur told MSPs: “Where the Scottish people find themselves right now, under a Tory Government that they did not elect, is with soaring mortgage rates, financial instability and the threat of billions of pounds in cuts to public expenditure—a new age of austerity.
“That is where the Scottish people find themselves, which is why more and more people in Scotland support independence and why, when they are given the opportunity to vote for independence, they will do so.”