SNP delegates rebuke ministers with vote for state-run financing

Scottish National party delegates have voted heavily to replace privately financed schemes with a state-run infrastructure agency, in an implied rebuke to SNP ministers.

The party’s spring conference overwhelmingly supported calls for Scottish ministers to set up a publicly funded infrastructure agency after the Guardian disclosed new evidence that firms in offshore tax havens invest heavily in Scottish government-sponsored building projects.

Research for the Guardian and the Ferret website found offshore firms stand to earn more than £1.7bn from contracts to build and run 47 new hospitals, motorway upgrades, schools, health centres and colleges overseen by an agency set up by the SNP government, the Scottish Futures Trust (SFT).

The SFT uses a less costly form of private financing than previous methods, but Scottish government data shows those 47 schemes will cost £2.7bn to build. Once their financing and maintenance costs are included, the total bill will rise to £8bn over the next 30 years.

Scottish taxpayers have still to pay off about £20bn from earlier and more costly private finance initiative schemes initiated in the 1990s by the Conservatives, and then used heavily by Labour, and in some part by the SNP.

Anne McLaughlin, a former MSP, told the party conference that the public infrastructure company suggested by the pro-Scottish independence CommonWeal thinktank would be “democratically accountable”. It would keep these building projects “in the public sector for the public good”, she said.

In a further vote, the conference also urged public sector pension funds to invest in a proposed new Scottish investment bank being set up by ministers in Edinburgh which focused on ethical projects and “the public good”.

The Guardian also revealed that public sector pension funds run by 14 English and Scottish councils, and one for the Environment Agency, have invested hundreds of millions of pounds in SFT projects that are controlled by offshore companies.

Dave Watson, head of policy for the public sector union Unison Scotland and an expert in pensions, said ministers could already insist that public pension funds sign up to the “fair tax mark” which prevented them from investing in tax avoidance schemes.

“It is simply wrong that public money and our members pension contributions should be invested in tax avoidance mechanisms. Billions of pounds of revenue are lost every year that could have been invested in vital public services,” he said.