French chef Albert Roux signs up for Scottish independence
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AWARD-WINNING chef Albert Roux is among 40 food and drink proprietors across Scotland who have signed an open letter backing Scottish independence - but he fears for the country’s finances.
The chef from France who owns Chez Roux at the Rocpool Reserve in Inverness admires First Minister Alex Salmond for "selling Scotland’s beauty to the world" but believes there could be problems for the country’s financial services sector.
He said: "The First Minister and his team have travelled the world to sell Scotland not only as a place to visit for a summer holiday but as a place to visit for the whole 12 months of the year.
"France gets 85 million visitors a year but its only in the last few years increasingly more and more visitors are visiting the beautiful country of Scotland, and that’s down to him."
Mr Roux, who joined forces with Charleston Academy in Inverness to fundraise for a £250,000 kitchen for pupils from across the city, said he knew too little about the impending financial climate in Scotland to comment, but said there could be turmoil.
He added: "I don’t know enough about that. I do not want to form an opinion, But I have concerns. It’s a dark room. All I know is the First Minister has done magic for the tourist industry."
The open-letter backing independence has also been supported by Dennis Overtone, chairman of the Aquascot seafood business in Alness, Vivienne Rollo, of Kishorn Seafood Bar, Wester Ross, Paddy Crerar, chief executive of Crerar Hotels, which owns Ben Wyvis Hotel in Strathpeffer and The Golf View Hotel in Nairn, Antonio Vastano, proprietor of La Traverna restaurant in Aviemore, and Stewart McConnach from Caithness Biscuits.
It comes after Gavin Hewitt, the former Scotch Whisky Association chairman, claimed this week that more than a hundred Scottish business leaders wanted to sign a letter backing the Union but stayed silent because they feared "consequences" from the SNP Government.
He helped gather signatures, and said around half the executives he approached agreed the business case for independence was not yet made but declined to go public amid worries of a Nationalist backlash.
And last night, Lloyds Bank announced it would vacate its legal headquarters in Edinburgh and move to London if Scotland voted for separation for the UK.
However, more than 100 business leaders added their names to a declaration in favour of independence on Wednesday, following a similar statement signed by around 200 executives in August.
Mr McConnach from Caithness Biscuits, which opened in 2007, and boasts a client base which includes 120 Tesco stores across the UK, has no fears.
He said: "We need to take the scare mongering about big businesses leaving Scotland with a pinch of salt. What big businesses? Surely banks are not counted, they’re government owned.
"I think businesses will benefit from independence. At the moment, all I see is the money Scotland gets from the UK for businesses being diluted to pay for bureaucracy and we need every penny to develop the skills of our young people, who are the future of Scotland."
He added: "The amount of red tape that’s coming out of Europe is ridiculous, We could stand up as a separate country to Europe and argue against those things."
Vivienne Rollo, who opened the Kishorn Seafood Bar in 1996, said independence was a "fantastic opportunity to go in a different direction from the rest of the UK".
"It’s definitely not an anti-English thing that’s for sure," she said.
"I just see the rest of the UK going in a different direction, more right wing and more racist. I think that we have surely got a different attitude in Scotland. And I have absolutely no qualms about the financial situation in Scotland. I think we are quite capable of running our own affairs. I would hope that there might be changes made to things like the business VAT. At the moment food is zero-rated which means that you cannot claim anything back on your tax. Anyone in the food industry whose turnover breaches the threshold has to pay VAT on everything. If you’re in any other industry you can claim your VAT back on say your tools or equipment, but there is no VAT on food so you can’t do that."
Mr Overton at Aquascot and Mr Crerar at Crerar Hotels were contacted for comment but did not respond before the publicaton deadline.
A spokesman for the Better Together campaign said: "If Scotland does manage to negotiate re-entry to the EU after independence, then we would have a weaker voice in the EU than the UK currently does and there would be different terms and conditions. And Scotland is unlikely to qualify for current exemptions the UK is entitled to around VAT."
