Independence: The Bigger Picture
‘Time and tide wait for no man’
Sir John Elvidge
After the constitutional
referendum, whatever the
outcome, we may be able to
turn our attention back to the
dynamics of the world in which
we live. Dynamics which we shall
have to address, and to which our
constitutional preferences may
not be very relevant.
“…in
Scotland, we
have allowed
ourselves to
be diverted
from
thinking
about the
inexorable
nature of
the effects of
demographic
change
on labour
supply.”
Sir John Elvidge
was Permanent
Secretary to
The Scottish
Government from
2003 to 2010.
Every individual country in the
world is affected by forces which
are global but with consequences
which are local. Those forces
may be economic, climatic,
demographic, technological,
biological or ideological.
We can remember from before
the process of debate leading
towards the constitutional
referendum, before even the
banking crisis and its economic
consequences, we had deep
concerns about the potential
long-term effects of climate
change, and were beginning to
understand the potential breadth
of the effects of changing
demographic structures.
One of my strongest personal
concerns is that, in Scotland,
we have allowed ourselves to
be diverted from thinking about
the inexorable nature of the
effects of demographic change
on labour supply. There are
potentially far-reaching social
and economic consequences,
irrespective of whether we choose
to seek to adjust our economy
and public services to a smaller
workforce, or to achieve levels of
immigration for which Scotland
has not in the past proved an
attractor. A smaller workforce
would imply the adoption of
less labour-intensive ways of
delivering goods and, more
particularly, services.
One potential consequence
is greater concentration of
activity, potentially accelerating
changes in settlement and/or
travel patterns. Another is that
the public sector may find itself
unable to compete effectively
with the private sector for scarce
labour, with consequences
for the way in which the most
labour-intensive of our public
services are delivered. Those
consequences may not sit at
all easily with another direct
consequence of demographic
change – greater demand for
precisely those public services.
Other global issues are coming
more fully into our awareness.
We see that the vulnerability
of our collective or individual
security and privacy, which is
the other side of the coin of the
positive capacity created by the
growing ubiquity of electronic
communications, has become a
substantial reality before many
of us had begun to understand
the potential risk. Cyber attack
is now a more present threat
than missile attack, and one with
the potential to affect a whole
country more pervasively, in ways
which we analysed to a degree
in the extensive planning for
resilience against the now largely
forgotten concerns about the
Millennium Bug.
Cyber security is an example
of an issue which we first
perceived as sporadic and later
came to understand as part
of the new normal. We may
be in that transition on other
issues. We had a brief period
of grappling with the potential
for the more rapid spread of
pandemics, when we and other
countries raced to put in place a
convincing response to the threat
of avian flu. We had a rise and
fall in our level of concern about
global terrorism, following the
attempted bombing of Glasgow
Airport. Those issues remain part
of the environment in which our
future will unfold; and dormancy
is not, of course, the same as
reduced probability.
In addition to all these external
forces, we have broad issues
to face which exist more within
our own boundaries, even if a
number of other countries also
face similar challenges within
their boundaries. Our post-war
model of delivery of a range
of public services delivers very
effectively for some in society, but
the evidence of six decades tells
us very clearly that it does so
much less, or scarcely at all, for
others. Consequently, we need to
ask what complementary model
would enable us to mitigate these
profound inequalities. In my
discussions with those elsewhere
in the world interested in these
issues, which are recognisable
in other countries with welldeveloped systems of social
provision, Scotland is regarded
as having made radical efforts to
begin to tackle this challenge. We
have important decisions to take
about whether and, if so, how to
build on that.
I haven’t dwelt on the economic
challenges of rising global
competition, the rise of
consumer power in parts of
the world to which we have less
proximity than our former and
current main export markets, or
our long-standing challenges with
relative levels of productivity and
new company formation. In part,
this is because our economic
concerns have held their place
in our attention alongside the
constitutional debate better
than other issues. Also, I am
conscious that some people
believe that the constitutional
debate is essentially about how
best to be positioned to deal with
these challenges. So perhaps the
only thing we can all expect to
agree on in relation to economic
challenges is that, like all the
other issues I have discussed,
their tides will be in flow
whenever we can spare time from
our constitutional preoccupations
to