Migrant Myths 2 : The "Flood" of migrants and refugees to the EU and UK - There isn't one, but if Syrian refugees continue to be left to starve there soon will be

Summary: While there is a lot of talk of a “flood” of refugees to the EU or a “migrant crisis” the numbers involved are pretty small compared to the population, size and wealth of the EU – around 0.6% of the existing EU population in 2015 for instance. (This figure includes all migrants estimated by the EU border force Frontex to have entered undetected, and of all nationalities). More a growing trickle than a flood.

The proportion of these coming to the UK is even smaller as the UK gets less than 5% of asylum applications to EU countries. Ninety-five per cent of Syrian refugees are in Syria and neighbouring countries.

The real crisis is for countries like Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey. Jordan, for instance, a country the size of Cornwall and much poorer than the UK , has about 1.2 million Syrians, an increase in its population since 2011 of 25%.

The widespread reports that the richer Arab Gulf states have taken in no Syrians are also false. In fact they have taken in about 1.3 million Syrians and in Saudi’s case given them rights to free education and healthcare, but as they are not signatories to the 1951 UN refugee convention, none are reported in UN statistics as refugees.

Since Saudi for instance has an extreme version of Sharia law, and oppresses non-Sunni Muslims, many Syrian refugees – who include Christians, Shia, Alawites and secular or moderate Sunnis, as well as non-Arab Kurds, will not want to live there either.

Many of the Syrian refugees in countries bordering Syria are receiving no food aid or medical treatment or education for their children, because wealthier countries have not donated enough to the UN to pay for this.

The £1.3 billion over 4 years that the British government boasts about having given to refugees is about £400 million a year out of annual public spending of around £700 billion. It is only “generous” compared to the even smaller amounts given by other countries. Its latest pledge only increases this to around £500 million a year (around 0.07% of the UK’s annual public spending).

Unless EU governments , the US and the Gulf states donate a lot more money to the UN to feed Syrian refugees , there really will be a flood of them into Europe soon – especially with the governments of countries neighbouring Syria having started deportations of Syrians, and the Turkish government’s restarting of its war with Turkish Kurdish separatists, which makes Turkey even less safe for Syrian Kurd refugees.

A flood of migrants and refugees to the EU and UK?

Only 5% of Syrian refugees have been taken in so far by countries outside the Middle East. The other 95% are in Syria itself (about 18 million internally displace people forced out of their homes but still somewhere in Syria) or refugees in refugee camps in neighbouring countries. The numbers granted refugee status in neighbouring countries are over 2.5 million granted refugee status in Turkey, over 1 million in Lebanon, about 600, 000 in Jordan , 250,000 in Iraq (which has a civil war itself) and 100,000 in Egypt (a military dictatorship) . However the total numbers of Syrian refugees in these countries are higher, as many have not been granted formal refugee status. Lebanon and Jordan are small and fairly poor countries. (1).

Lebanon alone has taken in probably more Syrian refugees than the entire EU combined at 1.1 million (or 1.2 million including those not granted refugee status), a 25% increase on its pre-Syrian civil war population of 4.3 million (which already included 450,000 Palestinian refugees).

The EU by comparison got asylum claims from a bit over 200,000 Syrians in 2015 – or just 0.04% of its 504 million population, or 270,000 total since 2011, around 0.05% of its 504.5 million population on the first day of 2011. Of course there were other migrants and asylum seekers from other countries too. The European border agency Frontex estimates the total number of migrants coming to the EU illegally in 2015 was around 1.5 million, including those likely to have avoided border controls. The numbers who enter legally each year have been similar from 2010 at about 1.4 to 1.5 million a year. So for 2015 the total number of legal and illegal migrants would be around 3 million, or a 0.6% increase in the EU’s population if all were allowed to stay (which they will not be as, while applications may take a long time to process, many applications are rejected each year and around 40% of rejections result in deportation in the same year as they are rejected) (2) – (5).

Multiplying by 4 for the years since the Syrian civil war started in 2011 it would come to a 2.4% increase in population from all forms of immigration. (This will be a significant overestimate as there were more migrants and refugees in 2015 than in previous years)

These figures don’t include the number of non-EU nationals who leave the EU (emigrate from it) every year, from around 700,000 in 2010 to over 800,000 in 2013. That would make the overall growth of non-EU national population in the EU about 2.5 million in 2015, or 10 million over 4 years maximum or around 0.5% per year, or 2% over 4 years (again likely an over-estimate) (6).

So the total increase in the EU’s population from immigration from outside the EU is not so much the “flood” the media often talk of as a rapidly growing trickle relative to the size of the lake it’s flowing into.

And of course immigration and emigration aren’t the only factors affecting population growth. Birth and death rates also affect it. Looking at total population growth for all the countries that are now EU members since 1960 there has not been any significant increase in the rate of population growth. Birth rates have fallen significantly over that time, while people are also living longer due to improved living standards and medical care. The result is a growing population, but with a growing percentage of elderly people (7).

Without either immigration (with immigrants being younger on average) or other measures to increase the birth rate (e.g the 35 hour week tried in France), or both, we may end up with not enough people of working age to pay the taxes to fund healthcare and pensions for pensioners.

But ever increasing population results in increasing pollution, deforestation and environmental damage, including climate change. This is a difficult circle to square.

The rate of population growth in the EU has actually been falling for decades though and is considerably lower than it was in the 1960s.

Are the wealthiest Arab states refusing to take in any Syrian refugees?

The Gulf states – Sunni ‘monarchies’ (dictatorships) allied to the US and who are funding and arming many of the Syrian Jihadist Sunni rebels (including Al Nusrah, the Syrian wing of Al Qa’ida) are refusing to take in any Syrians as refugees, as they are not signatories to the 1951 Refugee convention. However some Syrian refugees have been given residency permits to live in Saudi and granted free education and healthcare (the Saudi government claim over 100,000 though this is not an independently verified figure) (8) – (9).

