The report said: 'A protracted period of negotiation beyond the proposed 18 months would have a negative impact on business in Scotland as well as the other parts of the United Kingdom. 'The Scottish government must play fair with Scottish businesses, investors, and voters and set out its plans for an alternative currency for an independent Scotland.' It's no longer tenable for the Scottish government to assert an independent Scotland will retain the pound when a sterling currency union is firmly off the table. The committee raised serious concerns that a yes vote may leave Scotland facing a currency 'limbo' and, in the short term, unable to join a sterling currency union and without the prospect of adopting the euro.Īdrian Bailey, chair of the committee, said: 'On big questions, such as the issue of a future currency, it's time for the Scottish government to come clean and lay out the detail. The MPs also said a yes vote for independence would break up the UK single market and in the short-term could leave Scottish businesses uncertain of their position in Europe.Ī protracted Scottish negotiation over EU membership, and the uncertain investment environment arising from a vote in favour of independence, would involve 'a leap of faith' and would have a damaging impact on businesses in Scotland as well as other parts of the UK, they said. The risk to Scotland is that provision of the universal postal service will come at significant additional cost, either to the taxpayer or to the consumer.' The committee concluded: 'We do not believe that the Scottish government has set out a coherent body of evidence to show how it would maintain and pay for the universal postal service in an independent Scotland.

It said Vince Cable, the UK government's business secretary, had confirmed that the costs for an independent Scotland of running its own postal service to current standards 'would be 'significantly costly' and that the result would be either an increase to the stamp price or a bigger state subsidy'. The MPs' report said: 'Consumer Futures concluded that in Scotland there was 'substantial evidence' of the difficulties faced by consumers in Scotland, due to 'higher costs of delivery no delivery to their location longer delivery times lack of transparency of delivery costs and a lack of up-front information about delivery costs'.' It said the UK government paid a £210m-a-year subsidy to the Royal Mail to cover rural post offices that were not commercially viable. In a report on the business costs of independence, MPs quoted evidence from Consumer Futures, a UK government-funded consumer watchdog, showing that half of the 3,000 UK addresses exempt from the Royal Mail's universal service order were in Scotland.Ĭonsumer Futures also said the only three postcode areas exempt from quality of service standards were in Scotland – Orkney, Shetland and the Outer Hebrides. The select committee said it could prove impossible to maintain low-cost, six-days-a-week deliveries to Scotland's islands and vast areas of remote countryside after independence because of the sums involved in subsidising uneconomic deliveries at a uniform price across the country.

Labour now believes it would be too costly to take it back into public ownership at UK or Scottish level. A substantial majority of Scottish MPs, chiefly Labour and SNP, opposed the sell-off.īut Salmond's renationalisation pledge, which appeared to catch his cabinet by surprise, remains uncosted by the Scottish government. Salmond said the UK government's decision to part-privatise Royal Mail, earning the Treasury £2bn in October 2013, was a clear case of ministers in London imposing policies that had been rejected by Scottish voters.

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