Hummingfrog -
A recent UK report on Scottish finance indicates that the extra public finance Scotland gets isn't covered by the revenue from oil. The Scottish budget has run a deficit of £41 billion over the past 30 yrs. This is derived from the £197 billion spent in scotland over the total tax raised - minus the £141 billion that was raised in oil revenue.
To put that figure into perspective, I'm pretty sure the same report indictated UK plc had run up over £700 billion of debt over the same period. The same department responsible for producing those statistics have also shown Scotland to be a net financial contributor to the UK.
1.
Will the state pension remain the same - there is no pot to share so from independence day the scottish taxpayer will have to pay some public sector pensions plus all of the state pension.
Scots have paid in to the pension pot from the inception of the welfare state, so are perfectly entitled to get an equivalent share. Longer term, pensions is a conundrum affecting every western country, so the same argument can be leveled outwith the borders of Scotland.
2.
Will the Scottish NHS be fully funded and give the same care as the present UK NHS. I presume Scotland will inherit the infrastructure but what about specialist treatment currently taken in England?
Health is already a devolved issue in Scotland, so the NHS and all it's infrastructure is already under the control of the Scottish parliament. As for care, per head of population the NHS budget is bigger in Scotland than other parts of the UK with new hospitals being built and the taking out the private sector in relation to hospital cleaning and abolishing car park charges. As for specific treatments, why would that change ? If a patient from Scotland currently needs very specific treatment at a hospital in London for instance then that is paid from the Scottish health budget. There is no reason that would change, as hospital's in London already deal with patients from outwith the UK who need specialized care.
3. Will tax rates be the same - income, car, petrol duty etc?
Quite an open ended question that one, even we don't know how the tax rates will be from year to year in the UK as we're at the whim of a chancellor and his economic forecasts, but the Nats have already hinted that things like corporation tax would be lowered to enable Scotland to bring more job creating inward investment.
For those of you who know about the Edinburgh financial disasters - Parliament budget £40 million cost actually £400+ million - Tram budget £375 million no tram has yet run on a much reduced route yet cost is already £500million + with extra borrowing of £231 Million needed - a shambles! These are the people who will run Scotland!
Both the parliament and the trams were Labour inceptions. Both ill thought out and cynically undercosted. The trams debacle in particular, when Labour pushed the legislation through parliament as they thought it would be a good political wheeze to torpedo the Nats budget at the time. They also failed to put a proper management structure in place to run what is a complex infrastructure project. You can easily argue successive UK governments have also had their fair share of capital mismanagement and pick any number of defence projects and the billions squandered for starters. So far the SNP far have delivered every capital project on time and on budget.