Borrowing Powers - Eddie Barnes

The SNP Government is issuing quite an effective release for the Sunday papers tomorrow (apologies if this is breaking the embargo). It has listed all the various public bodies which say the Scottish Government should get borrowing powers. They include the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy, the Royal Society of Edinburgh, the Scottish Council Foundation and the Church of Scotland. The SNP's point is that if they had borrowing powers they wouldn't be forced (having ruled out PFI) to go down the public procurement route for the new Forth Road Bridge crossing, a decision which looks set to leave them broke for about three years.

This is an argument which may find more traction than the SNP's demand for an advance for the bridge from the UK government. The reason the Scottish Government doesn't have borrowing powers is because the Treasury has always opposed the idea of relinquishing control over the UK's borrowing targets. It fears that if the Scottish government got borrowing powers it would spend money like there was no tomorrow thereby ruining the UK figures. But now that Gordon Brown's golden rules have become a token of history and with Treasury borrowing set to hit £119bn in 2009-10, I wonder whether this position can still be held.....

But there are some questions to be put to the SNP as well. The only reason the organisations quoted by the SNP today have declared their position on the question of borrowing powers is because they have been asked to by the Calman Commission - you know, that Unionist conspiracy which the SNP has decided to boycott. Today, however, the SNP is using the evidence it has gathered to back up its position. Ah the irony.....