ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO MURNAGHAN, SKY NEWS

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Now then, the Yes campaign for Scottish Independence is in the lead, as you’ve been hearing, in a major poll for the first time this morning.  It’s been described as a game changer, a breakthrough moment and even a political earthquake.  Well I am joined now by Scotland’s Cabinet Secretary for Finance, Employment and Sustainable Growth and former leader of the SNP of course, John Swinney, a very good morning to you, Mr Swinney.   You and I have talked over the months and years indeed of this campaign and you’ve always told me when the no campaign were ahead by twenty points or more you don’t take any notice of the polls, I bet you’re taking notice of this one.

JOHN SWINNEY: The polls are encouraging Dermot but of course the polls are mixed.  One poll this morning puts the yes campaign ahead and one poll puts the no campaign ahead and I think what that demonstrates is that people in Scotland have engaged very closely with this referendum campaign, they know that there is an important choice to be made and more and more people are now seeing that there is a great opportunity for Scotland in voting yes by acquiring the ability to determine our own future, by taking the future of Scotland into our own hands and that’s the great choice that’s available to us by voting yes in the referendum.

DM: Just staying with the poll there, Mr Swinney, if it turns out that way, if it is the way that the vote breaks on the 18th, are you worried in any sense that you then have a fractured society, a nation divided down the middle?  It’s very, very close. 

JOHN SWINNEY: We’ve gone through an entirely consented process around this referendum.  The Scottish government and the United Kingdom government both agreed on the way in which the referendum would be taken forward, it was legislated for by the United Kingdom parliament and the Scottish parliament.  We have had a very long and as you said in your first question, extensive discussion around the issues of independence and I think everybody accepts that once the referendum takes place we accept the outcome and we get on with implementing the outcome and indeed, that’s the principle of the Edinburgh Agreement, signed between the Scottish and UK governments, that whatever the outcome of the referendum we will embark with a spirit of goodwill to implement the outcome of the referendum and whatever that outcome is we will work hard to implement it and to create a better Scotland. 

DM: But do you know the big offering, it’s on the table at the moment, it’s been fleshed out even more, coming from the Better Together campaign and it’s this so-called devo max option which, I’ll paraphrase it, more or less says why bother with the issue of what the currency is going to be, whether you are going to need a passport or whether we are going to set up new embassies or not – stay with this devo max option, get more or less the entire arc of what you are offering on full independence and stay within the United Kingdom.  What is wrong with that?

JOHN SWINNEY: Well the problem with that, Dermot, is that we have been here before.  I’m old enough to remember the 1979 referendum when Scotland was advised to vote no to get a better and stronger Scottish parliament and what we got was 18 years of Conservative government, we got industrial devastation and we didn’t get a Scottish parliament for 18 years.  So I think people in Scotland have seen what it means to be persuaded to vote no in a referendum and what people will be looking for is the guarantee of how they can acquire new powers for the Scottish parliament and the only way that we can get new powers in the Scottish parliament is to vote yes in the referendum. 

DM: Okay, Mr Sweeney, you feel you were led up the garden path all those years ago but this time it’s for real isn’t it?  We have got to believe all the political parties from Westminster are offering you this devo max, tax powers, welfare powers, it is true, they are not going to take that away.

JOHN SWINNEY: Well it was for real in 1979 apparently and it didn’t materialise and of course we had a recent example of this in the Calman Commission which was set up by the three UK parties in 2008, that was designed to give us new powers.  The Calman Commission recommended additional powers and we didn’t even get all of those powers, modest as they were.  So I think if people want a guarantee to get additional powers for the Scottish parliament, the only guarantee that will secure those powers is to vote yes in the referendum a week on Thursday. 

DM: Okay, let’s address this issue of fairness which I know the yes campaign is saying Scotland wants to be a fairer society, it’s hamstrung by being ruled by Westminster at the moment.  That bridled as you probably saw with Gordon Brown, the former Prime Minister, I interviewed yesterday and we broadcast it earlier this morning and this is what he’s got to say about the fairness agenda.  Mr Brown was saying you want to cut corporation tax and stick more money in big business’s pocket. 