World Bank figures gave the total for all the Gulf monarchies as over 1.3 million Syrians living in them in 2013 , 1 million in Saudi, but the UNHCR figure in 2015 was just 500,000, possibly due to definitions of who was being counted (10).

However even Saudi citizens have no real rights not to be imprisoned or executed without fair trial. Immigrants working in Saudi are exploited ruthlessly.

And Saudi Arabia has an extreme version of Sharia law based on the Wahhabi sect of Sunni Islam. Syrian refugees include Christians, Alawites and Shia, all of who face persecution in Saudi, along with moderate and secular Muslims who do not want to live under Sharia law. So many refugees would rather avoid Saudi Arabia and other dictatorships with religious laws.

Is the UK taking more than its share of refugees coming to the EU? No, far less

The UK’s population has grown steadily too, around a 20% increase in the last 50 years. The rate of increase has gone up and down over that period, but is currently higher than at any point since the 1950s (11).

The UK, with over 10% of the EU’s population, and one of the richest countries in it, gets less than 5% of asylum applications for refugee status from people who are not citizens of any EU country. So the people at Calais are not a flood either, but an even smaller trickle. For instance in the second quarter of 2015 the UK got just 3.5% of applications to EU countries. In the third quarter it got just 2.86% (12).

And that trickle is not higher than ever before either – the number of asylum applications in the UK in 2014 was about the same number as in 1990. And overall about 52% of asylum applications processed in 2014 in the UK were refused (13) – (14).

The UK actually gets very few asylum applications relative to it’s size and wealth – one of the lowest rates in the EU relative to our population.

Source : BBC News (15)

The UK, twice as wealthy as Lebanon in GDP per capita and a much larger country in terms of population and land area, had granted just 5,102 Syrians the right to remain as refugees by August 2015 and offered to take just 4,000 a year in future. (Total numbers will be higher as some will be waiting for applications to be heard, but still likely in the thousands compared to Lebanon’s millions)

Graphic : http://www.ifitweremyhome.com/compare/GB/LB

The real refugee crisis is in Syria’s neighbours, not the EU, but unless the EU provide more money to feed and house refugees, it may be an EU crisis soon

The EU and UK are not suffering a refugee “flood” or “crisis”, but manageable numbers both in terms of their exsiting population, their land area and their wealth. The real refugee crisis is in Syria and for its neighbours. But if the wealthier governments continue to fail to provide enough money to feed and house refugees in countries neighbouring Syria, there may soon be a real flood.

Those Syrians in refugee camps in the Middle East are not getting enough food, and often no medical treatment for illnesses and wounds, as donations from governments around the world have been too low. Syrian refugees in Turkey and Lebanon currently get under 50 cents or 35 pence worth of food a day, not nearly enough. The Turkish government has begun sending many back to Syria. Jordan has closed its border with Syria leaving thousands of refugees stranded in the desert. Lebanon has also begun deporting Syrian refugees . The governments of the three countries are saying they can’t take any more refugees
(16 ) – (19).

The UK’s supposedly “generous” aid to Syrian refugees in the Middle East comes to about £1.1 billion over 4 years since the Syrian civil war began, or a bit under £300 million a year, out of annual public spending of around £700 billion (thousand million) a year. The fact that other EU governments have given even less is nothing to boast about. Even Cameron’s latest pledge to increase it to around £510 million a year from the UK and ask other EU countries to increase similarly is far too little. It amounts to under 0.07% of the UK’s annual public spending of over £700 billion a year (20) – (22).

Sources

(1) = UNHCR 19 Jan 2016 ‘Syria Regional Refugee Response - Inter-agency Information Sharing Portal’, http://data.unhcr.org/syrianrefugees/regional.php

(2) = BBC News ‘Migrant crisis: Migration to Europe explained in graphics’
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-34131911 (200,000 asylum applications from Syrians EU 2015; Frontex 1.5 million migrants estimate for 2015)

(3) = Al Jazeera 22 Dec 2015 ‘One million 'refugees and migrants' reached EU in 2015’, http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/12/million-refugees-migrants-reached-eu-2015-151222100045573.html (270,000 Syrians applied for asylum in EU countries since 2011)

(4) = BBC News 09 Sep 2015 ‘Migrant crisis: Who does the EU send back?’,
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-34190359 (only 39% of rejected asylum claimants deported from the EU in 2015)

(5) = BBC News 13 Aug 2015 ‘What happens to failed asylum seekers?’,
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-33849593

(6) = Eurostat 10 Jun 2015 ‘Immigration in the EU’,
http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/home-affairs/e-library/docs/infographics/immigration/migration-in-eu-infographic_en.pdf

(7) = Eurostat Jul 2015 ‘Population and population change statistics’,
http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Population_and_population_change_statistics

(8)= Huffington Post 23 Sep 2015 ‘Western Media's Miscount of Saudi Arabia's Syrian Refugees’,
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/anhvinh-doanvo/europes-crisis-refugees_b_8175924.html

(9) = Guardian 12 Sep 2015 ‘Saudi Arabia says criticism of Syria refugee response 'false and misleading'’, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/12/saudi-arabia-says-reports-of-its-syrian-refugee-response-false-and-misleading

(10) = News Week 12 Apr 2015 ‘The Gulf States Are Taking Syrian Refugees’, http://europe.newsweek.com/gulf-states-are-taking-syrian-refugees-401131

(11) = ONS 26 Jun 2014 ‘Changes in UK population over the last 50 years’, http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/pop-estimate/population-estimates-for-uk--england-and-wales--scotland-and-northern-ireland/2013/sty-population-changes.html

