THE referendum on the future of Scotland in the UK is certainly hotting up. Indeed, it is dominating the media more than the more immediate Euro elections, scheduled four months earlier than the Scottish referendum.

The Scottish referendum is probably only of marginal interest to residents in Wyre Forest. From my limited mailbag on this subject, I suspect that where people care they would like to see Scotland go independent, thereby ending the substantial subsidies paid by English taxpayers to Scotland and stopping the nonsense of having Scottish MPs dictating how we look after devolved issues, such as English health and education.

However, the debate rages on and there are important implications for the remaining UK should Scotland go independent. UK Government debt, currently £1.2 trillion, legally stays with the remaining UK. Our smaller economy (without Scotland) would keep all the debt and we would have to negotiate with the new Scottish government for them to take their fair share. What that share would be is questionable and Salmond would argue that to accept anything at all, they would want a currency union with the UK and sterling. As far as I am concerned, that is utterly unacceptable and there are absolutely no circumstances when I would agree an independent Scotland could have a say in how we run UK monetary policy. They can use the pound (or Euro, or dollar or whatever) but not as part of a currency union. Other issues come to light as the debate goes on – what will happen to Scotland’s financial services industry without UK regulation? The oil industry? Cross border trade? Their membership of the EU?

But what is incredibly important is this referendum creates the perfect forum for an informed debate. The Scottish Nationalists can hypothesise as much as they like about an independent Scotland but it is only when the electorate is faced with an in/out referendum that all the arguments are properly aired. Whatever the outcome, it will close down the debate for a generation. This was the case with the electoral reform referendum a couple of years ago and it will be the case with a UK in/out of the EU referendum. It is vital we hold an EU referendum in 2017.