The point of GERS is to harm the independence cause

So why does the Scottish Administration persist in publishing it?

I asked Ken Mathieson, a retired CA and subscriber to Dear Scotland, to write a piece about GERS (Government Expenditure and Revenue Scotland) and the enormous harm it is doing to the independence cause. GERS will once again be published next month. As usual, the unionist press will have a field day ridiculing Scotland and depicting it as economically inept and bankrupt and thus hopelessly dependent on Westminster “charity” to survive, when it’s Westminster that’s dependent on Scottish revenue and resources. Otherwise, the UK would have cut us loose long ago.

Since no evidence has ever emerged that production of GERS data is mandatory under Statute, Ken reasonably asks: “Why then, does the Scottish administration persist with it?”

With Scotland’s media firmly under unionist control, it’s an uphill battle to get the truth out to the People. But we must keep trying because the alternative is unacceptable - to be continuously asset-stripped and mired within this failing union.

Many people think GERS is a serious accounting/economic exercise, when it is neither by a country mile. Every aspect of GERS reeks of obfuscation and deliberate manipulation of data to present a misleading picture of Scotland's economic situation. That much is evident from the large number of analyses over the years by people who understand how GERS is compiled and how accountancy and economics work.

For my part, as a young CA, if I had presented to the partner in charge of the audit a set of accounts consisting almost entirely of estimates with no proof of accuracy, I know that, at best, I'd be given a severe bollocking and at worst, fired. And yet, not only do these fictions get produced and published year after year, but the Scottish Administration authorises them and pays for them! 

With the "GERS season" again approaching, I wrote to the First Minister and Finance Secretary after the recent SNP leadership changes to ask why they persist in publishing (and financing the production of) GERS each year when it’s so transparently obvious that it is a work of fiction designed to undermine Scotland (a fact not denied by the originator, former Tory Scottish Secretary Ian Lang). Here's the response from an economist in the Office of the Chief Economic Adviser:

"The GERS publication is a statistical publication. It is produced in line with the Code of Practice for Statistics to ensure that it is providing users with statistics that have public value, are high quality, and trustworthy. The methods it uses have been agreed in consultation with users, and are similar to those adopted in the Office for National Statistics Country and Regional Public Sector Finances publication, which is available at: Country and regional public sector finances, UK - Office for National Statistics (ons.gov.uk) Further information on the Code of Practice for Statistics is available at: Code of Practice for Statistics (statisticsauthority.gov.uk). The GERS report was last assessed by the Office for Statistics Regulation in 2014. The report is available at the link below:
Statistics on Government Expenditure and Revenue Scotland – Office for Statistics Regulation (statisticsauthority.gov.uk)"

I got a similar brush-off when I wrote to the then Finance Secretary Derek MacKay when he was in office. It's the classic Ombudsman get-out: "all procedures were followed" without any consideration of whether the procedures were fair or made any sense. In other words, 'procedures were blindly followed'.

Years ago, I did a study of GERS contents based on auditing concepts and found that circa 4% of all the data had a clear audit trail that led back verifiable figures. The other circa 96% is derived from estimates and allocations largely based on population size. The bitter fact is that UK Governments and the Treasury have never attempted to gather critical data (e.g., taxes raised, exports, imports, etc.) by nation and have instead gathered them at UK level. Hence the overwhelming obfuscation of key data. Another factor that can never be forgotten is that the Civil Service in Scotland is run by Whitehall and not Holyrood. 

I've been asking the question for years whether publication of GERS by the Scottish Administration is somewhere contained in Statute, but have yet to receive an answer. That makes me more suspicious that it's not a statutory requirement, which then begs the question "why does the SNP, year on year, make a rod for its back by issuing enormous amounts of almost entirely unproven anti-independence propaganda/ammunition for the Unionist media?”

The pro-Indy Westminster crew seemed to have been cowed by the ludicrous rules and customs of Westminster. They're meant to be revolutionaries, but wound up with Stockholm Syndrome.

The Claim of Right 1689 (affirmed in recent times by both Holyrood and Westminster) establishes that the Scottish People are sovereign. It's about time the Scottish People took the initiative to formulate a sound strategy to secede from the Union. The politicians will be needed to handle secession negotiations (in conjunction with the People), but they've shown remarkable reluctance to initiate the secession process, so my view is that they need the People to enforce it for them.

Ken Mathieson