(12) = Eurostat News Release 10 Dec 2015 ‘Asylum in the EU Member States More than 410 000 first time asylum seekers registered in the third quarter of 2015’, http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/documents/2995521/7105334/3-10122015-AP-EN.pdf/04886524-58f2-40e9-995d-d97520e62a0e

(13) = Migration Observatory , Oxford university, 13 Aug 2015, ‘Migration to the UK : Asylum’, In 2014, 59% of asylum applications were initially refused. 28% of appeals were eventually approved,
http://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/briefings/migration-uk-asylum

(14) = Migration Observatory , Oxford university, 13 Aug 2015, ‘Migration to the UK : Asylum’, Figure 1 - Asylum applications and estimated inflows, 1984-2014,
http://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/briefings/migration-uk-asylum

(15) = BBC News ‘Migrant crisis: Migration to Europe explained in graphics’ http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-34131911

(16) = Observer 06 Sep 2015 ‘UN agencies 'broke and failing' in face of ever-growing refugee crisis’, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/06/refugee-crisis-un-agencies-broke-failing

(17) = BBC 15 Jan 2016 ‘Turkey 'acting illegally' over Syria refugees deportations’ http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-35135810

(18) = Independent 22 Jan 2016 ‘Jordan blocks Syria border leaving thousands of refugees in the desert - including hundreds of pregnant women’, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/jordan-blocks-syrian-border-to-leave-thousands-of-refugees-trapped-in-the-desert-including-hundreds-a6828471.html

(19) = CBS/AP 07 Feb 2016 ‘Turkey: We're at end of "capacity to absorb" refugees’,
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/turkey-has-reached-the-end-of-its-capacity-to-absorb-refugees/

(20) = DFID Syria Crisis Response, https://www.gov.uk/government/world/organisations/dfid-syria-crisis-response

(21) = http://www.ukpublicspending.co.uk/total_spending_2015UKbn

(22) = www.theguardian.com 04 Feb 2016 ‘David Cameron calls for billions more in international aid for Syrian refugees’, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/feb/03/david-cameron-calls-for-billions-more-in-international-aid-for-syrian-refugees

German and EU hypocrisy and short memories on Greece : Syriza aren't extremists - they're asking for the same debt relief deal Greece gave Germany in 1953. The EU is handing the banks almost ten times the amount of money Greece is asking written off in debts

Syriza extremists or unrealistic? No, moderates, asking for deal Germany got in 1953

The deal Syriza are looking for is a reasonable one. For their creditors to forgive 50% of their debts, for debt repayments to only have to be made once the Greek economy is growing again, for the EU to stop privatising Greek government assets and services by selling them off for buttons at the bottom of the market, and an end to austerity policies which prevent growth (1).

This is a plan based on the 1953 London Agreement under which Germany was forgiven 50% of its debts incurred during two world wars and from Marshall Plan aid from the US after them. The creditors forgiving half of those debts included the governments of Greece, Ireland and Spain, three of the four countries much derided as ‘PIGS’ over the debt crisis. The London Agreement also included Germany only having to pay back debts out of 3% of its export earnings, so that its creditors imported German products (2).

While saying there will be no more debt reductions for Greece, Angela Merkel and other EU government leaders have approved issuing 1.1 trillion (one thousand one hundred billion) euros of “quantitative easing” money to be handed straight to private banks (3).

How is it that there is infinite money available to the banks, but none to keep ordinary people in work? Or even on benefits while there are more unemployed people than job vacancies?

How is it that one thousand, one hundred, billion euros can be created and handed to the banks, but none of it can be used to reduce Greece’s debt of around 300 billion euros by half (150 billion)? (4)

Syriza’s proposal is that some of the QE money should be used by the European Central Bank to buy bonds not just from private banks, but from governments suffering debt crises, like Greece and Spain’s.

Some Greek and American economists are saying the only problem with Syriza’s proposals are that they’re not radical enough (5) – (6).

While many have tried to paint Syriza as being left wing extremists, mirroring the neo-nazi Golden Dawn party’s right wing extremism, in fact Syriza’s leadership are moderate left wingers. Even the Telegraph newspaper, which favours the right wing of a Conservative party whose centre is right of Thatcher, considers Yanis Varoufakis, Syriza’s Finance Minister, to be a moderate (7).

Far from being ideologically opposed to EU or Euro membership, Syriza leader Alexis Tspiras preferred a coalition with the right wing but anti-austerity Independent Greeks party to one with the radical left KKE party which wants to leave the Euro and the EU (8).

Lazy Greeks? Nope – they work the longest hours in Europe

The supposedly “lazy” Greeks work, on average, the longest hours of any nationality in the EU according to OECD figures, over 2,000 hours per year, and did so even before the crisis. The “hard working” Germans rank 33^rd at under 1400 hours a year .The average employed person in the UK works 1,600 hours a year, 400 less than the average Greek. (9) – (10)

Other studies found that Greeks work on average 38 hours a week, compared to 35 in the UK and Germany (11).

And Germans take more days of holidays per year than Greeks too (12).

Greece allowed more tax avoidance and corruption?
There are tax havens and corruption in UK dependencies and across Europe

Tax avoidance by Greeks is also often raised to try to justify the conditions imposed by the EU. Tax avoidance is certainly a serious problem in Greece, but the idea that other EU countries have done anything to prevent it is laughable. The UK allows offshore ones in the Channel Islands and in the UK dependencies of Bermuda and Belize, as well as the main party in government in the UK getting more than half its donations to party funds from the financial sector. Both Luxembourg and Switzerland are renowned tax havens.

It’s highly likely that much of the tax money avoided by wealthier Greeks is in those tax havens in other EU countries and territories they control. Since they’re demanding a crack down on tax avoidance and evasion by the Greek government, perhaps they could help out at the other end by closing down their own tax havens?

