The Government has quashed yet more outlandish claims by the SNP about what an independent Scotland would look like, with the party’s latest pro-independence document torn to shreds. Humza Yousaf’s government has been publishing regular taxpayer-funded reports into how Scotland would look if it chose to go independent in a future referendum.
His latest prospectus, entitled “Building a New Scotland: an independent Scotland’s Place in the World” claimed that Scotland would retain its role as a prominent ship-building company, not only for its own defence capabilities but for the Royal Navy.
The paper claimed: “This Scottish Government’s intention would be to use the capability of Scottish yards to create the maritime capability for the navy of an independent Scotland.
“Companies in an independent Scotland would also be expected to be in a strong position to compete for UK Defence work, following a recent change in UK naval procurement policy.
“The UK Government published a refreshed national shipbuilding strategy in March 2022, confirming that the procurement approach for all UK naval ships is now to be decided on a case-by-case basis and can be open to single source procurement, UK competition, international competition, or a blended approach comprising UK and international competition.”
However the UK Defence Journal website has now revealed that a Ministry of Defence source has already poured cold water over the claims Scotland would be easily able to continue building for the Royal Navy.
The anonymous insider revealed that the commissioning of “complex” Royal Navy warships remains exclusively with domestic manufacturers, “driven by imperatives of national security and the safeguarding of sensitive technology”.
Therefore an independent Scotland would “regrettably be positioned outside this established policy framework, rendering the continuation of such contracts highly problematic”.
They added that a newly-independent Scotland would also have “substantial” and “formidable” difficulties in adhering to international defence regulations
Former Defence Minister Phillip Dunne added that, in an independent Scotland, no further Royal Navy warships will be built on the Clyde.
“Had the independence vote gone the way that he and his colleagues would have liked, no warships would have been built on the Clyde, because the United Kingdom Government would not have chosen to build them there; we made that very clear.”
12,000 jobs in Scotland rely on UK Defence, with more than £2 billion spent annually on local defence.
HMNB Clyde is also one of the largest employment sites in Scotland, and would therefore take a huge hit if the SNP broke away from the union.
The SNP have published more than half-a-dozen reports into a hypothetical independent Scotland, causing outrage by using taxpayer cash to fund them.
Simon Case, the Cabinet Secretary, told a Parliamentary Committee last year that the use of taxpayer cash for the nakedly party-political briefings were “unusual and a bit worrying”.
He told the Lords he was looking at issuing “further clarification and guidance” to the Scottish Government civil servants about “what is and isn’t appropriate spending”.
