Scotland’s Place in the UK

Debate between Lord Tyrie and Stewart Hosie

Thursday 6th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Tyrie]

I think it crucial for us to understand that a banking union could well trigger the migration of banks to London, where they would be able to benefit from the “lender of last resort” facilities provided by the Bank of England.

Let me say something about what a common fiscal policy would entail. It would mean, for instance, pre-approval of budget proposals, which would be accompanied by intensive and very intrusive oversight of budgetary outcomes. It would require rigorous powers to insist on overshoots being corrected quickly and reversed, backed up by credible sanctions for non-compliance.

In order to carry credibility, such powers would probably need to be directly applicable in law on both sides of the border. What that means in practice is that the Bank of England and the Treasury would have the power to direct a large part of Scottish economic and financial policy. For example, the Scots would probably be required to seek their approval before they could borrow in order to build schools and hospitals.

Is it realistic to imagine that all those in Scotland who had just voted for independence would readily accept such intensive supervision and direction from the rest of the United Kingdom? I doubt it.

[Stewart Hosie (Dundee East) (SNP)]

The Chair of the Treasury Committee is making an interesting assessment, but what he is saying is not necessarily the case. If the stability arrangements were made at the aggregate deficit or debt level, and if both countries were required to adhere to them, the line-by-line scrutiny of spending plans he describes would not be necessary, would it?

[Mr Tyrie]

Countries in the eurozone were required to abide by the stability and growth pact, and look where that took us. We need something much more robust than that to make a currency union work, and I am pretty confident that it would not be any more acceptable in Scotland than it will be in England.

Let me now say something about the effects of a currency union on the rest of the United Kingdom. It would, after all, have to be a two-way street. Is it realistic to expect the rest of the UK—much the bigger partner, both economically and in terms of population—to accept Scottish oversight of fiscal policy here? Is it realistic to expect the rest of the UK to risk the need for what most durable currency unions have eventually required, namely fiscal transfers? Is it realistic to expect the rest of the UK to sign up to a currency union that could carry the risk that all those rules, albeit tough rules, would fail, and whose failure would trigger the need for bail-outs? I do not think that such arrangements would be acceptable to the electorate. What is more, I doubt that a majority could be mustered for them in the House of Commons.

Of course, the leaders of both countries might try to get a currency union past their respective Parliaments without fully explaining the consequences, but I am on my feet now because I want to try to prevent that from happening. There would be shades of the eurozone in such an attempt, but it would be a fool’s errand.

A currency union created in such circumstances would, sooner or later, be tested by the markets. Either the rules would be tough enough to bite, or, if they were not tight enough, there might be a bail-out. Alternatively, we might experience both the pain and the bail-out, as happened in the eurozone: we might experience the pain of the bail-out south of the border, and the pain caused by the biting of the rules north of the border.

Not enough attention has been paid to the political consequences of botching these currency arrangements. Whatever the economics of trying to create a currency union, I think that it is bad politics for these islands at this point. The eurozone has provided a reminder not just of the economic difficulties of creating durable currency unions, but of the political damage and fall-out that come with flawed arrangements. We need, above all, to put what Lord Lang, in the other place, described as “the politics of grievance” behind us as we make our efforts to renew the relationship between Scotland and the rest of the UK. But it seems to me that a currency union would risk the opposite. As its full implications became clear, it would create the conditions for lasting resentment on both sides of the border, and it is just such resentment that we must do everything possible to avoid in the search for a stable economic and political relationship between those on the two sides of the border.

I urge the Governments on both sides of the border to explain how all the difficulties that I have outlined could be addressed, well before the Scottish referendum. Not to do so would be to deceive our respective electorates into believing that there is some third way, some relatively painless option, enabling the Scots to imagine that they could be fully in control of their own affairs and that the rest of the UK could avoid large contingent obligations. If, as I have concluded, those difficulties cannot be adequately addressed in the current circumstances, the two Governments should rule out a currency union now.