“Revelations” about a secret 1977 paper proving the UK Government snubbed the idea of an oil fund are not so new.
Reports of the “newly unearthed” document, written by Gavin McCrone, who was Labour prime minister James Callaghan’s chief economic adviser, surfaced at the weekend. But this and other rejections of an oil fund to preserve wealth for future generations were all set out in Aberdeen University professor Alex Kemp’s Official History of North Sea Oil and Gas, published in 2011.
Even so, First Minister Alex Salmond was quick to highlight Westminster’s “mismanagement” of Scotland’s oil and gas industry since its earliest days.
“Labour were repeatedly told more than 35 years ago that they should set up an oil fund or risk being condemned by future generations, but they failed to do so,” he said.
“The costs of that mismanagement are now clear.”
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