Readers’ questions answered

How on earth are we going to pay for everything? Rosemary McMurtrie The Yes campaign claim it’ll be easy because Scotland will be among the top 20 wealthiest nations in the world, richer per head than France or Italy. They point to £ 600 million of savings from measures including trimming the military and scrapping Trident.

However, independent research by the Institute for Fiscal Studies said that while Scotland could afford to go it alone it would face substantially higher taxes or £6 billion of cuts to balance the books because oil revenues on which many of the SNP projections depend are in decline and the pensions bill is rising.

The Scottish Government dispute that, claiming policies tailored in Edinburgh will allow them to boost the economy and a more relaxed approach to immigration will swell the workforce and balance the demographic problem of an ageing population. If we go independent who will be a Scottish citizen? Patricia O’Connor

Those born in Scotland and anyone living in Scotland at the point of independence, March 2016 under the SNP’s plans, would automatically become a citizen.

After that any children born to at least one Scottish citizen would also qualify.

However, more controversially, anyone who was born outside Scotland but whose parent is a Scottish citizen would have to register as a Scot rather than becoming one automatically.

That means Scots living and working in banks in London or in the oil industry overseas and who had children outside Scotland would find their offspring would have to register, while a foreigner who happened to be living in Scotland in March 2016 would qualify automatically.