The Scottish Government of Humza Yousaf, still in its infancy, has not been short of controversy. Mr Yousaf has, without question, inherited the most challenging in-tray of any First Minister in devolution’s history, with an ostensibly bottomless pit of policy difficulties.

Mr Yousaf has needed to make his mark, and he has turned to the constitution as a means to do so. Earlier this week, ahead of tomorrow’s convention on independence strategy, the First Minister unveiled his proposals to create a constitution for an independent Scotland, including a good indication of what he believes should be in the nation’s founding document.

The very act of creating this fourth in the series of papers outlining the case for independence has caused a degree of controversy amongst the Government’s opponents, but I must say I do not concur with that particular analysis. This is a government which supports independence, and which has what most neutral observers would concur is a clear mandate for a second referendum on it, and so it is entirely fair and reasonable, and perhaps even expected and required, that it would outline for voters what it expects that independent Scotland to look like.

To that end, the existence of a Minister for Independence, Jamie Hepburn, and the spending of taxpayer funding on it, is legitimate. If you don’t like it, don’t keep voting for them.

I am, furthermore, increasingly persuaded of the case for a written constitution. There is an attractiveness to an uncodified constitutional framework, as the UK currently has. It provides an opportunity for constitutional flexibility, and enables a government to remain ‘current’ and constantly respond to current needs rather than being constrained by the rigidity of a constitution written in and for its time.

However, these advantages are outweighed by the need to create a basic set of "rules of the game’" to ensure that people understand their rights and to create a check on the power of government.

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The Scottish Government’s paper outlined some of what we might expect to be contained in an interim document, and what might be contained in a permanent version. There are important and worthy inclusions on matters such as who should be the head of state and who should be the head of government; how many parliamentary chambers should exist and how local government should be exercised.

These are all critical building blocks for any country and, indeed, would have a fair chance of making people’s lives better. For instance, codification of the role of local government may compel central government to pass power down to local representatives, moving us on from the stifling centralisation of power in Edinburgh.

But politicians are politicians and, in this document, the temptation to introduce campaigning policy into what is supposed to be a totem to endure generational change has proven itself to be irresistible.

For instance, the Government has proposed that the permanent Scottish constitution should ban the housing of nuclear weapons in Scotland. This is, I am afraid, something of an eye-roll moment for the neutrals amongst us. Notwithstanding the question mark over whether the removal of nuclear weapons from the Clyde would be compatible with an independent Scotland’s membership of Nat (and it would be a brave leader who told us that NATO membership is unimportant for an exposed nation just around the Norwegian Sea from Putin’s Russia), it is also a policy matter for the government of the day.

It is perfectly acceptable for the SNP to advocate the removal of these weapons, which they do in order to appease their left flank, but the SNP should not seek to thirl future governments to the same policy.

The nuclear weapons sop, though, is tame compared to the most glaring act of what I can only characterise as the impeding of rationality by emotion - the constitutional enshrining of the NHS.

This country’s hysterical obsession with our health service is, at best, curious and, at worst, debilitating. And the spectre of this modern, internationalist, new country holding tight a demonstrably failing institution which has changed negligibly during its 75-year existence risks international embarrassment.

Constitutionally enshrining the principle that the taxpayer should provide universal access to necessary healthcare would be both acceptable and worthy. However, that is not what this proposal does; instead, it suggests constitutionally enshrining the NHS. In other words, it lumbers us with a specific system which produces woeful outcomes and which unnecessarily consigns vulnerable people to a life of misery.

I have written often on these pages of the NHS’s core problem - capacity. There is a way to organise a universal state-funded health system which requires a similar resource but which produces substantially better outcomes, and we can look at almost any European country as an example.

But at the heart of our inability to learn from our European friends is that we are psychologically bound to two basic misconceptions about the NHS: firstly, that it is good, and secondly, that it is free.

Neither is true, and yet the word "free" appears no fewer than eight times in relation to healthcare in the Scottish Government’s paper. The average earner in this country makes, rounding down slightly, £25,000. Of that, again roughly, £5,000 of it is retained by government in the form of income tax and, conservatively, the government spends around 40 per cent of its budget on the NHS.

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So, in income tax alone, the average earner pays a couple of thousand pounds every year towards their healthcare. And therefore when they visit their GP, or turn up at the Emergency Department, or sit on a waiting list for surgery, they are not enjoying a freebie. They have paid for it, handsomely.

The "free" narrative is deeply pervasive. It stops us asking awkward questions; it teaches us to be grateful and not to expect too much. And neither the words nor the sentiment should be anywhere near a written constitution for our country.

Our health service is terminally ill. It needs thoughtful, unemotional and substantial reform if it is to stand any chance of serving a population which is becoming progressively older and less healthy, while being paid for by a proportionally smaller set of taxpayers.

That reform would be a clear sign of a country ready for independence.