SCOTLAND and Wales were promised "powerhouse" parliaments yesterday, as the two nationalist parties urged voters to reject the watered down devolution schemes backed by Labour and the Liberal Democrats, writes Frank Millar, London Editor.
The Scottish National Party leader, Mr Alex Salmond, launched his party's manifesto with a declaration that an independent Scotland could "pay its own way in the world." The Plaid Cymru leader, Mr Dafydd Wigley, claimed his party's plans for a lawmaking parliament with full fiscal powers could create 100,000 new jobs in Wales by assuming responsibility for education, health, transport and employment.
Mr Wigley said only a Welsh parliament with control of its own finances could unlock the potential of Wales, where he claimed centralised London rule had pushed income levels down to 83 per cent of the UK average.
He was scornful of New Labour, "with new faces and new principles", which he claimed was geared to the politics of southeast England and the desperate battle to win over Tory voters there. Labour, he said, offered Wales a very limited assembly which treated Wales as a second class nation compared with Scotland.
With little departure from its 1992 programme, the SNP manifesto pledged Scottish independence within Europe; continuing membership of the Commonwealth; a Bill of Rights; and a written constitution.
The SNP hopes to benefit from Labour's continuing "wobble" on Scottish policy, after Mr Tony Blair's intervention last week in which he appeared to liken the proposed Scottish parliament to a parish council, vowed Labour would not avail of the proposed tax raising powers, and insisted sovereignty remained with London and with him "as an English
But the other parties rounded on Mr Salmond, claiming his party's proposals had not been costed and would spell "economic catastrophe" for Scotland. Labour's Scottish campaign co ordinator, Mr Henry McLeish, described the manifesto as the "most dishonest dangerous and devious ever published by a political party in Scotland".