Transcript of Alex Salmond

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On Sunday 13th March Andrew Marr interviewed Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond

ANDREW MARR:

The Scottish Nationalists have been in power in Scotland for the past four years. It's a minority administration, but it's survived a full term in office and the SNP Leader and First Minister Alex Salmond claims many achievements - among them freezing the council tax, abolishing charges for university tuition, and coming soon free prescriptions. Well Alex Salmond joins me now from the SNP spring conference in Glasgow. Good morning, Mr Salmond.

ALEX SALMOND:

Good morning, Andrew.

ANDREW MARR:

You made a very impassioned defence of free tuition for Scottish students yesterday. You said in effect hell would ice over before you flinched on that, and you would fill any funding gap that emerged. How do the sums work out on that and free prescriptions and the other goodies, as it were, you're able to offer Scottish voters?

ALEX SALMOND:

It wasn't hell freezing over. It was the rocks melting with the sun before I would see tuition fees imposed on Scottish students. You'll recognise the …

ANDREW MARR:

(over) I do indeed.

ALEX SALMOND:

… Robert Burns quote, Andrew, I know that. Now it's very, very important that we establish, keep, defend and progress the principle of free access to education in Scotland because I mean that's what brought us the Scottish Enlightenment. Scotland was the first country in the world to expand universal education, and out of that came the ideas, the innovation, the invention which changed the modern world and shaped the modern world. We're not going to abandon it now. We're most certainly not going go to down the road that the coalition government are taking people in England. I think it's a road to social division, social exclusion, it's a road to disaster south of the border, and we'll pursue our own distinctively Scottish path.

ANDREW MARR:

And yet you can't completely isolate yourself from what's happening south of the border. The Scottish universities are talking about a £200 million funding gap and they're clearly quite worried, once the English universities start to charge fees, what's going to happen.

ALEX SALMOND:

Yes, well we finalised that in a joint, collective way in Scotland over the last few months, and we've identified what we believe is a potential gap. That's assuming that the plan in England actually works, and there's some scepticism about that. But we've identified a potential funding gap of £100 million and that will have to be funded by central government. But can I just put that into context? I mean last Friday, we announced a £90 million new investment for Strathclyde University in this city of Glasgow in a renewable energy technology centre. That's an investment, a new investment in one university. So to be able to close a funding gap of 100 million or so across the university sector in Scotland is something we can do by deploying the resources of government and, in the case of Friday's investment, the private sector as well. So this is something we can do, this is something we're going to do because the prize of free education and establishing, retaining and expanding that great Scottish tradition is something too valuable to give up just because the Tory led coalition south of the border are pursuing a different path.

ANDREW MARR:

Ad yet these are tough times. Money is short everywhere. One of the things that you obviously want is fiscal autonomy for Scotland. You may not like it, but the new bill or act does give you the ability to borrow more money and you've always had the ability to raise income taxes a bit if you want to. If you're re-elected - and it's a tight, tight race with Labour at the moment, as we know - if you're re-elected, will you start to use those powers?

ALEX SALMOND:

Well the borrowing powers are hugely important and of course it was the SNP administration who argued successfully to get these powers into the bill. And now we have to see … There's a consensus actually growing in Scotland that these powers have to be substantially expanded, for very obvious reasons. We're going ahead with a two and a half billion bridge, new bridge across the River Forth. You don't want to have to pay for that in one or two or three years. That's a huge capital investment that you need the borrowing powers to plan over a range of years. Or, for example, our Scottish water industry of which we're so proud. You know it's a huge natural resource for Scotland. We're moving into hydro economy when water's going to be one of the greatest resources of all. If we had borrowing powers, then our Scottish water, our public Scottish water could launch a bond issue next week and raise £500 million such is their revenue base.

ANDREW MARR:

Sorry, does that …

ALEX SALMOND:

So these borrowing powers in the bill are absolutely critical.

ANDREW MARR:

Does that mean that you know the free prescriptions and the tuition fees and all the rest of it - the lack of tuition fees, I should say - does that mean that you can do all that, you would argue, without raising taxes?

ALEX SALMOND:

Yes, I mean what we've just been talking about is the capital investment programme. There's no doubt that unless we get borrowing powers, the capital investment programme becomes very, very restricted. That's what's happening in Westminster just now and we've got to break out of that straitjacket. In terms of economic powers, the reason we want full fiscal autonomy is we want to be able to marshal all of the resources, and therefore the ability to raise revenue in Scotland, to meet our expenditure plans over the long-term. That's the case for financial and fiscal responsibility. We want to move out of this recession by growing the economy and growing the revenue base as opposed to by trying to pile on taxes, which is what is happening in London just now and what some our political opponents would like to do in Scotland, and grow the revenue side of the equation. And you can only do that, of course, if you have control of it, Andrew.

ANDREW MARR:

Right. We read this week that Mr al Megrahi has got a wonderful new three storey house in the middle of Tripoli. Everything else is being knocked down, but his house is going up. And we also have heard from one of Mr Gaddafi's former ministers who's defected, who said that Megrahi was absolutely involved in the Pan Am plot, the Lockerbie bombing, and that Gaddafi was determined to get him out of Scotland to keep the truth from fully coming out? Do you feel fooled?

ALEX SALMOND:

No, I mean we've never doubted the safety of the conviction. Mr al Megrahi wasn't released on these grounds. Nor was he released on the grounds that we now know the Labour government were canvassing and agitating for following Gus O'Donnell's review. That is oil and the economic interests and things like that. We released him on compassionate grounds according to the precepts of the Scottish legal system.

ANDREW MARR:

(over) He was about to die.

ALEX SALMOND:

But listen, Andrew, just under… Yes, but just understand this. Mr Megrahi is dying of terminal prostate cancer. That is true. I wouldn't pay too much attention to some of the other reports, newspaper reports you get out of Libya. He is dying of terminal prostate cancer.

ANDREW MARR:

And so when you talk about or the government talks about the importance of compassion, a lot of people would say this is the single most heinous act of mass murder committed in your country. Does that mean that all murderers if they're very ill get out of jail to die? I mean why compassion for this man in particular?

ALEX SALMOND:

Well it's according to the precepts of our system, Andrew. I mean I'm assuming you do know that no prisoner who's had the recommendations of the parole board, the prison governor and full processes under our system of compassionate release has ever been denied that compassionate release. All prisoners have been allocated that if they have met the criteria which were previously established. We didn't make any special exception for Mr Megrahi. We applied the rules and precepts of the Scottish legal system. And right through this debate - and I think we've been vindicated on this point - we've never assumed that people would agree with us (although incidentally many did, including many of the UK relatives) what we've just argued for is for people to accept that we made a decision in good faith according to the principles of Scottish justice, which is what we did.

ANDREW MARR:

Alright, okay.

ALEX SALMOND:

In stark contrast, incidentally, to what we now know were the manipulations of the Labour government at Westminster.

ANDREW MARR:

Right. Alright, thank you very much indeed Alex Salmond in Glasgow.

INTERVIEW ENDS

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