CRAWFORD Beveridge, the former chief executive of Scottish Enterprise, has become the most senior business figure to back more powers for Holyrood.
Crawford Beveridge, now executive vice-president of Sun Microsystems, believes the Scottish parliament should have financial autonomy to make it more committed to expanding the country’s economy. He believes this would also help attract a higher calibre of MSPs.
Crawford Beveridge was speaking from Santa Clara in California’s Silicon Valley, but will later this week return to Scotland to deliver the keynote address at the Institute of Directors’ annual Scottish conference.
“I advocate the policy that Scotland should raise the money that it spends,” he said. “I know that could potentially plunge the place into recession, because it is unlikely that the total tax take would be as much as Scotland currently receives under the Barnet formula.
“The real issue, however, is that, with a few notable exceptions, the current devolution settlement leads Scottish politicians to be much more focused on how to spend money, rather than on how money gets made.”
Earlier this week, first minister and Scottish Labour leader Jack McConnell signalled that would be the only party leader in next year’s Scottish parliamentary elections against seeking to extend the current devolution settlement.
Business figures have been reluctant to comment, with the exception of Tom Farmer, the founder of Kwik- Fit, who said recently that he believed independence was inevitable.
Crawford Beveridge, whose California-based employer Sun has a big manufacturing base in Linlithgow, West Lothian, said: “If the parliament was to become responsible for raising its own revenue, it would give the Scottish politicians a much greater incentive to create a bigger tax base by growing the overall economy.
“Greater revenue-raising powers would also encourage more talented individuals to become MSPs. A lot of the current Holyrood politicians are former councillors and very few of them have much of an understanding of business.
“I believe that if the parliament was also responsible for raising its own revenue, it would encourage people from the business sector to want to become MSPs.”
Crawford Beveridge acknowledged there would be risks attached to giving Holyrood reponsibility for revenue as well as spending but agreed with a recent article in The Economist, which argued that the current devolution settlement encourages Scotland’s 129 MSPs to behave “like teenagers on an allowance”.
In his talk to the Institute of Directors, Crawford Beveridge will acknowledge that Scotland “is in not bad shape at the moment”, though he is expected to say the country should continue seeking to attract immigrants and that the executive should avoid the temptation to position Scotland as a low-cost location.
He will accuse Scottish business people of not grasping the opportunities presented by the internet. He says he cannot understand why Scotland has failed to produce a web-based company along the lines of Amazon, eBay, Second Life, MySpace or YouTube.
Not everyone in Scottish business agrees with Crawford Beveridge that tax-raising powers would be good for Holyrood, however. In a recent policy document, CBI Scotland said: “There is no evidence that lower taxes would be affordable. The opposite is true and is likely to remain so for the foreseeable future. Moreover, the likely uncertainties surrounding Scotland’s funding would add to the risks for business.”
Other speakers at the Institute of Directors Scotland event, dubbed Drive to Succeed, include Bill Gammell of Cairn Energy, Charan Gill of Harlequin Leisure and Janette Anderson of First Engineering.
This article was published in the Sunday Times on 29 October 2006. Read on Times Online The following week Ben Thomson, chief executive of boutique investment bank Noble Group, also came out for either fiscal autonomy or independence.