Guest election blog – Scottish National Party by Mark Avery

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I am one of the co-founders and co-directors of Wild Justice but I write this in a personal capacity. I am a scientist (evolutionary biologist and ecologist) by training, and I worked for the RSPB for 25 years. Since 2011 I have done pieces of freelance work for several wildlife organisations, written several books, blogged, campaigned and helped set up Wild Justice.

I first voted in the 1979 general election and have rarely voted for a successful candidate. I am a member of the Labour Party and have, in the past, voted Labour (often), LibDem (rarely but where they stood a chance of displacing the Conservatives) and Green (mostly in local and EU elections). I’ll be voting in the Corby and East Northamptonshire constituency on 4 July where there is no SNP candidate, but I have friends and relatives living in Scotland, and a degree from a Scottish university, and maybe I’ll move north some time, but in any case I am interested in politics generally.

This is my review of, and my thoughts about, the environmental implications of The Scottish National Party election manifesto.

Things I like:

• Rejoin the EU: I was a determined Remainer and I guess I still am, but I’m not sure that the EU we so foolishly left, is necessarily the one that now exists. So I am emotionally drawn to this, and intellectually in the long term, but I’m not really quite sure what it would be like any more. Shifting baselines.
• Building a fairer, greener economy: yes, I’m up for that. The manifesto seeks devolution of more planning controls to the Scottish parliament – that sounds very reasonable to me. It doesn’t depend on independence and is a perfectly reasonable ask under devolved government.
• Ban new coal licences: yes – but is anyone applying for them?
• Provide sustainable funding for farming to pre-Brexit levels: I recall (but I’m out of date) that there are oddities that disadvantage Scotland when it comes to dispersion of the former Common Agricultural Policy payments and their successors. I’m all for fairness. However, this just looks like a demand for more money (perhaps justified) with the word ‘sustainable’ thrown in because it sounds good. There isn’t anything here (page 21) which explains where the sustainability comes from.
• Give Scotland our rightful share of marine funding: this is a bit like many other asks in this manifesto, it says Scotland is being short-changed by Westminster. If it is, then, even sitting in England, I don’t think it should be.
• Prioritise Scotland’s unique fishing needs: see above – is Scotland being short-changed? But if it is farmed salmon which will get the dosh then it would be more gladly given in my view if salmon farming were better in welfare and environmental terms. But the principle is that Scotland can wreck its environment if it wants to…does the SNP want to?

Things I don’t like:

• Scottish independence: I’m not sure what I think about this because it is rarely something I have to think about in England. Scottish independence will be something that is done to me about which I have feelings but no say – I’m not complaining, just explaining. If I were in Scotland then I would have wanted to free myself from English Tory policies but that may be about to change and I’m not sure (who is?) how Labour will behave.
• No ban of new oil and gas licences: funny that coal gets banned, oil and gas don’t. Can’t think that is anything other than pork-barrel politics.
• Rule out nuclear power plants in Scotland: I wouldn’t.
• A cleaner, greener transport system: sounds good as a headline but this is all a bit thin really. And I am slightly miffed that I can’t use my senior citizen bus pass in Scotland so I’ll flounce off and drive a Ferrari round Edinburgh instead.

Things that appear to be missing:

• farming is hardly mentioned except for ‘give us more money’.
• nature is not mentioned except for the word being used once – so not even ‘give us more money’.
• forestry is not mentioned…
• hardly anything environmental is mentioned except in terms of ‘give us more money’. That money may be deserved but there is a reason why, even in a devolved UK, the SNP should say more about these matters in their Westminster election manifesto – see last two sections below.

Overall assessment: the manifesto reads like a demand for money. If you live in England, Wales or Northern Ireland then you might do well to read this manifesto and see what demands are being made of you. If the Barnett formula isn’t fair then it needs to be made fair even if that disadvantages English residents and taxpayers. I am a great supporter of fairness. Those who oppose Scottish independence (not me) would do well to ensure fairness across all four UK nations in allocation of money as part of a defence against schisms. However, Scotland does have its own parliament and decides a great deal of its own affairs, but this is a manifesto for a UK parliament election, not a Scottish election. MPs come to Westminster from Scotland (Wales and Northern Ireland) to help decide UK matters. MPs go to Westminster from English constituencies to decide English matters and UK matters. Westminster is a hybrid parliament – see below for more.

Would I vote for these environmental policies?: the question is moot because there is no SNP candidate standing in Corby and East Northamptonshire despite the fact that Corby hosts a large and impressive Highland gathering – the next of which takes place 10 days after the general election. The last time I visited the Labour Club in Corby, which was probably over a decade ago, Scottish accents were commonplace and pints of McEwans export were being drunk, as Corby had the nickname of ‘Little Scotland’ due to the number of Scottish steelworkers who had moved to work in the Corby steelworks.

However, the MPs sent to Westminster from Scotland can vote on English-only issues, whereas the MP I help to elect in Corby cannot vote on Scotland-only, Wales-only or NI-only issues because they don’t sit in the devolved nations’ legislatures. This is the famous West Lothian question and for a while at Westminster, MPs from English seats had a veto on England-only issues – see English Votes for English Laws, EVEL – click here.

If MPs from Scottish constituencies influence my environmental future on England-only matters I won’t be chuffed, unless, of course, they vote the way I’d like! If MPs from non-English constituencies had a decisive say on licensing (or better a ban) of driven grouse shooting in England then whichever way it went, one side or the other in England could rightly feel hard done by. This set-up is a recipe for future strife and needs sorting out rationally and fairly – the trouble is that the short term interests of the Westminster English government (as opposed to the Westminster UK government) are strongly determined by whether they think they will gain or lose in the short term from EVEL.

This is one of a series of opinion pieces on the political parties’ 2024 general election manifestos. They were commissioned by Wild Justice several months ago by approaching a wide variety of conservationists and environmentalists long before the date of the general election was known. Some people who originally agreed to write pieces found the date and short timescale impossible and had to back out. We did not know what they would write and their only brief was to pick one or two political parties’ election manifestos and tell us what they liked and didn’t like about their environmental policies. We didn’t tell people what to write and we haven’t edited what they wrote (except to squeeze things into a common format, to correct minor grammatical and spelling errors and typos). The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Wild Justice.