YESTERDAY the SNP published the findings of its Social Justice and Fairness Commission. Previous SNP and Scottish Government enquiries, such as the Sustainable Growth Commission and the Advisory Group on Economic Recovery, were massive yawnfests, but this one feels a bit different.

Firstly, the membership of the commission was less traditional and more progressive than previously. Similarly, the findings in the report are visionary, with significant nods to experimenting with Universal Basic Income, Annual Ground Rent and Community Wealth Building, all concepts championed loudly by Business for Scotland and Believe in Scotland.

There is a whole section on Wellbeing Economy, which other than independence, is our raison d’etre (you can’t win one without the other). The word wellbeing appears on 126 occasions across just 132 pages, suggesting that the Scottish Government is, at last, adopting a more progressive stance on social issues and moving away from right wing economic orthodoxy that has always appeared as a strange bedfellow for a party raging against the status quo.

Honestly, I am pleasantly surprised at the progressiveness of the report and its willingness to consider next generation economic concepts. Many of the conversations I have had with Ministers and Cabinet Secretaries in the last year have been frustrating and involved some significant pushback when I’ve pushed ideas included in this report.

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So much so, that the hundreds of “let’s raise pensions after independence” billboards that we placed around Scotland were aimed as much at the SNP Government, as the older generation of voters worried about their pensions. Then last week, when the full Ministerial team was announced, I sensed a significant move within the government towards wellbeing and progressiveness.

The next step is to form a full-blown Wellbeing Economy Commission. Wellbeing isn’t just a social policy, it’s central to creating a sustainable recovery in this post-crash, post-Brexit, post-health crisis economic reality. Indeed, the opposition parties were swift to point out that this progressive report seems more than a little at odds with the sustainable growth commission report. Recently, the FM has been defending that report in the media whilst admitting that it needs updated. It needs more than updated, lockdown has changed everything. It needs to be replaced by a vision of an independent Scotland viewed through a wellbeing lens.

Planning Scotland’s pandemic economic recovery will be challenging. However, going back to normal isn’t an option, normal just wasn’t working. We have to recalibrate our economic system to create a country dedicated to social and economic wellbeing; to build back better with a more resilient, fairer and greener economic system. The UK Government will revert to the pre-coronavirus economic template, where the rich continued to get richer and the less well-off were trapped in poverty by austerity, low wages and even lower pensions.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Independence will provide the opportunity to create a country that reflects Scotland’s values through a vision of economic success in tandem with wellbeing, equality and fairness into a reality. That can be the starting point of the Wellbeing Economic Commission.

There is one area where I would go further than the Social Justice and Fairness Commission, and that’s on pensions. The report states (amongst many good pensions ideas) that we need a long-term pensions policy that doesn’t chop and change and must appreciate the WASPI women whose ability to plan for retirement was shattered with a knee-jerk retirement age switch. WASPI women are mentioned only once in the report, with a statement of support for their cause and a note that correcting their situation is Westminster’s responsibility. I agree, but post independence we must take responsibility for the wellbeing of our own pensioners and if the UK hasn’t compensated them, Scotland should state clearly that we will.

The report also states that the New State Pension Rate (available to new retirees) should be paid to all pensioners. Absolutely, but it’s also not enough. The current Standard State Pension sits at £134.25 a week (figures used in report). The New State Pension (retiring after April 2016) sits at £175.20 a week, so that represents a £40.95 a week raise for pensioners, £177.45 a month or £2129.40 a year. The report states that this would cost between £1 and £2 billion (surely, they could have calculated with a bit more accuracy than that!).

So while £175.20 a week is not to be sniffed at it is not that ambitious. By my calculations, a £50.00 a week raise, £216 a month or £2600 a year, would cost £2.386bn a year. It takes it above the UK new state pension and means 100% of Scottish pensioners will earn more after independence. It’s also not as easy for the UK Government to say during the indyref2 campaign that they will match it without looking like disingenuous fools.

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"But Gordon, where will we find £2.386bn a year?", shouts some panicking Unionist politician reading this. Well, the UK Treasury estimated that last year the UK tax gap – tax lost through non-payment, use of avoidance schemes, interpretation of tax effect of complex transactions, error, failure to take reasonable care, evasion, the hidden economy and organised criminal attack, amounted to £31bn (I think its twice at least, but let’s use the Treasury figure). Scotland’s population percentage share of that tax gap (conservative methodology given our high GDP per head) is approximately £2.6bn a year. So, assume that an independent Scotland will clamp down on tax evasion and tax avoidance and the £2.3bn needed to raise pensions is paid for. That’s also without adding in the fact that pensioners given extra money will spend it and the Scottish Government would get 20% VAT back on a lot of that spending and local economies, especially in rural Scotland, would be significantly boosted.

That’s not the point though, we should raise pensions because it is affordable, it will help us win independence, but the key reason is that ending pensioner poverty is the right thing to do. In contrast, the UK Government keeps pensions low to force wealthier people to buy private pensions and boost City of London profits, trapping less well-off pensioners in poverty.

An independent Scotland will be a wealthy nation, let’s agree now that wealthy nations shouldn’t have poor pensioners.

Gordon MacIntyre-Kemp is the founder and chief executive of Business for Scotland and facilitator of the Believe in Scotland campaign