1. To ask the First Minister what engagements he has planned for the rest of the day. (S4F-01559)

Engagements to take forward the Government’s programme for Scotland.

Excellent. Writing in The Guardian, the First Minister’s former head of policy, Alex Bell, the man charged with writing the white paper on independence until as recently as July this year, says of the nationalist movement that Alex Salmond leads:

“At its worst, it succumbs to the temptation to focus on old songs and tired policies. In this, Salmond is wrong.”

Mr Bell goes on to suggest that he had difficulty in writing the Government’s white paper on independence because the First Minister’s arguments are false. He says of the task of writing it:

“Had the superficial elements of the independence argument been true, this would have been easy.”

Is the First Minister’s former head of policy right? If not, why not?

I will have to update Johann Lamont. I saw Alex Bell on “Newsnight Scotland” last night, and he was saying what a wonderful person I am. I was most gratified.

I agreed with a huge amount that was in the article in The Guardian. I thought that Alex Bell represented his arguments properly when he said:

“For many of us the nationalist case represents what the UK Labour party could be, if it had a spine”.

He was being a bit aggressive towards the Labour Party, but I think that the Scottish population would basically regard the Labour Party—both in the United Kingdom and in Scotland—as a shiver looking for a spine to run up.

That was stunning. The dispute is not whether the First Minister is a wonderful person; it is whether he is right or wrong. For a supporter of independence to attack the Labour Party is perhaps expected, but it is a serious matter to hear Alex Bell—the man whom the First Minster chose to write the blueprint for an independent Scotland—express those views.

The future of Scotland is supposed to hang on the First Minister’s long-awaited white paper. We deserve to know why the man who was writing it left the Government. Here is a clue. Mr Bell writes:

“Salmond has denied a crucial truth about the debate: Scotland’s problems are common to the developed world”.

If the First Minister cannot persuade those whom he hired to advise him of his case for independence, what chance does he have with the rest of us?

I point out to Johann Lamont that in last night’s interview Alex Bell confirmed a range of things, including that he is a keen supporter of an independent Scotland. [Interruption.]

Order.

That is the decision that each and every one of us in Scotland is going to be asked to make.

Johann Lamont’s idea that everybody in the same political party should be in agreement is a fantastic one. I have been looking at some of the things that have been said about the Labour Party. In the Sunday Herald of 30 June 2013, we read:

“Labour’s finance spokesman Ken Macintosh was dropped in Johann Lamont’s reshuffle because he dared to criticise her infamous speech about Scotland’s ‘something for nothing’ culture”.

Alex Bell last night made it absolutely clear that he will vote yes in the referendum. We do not know whether Ken Macintosh has succeeded in knocking Johann Lamont off her something-for-nothing culture.

Only in the First Minister’s world does somebody saying that Alex Salmond is wrong mean that Alex Salmond is right. Alex Bell may support independence, but he agrees with me that we should address the long-term problems such as pensions and an ageing population. However, he lost that argument with a First Minister who always and ever puts his own interests ahead of the interests of the people of Scotland.

If Alex Bell were a one-off, we could understand it, but the First Minister has form. What did his Nobel laureate adviser Professor Joseph Stiglitz say of his corporation tax plans? He said:

“Some of you have been told that lowering tax rates on corporations will lead to more investment. That fact is not true.”

What about Alex Salmond’s former economic adviser Professor John Kay? He described the First Minister’s claims as “cloud cuckoo land”.

Does the First Minister ever reflect—[Interruption.] Well, we know that no one on the back benches will ever say the words, “Alex Salmond is wrong,” so someone else has to say it for them. Does the First Minister ever reflect that perhaps it is not his advisers who are wrong but he who is wrong?

The evidence is that, if someone in Johann Lamont’s shadow cabinet says that she is wrong, they end up in the back benches. [Interruption.]

The Presiding Officer:

Order.

In some cases, they return to the very back benches.

I commend to Johann Lamont the transcript of what Alex Bell had to say on “Newsnight Scotland” last night. I will not read that out because it is too glowing in its praise.

Members: Aw!

Oh well—

The Presiding Officer:

Just give us a flavour, First Minister.

Alex Bell said:

“It has been an immense privilege to work for the Government of Scotland. We have done some fantastic things. Alex Salmond has won a series of elections ... There was no fallout. We are much closer than we were when we first worked. There is a lot of compassion there. But I just felt, if it wasn’t going to be the argument that I would make, that I should step aside.”

In terms of people gracefully stepping aside from Government, Alex Bell is a paragon of virtue. What he said should not be used by Johann Lamont to suggest that he is anything other than a keen supporter of the yes campaign on Scottish independence.

Presumably, when the rest of Scotland is now disagreeing with Alex Salmond, it gives him some comfort to read out nice words about himself. However, perhaps he should take things a little more seriously and reflect on what Alex Bell has actually said. People across Scotland are finding the First Minister increasingly deluded and unconvincing. No wonder the First Minister’s old deputy, Jim Sillars, has said of the Scottish National Party:

“Totalitarian would be a fair description of Scotland’s majority party.” [Interruption.]

And totalitarianism does involve shouting people down.

On a host of issues that are important to the public, which will need to be answered in coming debates on independence, the evidence is that no serious work has been done. Those willing to be told to shut up seem happy to follow whatever line is laid down for them.

Today, the Institute for Fiscal Studies has said that the First Minister has a £5.9 billion black hole in his finances—something that he ignored when John Swinney pointed it out to him in private months ago. Is it not true that the people of Scotland do not believe what he says about independence and that even his own side do not believe him any more?

First, a correction regarding the Institute for Fiscal Studies report is that the IFS ran a range of scenarios. I suggest that Johann Lamont looks at page 8, where it says:

“However, if North Sea revenues turn out to be substantially stronger than the OBR forecasts, the fiscal situation in Scotland might actually be somewhat stronger than that for the UK as a whole for the first few years of independence.”

One thing to say about the scenarios that show a stronger fiscal position is that the oil price figures are taken from the Department of Energy and Climate Change, so those were London-based forecasts as well. I thought that David Phillips, who is the senior economist at the IFS, was pretty fair-minded on the radio this morning. Johann Lamont should quote the report properly and in the full context.

On the question of trust, which was Johann Lamont’s key question, we now have considerable evidence from this very morning from the YouGov poll on what people say about independence. Now, no politician emerges dramatically as being incredibly trustworthy, but that is perhaps not surprising—I top the poll, but nonetheless no politician emerges unambiguously. What is really interesting about Johann Lamont’s figures is that—according to this YouGov poll, which the no campaign has been citing—her total trust figure on the constitutional question is 16 per cent. That is for the Opposition leader in Scotland. Of course, that might be because, according to the poll, a majority intend to vote for the Scottish National Party, but let us look at what Labour Party voters—her own supporters—say. One question asked whether Labour supporters trust Johann Lamont on the constitutional question. A majority of Labour supporters—44 per cent—do not trust the Labour leader on what she has to do on independence.

If we are in a situation—as that poll indicates—in which even Labour supporters in Scotland do not trust the Labour leader, it is hardly surprising that those of us who are arguing for a positive future in Scotland look forward optimistically to the campaign over the next year.