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Orkney councillors back plan to explore alternative forms of governance Orkney councillors back plan to explore alternative forms of governance
(32 minutes later)
Councillors vote for motion asking officers to compile report on future of how islands are runCouncillors vote for motion asking officers to compile report on future of how islands are run
Councillors in Orkney have voted to explore alternative forms of governance. Orkney council is to investigate winning greater independence, including possible deals with Nordic nations, after accusing Scottish ministers of consistently neglecting the islands.
At a meeting on Tuesday, they opted to back a motion from the council leader, James Stockan, which would request council officers to compile a report on the future of how the islands are run. Councillors voted by a large majority on Tuesday to look at a range of options to increase their autonomy and funding, alleging that Orkney had been unjustifiably deprived of hundreds of millions of pounds by ministers in Edinburgh.
Stockan proposed a motion that instructs the local authority’s officers to publish a report on different options available to the islands, which have a population of about 22,000, including exploring previous “Nordic connections”. Officials have been instructed to look at a range of options, from splitting off from the UK, to becoming a crown dependency like Jersey, or less dramatic proposals for greater financial and political support from the Scottish and UK governments.
Stockan insisted during the Tuesday debate that his motion was “not about joining Norway”. The islands were under Norwegian and Danish control until 1472, when they were given to Scotland as part of Margaret of Denmark’s wedding dowry to King James III of Scotland. James Stockan, the council’s political leader, stunned many of his colleagues last weekend by asserting that Orkney, an archipelago sitting between mainland Scotland and Shetland, could align itself to Norway in protest at its treatment.
“I say ‘enough’,” the leader told his fellow councillors. “I say it is time for government to take us seriously, and I say it’s time for us to look at all the options we’ve got. Despite pointed criticism from several councillors who accused him of peddling a fantasy, Stockan was unrepentant on Tuesday. He said the Scottish government, and to a lesser degree ministers in London, had failed to follow through on repeated promises to empower Orkney.
“There is a far bigger suite of options here – this could even be that we could get our money direct from the Treasury in London and look after our own future.” The islanders faced destitution because Scottish ministers refused to foot a £420m bill to replace Orkney’s decrepit fleet of nine inter-island ferries; ministers had also refused to pay Orkney its share of a ferry fare subsidy known as road equivalent tariff.
An amendment attempting to block the motion was defeated by 15 votes to six, while a further change, which would revive a consultative group on constitutional reform for the islands, was accepted by Stockan and the motion’s seconder, Heather Woodbridge, without the need for a vote. An inter-islands committee chaired by ministers had never met, he added. Shetlanders and islanders in the Western Isles received £350 and £700 a head more respectively than Orcadians.
“If we don’t get help from our governments, where do we look?” he asked councillors in Kirkwall. “I say it’s time for government to take us seriously, and I say it’s time for us to look at all the options we’ve got.
“This isn’t about us joining Norway, there’s a far bigger suite of options there. It could be that we get our money direct from the Treasury in London.”
The islands were under Norwegian and Danish control until 1472 when they were given to Scotland as part of Margaret of Denmark’s wedding dowry to King James III of Scotland.
Stockan plans to write this week to Humza Yousaf, the Scottish first minister, and Rishi Sunak, the prime minister, demanding fresh talks about Orkney’s financial and political demands.
His motion was amended successfully by a highly critical councillor, Steven Heddle, a former council convenor, who said Stockan’s suggestions Orkney could split off from the UK would be financially catastrophic and unworkable.
“It makes us look like fools,” Heddle said. What Orkney had to do was reinforce its rights under existing constitutional arrangements.
Øivind Bratberg, a senior lecturer in political science at University of Oslo, told the Guardian Stockan’s ideas were “entertaining” but a non-starter. Norway had no system of crown dependencies.
“There’s no model the Orkney Islands could lay claim to that would allow them to actually become part of Norway,” Bratberg said. “They could affiliate themselves more, certainly – cultural ties could be intensified, there could be festivals … But politically, constitutionally, in terms of international law, I’m afraid it’s a non-starter.”
Stockan insisted after the meeting that aligning Orkney to a Nordic nation should be taken seriously. He pointed to the Faroes, an autonomous territory of Denmark, and the Åland islands, a Swedish-speaking archipelago in the Baltic sea that is an autonomous region of Finland.
He said he was attending a West Nordic council meeting involving Iceland, the Faroes and Greenland in late August as an observer, but he acknowledged he had never discussed his Nordic alliance proposals with any of the countries he cited.
He said it was constitutionally improper for a council leader to discuss deals with other sovereign states: that was a matter for the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office in London.
No 10 has dismissed Stockan’s proposals, insisting there is no legal or constitutional route for an existing part of the UK becoming a crown dependency; nor would other forms of independence be entertained, a government spokesperson said.