SELECT COMMITTEE ON ECONOMIC AFFAIRS - Parliament

Professor Gavin McCrone—Oral evidence (QQ 117–187)
themselves partially as Scots, really, and who knows what might happen there. I always think
that the status of Faroe in relation to Denmark is something that could be of interest to
Shetland. The Faroe Islands are a dependency of Denmark rather than an integral part of
Denmark, which means they are not in the European Union but can trade freely in the
European Union, and they get a lot of advantage from that because of their fishing industry.
Q120 The Chairman: On public pension assets and liabilities, how do you feel that
should be dealt with?
Professor McCrone: I do not really know, but a lot of the public pensions, of course, are
not funded; they are simply paid out of revenue. So I suppose that that would be the practice
that would be adopted, for instance, for civil service pensions. I do not know what would
happen with teachers, but it would be a very difficult split for the ones that are actually
funded, I suppose. As for defence, I think that is a nightmare.
The Chairman: Yes. We will obviously be taking other evidence on defence.
Professor McCrone: Yes.
Q121 The Chairman: Are there any important items that you think should not be
divided?
Professor McCrone: I do not really think so. If Scotland becomes independent, then a lot of
consequences follow from that, and it then becomes much more difficult to see various
things being shared. Things like foreign embassies and so on, I suppose, might be at least
partially shared, but I do not see any financial flow being shared.
Q122 Lord Lawson of Blaby: On the last point, it is very difficult to see how you could
share a foreign embassy if the two countries had different foreign policies, which might be
the case.
Professor McCrone: It might easily be the case. But on the other hand, it is quite common
for the embassy of one country to act on behalf of another one, so I suppose that is how it
would be done.
Q123 Lord Lawson of Blaby: I want to come back to the Shetlands, because you drew
our attention, very properly, to the importance of that. Presumably the Shetland islanders
would effectively have a choice as to whether they wished to remain part of the United
Kingdom or wished to be part of an independent Scotland. As you said, they would have a
very strong bargaining position because they would see which of those two courses would
give them a more attractive deal all round. Have you any inkling—because you say you know
the Shetland Islands well—of which way that might go, and indeed how long this process
would take? It seems to me that even if the Scots do vote for independence, there are a lot
of important issues that are going to have to be decided, where there is no clear
international law that governs how they are decided. They have to be decided by
negotiation, and this negotiation and discussion could take a very long time, could it not?
Professor McCrone: Yes, indeed, it certainly could, and there are a lot of things to be
sorted out. As for Shetland, incidentally the Shetlanders call it Shetland not “the Shetlands”.
They are quite sensitive about that point.
Lord Lawson of Blaby: I understand sometimes they call it Zetland.
Professor McCrone: That is in the past, yes. I have no inkling what would happen. It has
never been suggested to me from any of my contacts in Shetland that they would want to
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