Mark Field, the Conservative MP for the City of London & Westminster, Mark Field, boasted in 2010 about all the foreign money coming into UK tax havens (13).

Government minister Francis Maude said in 2012 that turning the UK into a tax haven is “exactly what we are trying to do” (14).

Lord Fink, Treasurer of the Conservative party, and director of three firms with subsidiaries in tax havens (the Cayman Island,s Luxembourg and Guernsey) called for the same (15).

And progress has been made towards making the mainland UK a tax haven, with many US firms now relocating their headquarters for tax purposes here (16).

Ireland’s economic “miracle” and then collapse were, like Britain’s , largely down to deregulation (though worse for Ireland as it didn’t have it’s own currency). This included Ireland slashing its corporation taxes to the lowest in Europe in order to get companies to relocate there for tax purposes (17).

That’s why Ireland was able to recover relatively fast from the crisis. But, as Greek government ministers point out, there is not room for every country in the EU to have the lowest taxes, and competition to reduce taxes results in crises for government funding in all of them.

As the firms and banks benefiting most from tax havens also tend to be big donors to party funds for the biggest parties in countries across the EU, corruption is as much a problem in the UK as in Greece, it’s just done in a more formalised way and at a higher level in Britain.
Cash in brown envelopes is for amateurs. Donations to party funds, and jobs as advisers or directors for retiring ministers for favours done in office, are preferred.

Does Greece have any choice but to do what the EU and Germany say?

Yes. It could drop the Euro as a currency and return to the drachma, or adopt another currency, such as the dollar. This would likely cause another crisis and considerable hardship, but with the austerity imposed by the EU having seen average incomes cut 40% and unemployment over 25%, most Greeks are already suffering plenty of hardship and might decide that having control of their own government and economic and welfare policy and budgets again was worth a bit more.

This would likely lead to a run on the Euro, which might well lead to Portugal, Spain and maybe even Italy also dropping the Euro as currencies. The Eurozone benefits Germany most of all. Countries leaving the Eurozone would reduce German export earnings, which have been greatly increased by the Eurozone effectively reducing the price of German exports in countries using the Euro (18).

Sources

(1) = Greek Reporter 28 Jan 2015 ‘Greece: This is SYRIZA’s New Government Plan in Detail’, http://greece.greekreporter.com/2015/01/28/greece-this-is-syrizas-new-government-plan-in-detail/

(2) = EU Observer 07 Jan 2015 ‘Europe's debt revolution: Can Syriza's plan work?’, https://euobserver.com/news/127115

(3) = BBC News 22 Jan 2015 ‘ECB unveils massive QE boost for eurozone’, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-30933515

(4) Washington Post 30 January2015 ‘Greece really might leave the euro’ =
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/01/30/greece-really-might-leave-the-euro/

(5) = Truthout 22 Jan 2015 ‘Economist Leonidas Vatikiotis: Syriza's Proposals Don't Go Far Enough for Greece’, http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/28661-economist-leonidas-vatikiotis-syriza-s-proposals-don-t-go-far-enough-for-greece

(6) = NYT 26 Jan 2015 ‘Ending Greece’s Nightmare’, by Paul Krugman, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/26/opinion/paul-krugman-ending-greeces-nightmare.html

(7) = Telegraph 26 Jan 2015 ‘Yanis Varoufakis: Greece’s future finance minister is no extremist’, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/11369851/Yanis-Varoufakis-Greeces-future-finance-minister-is-no-extremist.html

(8) = Guardian 26 Jan 2015 ‘Greece: claims of a far-left victory are nonsense’,
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/26/greece-claims-of-far-left-victory-are-nonsense

(9) = OECD Stat Extracts ‘Average annual hours actually worked per worker’, http://stats.oecd.org/index.aspx?DataSetCode=ANHRS

(10) = BBC News 26 Feb 2012 ‘Are Greeks the hardest workers in Europe?’,
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17155304

(11) = Busting the myth of France’s 35-hour workweek, http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20140312-frances-mythic-35-hour-week

(12) = See (10) above

(13) = Bloomberg 03 Nov 2010 ‘Tax Havens Send ‘Massive Capital’ to London, Lawmaker Says’, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2010-11-03/tax-havens-send-massive-capital-to-london-lawmaker-says

(14) = This IS Money 07 Apr 2012 ‘Francis Maude in new row after saying it would be a compliment if Britain were seen as a 'tax haven' under coalition’, http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/news/article-2126452/Francis-Maude-new-row-saying-compliment-Britain-seen-tax-haven-coalition.html

(15) = Guardian 21 Sep 2012 ‘Tory treasurer wants UK to become more like a tax haven’, http://www.theguardian.com/business/2012/sep/20/tory-treasurer-make-uk-tax-haven

(16) = Reuters 09 Jun 2014 ‘Britain becomes haven for U.S. companies keen to cut tax bills’, http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/06/09/uk-britain-usa-tax-insight-idUKKBN0EK0BA20140609

(17) = Forbes Magazine 06 Nov 2013 ‘If Ireland Is Not A Tax Haven, What Is It?’, http://www.forbes.com/sites/taxanalysts/2013/11/06/if-ireland-is-not-a-tax-haven-what-is-it/

(18) = Business Insider 20 Nov 2011 ‘Why German Taxpayers Should Be Forced To Bail Out Italians And Greeks’, http://www.businessinsider.com/why-germany-should-bail-out-italy-and-greece-2011-11#ixzz3QRQBjDjw

The Scottish people must have their say on what additional devolved powers we choose from - not just to take or leave a package deal cut by big parties - Smith Commission on Additional Devolved Powers Submission

Thank You

First I’d like to thank you for giving the people of Scotland this opportunity to have a say on what additional devolved powers Scotland needs.

