SNP’s capitalist credentials on show over Tory freeports
By Jimmy Haddow
The Scottish trade minister, Ivan McKee, reported to the Scottish parliament on January 21, 2021 the findings of a survey conducted at the backend of last year called “Scotland’s Economic performance: The Contribution of Place-based Economic Development Zones”.
This is a fancy name for ‘freeports’, also called ‘free trade zones’, where the normal tax and tariff rules of a country does not apply, such as VAT and employment tax. McKee argued that these are needed to develop the Scottish economy post-Brexit.
Freeports, much beloved by Boris Johnson and his Tory government, allow goods to be imported, manufactured and re-exported without being subject to checks, paperwork or import tax, more commonly known as tariffs.
They are also notorious for criminal activity because of the lack of checking paperwork and, more importantly, for low wages, lack of workers’ rights and exploitation of foreign workers.
Ironically, McKee’s announcement is in total opposition to the position of the SNP conference at the end of November 2020, in which a resolution was passed that highlighted the low cost, low wage, low value opportunities offered by the UK Government’s freeports agenda.
The Scottish government has overturned the SNP conference resolution by sweetening the bitter pill with saying it will be a different type of free model because it will have ‘Scottish characteristics’.
The Trade minister announced that Scotland’s freeports will be sustainable, fair and green. Nor will they “engage in any economic model or mechanism that allows for a ‘race to the bottom’”.
Moreover, they must include a contribution to sustainable and inclusive growth; a commitment to supportive decarbonisation, zero net economy and fair work, a real living wage and the zone must help the local economy if it is to get to get benefits from the Scottish government tax incentives.
Even the Scottish Greens, who have supported the SNP government and their cuts budgets since 2016, condemned the move. Patrick Harvie MSP said: “This is shameless greenwash. Freeports are a form of sanctioned tax dodging, linked to deregulation and race-to-the-bottom free market extremism. Simply putting the word “green” into the name doesn’t change that. This is Tory economics.”
The Scottish government are also failing on renewables. As the recent STUC report ‘Scotland – Renewable Jobs Crisis & Covid 19’ explained employment in Scotland’s low-carbon and renewable energy economy (LCRE) flatlined between 2014 and 2018.
Despite past promises of 130,000 jobs by 2020, direct employment in 2018 was 23,100, down from 23,400 in 2014.”. So much for commitment from the capitalist SNP government to the environment and jobs in the green sector.
The idea of green ports are not new. They are promoted by the EU and the European Commission. The SNP government’s slavish support for the neoliberal bosses’ European Union knows no bounds.
The STUC and all trade unionists, anti-austerity campaigners and socialists should oppose the concept of capitalist green ports and the race to the bottom in wages and conditions that goes along with it.
Instead any port infrastructure should be nationalised under democratic workers’ control and management with this being linked to a wider socialist economic strategy.
We demand that major industry, including the renewables sector, is brought into public ownership under workers’ control and management with massive investment into the technology required to deal with global warming.
Jobs should have not less than a £15 an hour minimum wage with trade union control of terms and conditions and working practices, alongside a shorter working week with no loss of pay to provide full employment.
