MAJOR change in little time? Here’s how Common Weal believes its economic recovery plan can work.
The body, established in 2013, says it’s designed a pioneering three-part scheme – only one part of which has yet been published. The scheme is “devised entirely to work under devolution” and only requires the “very simple expansion” of some existing powers.
It says the standard Keynesian model that uses subsidies and bail-outs doesn’t work under the tax arrangements of devolution and therefore the plan aims to unlock “underdevelopment” in the economy instead.
This refers to latent potential currently unharnessed following the focus on finance, retail and services after deindustrialisation in the 1980s.
Unlocking this potential, Common Weal says, will allow “speedy recovery and transition”. It says: “Another substantial problem for Scotland is that it has one of the most foreign-owned economies in the developed world and our weak domestic industry base means large amounts of Scotland’s wealth are exported out of the economy by multinational corporations.
READ MORE: Common Weal's radical coronavirus recovery plan for Scots economy
“ Greatly increasing the proportion of the economy owned domestically means that, along with supply chain integration, Scotland can retain much larger proportions of its own wealth. In this way of approaching the economy the underdevelopment in Scotland is transformed from a failure to an enormous opportunity.”
However, on the hotel and hospitality vouchers scheme, it says: “While this report is not based around subsidies it accepts that there are some areas of the economy which will be devastated without some financial support. However, that support should also be used to begin to change those sectors of the economy.
“ It is far from clear when (if ever) international tourism will return to its previous levels and so making a shift towards domestic tourism is a good bet for shoring up the viability of the tourism industry long term.
“Filtering subsidy through citizens means both objectives can be met at once. This is why some of these proposals look like household subsidies – but that is the means, not the objective.”
Former social security minister Angela Constance said: “As we look to life beyond lockdown we need to start to rewrite the rules and rebuild an economy that is more democratic, entrepreneurial and fairer.
“We need a resilient economy that can’t be blown of course when it comes to jobs, pay and ending poverty. This paper is about how we build a resilient Scotland and lays out a series of ideas, steps and measures that can be taken within devolution in the medium term but also points to the more radical opportunities that Scotland could achieve with independence.”
And ex-STUC president Lynn Henderson, now acting senior national officer of the PCS union, said: “How we now live, work and behave for the greater good of people and planet must be the way out of the pandemic crisis. Our values on how we organise as a society must be thoroughly examined. Let’s open up the debate.”
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