We simply can’t go on subsidising the Scots

WE have often wondered how it is that Scotland can afford to provide university tuition and NHS prescriptions free of charge. Now we know, thanks to the excellent article and Editorial (Yorkshire Post, August 31).

Around 50 or 60 years ago, Scotland was the poor relation but in 1978, when devolution was in the air, the Labour Minister Joel Barnett produced a complex new funding formula favouring the Scots, which today gives them £1,600 per person more than their English counterparts.

No wonder Alex Salmond, whom Bernard Ingham brilliantly nicknamed “that bladder of haggis” (Yorkshire Post, May 18) always looks so smug and self-satisfied.

There may have been a time, when we were more affluent, that we could afford to be generous to our Celtic neighbours but now, facing stringent austerity and severe cutbacks, we cannot subsidise services in Scotland which we are not able to enjoy ourselves. At the risk of weakening the Union, action must be taken to end this discrepancy not only in Scotland but also in Wales and Northern Ireland, which are similarly advantaged, even if it is graduated over a number of years.

It is reported (Yorkshire Post, September 5) that, if Murdo Fraser becomes the leader, he plans to wind up the Scottish Conservatives and Unionist Party and form a new party with a different name, although he claims this will strengthen the union, there are grave fears that it will do the reverse.

What a short-sighted and misguided step it would be to break up an Union which has existed since 1707.

It is to be hoped that the majority of Scots will always have more sense and loyalty to our United Kingdom.