Saturday November 30th 2019
Owen Thompson, SNP candidate speaking at the Midlothian Hustings. Photography by Lee Live: Photographer
Sir,
At the Midlothian hustings held on Wednesday 27th November, the SNP candidate and previous MP Owen Thompson claimed that Scotland receives less back than is ‘sent to Westminster’.
This directly contradicts the figures published by our SNP government in Holyrood, these show that we have been receiving at least £10 Billion in extra funding annually, small schools and hospitals in the Highlands and Islands are not cheap to run.
The SNP’s White Paper described these figures as “the authoritative publication on Scotland’s public finances”, so they can be assumed to accurate.
Scotland is not a special case here, Northern Ireland, Wales, the North East and North West all get more support per head than we do, part of the pooling and sharing of UK resources.
Mr Thompson railed against the austerity measures imposed over the last ten years, claiming £1.5 Billion of cuts every year.
We can see that independence and the loss of the £10 Billion would immediately be more than six times worse, that is before taking into account the loss of the finance industry etc as predicted by the SNP’s Growth Commission.
It is remarkable that someone who wants to represent us and agitates for our separation from the UK is so badly informed about our financial position within it.
Perhaps if he was better informed he would change his mind.
Nial Stewart
Dalkeith
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