 

Need for additional devolved powers decisions not to be just a deal between party leaders
that the Scottish people can only take or leave

While I was a Yes campaigner, I recognise that the Scottish Social Attitudes Survey 2014 showed the majority of people in Scotland wanted additional devolution or “devo max” as an option in the vote, and always thought this should have been an option people could have voted for (1).

As Lord Ashcroft’s post referendum poll found 25% of No voters said they had voted No primarily because Scotland would get additional devolved powers, and assuming the vast majority of Yes voters will back additional powers too, a majority of Scottish voters of somewhere around 58% want more devolved powers (25% of the 55% who voted No would be 13.75% of all voters. The 45% of voters who voted Yes plus 13.75% would be 58.75%) (2).

While the various Scottish and British political parties, pro and anti-independence, each have their own positions on what the additional powers should be, and clearly have to have input into the final decision, the Scottish people must also get a major part in making this decision.

It should not be reduced to just being given a Yes or No vote on a package the parties agree among themselves to offer us. It should include the wider public getting to decide which options the whole country will choose from. Additional devolved powers are a more complicated issue than independence and cannot be reduced to a Yes or No without taking much of the say from the public.

Another Scottish Constitutional Convention? Elected this time?

One month is a very short period for such a consultation. I’d argue that the next stage should be a longer consultation period to a new Scottish Constitutional Convention elected by Single Transferrable Vote (STV) , allowing for candidates from smaller parties, and representatives of Scottish society who don’t represent any party, to be involved in drawing up the options (3) – (4).

STV allows voters rather than party officials to rank candidates in order of preference, and ensures that no one’s vote is “wasted” by going to a candidate who is not elected. It allows voters to vote positively for the candidate or party they support most, rather than just negatively to try to keep the large party they dislike most out of power (5).

While an elected constitutional convention would take longer to put proposals for additional devolved powers together, due to the time required to elect it, those options would be more likely to reflect the views of the whole population rather than just a deal cut between the leaders of the largest political parties.

While the Electoral Reform Society and the British Labour Party propose a UK Constitutional Convention this would risk become bogged down in disputes that can’t be resolved like English Votes for English Laws; as well as whether further devolution in England should happen at all, and, for those who want it, whether it should be to an English parliament or regional ones (6) – (8).

There is no reason why additional devolved or federated powers for Scotland should not be decided separately to ensure they are not delayed indefinitely.

 

How the Scottish people , rather than just political parties, can be given a real say on further devolved powers even if there isn’t another Scottish constitutional convention

Even if another Scottish Constitutional Convention is not formed though, the Scottish people’s views can still be taken into account. First through public consultations like this one. Second by looking at opinion poll results on what powers people in Scotland think should be devolved (though bodies accepted as neutral by all parties would have to be given a remit to conduct polls, as what results polls come up with depend on what questions are asked and how they’re phrased).

Finally by making the final referendum on the proposed additional powers a multi-question one with voters able to approve or reject each major additional power or group of them, rather than just a single Yes or No question to approve or reject all of them.

Opinion polls since the referendum already show majority support for devolution of welfare policy and budget to the Scottish parliament and government, as well as pensions, corporation tax and VAT (9).

These polls show that the public want far more powers devolved than the main two UK parties plan. Other polls during the referendum campaign showed that two-thirds of voters did not know what additional powers these parties were offering in the event of a No vote (10).

If the actual powers delivered are a disappointment to the majority of people in Scotland another independence referendum is likely within 5 to 6 years (or sooner if the UK leaves the EU).

Labour politicians have raised reasonable concerns about this leading to competitive reductions in corporation tax across the UK, reducing tax revenues. While such competition does already take place between countries, it is arguably unhelpful (11).

There is no reason, though, why the UK government could not continue to set the rates for these taxes, while the majority of revenues from them went directly to the Scottish government, assuming the majority of domestic governmental powers were devolved to the Scottish government.

 

Each devolved power must include full control of the budget for that policy area – and devolving the politically sensitive income tax alone would be merely party political manoeuvring and unacceptable

All devolved powers must include power over the budget for that power, or else the power has been devolved in name but not in reality.

It also has to be emphasised that the plans for limited additional devolution amounting to little more than powers over income tax plus a “proportionate” cut in the devolved Scottish budget by the Labour and Conservative party leaderships are dubious and may well be motivated by an attempt to gain party political advantage over the SNP (12) - (14).

Income tax is the tax most reported on by the media, most noticed by the electorate and so most politically sensitive. As a result UK governments have for decades avoided any rise in the basic rate of income tax. A devolved budget cut plus income tax powers would seem to be a trap set for the Scottish government, forcing it either to raise the most unpopular of taxes or cut services.

(I’d add that I’m not an SNP member and have stood (and lost my deposit repeatedly) as an independent candidate in more than one election).

 

Why many No voters will have expected full federalism based on Brown’s statements.
Why full federalism is practical for Scotland in the UK.

Gordon Brown MP, the former UK Chancellor and Prime Minister, greatly influenced the result of the referendum and the establishment of your own commission. However his opinions should not over-ride the views of the majority of the people of Scotland any more than any other politician’s. The terms he used are also likely to have given most people the impression that he and the UK party leaders were offering considerably more devolution than he or those party leaders actually plan to.

During the referendum campaign Mr Brown claimed that a No vote would result in “as close to a federal state as you can be in a country where one nation is 85 per cent of the population” and “nothing less than a modern form of Scottish Home Rule” (15) – (16).

While ‘devo max’ has never been clearly defined and ‘Home Rule’ similarly has no universally accepted definition, it’s likely that most people would see these phrases as meaning the same as federalism - the devolution of almost all domestic policy – full control of the budget and policy making for domestic policy – i.e everything except foreign and defence policy. While the degree of devolution of powers in existing federal systems like the US, Germany and Switzerland varies, it is high in every case.

