Letters: The independence White Paper has now been shown to be a work of fiction

• For those people living in Scotland in receipt of the UK State Pension at the time of independence, the responsibility for the payment of that pension will transfer to the Scottish Government.

• For those people of working age who are living and working in Scotland at the time of independence, the UK pension entitlement they have accrued prior to independence will form part of their Scottish State Pension entitlement. Any pension entitlement accrued in Scotland after independence would also form part of that Scottish State Pension. On reaching the State Pension Age, their Scottish State Pension would be paid by the Scottish Government

• For people who build up entitlement to a range of State Pensions – in Scotland, in the rest of the UK, in Europe, or elsewhere –the current situation will continue. The only difference will be that, from independence, pension entitlement accrued from working in Scotland will be to the Scottish State Pension, rather than to the UK State Pension."

Ian Blackford and the First Minister should be utterly ashamed in their endeavours to mislead the Scottish electorate over the future payments of the state pension. Simply put, a foreign country is not going to pay the Scottish state pension and the electorate know this despite the best endeavours of the First Minister and her acolytes. This is complete fiction, as it seems was most of the White Paper on independence.

Richard Allison, Edinburgh.

PROJECT FEAR GEARING UP AGAIN

ROBERT McCaskie (Letters, February 9) says that the UK will continue to pay pensions for expat Brits who live abroad, but would not pay for "foreign nationals', i.e. anyone living in Scotland", as "every person living in Scotland will become a foreign national on day one of independence”. I don’t know if this would apply to Mr McCaskie, but I am sure that it would not automatically apply to the tens of thousands of English UK citizens who have chosen to live in Scotland.

In Mr McCaskie’s world will they lose their right to pension benefits? It may also be that many Scots might choose to retain their British passports. Would they be cut off from their pensions as foreign nationals? Will people have to renounce their Scottish nationality to retain their rights to pension benefits? What if they qualify or opt for dual nationality? If every Scot becomes a foreign national on day one of independence, what is to happen to the Scots who have lived and worked in England all their lives?

Mr McCaskie has still to explain why Scots who have paid their contributions should be treated in any way differently to the expat Brits who retire to live on their British pensions in the sunny and foreign lands of Spain, Portugal, France and the like.

One might be forgiven for thinking that Project Fear is gearing up again.

Ken MacVicar, Lesmahagow.

A LEGALLY BINDING CONTRACT

JUST a little bit more logic should perhaps be applied to the pensions debate. Jane Lax (Letters, February 9) seems to see a huge difference between those born in the UK but living abroad and those born in the UK who will live in an independent Scotland. So consider another example.

You and your brother live together and decide to save the same fixed amount for a car which both can use and sign an agreement to do so. Brother later moves to live elsewhere. Do you not then legally owe him his share of the money saved? Even if you have already spent the lot on a holiday or your latest girlfriend, you still legally owe him that money.

If, therefore, you have built up an entitlement to a UK pension through National Insurance, there is a legal obligation for that pension to be paid, no matter where you live. Your pension has never been funded as a dedicated savings pot but your payments are used a part of general taxation and the pension paid on the same basis.

Where is the problem? It is a legally binding contract.

P Davidson, Falkirk.

WORK WITH UK, NOT AGAINST IT

I CAN assure Alan M Morris (Letters, February 10) that these feelings of national inferiority he expresses are all in his head (“our country as a sovereign state taking its place at the world table, not sharing it as a minnow constantly hidden by a larger partner”.

Mr Morris might like to be reminded that the population of Scotland is approximately 5.5 million compared with the 56.5m in England. This differential might not change significantly if Scotland was to be independent but better that she is our partner than our estranged larger partner.

Furthermore, since it is the SNP policy for an independent Scotland to rejoin the EU, would we not then really be comparable to a minnow, taking orders, laws and regulations from Brussels? Look at the shambles it got into over cross-border Covid vaccinations.

If the SNP representatives in Westminster were to start working with the UK Government rather than against it, we would all be better off with the ensuing peace.

Bill Brown, Milngavie.

WHERE IS ROUTE TO DEMOCRACY?

OVER the years, we have become inured to unionist politicians extolling the virtues of the “self-determination” of various countries, most recently in Ukraine and the Falkland Islands (though not Scotland or the Chagos Archipeligo). Mark Smith ("Scotland can learn from the Falklands", The Herald, February 10) finds it rum that Scots feel excluded from this global, UN principle of “the universal realisation of the right of peoples to self-determination, national sovereignty and territorial integrity”. He should be aware that this “right” applies to all Scots, the vast majority of whom, like myself, don’t regard themselves as “nationalists”, Scottish or British, at all.

But what is rum, is that Scots are denied any ability to exercise that right of self-determination, by all three UK-wide parties, who refute Scotland the same “right” or constitutional mandate, as they themselves have enjoyed, earned through the ballot box. Mr Smith’s own party leader has stated he will impose a constitutional settlement on Scotland without reference to a confirmatory referendum. So I challenge Mr Smith to explain what legal, democratic route to Scottish self-determination exists, which he has asserted is “fair and clear”, because it seems to me, we do not have one.

GR Weir, Ochiltree.

CONNECTIVITY IS LAMENTABLE

YOU are to be congratulated in presenting a broad range of opinions on the now-linked topics of independence and EU membership. However, none of the commentators has referred to the question of connectivity, ie for internal and international travel. In the Scottish context, Glasgow and Edinburgh are arguably the best-connected two major cities in the UK, having four rail routes and two distinct motorway links. Outside the Central Belt, however, we have single-track rail north of Perth to Inverness and throughout the Highlands, Borders and Galloway. Both the local geology and more frequent storms make road, rail and ferry upgrades challenging; what can we offer European suitors beyond wind power and whisky?

It's also worth noting that connectivity between Scotland and Europe is poor. A year ago, at the height of lockdown, the only overseas flight from Glasgow was to Amsterdam; the short-lived Superfast ferry service between Rosyth and Zeebrugge did not prosper; and a proposed Rosyth-Eemshaven (Dutch) ferry has not materialised.

Meanwhile, Boris Johnson is the best recruiting sergeant imaginable for Scottish independence. He has little empathy for Scotland, and fails any decency test. It is to our discredit, however, to take his mean-spirited and ill-thought-out Brexit "deal" as an established, immutable treaty. We have to cast off "Little Scotlander" parochial notions, and study in depth the arrangements made by other countries, both inside and outside the EU. How did the Czech/ Slovak split work out? How do Norway and Sweden, or France and Switzerland, handle cross-border trade and travel: surely better than the UK's inept Brexit arrangements?

Graeme Orr, Neilston.

* I APPLAUD your decision to publish a series of articles by intelligent, objective experts about the impact of an Indyref2 decision on us all. Unfortunately, I suspect that many of our polarised politicians and voters across both camps do not accept the value of nuance, objectivity and altruism in shedding light on a complex problem. To paraphrase Theresa May: they either do not understand the value of these attributes; they do understand their value but do not think they apply to them; or they have not heard of these values. This is the rock upon which we may founder as we try to work out what is best for Scotland.

John Murdoch, Innellan.

Read more: The independence debate is about having faith in ourselves