In January the Scottish government launched a consultation paper in order to set in train its plans for a referendum in order to re-establish Scottish independence. The Scottish government invited political parties and interested organisations and individual to make submissions. The National Liberal Party, which advocates ‘Devo-Max’, – full self-government short of independence – has argued in its submission for a third question on Devo-Max to appear on the ballot paper.

In addition, the NLP argues for a ‘preferendum’ in order to achieve the political outcome with the most widespread political support. A preferendum allows voters to ‘weight’ their support for all the options and thus ensures majority support for the ‘winning’ option.

Some 21,000 submissions have been made by individuals and organisations (compared to 3,000 to the Westminster consultation). We are unaware of what those submissions recommend but we are aware that the NLP are one of the few, if not only, political parties to support Devo-Max being on the ballot. The party carried out a campaign in Scotland urging citizens to contact the Consultation body to support our call.

The consultation will be considered this summer by the Government and a statement outlining their prefered option(s) will be made in Autumn and a Bill put before the Parliament early next year. The National Liberals wait for these landmarks in anticipation.

The submission was presented a week before the deadline (11th May)

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The next group to join our Liberty Wall is the party sponsored National Liberal Trade Unionist. This aims to promote a non-socialist trade unionism i.e. building employee protections rather than class revolution. The group will support the principles of liberty e.g. the protection of all individual employees, and patriotism e.g. the defence of workers from globalisation, and promote a liberal e.g. supporting greater employee share ownership, agenda. If you want to find out more click onto the group’s logo.

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