“As close to a federal state as you can be in a country where one nation has 85% of the population” would imply the maximum level of devolution as in Germany and Switzerland. While there are some grey areas on what is foreign policy and what is domestic policy (international trade policy etc) which would be matters for negotiation, the majority is easy to define.

Mr Brown has implied that as Scotland has less than 10% of the population of the UK this precludes full federalism as “majority rule” must be maintained.

Earlier this month he stated that “You see, in the United Kingdom, England is about 84% of the United Kingdom. Scotland’s 8%, Wales is 5%, Northern Ireland’s 3%. And you’ve got to find a fair distribution of power that recognises the majority rule but also recognises the minorities and that they have special needs that have to be met.” (17).

This concern with maintaining “majority rule” is doubtful for two reasons. First existing federal systems include states with massively different populations, of far greater orders of magnitude than the differences between Scotland and England.

In 2010 Perlis, the smallest state in Indonesia, has a population of under 250,000 people, while Selangor, the largest, has a population of over 5 million – a ratio of about 20 to 1 between the largest and smallest states, double the roughly 10 to 1 between England and Scotland (This does not include the smaller federal territories which are not states) (18).

Bremen, the smallest state in Germany has a population of around 660,000 compared to over 17 million for North-Rhine Westphalia, a ratio of 25 to 1 (19).

Eight states of the U.S had an estimated population of under 1 million in 2013 and another two populations of only just over 1 million, while California has a population of 38 million, a ratio of over 38 to 1 between smallest and largest (20).

In any case it is likely that if the UK became a federal state England would be split into several regions with populations of a similar size to Scotland’s, as Gordon Brown himself has suggested, making the relative populations of the different nations in the UK irrelevant, as the devolution would probably not be only on the basis of nations, but regions of England (21).

 

Why “majority rule” does not exist in the UK,
Would not be particularly democratic if it did,
And is not a barrier to full federalism

Second “majority rule” is a doubtful definition of democracy in the UK . First, due to the unrepresentative First-Past-The-Post voting system for UK General Elections, most UK governments have not had a majority of the votes cast. Most have had large majorities of seats in the UK parliament, sometimes even over 60% of the seats, while getting only 39 to 48 per cent of the vote (22) – (26).

The current Coalition government is the only one in the last 66 years which was elected by a majority of voters, but it has also failed to represent the majority of voters in many ways (e.g by Nick Clegg MP breaking his main election pledge on tuition fees and in letting private companies run more NHS services despite public opposition – and by e.g the fact that many Lib Dem voters would have preferred them to form a coalition with Labour, or leave the Conservatives to run a minority government by not forming any coalition).

So majority rule is the exception rather than the rule in UK politics. It is usually largest minority rule, but with that minority behaving as if it had a huge majority of the votes cast for every policy it implements, when in fact it has the support only of the largest minority, and on some policies, which were not brought up in the party’s election campaign or its manifesto, not even that.

Second defining democracy as “majority rule” would lead to many undemocratic implications. In Northern Ireland “majority rule” under “Home Rule” led at one point to the Protestant, Unionist majority being given free reign implement policies that disadvantaged the Catholic minority.

Third “majority rule” is a dubious definition of democracy. Is it democratic if a small majority completely over-rule the wishes of a large minority, or even if, as more often happens in UK politics, the largest minority completely over-ride the wishes of the majority?

Surely real democracy involves everyone having an equal say, not winners and losers?

Finally defining “majority rule” as the defining democratic principle of the UK would mean that on every important matter the opinions, wishes and interests of the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish minorities would remain irrelevant. On every issue the majority in England would over-rule them. Scotland has just 59 MPs out of 650 in the UK parliament. Frequently a majority of Scottish MPs will vote the opposite way to the majority of English MPs on an issue. As the Reverend Stuart Campbell has shown on his ‘Wings Over Scotland’ blog, MPs elected in Scotland have only changed the results of UK elections four times since 1945, and in each case only marginally (27).

The House of Commons Library blog has largely confirmed Campbell’s analysis, finding that the overall result of all but four of the 18 UK General elections since 1945 would have been the same with or without MPs elected in Scotland (28).

 

Need for the power to regulate banks and other financial firms in Scotland

Scotland desperately needs the powers to regulate banks, hedge firms and other financial sector firms operating here in order to avoid another financial crisis and recession. We also need to stop banks foreclosing mortgages on the homes of taxpayers who bailed them out, and letting viable businesses collapse through refusal to even provide bridging loans.

If the British government was willing to effectively regulate the financial sector this would not be a problem, but UK governments of all parties have failed to even institute any law banning high street savings banks from also being involved in dubious “investment” banking (often effectively high risk bets like the trading in futures). Even the US had such a law, the Glass Steagall Act, gradually repealed in the 1980s and 1990s, with disastrous results more recently (29).

The Conservative party gets more than half its funding from banks and hedge funds. Predictably Chancellor George Osborne has not instituted a full legal separation on the types of banking, instead referring to ‘Chinese walls’, ‘firewalls’ and ‘ring fences’ between the two arms of the same bank, which amount to the lack of a legal ban that would prevent another crisis (30) – (32).

 

Need for power to establish a nationalised national bank for Scotland
and local ones for local authorities

For similar reasons Scotland needs the power to set up a nationalised bank to provide secure savings for savers and low interest loans and grants to small and medium sized businesses, as well as the power for local councils to set up local government banks similar to the regional and local ones in Germany. The UK Labour party has said that it intends to establish something similar, but is not guaranteed to get a majority in the UK parliament for this after the next election.

