Nicola Sturgeon has accused Michael Gove of telling “a fib and a half” after he claimed Scotland would be able to set its own immigration quotas if the UK leaves the EU.
The pair clashed after Gove said a Scottish visa system could be devised by the Scottish parliament after a Brexit vote, allowing Holyrood to tailor an immigration policy to meet its economic needs.
In a short visit to Scotland to rally support for the Vote Leave campaign, Gove said the points-based system would be very similar to the proposals put forward by the Scottish National party in the 2014 independence referendum. Alex Salmond, the then first minister, and Nicola Sturgeon, his successor, were highly critical of UK immigration policy for reflecting the needs of south-east England or the anti-immigrant sentiment of English voters.
Sturgeon implied Gove was guilty of cynicism. Referring to his active involvement in the anti-independence campaign in 2014, she tweeted:
Politicians who opposed Indy now pretending that #brexit is great idea because it will give us powers of Indy probably shouldn't be trusted!
— Nicola Sturgeon (@NicolaSturgeon) June 13, 2016
Well there's a fib and a half... #voteremain https://t.co/4puIBp6Mn6
— Nicola Sturgeon (@NicolaSturgeon) June 13, 2016
Gove told BBC Radio Scotland that although the Home Office in London would still control UK borders after leaving the EU, under his campaign’s proposals both the UK and Edinburgh governments would in future negotiate a distinct Scottish policy. Appearing to appeal directly to a growing number of leave voters, including to a third of Scottish National party and pro-independence supporters, Gove said “it would be for Scotland to decide” what migrant tests it wanted to introduce.
He said the UK-wide result in next week’s referendum was “on a knife-edge” and said the outcome among Scottish voters “will be significantly higher” than the 25% to 30% leave vote shown by recent polls.
Gove endorsed a letter to Sturgeon from Tom Harris, the former Labour MP now leading the Scottish Vote Leave campaign, saying Scotland could negotiate a special decentralised deal within the UK, in the same way the Isle of Man has one with the European economic area which allows it to prioritise its own workers.
Gove pointed at the situation of the Brain family who face being deported from Scotland back to Australia because the UK government changed the post-study work visa rules which originally brought the Brains to the Highlands. That system did give Scotland some flexibility but was scrapped in 2012.
Provoking a scathing attack from Salmond, whose party has championed the Brains’ case, Gove implied the family was being penalised because the EU system forced the UK to give preferential treatment to EU migrants. “At the moment, if you are an Austrian you can come here and there is no control over the number of people who can come from any EU country but if you are an Australian there is a limit,” he said. “Ultimately, the numbers who would come [to Scotland] in the future would be decided by the Westminster parliament and the Holyrood parliament working together.”
Salmond accused Gove of talking nonsense. “The Brain family are not suffering from any impositions of the European Union. They are suffering at the hands of Gove’s Tory government,” the former SNP leader said.
“The truth is of course is that the Brexiteers will say anything at this stage in the campaign. They run about England telling people they are going to slash immigration and now Gove comes to Scotland to tell us we will be able to attract more people. The lord chancellor is talking nonsense on ermine-clad stilts – what is standing in the way of Scotland having the immigration powers we need isn’t the EU, it’s the UK government.”
