Sunday, January 24, 2010

If independence is to be achieved then the SNP have to show economic competence, SFT should be tasked for review by Jim and Margaret Cuthbert








Dear All

The Scottish Government has attracted continual criticism over the Scottish Futures Trust.

The idea is to get away from the PFI concept where big business makes obscene money off building infrastructure projects.

Good idea which few could disagree with.

Two people have been very critical of the Scottish Futures Trust, Jim and Margaret Cuthbert; he is a former chief statistician with the Scottish Office and his wife an academic.

I would think that the sensible way forward for the SNP Government is to commission a review of how the Cuthberts would address the problems they believe have surfaced in the SFT project.
The Cuthberts don’t appear to be anti SNP having savaged the Calman proposals put forward by the Unionist parties.

The Scottish Government could use a fresh pair of eyes on SFT, if anything to ensure the best use of public money.

They should be given the opportunity to have a blank canvass.

The SNP shouldn’t be frightened to be radical; the goal is a properly functioning set of proposals that are in the Scottish public interest.

One of the interesting points mentioned by the Cuthberts is that because of the size of the contracts, middle-sized Scottish firms are denied the opportunity to get to bid for the projects.

The Scottish Futures Trust has to work or be a continual question of economic competence for the SNP Government to answer.

John Swinney should task the Cuthberts to go through everything in SFT, line by line and sort out any problems inherent in the proposals.

Yours sincerely

George Laird
The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University

No comments:

Post a Comment