Economic resilience

Resilient Scotland Part Two

Stephen Richard — Sat, 04 Sep 2021 10:58:51 +0000

Resilient Scotland Part Two

Primary Author or Creator

Common Weal

Stephen Richard Sat, 09/04/2021 - 11:58

Date Published

Sun, 06/21/2020 - 12:00

Category

Economy

Type of Resource

Policy Paper

Fast Facts

This phase of creating a resilient Scotland covers 2021-26 the five years of the next Scottish Parliament. It provides the detail of how the transformation envisaged can be achieved quickly, with a closer look at our economy, society and democracy.

More details

This is the second part of a three-part plan for creating greater economic, social and environmental resilience in Scotland and focusses on the four- year period of the next Scottish Parliament. It contains too many individual recommendations to summarise all of them here. At the same time it does not cover a number of areas which require much more space to cover than is possible here – not least the need for a National Care System (which will be covered in a forthcoming Common Weal report). These are some of the key points:

Over this period Scotland should accelerate economic transformation by creating an industrial strategy for green reindustrialisation in Scotland, using the full set of policy tools available in Scotland to support green manufacturing and other forms of production.

This will not only create high-pay jobs and increase national prosperity,
it will also transform Scotland into a ‘circular economy’ in which our economic activity does not do damage to our environment – or to anyone else’s environment either.

To make this happen will require extensive public interventions in banking, infrastructure, energy, food, transport and training and organisational development, each designed to create the best possible condition for the transition to take place and to lead to the creation of new high-quality jobs as quickly as possible.

A National Pharmaceutical Company should be set up to provide Scotland’s NHS with inexpensive medicines and to act as a manufacturing hub more generally, producing high-quality medical equipment in Scotland – including PPE.

The Council Tax should be replaced with a fairer Property Tax which also taxes land, to finance local development and to incentivise the productive use of land

Scotland should undergo major democratic reform, particularly to introduce a dynamic system of local democracy, but also to move Scotland into a transformational new phase of participatory democracy. This should be accompanied by a much stronger commitment to a system of transparency and accountability and new ways of making policy.

This decentralisation will enable a much greater focus on both localism and ‘placemaking’. The Plan proposes specific action programmes for town regeneration and for a rural and coastal industrial strategy based around green reindustrialisation. This will involve major reform of the fishing industry in Scotland to bring jobs back to Scottish communities.

To enable all of this Scotland will need a radical programme of land reform to provide adequate access to essential natural resources which provide the basis for much of what is in this Plan.

The Plan then focusses on how to improve social and community cohesion, democratic and social participation and how to ensure that the sense of civic duty which was so evident during the Covid crisis is embedded into public life.

This will need a much greater focus on what really creates wellbeing, not least the need to move away from GDP as the primary measure of economic success and the wellbeing benefits of deconsumerisation.

This phase of the Plan also acts as an ‘incubator phase’ of a full Green New Deal. Much can be done under devolution and this is all covered in this report, but crucial things are not possible with the power of independence. The three big ones – decarbonising heating, electricity and transport – cannot be achieved under devolution. However, each of these involves large engineering projects which have a long lead time of three or four years. It is perfectly within the powers of devolution to get these projects shovel-ready.

However, this will represent the limits of what is possible in Scotland under devolution. At this point Common Weal believes that Scotland must choose either to continue on this economic and social path or to revert to following the economic and environmental strategy being pursued at a UK level. For this reason a detailed proposal for how Scottish independence will be achieved will be prepared and this will be put to the people of Scotland not later than year three of this Parliament. Those who support the objectives of this Plan but do not support independence will be encouraged to explain what steps they believe can then be taken.

Resource Address (URL)

https://commonweal.scot/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Resilient-Scotland-Part-Two…

Keywords

Green reindustrialisation

Language English

Resilient Scotland Part Three

Stephen Richard — Sat, 04 Sep 2021 10:41:44 +0000

Resilient Scotland Part Three

Primary Author or Creator

Common Weal

Stephen Richard Sat, 09/04/2021 - 11:41

Date Published

Sun, 06/21/2020 - 12:00

Category

Economy

Type of Resource

Policy Paper

Fast Facts

The final stage of the Resilient Scotland Plan runs from 2025 with the upcoming Parliamentary session ending with Scotland becoming an independent country. All of the work started in Part Two will continue and the work that could not start due to the limitations of devolution can now commence. By 2045, the plan will be completely and Scotland will have been transformed into a net zero-carbon country with a resilient economy that works for All of Us.

More details

The Resilient Scotland Plan provides extensive detail on a practicable, deliverable programme for achieving what everyone now says is necessary – a vibrant, green economy which creates good jobs and delivers economic fairness. It is well past the time where it is viable for individuals and organisations still to be talking about broadly supporting the principle and we are now racing past the point where vague aspirations and boiler-plate language should be accepted.

It is no good to talk about ‘green investment’ if, by now, we are not identifying where that investment should come from, who should pay for it and how, and where specifically that investment should be going. It is farcical to suggest that a bit more of what we’re currently doing is even close to sufficient. Pick your crisis – Covid or the environment. Either in themselves requires an expenditure of effort and a level of investment that societies make only every few generations. Combine them and the case for being that generation is overwhelming.

