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LABOUR leader Ed Miliband blasted Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond yesterday saying he “didn’t have an answer on the pound.”
Mr Miliband went on to rule out a “eurozone-style currency union” with an independent Scotland if Labour wins the 2015 general election in May, during a visit to the Scottish Chambers of Commerce in Glasgow.
The First Minister has held to the position that Scotland would keep a formal currency union with the rest of Britain despite intense political pressure following his bruising TV debate with Better Together leader Alistair Darling earlier in the week.
Ed Miliband said: “If you care about social justice in our country, you can’t leave the economics to guesswork.
“It would be working people, small businesses across Scotland who would be left to deal with the consequences of no Plan B.”
Mr Miliband insisted he wanted business and families to have the certainty of the pound.
“We did not join the eurozone for clear and correct economic reasons,” he said.
“It is for the same reasons the rest of the UK should not enter into a currency union with an independent Scotland.
“And that’s why, as Prime Minister, I couldn’t agree to a currency union.”
Scotland Finance Minister John Swinney responded by repeating his claim that the British government will agree to a currency union if there is a Yes vote.
“The position will crumble after a Yes vote in the referendum,” he told BBC Radio Scotland.
“They cannot turn round to the electorate in the rest of the UK and say we’re going to let the Scots go away debt free.”
nA new report by the National Institute for Economic and Social Research has criticised a possible “Plan B” where Scotland would use the pound but without the Bank of England as lender of last resort in a formal currency union.
The NIESR found that “sterlingisation” would have “consequences for Scotland’s financial sector, its capacity to export financial services, its new balance of payments and its economic prosperity” and claimed Scottish banks could not be sure they would be bailed out in the event of another financial crisis.
