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Independence Convention <SIConvention>

"Working towards an independent Scotland"

	Stephen Maxwell - Dysfunction in the UK’s regulatory state	70 giorni fa
	The ways in which the British state is politically dysfunctional for Scotland are frequently rehearsed in the debates on Scotland’s place in the United Kingdom – the way it periodically hands the key decisions on Scotland’s future to Governments at Westminster rejected by Scottish voters, the cynical location of its main nuclear weapons base close to Scotland’s major population centre, its indifference to all Scottish claims to a lasting benefit from the vast oil revenues flowing from the Scottish province of the North Sea, the preferential investment lavished on London and the South East of England in terms of transport or cultural and sporting events as most recently with the London Olympics. Less noticed in Scottish debate are the injuries of omission and commission inflicted by the ‘shadow’ state of the UK’s regulatory bodies, that network of statutory agencies with baffling acronyms charged by the Westminster Parliament with ensuring fair competition and efficiency not just in the economy overall but also in such key areas as financial services, energy supply, and communications. Recent history suggests that this system, which is barely accountable to Westminster let alone Scotland, is no less dysfunctional in respect of Scotland than the political superstructure. Take Ofgem, the Office for Gas and Electricity Markets. In July the (English) National Housing Federation (whose chief executive David Orr used to lead the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations) revealed that the low income customers in the UK who use pre-payment meters had overpaid the energy companies nearly £500m between 2006-8. Orr charged: “Ofgem has been asleep on the job and must urgently start defending the rights of ordinary people instead of protecting the profits of big business”. With levels of fuel poverty in Scotland at 29% of households, over twice as high as in England, Ofgem’s failure to protect the poorest energy customers will have had a disproportionate impact in Scotland. No wonder that the Scottish Fuel Poverty Forum in its 2008 report for the Scottish Government called on Ofgem to ensure that energy companies were not allowed to charge more for customers using pre-payment than for the generally better off customers using direct debit. Ofgem has a senior staff member with a designated responsibility for Scotland (among other responsibilities) and at least one of its thirteen Board members is Scottish based, but if they have been pressing the urgency of Scotland’s needs they were evidently ignored. Or take the Competition Commission’s latest intervention in Scottish affairs, its instruction to the British Airports Authority to sell off Edinburgh Airport, or perhaps Glasgow, on general competition grounds. Scotland’s representative business bodies such as the Scottish Chambers of Commerce have repeatedly challenged the Commission’s case on the grounds that Edinburgh and Glasgow serve different publics and therefore even as separately owned concerns would not compete with one another. If in a forced sale either airport were to be bought by a regional competitor such as Manchester Airport the Scottish interest could be at risk. They complain that their evidence has simply been ignored. The Competition Commission has no designated Scottish representation and just two of its fifty Board members are Scottish based. Then there is the case of Ofcom, the regulator of the UK’s communications industry including broadcasting. Despite the persistent evidence of Scottish dissatisfaction with the low level of Scottish broadcast output including Scottish material and a major decline in Scottish production, Ofcom failed to identify a problem until stirred by the establishment of the Scottish Broadcasting Commission by the new Scottish Government in 2007. Even its recent report Digital Britain contained only perfunctory reference to the Scottish Commission’s proposal for a Scottish Digital Network, despite the existence of an Ofcom Advisory Committee for Scotland. Without comment from Ofgem the UK Communications Minister has proposed a major public investment in video games in Salford provoking strong protests from the current leaders of the UK video games industry in Dundee and Glasgow. Meanwhile the BBC Trustees in their supervisory role have been no more effective in protecting Scottish interests within the BBC than Ofcom has in the wider communications field, despite having a designated Trustee for Scotland and a Scottish Audience Advisory Council. The most egregious case of UK regulatory failure in Scotland is of course the shared failure of the Financial Services Authority, the Bank of England and the Treasury in allowing the destruction of the Scottish banking system (and in abetting the demise of most of the Scottish financial mutuals to boot). The opponents of independence try to shift the blame by postulating an Irish style implosion of the whole Scottish economy outwith the Union. Such giddy speculation cannot absolve the British state. It is hardly surprising that lacking any remit for the heath and integrity of the Scottish financial sector or any designated Scottish representatives on their Boards or senior management the UK financial regulators allowed, and sometimes promoted, the undermining of the Scottish financial sector. But the devolution settlement gives the regulators an undivided formal responsibility to secure the stability and proper functioning of the UK’s financial system, a responsibility which they have demonstrably failed to discharge with particularly disastrous consequences for Scotland. The fact that the sorry story was presided over by three determinedly unionist Scots MPs occupying the apex of British politics as Prime Minster, Chancellor and Chair of the Treasury Select Committee, provides bitter reinforcement of the case for extracting Scotland from these dysfunctional British systems and equipping her with a regulatory system fit for Scottish purpose.
	inserito da Independence Convention