Ian Blackford has been making the most of current Tory difficulties, railing against the corrosion of public trust on Monday caused by partygate. But is the SNP Westminster leader really best placed to talk? Mr S has already pointed out his party’s own lamentable record on inquiries and civil servants up at Holyrood. And now it seems the nationalists are happy to indulge in outright lies as to the future of Scottish pensioners in a post-Scexit nation.
For speaking to the Scotland’s Choice podcast in December, Blackford was asked what would happen to Scotland’s state pension if the country voted for independence. He replied:
Absolutely nothing. The important point is that those who have contributed to the UK have an entitlement for a pension and indeed that was made clear by the Chief Secretary to the Treasury at the time of the independence referendum in 2014. So that commitment to continue to pay pensions rests with the UK Government. That’s no different to a UK citizen that chooses — for example — to live in Canada, or Spain, or France, or anywhere else.
Kate Forbes, Nicola Sturgeon’s finance secretary, then confirmed this on the same show, saying: ‘I wouldn’t dare disagree with Ian Blackford — the expert on all things pension— so I would agree with him.’ The claim of Blackford and Forbes is based on a 2014 letter from the the-then pensions minister Steve Webb, which has subsequently been debunked by, er, Steve Webb. Having originally claimed that people who had ‘accumulated rights’ would be entitled to current levels of state pension in an independent Scotland, Webb then subsequently corrected the record, confirming that:
The security and sustainability of pensions being paid to people in Scotland would, therefore, depend on the ability of Scottish tax payers to fund them.
Despite all this, Blackford has now doubled down on his claims about Scottish pensioners post-Scexit, giving an interview to ITV in which he likens Britain’s post-Scexit pension obligations to National Insurance payments. But National Insurance is not a fund: it’s paid by current taxpayers. The idea that Welsh taxpayers in Cardiff would pay the pensions of those Scottish taxpayers in Crieff, if the latter was part of an independent country, is simply ludicrous.
Other nationalist claims that the UK has the ‘worst state pension in the developed world’ are simply untrue, as has been comprehensively debunked here. As others have elsewhere noted, the SNP’s new position is something of a shift, given they’d previously been happy to claim in their independence white paper that post-Scexit:
Those people living in Scotland in receipt of the UK state pension at the time of independence, the responsibility for the payment of that pension will transfer to the Scottish government. For those people of working age who are living and working in Scotland at the time of independence, the Uk pension entitlement they have accrued prior to independence will form part of their Scottish state pension entitlement.
Given his ludicrous post-truth Trumpian claims, surely it’s time for the nats to now pension off Ian Blackford?
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