THIS week featured a tale of two reports in Scotland: one you will have heard of while the other you are unlikely to have seen anything about. Firstly we had the annual GERS report which presents Scotland’s suboptimal current fiscal position within the UK.
The second was a hugely exciting study on Scotland’s tech economy options. If ever there was a contrast between what should be consigned to the past and what should be embraced for the future this was it.
As every year the publication of the Government Expenditure and Revenues Scotland (GERS) caused more heat than light. With reality inversions rivalling Alice in Wonderland, anti-independence commentators frothed about Scotland’s finances in the UK as a weakness for the independence case rather than a damning indictment of failed Whitehall governance.
As Andrew Wilson cogently argued: “Scotland’s public spending deficit makes the case for independence. Unionists may welcome fiscal transfers from Westminster but they show the UK is not working for most of the country.”
In reaction to the GERS data not a single prominent pro-Union campaigner or parliamentarian made a single proposal to improve Scotland’s relative economic position in the UK. Bizarrely, Unionist politicians brazenly celebrate imbalanced UK economic policy, preach dependency as a panacea and lack ambition to match the success of neighbouring independent nations. It cannot go on like this. No wonder a sustained majority are now in favour of Scottish independence.
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In 2014 the independence referendum choice was framed by the Better Together No campaign as between a stable UK status quo and Scottish “separatist” uncertainty.
Now the choice is stark between an unstable and worsening Brexit Britain and Scotland making better decisions for our future. Every other northern European neighbour is more economically successful than Scotland within the UK. They have used the powers of independence to make better long-term decisions.
Scotland is already using its existing powers in advance of securing independence.
This week also saw the publication of a ground-breaking report which was commissioned by Cabinet Secretary of Finance Kate Forbes into how Scotland’s tech sector can contribute to Scotland’s economic recovery following the Covid-19 pandemic.
Tech entrepreneur and former Skyscanner COO Mark Logan conducted a short-life review and made 34 key recommendations primarily concerned with stimulating and accelerating the maturity of Scotland’s “Technology Ecosystem”, with a focus on education, infrastructure and funding.
According to Logan, “there is a tipping-point within tech ecosystems after which certain virtuous network effects establish themselves, and at which point the ecosystem is essentially self-sustaining. Scotland’s tech ecosystem has not reached this…”
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The report should be compulsory reading for all decision-makers in Scotland, particularly in Edinburgh which has the aim to become Europe’s data capital.
A Data-Driven Innovation (DDI) programme has already been launched as part of the region’s city deal with five areas of activity: talent, research, DDI adoption, data infrastructure and entrepreneurship. Five DDI innovation hubs will drive the programme: the Edinburgh Future’s Institute (EFI), Bayes Centre, National Robotarium, Usher Institute and Easter Bush.
Logan makes the key suggestion that computing science in schools should be treated with the same importance as maths or physics as a core subject and be taught from the first year of secondary school.
A further key suggestion is providing incentives for universities to produce homegrown software engineers from courses currently dominated by overseas students.
There are already positive growth signs in the sector with tech incubators like CodeBase Edinburgh, the UK’s largest technology incubator having over 90 companies which have collectively raised over half a billion dollars in investment. The FinTech sector in Scotland is becoming a leading global hub, ably supported by strategic enabler FinTech Scotland, and Edinburgh University planning to build Europe’s first regional data innovation centre.
Scotland should aspire to be amongst the most innovative countries in the world. According to the latest Bloomberg Innovation Index this includes smaller countries like Singapore, Switzerland, Sweden, Israel, Finland, Denmark, Austria, Netherlands, Belgium, Ireland and Norway all of whom are better rated than the UK.
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Other nations like Estonia have become leading proponents of digital citizenship. All of them have used the powers of independence to drive their domestic innovation agenda.
We must aim to match them and be at the forefront of innovation and sustainable economic development which will help deliver the social progress that must go hand in hand.
Scotland’s two economic reports this week told us much about what is wrong with our limitations in the UK but also gave a strong steer where we should focus for the future. The quicker we can move on from the stale annual GERS debate and instead invest our collective efforts in transforming Scotland’s economy to the industries of the future the better. By securing independence we will have the full range of powers to do just that.
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Callum Baird, Editor of The National
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