 

Going beyond devolution to the Scottish parliament – the principle of subsidiarity

Some have pointed to the sizeable minority vote for the Conservatives in the 2010 General election (16% of the vote) and the election of a UKIP MEP in Scotland in the last European Parliament elections as signs that unionism and conservatism are stronger in Scotland than has been assumed.

This may be true, but they remain a minority. The Eurosceptics and pro-Europeans share one principle though – the idea of subsidiarity, that decisions should be taken at the lowest level possible for that kind of decision (33).

This would imply that if they wish to have more decisions taken by the UK government rather than the EU, they would have to approve the maximum devolution of powers from the UK government to the Scottish government, from it to local councils, and from local councils to community councils, too, based on the same principle (34).

If they want to do the first but none of the rest then they are clearly basing their decision not on democracy or subsidiarity, but blind nationalism, merely blind British nationalism rather than blind Scottish nationalism – and that is not a principle worth upholding, it’s not a principle at all.

The SNP’s tendency to want to centralise all the powers devolved to Scotland in the Scottish parliament equally needs to be challenged by the principle of subsidiarity, with both more powers transferred from the UK parliament to the Scottish parliament, from it to local councils and from them to community councils. This should include budgets and revenue raising powers.

 

Power to decide electoral system for the Scottish parliament – need to avoid changes made purely to maintain position of dominant parties

While the principle of devolving the power to decide the electoral system for the Scottish parliament to the Scottish parliament is a good one, care has to be taken that it does not give the two largest parties in Scotland – Labour and the SNP – the power to change it to a purely First-Past-The-Post system that would benefit them but be as poor in terms of democracy as the Westminster voting system. Several Labour MSPs have suggested in the past that the Holyrood voting system be changed to the supposedly “fairer” FPTP and referred to SNP list MSPs as having been “defeated” and as “sneaking into the Scottish parliament through the back door”. There has to be some suspicion that the Labour party proposals to devolve this power might be about party political advantage.

While the SNP has not made similar suggestions on changing the voting system to FPTP for Scottish parliament elections so far, it’s possible that, if they win most seats in Scotland in the 2015 General Election under FPTP, as polls suggest they could, they might be tempted to do so.

The current voting system , designed by Labour to prevent the SNP ever getting a majority, failed to do so. So it will not prevent Labour or the SNP from pushing through changes to the voting system made purely for party political advantage either.

One way to reduce this risk would to require a 66% majority in the Scottish parliament, followed by a referendum, to make any change in the voting system. The referendum could be held on the same day as the subsequent Scottish parliament elections to avoid voter fatigue or low turnout, and to reduce costs. Any resulting change in the voting system would not be made until the Scottish parliament elections after those.

On the other hand some senior Scottish Labour and Lib Dem figures have in the past suggested changing the voting system to Single Transferrable Vote, which could be a step forward from the current Additional Member System, so a balance has to be struck between making electoral reform possible, and blocking backwards steps taken for party political advantage (35) – (36).

However when the Single Transferable Vote was used for council elections in Scotland in 2012 and Labour lost seats to the SNP, some Labour MSPs, and the largely pro-Labour Daily Record, began to criticise the voting system as “too complicated” and claiming that the “over complicated” voting system had resulted in a reduced voter turnout, despite the turnout actually having been higher than in the previous council elections, and higher than in the 2012 council elections in England (37) – (38).

This underlines the risk of big parties given the power to change the electoral system using it to change it to their advantage even if this reduces choice for voters.

 

Need for written constitution and constitutional court to define the division of powers between the Scottish and British governments – but section relating to Scotland does not need to wait on other nations and/or regions

Almost every federal system in the world has a written constitution defining what powers are held by the different levels of government, and a constitutional court to adjudicate disputed and grey areas.

This would be beneficial for a Scotland with devolved federal powers, but the complications and earlier stages of devolution to the rest of the UK do not need to delay Scotland getting additional powers.

The section of a written constitution relating to Scotland could be written separately and before those relating to other nations and/or regions of the UK.

Federalism rather than Devolution?

Devolution in the UK has involved asymmetric division of powers in which some policy areas are Reserved, with only the UK government able to legislate or make decisions on them, while others are Devolved to the Scottish, Welsh, Northern Irish and London parliaments or Assemblies. The UK government however retains the power to legislate or make decisions even on devolved matters, with the limit that it only do so with the consent of the devolved parliaments being a “convention” rather than an absolute restriction. So far the UK government has not broken this convention, but most people in the devolved areas do not realise that it retains the power to do so (39).

In a Federal system the central government would not retain this power, with the division between regional/national and central government powers being absolute and symmetrical (i.e neither could encroach into the other’s specified policy area), other than for a few grey areas of joint responsibility.

I would argue that Scotland’s devolved powers should become policy areas in which the UK government cannot act or legislate without a majority vote in the Scottish parliament permitting them to do so on a specific issue, and similarly for devolved or federally divided powers in other regional/national parliaments and assemblies.

 

Sources

(1) = Scotsman 18 Feb 2014 ‘Scottish independence: Most Scots back ‘devo max’’, http://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/top-stories/scottish-independence-most-scots-back-devo-max-1-3310342

(2) = theguardian.com 20 Sep 2014 ‘Scottish independence: poll reveals who voted, how and why’, http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/sep/20/scottish-independence-lord-ashcroft-poll?CMP=fb_gu

(3) = Wikipedia - Constitutional convention (political meeting) , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitutional_convention_%28political_meeting%29

(4) = Wikipedia – Single Transferable Vote, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_transferable_vote

(5) = Electoral Reform Society – Single Transferable Vote,
http://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/single-transferable-vote/

(6) = Electoral Reform Society Briefing 19 Sep 2014 ‘Time for a Constitutional Convention’, http://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/images/dynamicImages/file/Briefing%20on%20a%20Constitutional%20Convention,%2019th%20Sep.pdf

(7) = Guardian 19/20 Sep (website/print edition) ‘Labour proposes devolution settlement to 'shape own futures'’, http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/sep/19/labour-ed-miliband-constitutional-convention

(8) = BBC 14 Oct 2014 ‘Hague and Brown clash over 'English votes for English laws'’, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-29606220

(9) = STV 21 Sep 2014 ‘SNP on course to win third Holyrood term, according to new poll’, http://news.stv.tv/scotland/292917-snp-on-course-to-win-third-consecutive-holyrood-term-says-new-poll/ , (see 2nd last paragraph ‘A total of 80% of people questioned supported Scotland having control over welfare, with 62% saying it should be in charge of pensions. Almost three quarters (71%) of people back the devolution of income tax while 62% want to see Scotland get control of corporation tax and 61% say Holyrood should be in charge of VAT.’)

