Report claims Scotland ‘can match world’s top small countries’

An independent Scotland can emulate the world’s 12 best performing small economies with economy-boosting policies, according to the SNP’s long awaited growth commission report.

Due to be published tomorrow, the report’s findings are based on studies of the fortunes of a dozen small countries with advanced economies.

It outlines policies which it claims, if implemented in Scotland using existing powers and with independence, could turn the nation into a smallscale economic powerhouse.

While opposition parties said the proposals were “fanciful nonsense” which had been “plucked from thin air”, Ian Blackford, the SNP leader at Westminster, insisted the document was “not about milk and honey” but presented a detailed analysis on how the economy of Scotland could be strengthened.

Achieving Scotland’s potential, the document will insist, would be worth additional economic output equivalent to an extra £4,100 per person.

The growth commission was set up by First Minister Nicola Sturgeon in September 2016 as part of a “new conversation” on independence in the wake of the Brexit vote.