The campaign to keep Scotland in the United Kingdom has issued a fresh call for the SNP Government to release information about the country’s legal status if it becomes independent.
The UK Government published the opinion of two leading academics on Monday, suggesting that the most likely outcome of a yes vote in the 2014 referendum would be the creation of an entirely new state, free from the treaties and international memberships of the existing UK.
The Better Together campaign said this has increased the pressure on the Scottish Government to release its legal advice on independence.
It comes three months after the SNP administration ended a costly court battle with the Information Commissioner to withhold the fact that it had no specific legal advice to support its previous assertions on independence and membership of international bodies such as the European Union (EU).
Better Together campaign director Blair McDougall said: “The Scottish Government have no credibility on their legal advice. The only way people will believe their claims is if they too publish any opinion they have received.
“It is three months since they told us that they were now asking for a legal view that they claimed they had all along.
“Their response to the last Freedom of Information request was to block, cover up and mislead.”
Better Together has also launched an online campaign demanding access to the legal advice.
Meanwhile First Minister Alex Salmond has stressed that Euro-scepticism “does not have the same potency in Scotland as in some other parts of the UK” at a meeting of EU ambassadors in Ireland.
Mr Salmond confirmed that he does not support an EU referendum which Prime Minister David Cameron has pledged to hold at an event at the Irish Embassy in London.