(10) = Sky News 17 Sep 2014 ‘Sky Poll: Scots Unclear Over No Vote Powers’,
http://news.sky.com/story/1337107/sky-poll-scots-unclear-over-no-vote-powers

(11) = Scottish Labour Devolution Commission March 2014 , all of it, but especially page 6, http://b.3cdn.net/scotlab/26e0eb4bdf4c775d14_ram6b81bk.pdf

(12) = See (11) above

(13) = Scottish Labour’s Devolution Commission Final Report March 2014 ‘Powers for a Purpose :

Strengthening Accountability and Empowering People’, http://b.3cdn.net/scotlab/277fe5eb9b114b9a3c_1pm6iir9r.pdf

(14) = BBC News 9 Sep 2014 ‘Scottish independence: What new powers might Scotland get?’, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-25626977

(15) = Scotsman 15 Aug 2014 ‘Gordon Brown backs federalism in event of No vote’,
http://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/top-stories/gordon-brown-backs-federalism-in-event-of-no-vote-1-3511291

(16) = Telegraph 08 Sep 2014 ‘Gordon Brown unveils cross-party deal on Scottish powers’,
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/scottish-independence/11082930/Gordon-Brown-unveils-cross-party-deal-on-Scottish-powers.html

(17) = Guardian 12 / 13 October ‘David Cameron ‘playing fast and loose’ with constitution, says Gordon Brown’, http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/oct/12/david-cameron-fast-and-loose-constitution-gordon-brown

(18) = Wikipedia - States and federal territories of Malaysia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/States_and_federal_territories_of_Malaysia#The_states_and_federal_territories , (Wikipedia states source as "Laporan Kiraan Permulaan 2010". Jabatan Perangkaan Malaysia. p. iv. Retrieved 24 January 2011.)

(19) = Wikipedia - States of Germany,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/States_of_Germany#States

(20) = Wikipedia - List of U.S. states and territories by population
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_population#States_and_territories , based on US Census Bureau reports and statistics,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_population#References

(21) = Scotsman 15 Aug 2014 ‘Gordon Brown backs federalism in event of No vote’,
http://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/top-stories/gordon-brown-backs-federalism-in-event-of-no-vote-1-3511291

(22) = Electoral Reform Society – First Past the Post, http://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/first-past-the-post/

(23) = Political Science Resources – ‘British Governments and Elections since 1945’, http://www.politicsresources.net/area/uk/uktable.htm

(24) = House of Commons Briefing Paper SN/SG/2632 (2010) ‘General Election results 1979 - 2010’, http://www. parliament.uk/briefing-papers/SN02632.pdf

(25) = David Butler (1989) ‘British General Elections since 1945’ Blackwell, Institute of Contemporary British History, London, 1989 ; Appendix I Election Results 1945 – 1987, pages 121 to 123

(26) = David Butler and Dennis Kavanagh ‘The British General Election of 1997’ MacMillan Press, London , 1997, Appendix I The Voting Statistics, pages 254 to 255 (includes 1992 and 1997 election results)

(27) = Wings Over Scotland 10 Jan 2012 ‘Why Labour doesn’t need Scotland’ by Rev Stuart Campbell,
http://wingsoverscotland.com/why-labour-doesnt-need-scotland/

(28) = Second Reading - House Of Commons Library Blog 19 Jan 2014 ‘General Elections without Scotland, Part 1: 1945-2010’, http://commonslibraryblog.com/2014/01/30/general-elections-without-scotland-part-1-1945-2010/

(29) = Wikipedia – Glass Steagall Legislation, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass%E2%80%93Steagall_Legislation

(30) = Bureau of Investigative Journalism 08 Feb 2011 ‘Tory Party funding from City doubles under Cameron’, http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/2011/02/08/city-financing-of-the-conservative-party-doubles-under-cameron/

(31) = BBC 15 Jun 2011 ‘Banks must ring-fence retail operations, Osborne to say’, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-13770746

(32) = Telegraph 21 Nov 2012 ‘Big banks are good for society, says George Osborne’, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfinance/9694634/Big-banks-are-good-for-society-says-George-Osborne.html

(33) = Wikipedia – Subsidiarity, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsidiarity

(34) = The Scottish Government – Community Councils, http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Government/PublicServiceReform/CommunityCouncils

(35) = BBC News 27 Aug 2003 ‘Voting system change mooted’, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/3183401.stm

(36) = Electoral Reform Society – Additional Member System, http://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/additional-member-system/

(37) = Daily Record 05 May 2012 ‘Local council elections 2012: Fears over turnout as numbers system puts off voters’, http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/politics/local-council-elections-2012-fears-877195

(38) = Dr Alastair Clark, LSE Blog, 2012 ‘Scottish local elections in 2012 show that voters have understood the STV system and are not put-off by it’, http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/stv-scottish-local-elections-2012-clark/

(39) = The Scottish Parliament - Devolved and Reserved Matters, http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/visitandlearn/Education/18642.aspx