WI: UK sovereign wealth fund?

[RyanF]

Interesting article from the Scotsman on a potential North Sea wealth fund, the IPPR having estimated that had the UK followed Norways example and set one up it would be worth more than £500bn today.

Apparently such a fund was under discussion in the late 1970s but the economic outlook at the time precluded it. What if one had been set up in the dying days of the Callaghan government? If they could muster enough support from say the SNP to pass it.

Would the Conservatives have dismantled it as soon as they could? If not would would the effect of not being able to use oil revenues to reduce tax have on the stability of 80s governments? What would the long term consequences be for the UKs economy from the presence of one? Does this become even more of a bugbear for Scottish nationalists than pissing the revenue up the wall did, "It's Scotland's oil fund"?

 

[Alex Richards]

The Scots almost certainly would have argued for a large share of the wealth- in fact they may well have made a better-than-percentage-share share a requirement of voting for it.

More than anything else, I suspect that would lead to it being doomed before too long.

 

[RyanF]

The Scots almost certainly would have argued for a large share of the wealth- in fact they may well have made a better-than-percentage-share share a requirement of voting for it.

More than anything else, I suspect that would lead to it being doomed before too long.

I wonder if that was perhaps a concern at the time for not pursuing it, in addition to the aforementioned stagflation problem.

Perhaps the Liberals might have supported a more equitable version.