Brown calls on Scotland to reject independence

In a speech delivered on Tuesday, Mr Brown warned of a ticking “pensioner time bomb” should Scotland vote for independence. He cited a leaked Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) document showing that an independent Scotland’s first annual pension bill would be “three times the income from oil”.

With polls on Sunday showing the “no to independence” campaign’s lead slipping, the cross-party Better Together grouping hopes that his speech will reinforce their lead over Alex Salmond’s pro-independence campaign.

He was seen as one of the least popular prime minister’s in recent history. Towards the end of his time in office, political commentators joked that he had a “reverse Midas touch”. And, while he is still an MP, Brown has been relatively quiet since leaving Number 10 in 2010. He has spoken in the Commons only four times in this parliamentary session, Hansard shows.

But his popularity has often been stronger in his native Scotland than elsewhere in the UK.

The most recent YouGov survey to look into the issue found that his ratings – while still not good – were significantly stronger in Scotland, with a quarter of people believing him to be a good prime minister north of the border, as opposed to only 12 per cent overall. The 2013 poll found that, while 59 per cent across the whole UK thought him a bad prime minister, 41 per cent disapproved in Scotland.

‘Time bomb’

He told a Better Together event on Tuesday that Scotland faces a £100bn public sector pensions bill, with an additional £1bn of administration costs through duplicating UK services.

In the speech, he said: “For too long, the referendum debate has been presented as one side representing Scotland and the other side representing Britain.

“In fact, the real debate is between two Scottish visions of Scotland’s future – the nationalist one based on the breaking of all political links with the UK and our vision based on a strong Scottish parliament backed up by a system of pooling and sharing risks and resources across the UK.”

‘Fairer for everyone’

And he added: “The whole point of sharing risks and resources across the UK is that it is right and proper that the British welfare state bears the rising cost of Scottish pensions as the number of old people will rise from one million to 1.3 million.

“As the internal DWP document makes clear, it is fairer and better for everyone that Britain’s faster-rising working-age population rather than Scotland’s slow-rising working-age population covers the cost of the rising numbers of elderly in Scotland, because we have contributed in UK National Insurance all our lives to spread the risks of poverty in retirement.

“If the SNP deny there is a problem, they have to explain why they have set up a working party on ‘the affordability’ of future pensions.

“Scottish public sector pension liabilities of £100bn, while also higher, are also rightly covered as part of the system of pooling and sharing resources across the UK.

‘Economically illiterate’

Eilidh Whiteford, the SNP’s work and pensions spokeswoman, said: “Gordon Brown is simply repeating the same economically illiterate claims the Tories and Lib Dems made over a year ago. On this backwards logic, the UK pensions bill is 25 times the value of its oil and gas – making it impossible for the UK to afford to pay for pensions.

“The only new thing in this contribution is that Gordon Brown has finally ended the charade and joined his Labour colleagues in the Tory No campaign.

“Far from re-launching as a positive campaign, this contribution is negative, repetitive and lacks any credibility.”