The North Sea oil and gas industry would face several years of uncertainty beyond 2014 if Scotland backs independence, a leading pro-UK campaigner has argued.
Alistair Darling MP, chairman of Better Together, said investor confidence in the sector would be affected by prolonged secession negotiations with the UK Government and further talks with the European Union.
The former chancellor met business and civic leaders in Aberdeen yesterday as part of a “listening tour” of Scotland as the anti-independence partners step up the drive to retain the Union.
Mr Darling said: “Outside experts have said it will take three to four years to negotiate separation from the UK.
“As for the European Union, I can’t give you a figure, but the last applicant to get into the European Union just finished 10 years of negotiations.
“There will be considerable uncertainty, and that has implications on licensing, taxation, and on decommissioning costs, which is one of the big issues coming up – and we can’t afford to wait.
“The risk is that companies faced with uncertainty will go to places where they know the lie of the land, and once you sow seeds of uncertainty, it takes a long time to reassure people.”
The former Aberdeen University student also sounded a word of warning for the Scottish fishing industry, which he claimed would find it much harder to negotiate in Brussels as part of an independent country.
He said: “In the fishing industry, which is very important to the north-east, having the clout of the UK matters.
“I have been involved in European councils for 13 years and I can tell you that small countries just don’t have the same voice. It is the big countries that call the shots.”
Mr Darling argued that many business leaders in Scotland were fearful of speaking out on the fiercely divisive independence issue for fear of a negative reaction. The Labour MP insisted that the SNP in particular needs to be challenged more to answer “hard questions” about the future of Scotland outwith the UK.
He said: “In the past, if people have criticised the SNP they have been shouted down, they have been attacked as being somehow negative or unpatriotic and I think that is deeply regrettable.
“In any grown-up democracy, people should have the right to stand up and say whatever they believe, and we can either agree or disagree with it. For too long, the Nationalists have not been challenged – they have had 80 years to think about this and there are still fundamental questions they can’t answer.
“Look what has happened in the last year, the more people have spoken up the more the wheels have come off.”
Ultimately, however, the backers of the Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat backers of the Better Together campaign know that they will have to win the independence argument on several fronts. Mr Darling said: “It comes down to three levels – we have to win the emotional argument, because the UK is greater than the sum of its parts and we can be Scottish and British and proud of both. Also we have the influence, which is greater as part of the UK, and then the economy.”
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