JOHN SWINNEY: It is a bit ironic, Gordon Brown criticising us for proposing reducing corporation tax since he did that when he was the Chancellor of the Exchequer and said of course that he was very keen to cut corporation tax even further but the fairness agenda is at the heart of the whole referendum debate because people in Scotland are fed up with having policies implemented by the UK government which are not supported here in Scotland and we have seen a number of examples of that.  If you take the council tax benefit system for example, it was abolished by the United Kingdom government and transferred to Scotland but the budget for it was reduced so we in Scotland have had to take measures to support the incomes of 540,000 low income individuals within Scotland, including 200,000 pensions, whereas if it hadn’t been for the Scottish government we wouldn’t have been able to deliver for fairness or for vulnerable people within Scotland so what we want to do is to have the ability in Scotland to take our own decisions, to implement that agenda of creating a fair society but to do it by creating economic opportunity for all of our citizens and that’s the reason why the yes message is proving to be so popular in Scotland today. 

DM: Okay, I think we’ve got Gordon Brown now who disagrees with that analysis as you know, let’s just hear a little bit of it. 

GORDON BROWN: I also think that the SNP have got their policies wrong for Scotland and I think when people look at the small print, because there was this big manifesto that was published saying this is what we do in an independent Scotland, they find that the SNP haven’t got policies for a fairer Scotland, they haven’t got the detailed tax changes that would make Scotland a more equal place.  Their biggest proposal, and I think people will be shocked when they hear this, is not to get more money to pensioners through tax credits or to get more money to children through higher rates of income tax to fund the welfare state, their biggest policy tax change is to cut corporation tax by three pence and that money would go to the privatised gas and electricity companies, the people who have made the biggest profits would be the biggest beneficiaries of independence.  Now that doesn’t seem to me to be a fairer Scotland. 

DM: That’s Gordon Brown and Mr Swinney, you have already dealt with that and refuted that claim but presumably you’d also throw back another dimension of this polling, throw it back at Gordon Brown saying you may say that but 30% it seems of your voters, Labour voters in Scotland, are thinking or saying they are going to vote yes. 

JOHN SWINNEY: Well I think what those Labour voters in Scotland are recognising is that the only way in which they can secure their values is by voting yes in the referendum.  The Labour party in London have made it absolutely clear that they will be tougher on welfare and tougher on benefits than the Conservatives, those are the words of Rachel Reeves, the Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary.  So if people in Scotland want to create a fairer society then the best way to do that is to take control of our own resources, we’re a very wealthy country here in Scotland but the problem is not enough of our citizens are sharing in that wealth and we’ve got to take that wealth into our own hands with the powers to do something about it and to create a prosperous and a just society and the only way we’ll be able to do that is by voting yes in the referendum a week on Thursday with the guarantee that Scotland will be able to determine Scotland’s own future. 

DM: I just want to ask you lastly Mr Swinney a question that is around a lot for all nations and Scotland, you want to be part of a nation in waiting, and it’s on the question of Islamic State.  There is of course a Scottish hostage being held by Islamic State, his life is in grave danger.  There is much talk about the UK – and Scotland is still part of the UK at the moment of course – joining in military action with the United States.  Would an independent Scotland support air strikes on IS?

JOHN SWINNEY: What we’ve made very clear is that we believe international action is best determined by agreement and by progress made at the United Nations and that is the forum in which we should resolve these questions.  The particular circumstances of the hostage in Iraq is one of deep concern to all of us in Scotland, as it is across the whole of the United Kingdom, because these actions by IS are barbaric and we have to have coordinated and cooperative international dimensions that will support us in taking action to address the difficulties and the barbaric actions that are being perpetrated by IS.  

DM: But there is no UN resolution at the moment, the US are already bombing and the UK we know is thinking about joining in.  So an independent Scotland wouldn’t support that without a UN resolution?

JOHN SWINNEY: We think the best way to take forward concerted international and effective action to resolve these very deep trouble spots across the world is by cooperative and collaborative international agreement to guarantee that we are in a position to provide the security, the long-term security that has so evaded many of these trouble spots around the world and to deliver that in the interests of everybody in the surrounding nations and across the world.

DM: Okay Mr Swinney, great to talk to you, thank you very much indeed.  The Scottish Finance Minister, John Swinney there.