06/03/2007

On Sunday, a newspaper ran a story that Scotland was heavily subsidised by England. It concluded that, should the southern cash be taken away by independence, it would “cost Scots billions”.

Given that Scotland on Sunday ran this top of page one, the paper must think it is news. To make that judgement, SoS can’t have been reading the Scottish press for the last decade. Indeed, it can’t have been reading its own back issues.

The fact that Scotland is subsidised first hit the news agenda in 1995 with the publication of Government Expenditure and Revenue Scotland (GERS) document from the old Scottish Office. Since that time, the story has made regular appearances, not least on the front page of Scotland on Sunday the weekend before the 1999 election.

Political editor, Eddie Barnes’ tale added nothing new to the tale. So why was it run? Why waste the top spot of your newspaper on a tale as weary as ‘Scots are subsidy junkies’, a cry familiar from the days of Margaret Thatcher and John Major?

To be clear about this, the tale is very old. The Barnett Formula, which determines government cash distribution throughout the UK, was set in the 1970s. It explicitly awards a higher per capita budget to Scots than those south of the border. So the higher spend isn’t merely an old fact, it is truism of UK governance. As a story, it’s like splashing on “UK has Defence Budget” or  “State owns Downing Street”; so what?

The “so what?” in this case is the horror that the high spending supported by the subsidy will end if the Union folds. This ‘hook’ for the tale is as old as GERS - that’s why the Tories produced the figures for the first time, to make the case that life would only be rich for Scots if the status quo survived. Of course, the Tories said the wealth would end if there was any kind of erosion of the Union, and that hasn’t turned out to be the case.

Eddie Barnes’ ‘So what’ is therefore as old as GERS, or more than a decade. It’s the same ‘so what’ that motivated the 1999 front page ‘exclusive’ on exactly the same tale in the same paper.

Now, this issue makes for dramatic copy. A picture of social decay can be implied, while fruity quotes from unionists and nationalists liven up the lower paragraphs. That it is always the same cast of players quoted, however, makes this piece of political theatre feel like a tired production.

I’m not accusing Eddie of being politically biased - I have no idea about his politics - but I’m unconvinced that it is either good journalism or of any public service to merely repeat these old shows.

While the nationalists disagree, most of us can see there is a structural subsidy from the UK government to Scotland. Further, we can read Joel Barnett’s reason for this, namely that geographical spread and post-industrial adjustment put particular pressures on the Scottish budget. Additionally, we can study the social indicator statistics on crime, health and quality of life which show a society apparently unable to shift deprivation and poverty. Also, we can look around and not see a world significantly better off than one south of the border.

If we accept, broadly, all of the above, then isn’t the news, isn’t the real story, why Scots spend all this money but get a society no better or worse than England’s? In short, if we are getting £11 billion extra a year, as some claim, then why did last month’s statistics show poverty getting worse? The political story of the subsidy issue is not  two political parties and a few tainted economists trading insults, but why, since the 1970s, has all that money, adding up to hundreds of billions over the decades, extra to England, not shifted the problem? Wouldn’t that make for a better front page splash? Isn’t that something worth fighting an election over?

Alex Bell

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