Surgeon’s post-Brexit think tank cooks up plan for new Scottish pound

The SNP’s Growth Commission is going to propose the creation of a Scottish pound, according to a former member of the House of Commons Treasury Select Committee.

Writing in the pro-independence newspaper The National, former SNP MP George Kerevan, said “little birds” had told him that an economic advisory group set up by Nicola Sturgeon in the wake of the Brexit vote is set to recommend that preparations be made for an new currency that could be used in an independent Scotland.

The group, being chaired by former SNP MSP Andrew Wilson, was set up by Ms Sturgeon in September last year and has been exploring how to grow Scotland’s economy after Brexit.

The group of 14 economists, business leaders and politicians is now set to publish its final report and Mr Kerevan writes that the First Minister is already in receipt of the 400-page document complete with “three chunky appendices”.

Ms Sturgeon was asked for an update on the progress of the report in August, and she said it was still unfinished but insisted that it would be published “in full”.

“Let us say it loud and clear: in arguing the case for independence in the next referendum, a basic red line is that Scotland has its own currency, sets its own interest and exchange rate, and regulates its own banks,” the former MP for East Lothian wrote, adding that the case for independence ahead of 2014’s referendum had been “fatally wounded” by the proposal that Scotland would keep the UK pound.

He told the newspaper: “The Growth Report, according to some little birds, might be proposing a separate Scottish currency but keeping our exchange rate tied to sterling as an interim measure. In other words, a Scots pound would equal one English pound.”

Mr Kerevan, who called on Ms Sturgeon to publish the findings of the Growth Commission as soon as possible, said he was unconvinced by this proposal, claiming that it could be seen as “keeping sterling in disguise”.

“The London markets would immediately test the will of the Scottish Central Bank to keep the Scots and English pounds equal by flogging off ours, thus draining our reserves,” he wrote. “Why give them a hostage to fortune?”