What creates environmental vulnerability is the same thing that creates economic and social vulnerability. It is the economy in which we were promised all failures would be ended through growth – yet it is the economy where 40 years of growth have actually accelerated the failures and caused an increase in the rate at which the economy ‘falls over’ in the face of even minor crises. It is time for Scotland to use its eyes and its brains. If we are promised that growth fixes everything. If, after 40 years of growth, so many things got worse. If that economy gets more vulnerable the more it stretches supply chains and the more it extracts. If so, how can more of the same achieve resilience? Resilience is not made out of vulnerability, it is the alternative to vulnerability.

If we have learned anything through the Covid crisis it is that half measures and hoping for the best achieve next to nothing. You do it – or you don’t do it. This Plan is something serious we can do.

Resource Address (URL)

https://commonweal.scot/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Resilient-Scotland-Part-Thre…

Keywords

Economic resilience

Green Economy

Green new deal

Language English

Resilient Scotland Part One

Stephen Richard — Sun, 15 Aug 2021 16:00:56 +0000

Resilient Scotland Part One

Primary Author or Creator

Common Weal

Stephen Richard Sun, 08/15/2021 - 17:00

Alternative Published Date

2021

Category

Economy

Banking

Type of Resource

Policy Paper

Fast Facts

The borrowing cap for the Scottish Parliament should be removed or lifted substantially so public expenditure can be used where needed; but, more importantly the Scottish National Investment Bank should be given full dispensation to act as a bank and thus capitalise from sources such as pension funds and lend to the public as well as private sector. Public procurement should be entirely reprofiled with the public policy goal of supporting Scottish business and achieving the maximum number of manufacturing jobs.

More details

By using Resilience Economics we can replace an economic toolbox with few policy options which creates inequality, environmental harm and repeated economic crises with one based on a much more balanced set of economic theories which prioritise public-good outcomes and will result in a more stable economy. This can be made to work under devolution if we focus on unlocking Scotland’s economic underdevelopment and support this not with bailouts for existing businesses but transition packages linked to reprofiled public spending and sustainable investment from the Scottish National Investment Bank.

This is underpinned by a series of over-arching policy goals which explain what kind of economy we are seeking to achieve; replacing an unhealthy focus on GDP growth with these will make clear the kind of economic change Scotland is pursuing. Scotland is inordinately well positioned to achieve this because of the current underdevelopment of our copious natural and human resources.

To achieve this we must do the following: Set up a Transition Academy to help policy-makers adapt to the new agenda. Set up a Diversification Agency to support new and existing businesses to grasp the opportunities being unlocked. Create a guaranteed retraining programme for those who lose employment. Reprofile public procurement spending to support this transition Begin a major programme of public rental house-building linked to an integrated supply chain strategy. Create a mortgage-to-rent scheme for households at risk of losing their home. Introduce a tourism rescue package with all citizens being given a £100 voucher for a stay at a Scottish hotel Introduce a similar voucher scheme for the hospitality sector. Develop a form of Universal Basic Income for artists. Devise plans for a future Festival of Scotland to support the entertainment and events sector. Create an industrial strategy to unlock new economic activity in food production, materials manufacture, light manufacturing, housing, energy, hydrogen, land, design and innovation.

Resource Address (URL)

https://commonweal.scot/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Resilient-Scotland-Part-One…

Keywords

Scottish National Investment Bank

Language English

Resilience Economics, an Economic Model for Scotland’s Recovery.

Stephen Richard — Sat, 31 Jul 2021 10:32:59 +0000

Resilience Economics, an Economic Model for Scotland’s Recovery.

Primary Author or Creator

Common Weal

Stephen Richard Sat, 07/31/2021 - 11:32

Alternative Published Date

2020

Category

Economy

Type of Resource

Policy Paper

Fast Facts

We need a resilient economy, one which creates the good jobs that give people the income to live good lives now, which has the security to make us confident we can live good lives in the future, which useful, diverse, non-exploitative and which does not contain high levels of risk, or which falls over in a crisis. And this must all be based on a resilient environment which is always able to regenerate itself after human activity and can therefore sustain our lives now and in the future.

More details

To help visualise what Resilience Economics might mean in practice, the following is a short list of some of the high-level goals these economics suggest for Scotland:

― Scotland must create an economy which is more productive and useful and which reduces low-pay and insecure jobs with high-pay, secure ones

― Scotland should do much more to prioritise domestic productive business over corporations and help and encourage those businesses to develop themselves as part of a new green economy

― Scotland should get property price inflation under control so excessive rents and mortgages don’t undermine the economy again

― Scotland should make banking safe and boring so that a reliable and resilient banking sector can be trusted to provide crucial services – with risk-takers being allowed to fail

― Scotland should reduce the volume of commercial retail and to transition away from a reliance on the low-pay service sector

― Scotland must begin a major programme of green reindustrialisation and increase domestic manufacturing capacity

― Scotland’s recovery must be driven in part by land-based industries and so land reform will be crucial

― Scotland must adopt an ‘entrepreneurial state’ model working to a national industrial strategy

― Scotland must very substantially increase the proportion of our economy which is domestically owned

― Scotland must use the economic rebuilding post-virus to move rapidly to start a radical Green New Deal

― Nothing in Scotland’s recovery and its subsequent re-industrialisation process must be considered if it does not decrease economic inequality and poverty.

Resource Address (URL)

https://commonweal.scot/policies/resilience-economics-summary/

Keywords