SELECT COMMITTEE ON ECONOMIC AFFAIRS - Parliament

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Professor Gavin McCrone—Oral evidence (QQ 117–187) But I think that if Scotland did not get into the European Union, it would, I presume, be in the European Economic Area, and that would give it freedom of trade with the European Union. What it would lack is any voice in the councils of the European Union or in the decisions that European policy took. That is why countries like Sweden eventually decided to join, which had a great history of being very independent from everybody before. But then I suppose you have to ask yourself how much influence a small country like Scotland would have in the decisions taken by the European Union anyway. There is one area that some Scots would think could be much better dealt with outside the European Union, and that is the fisheries policy. There is a lot of feeling in parts of Scotland—particularly in the north-east and, I suppose, in Shetland—about the common fisheries policy. I was involved in a study of the common fisheries policy done by the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and there is a lot of misunderstanding of it. The main people who catch the fish are the Scottish and British fishermen and they fish too much, and that is a large part of the problem. The stocks have gone down. It is not the Spaniards coming and pinching the fish. The Spaniards do not even have licences for the North Sea, only on the western side. There is a great deal of misunderstanding about it, but I think there probably would be a lot of people who thought, “Well, we would be much better managing our own fisheries policy”. But there would be problems even with that because you still have to share it. The North Sea is shared by a lot of different countries, so if you came out of the common fisheries policy, you would have to have bilateral arrangements with a whole lot of other countries. The Faroe Islands are different because they have their own little continental shelf, so they can have their own separate fisheries policy, although linked with Denmark. Of course, the same applies to Norway. But that is the one area, it seems to me, where Scotland would feel that there might be some possible advantage in not being in the European Union. As far as the rest is concerned, I am sure there would be major advantage in being in the European Union. I think the SNP take that view. They did not originally. At one time they did not want to belong to anything, but I think increasingly they have felt that Scotland within Europe was what they wanted. Q181 Lord Tugendhat: To what extent do you think Scotland draws any lessons from Catalonia, and the decision of Catalonia to remain part of Spain and, indeed, to exercise rather greater leverage in Madrid, perhaps, with its present status than it did before? Does the Catalonian example feature in the Scottish debate? Professor McCrone: It does a bit. I do not know enough about it to say with any kind of authority what I think about it, but people often do quote Catalonia. They say, “Well, if Catalonia can do all these things, why can Scotland not do them?” and so on. Catalonia, of course, is the richest part of Spain, which is worth bearing in mind, and is very important, therefore, to the rest of Spain. I do not know what lessons one could learn from that. I do think they have powers to vary corporation tax and things like that there, but I do not know how extensive those powers are, and I do not know whether it gives rise to the kind of problems that I have been worrying about in relation to Scotland. Q182 Lord Tugendhat: Although, of course, interestingly in the present crisis afflicting Spain, one of the things the Spanish Government, as I understand, is having to do is to restrict the financial freedom of action of Andalucia and Catalonia. 228
Professor Gavin McCrone—Oral evidence (QQ 117–187) Professor McCrone: Yes. Well, I understood Catalonia was having to have the equivalent of a bailout or something from the rest of Spain, which is not a very good precedent for Scotland. Q183 The Chairman: I had to deal with fisheries policy a long time ago. Can you just remind me what proportion of Scottish GNP now is coming from fisheries? Professor McCrone: I do not have the figure. It is not huge. The Chairman: It is quite low, is it? Professor McCrone: Yes, it is quite low. It is quite low, but it is very, very important for certain communities on the north-east coast of Scotland and in Shetland especially. The Chairman: I understand that, yes. Professor McCrone: Those are the ones that are mainly affected. The fact that there have been problems in the industry has undoubtedly depressed these areas quite a bit—not Shetland so much, but the north-east coast of Scotland. It is a major concern there. I went to Shetland when they were scrapping some of the boats and it was a very sad business altogether. The pelagic fleet was doing reasonably well, but it is the white fish that are really the problem. I think the catch quotas are very difficult to work, because you cannot decree what fish you will catch. You may have plenty of quota for haddock but hardly any left for cod, and you cast the net overboard and it brings up cod. What are you supposed to do with it? That is what gives rise to all these discards and illegal landings and all sorts of things, which are a great problem with the fisheries policy and give it, of course, a great deal of ill publicity in Scotland as well as elsewhere. Q184 Lord McFall of Alcluith: I was at a seminar in <strong>Parliament</strong> a number of months ago where Professor Nicholas Crafts of the LSE said that Scottish public services were grossly inefficient by miserable UK standards, and he referred to the health service. Do you agree with the proposition that it is the detail of what you do with taxes rather than the absolute level and what you spend your money on that is important? Could the Scottish <strong>Parliament</strong> have been more efficient in that over the past 10 years? Is there potential to increase that in future? Professor McCrone: I would have thought there certainly is. I have never attempted to compare the efficiency of the Scottish public services with those in England. I happen to think, living in Edinburgh, that I am very well served by the National Health Service, better than I would be if I was in London, but that is maybe just prejudice. Lord McFall of Alcluith: He was talking about an extra 90% expenditure per person in relation to that. Professor McCrone: Yes, that is right. One of the things that has happened with devolution is that Scotland has stopped pulling all these things up by their roots and examining them. I think that has been a tendency in England that has been rather excessive sometimes. Things are always under review. When I did my report on teachers’ pay I remember that Ministers kept saying to me—it was the coalition of Labour and Liberal at that time—that they wanted to take another initiative in relation to the teachers and I said, “For God’s sake, do not. The one thing they are all complaining about is that they cannot cope with the ones they already have”. There is a lot of sense in leaving things be for a while, but certainly you do want always to try to improve the efficiency of what is delivered. 229
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